Valentine (37 page)

He was pressed against the trunk of a large tree, some thirty yards away in the darkness of the forest. He stared in disbelief as the boyfriend, Nate, came out of the trees and into the pool of light outside the cabin.

What the
hell?
he thought. What the hell is
he
doing here?

Nate knocked on the door, and after a moment she opened it. Shouting his name, she threw herself into her lover’s arms.

I can’t believe this! he thought. He’s going to spoil everything!

Then, in the very next instant, he had another idea.

No, he thought slowly to himself. Perhaps not. Perhaps he won’t spoil it, after all. . . .

“Oh, Nate! Am I glad to see you!” She continued to embrace him in the doorway, the flecks of snow swirling in on the chill wind from outside. “How did you find me?”

He was laughing as he moved into the room. “Hang on a minute. I’m freezing!”

She let go of him and stepped backward, allowing him to get all the way into the cabin. He slammed the door behind him and shot the bolt. Then he took her in his arms again and kissed her.

When they paused for breath, she stepped back from him and looked up at his face. His hair was
wet, hanging down into his eyes. She laughed, partly at the sight of him and partly at the warm, solid reality of him, and went into the bathroom to get a towel. When she came back, he was lowering his dripping saddlebag onto the desk beside the dripping crash helmet. She handed him the towel and he hung it around his neck, grinning.

“Whew!” he breathed. “You sure are one tough lady to find!”

She grinned. “I hope it was worth it. How
did
you find me, anyway?”

He laughed as he reached up to towel dry his hair. “Mary, of course. Well, Tara started it. She was worried about you—as well she should be. She told me all about the other night, before you took off without telling anyone where you were going. Jill, you should have said something.”

Jill felt the hot blush rise to her cheeks. “I know, darling, but you were so busy with your show, and I thought—”

“Did you think
anything
was as important to me as you?” he cried.

“Well, I—I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly. . . .”

He laughed. “
Ill
say! But, given your circumstances, that’s understandable.”

She stepped forward to embrace him again. “Oh, Nate, it was
awful!
But you’re here now, and we’re
away from there, away from
him.
” She buried her face in his chest.

He reached up to stroke her hair. “Yes, Jill, I’m here now, and everything’s going to be okay.” Then he reached up gently to pull her away from him. “But first, I have a surprise for you.”

She smiled and took the wet towel from him. “A surprise? It’s enough that you’re
here!
”

He turned and leaned down, opening the saddlebag. “I know, but I came all the way out here, so . . .” He took something out of the saddlebag and put it down on the desk, but she couldn’t see what it was because his body was blocking it. Then he reached down into the saddlebag again.

At that moment, the clock above the desk began to chime for midnight.

They both looked up at the clock.

Then she heard it. Coming from the desk behind him.

Sarah Vaughan.

“My Funny Valentine.”

“What?” she began. “Nate, what on earth—”

Then Nate whirled around to face her, extending his hands. She looked down. He was holding out a bright pink candy box.

Jill looked up into her lover’s eyes. He was no longer smiling.

“Happy Valentine’s Day!” he said.

David MacFarland stood behind the tree thirty yards from the cabin, staring at the door and the pool of light that flooded down on it. They were in there, Jillian Talbot and her boyfriend.

Her boyfriend.

He’d dismissed him as unlikely, as he’d dismissed his friend Doug Baron, the photographer. He’d even followed them around Spring Street that day, finding nothing suspicious about them.

The boyfriend. He’d been with her for months, nearly a year . . .

Then, he thought of his own sister, Cass.
She’d
had a boyfriend, too, in the weeks just before . . . a man named Neil something . . .

Neil Avnet.

He’d never been able to trace Sharon Williams after she’d disappeared, but the other one, Belinda,
on the ski slope. . . yes, there’d been a strange man there, too. He was quoted in the newspaper reports. Leonard something. Something Italian. Morelli . . . Vanelli . . . Vaneti.

Leonard Vaneti. Len, for short.

Oh, my God! he thought.

Len Vaneti.

Neil Avnet.

Valentine!

Then he was lurching forward, out from behind the tree, and crashing through the dense forest ahead of him, stumbling blindly in the direction of the light, of the cabin, the name screaming in his mind, over and over and over.

Nate Levin!

“What?” she said again, stupid, numb, her mind suddenly off, unable to function. “What—”

“Happy Valentine’s Day!” he said again.

Instinctively, she stepped backward, away from him, away from the music and the heart-shaped candy box. “Nate!”

Then, in a long, awful moment, a slow smile came to his face. It was not a smile she’d ever seen, not in all the months they’d been together. It wasn’t Nate’s smile, it was nobody she knew. It was nothing human.

“I’m not Nate,” he said, his dead voice belying the
horrible smile. “There is no Nate. Nate Levin is an anagram, you stupid, evil bitch. My name is Victor Dimorta.” Slowly, he raised the box again and held it out in front of her. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

The shock coursed through her. She stared, fascinated, as the song continued and her death stepped smiling forward holding out a box of candy and she couldn’t think couldn’t breathe couldn’t move couldn’t move simply . . . could . . . not . . . move. . . .

Crash!

Something big and powerful smashed into the other side of the door inches behind him, as if someone had thrown himself against it. He gasped and whirled around toward the noise, and in that instant the spell was broken and the survival voice deep inside her came rushing up into her brain.

Move.

She reached up with her arms and pushed with all her might, with a strength born of shock and pure adrenaline, sending him crashing forward into the door. He lost his balance and fell to his knees, the candy box flying from his outflung hands.

Weapon.

The gun was in her purse, her purse, her purse, where the hell was her
purse?

On the table in the corner. She would have to get past him to get to it. She was already stepping forward
in the direction of her purse when his hand clamped viciously down on her wrist.

And he was on his feet in front of her. He brought up his other hand in a fist, rearing back to strike.

Disable.

She yanked her wrist from his grasp and stepped backward. She kicked her right leg out behind her, straightening her knee as the instructor had taught her. Then she brought it forward with all her strength. Her boot made solid contact, directly between his legs.

His face contorted in a dreadful grimace of pain, and he fell heavily backward onto—

Her purse. So much for the gun.

Move.

She was running, running away from him, across the room and into the bolted back door.

Unbolt the door.

And she was reaching and she was yanking and she was pushing and then the door was open and she was falling out of the doorway into the snow, facedown in the snow and she was groping with her hands and she was on her knees and she was up, up and running, running, running through the blackness, through the dense forest behind the cabin where there was no path no light no anything only darkness and more darkness and the pounding of heavy feet behind her and run rum run oh, God,
run!

When David MacFarland came to, he was lying in deep snow in a pool of light outside the door of a cabin. Blood, apparently from his nose, was already frozen to his cheek and neck. His ungloved hands were numb, and there was a tearing pain in his chest and his arms. He heard faint music, big band music, coming from somewhere far away.

It took him a moment to remember. Then it came rushing back to him: he had thrown himself against the door. He’d smashed into it with such force that he’d been temporarily knocked out.

In the next instant, the rest came back.

Valentine!

And he was on his feet, ignoring the pain and the blood and the numbness, pounding his fists against the door. Then he stopped, listening.

There was other music, coming from inside. A woman’s voice, softly singing “My Funny Valentine.” Otherwise, nothing. Not even breathing. Nothing.

Without really thinking, acting on instinct, he ran around the side of the cabin toward the back, stopping at the wooden window just long enough to ascertain that it was locked. He raced to the rear side and saw the open door and the footprints leading away from the cabin, into the trees. A brief glance
through the open back door told him that the cabin was empty.

Pulling the Beretta from his coat pocket, he plunged into the black forest.

She was running aimlessly now, through the endless trunks of trees, caught up in her panic. Her body had become a machine, a fulcrum of perpetual motion bom of her instinct to survive. Keep moving, the voice inside her repeated. Just keep moving.

So she kept moving through the forest, raising her hands to ward off the dark shapes that constantly loomed up in front of her. Falling in the snow and rising, always rising and moving on. She was aware of the sounds behind her, the crunching and the crashing and the panting. She knew he was mere yards, perhaps feet, behind her, and that he was gaining on her. Rim, the voice inside her said. Run.

There was nobody in front of him: he was certain of it. David stopped to catch his breath. He would catch up with them, though; he had no doubt of that. It was the one purpose he now had on this earth.

He would find Valentine, and he would kill him.

He had made the silent promise over her coffin. Cass—dear Cass, who had remained beside him when everyone else was gone. Their parents had thrown him out when he was eighteen, when he had
told them that he was gay. His high-school friends had shunned him, even the rest of the football team. He had been their first-string quarterback for two years, leading the school to an unprecedented number of victories. But that didn’t matter to them: he was a homo, a queer, a faggot, and that was that. Only Cass had been loyal, had continued to love him.

And now he would avenge her.

He turned around in the snowy forest, moving off in the direction of the faint noises he could hear through the trees. Victor Dimorta was somewhere over there, and he must get to him. If he managed to save Jillian Talbot, too, that was good, but it was a secondary consideration. He knew only that he was going to kill.

Even as he ran through the dark woods, he smiled at the satisfaction his lover would have gotten from knowing the part he had inadvertently played. Richard Farnum, a name as familiar as his own, had been the name he’d used to get into this place. Now Richard Farnum—Rick—was gone.

As he ran, he remembered that final telephone call from Cass. She’d just received flowers, after the three valentine cards, and she’d finally figured it out. Victor Dimorta, she’d said: that’s who’s doing this. Then she’d told him about the prank that she and her friends had played. He’d offered to go there, to drive to her cabin in New Jersey to be with her, to protect
her. Don’t worry, she’d replied. I have a gun, and I know how to use it, and Neil Avnet, my new boyfriend, will be here in a few minutes. The date: February fourteenth.

Valentine’s Day.

In the weeks after her death, he’d found out about Sharon Williams and Belinda Rosenberg. He’d left Rick in his mother’s capable hands and traveled to Hartley College, where he’d demanded and been given the official records of the incident in the dorm room leading to Victor Dimorta’s expulsion. Then he’d gone to Mill City, Pennsylvania, and learned the rest. The following days had been a blur of feverish activity: the call to Sharon’s mother in California and the process of finding Belinda’s family at their new address in Buffalo. Mrs. Williams told him about her daughter’s disappearance in the middle of February, two years before. The middle of February, he’d thought. February fourteenth.