Valentine (38 page)

Valentine’s Day.

Belinda’s mother told him about the skiing accident the previous year, and the day on which it had occurred.

Valentine’s Day.

According to the Hartley College file, there had been a fourth girl involved in the incident. The college registrar proudly informed him that this girl, Jillian Talbot, was now a noted mystery writer living
in New York City. He’d thought, briefly, about calling her and warning her, when his new idea had been bom.

Jillian Talbot was his key, he realized, his only possible access to Valentine. Cass and Belinda were dead, and Sharon Williams was probably dead, too. Jillian Talbot was the only one of the four who was still alive. But now, he knew, it was her turn. She was to meet the same fate as Cass and the other women.

Valentine’s Day.

So, four weeks ago, he’d gone to Greenwich Village. To wait. To wait for Victor Dimorta to arrive. He’d followed the woman, and he’d bugged her apartment. He hadn’t made his presence known to her, fearing that Victor Dimorta would get wind of it and vanish without revealing himself. He’d watched her in her home, suffering through the evil jokes: the cards and the flowers. He’d followed her to the police and the private detective, and still he had forced himself to remain silent. He felt, sometimes, that he could do anything, whatever it would take, to avenge his sister.

He tightened his grip on the Beretta. He could hear his quarry now, somewhere among the trees directly ahead of him. Taking a deep breath, he began to run again.

There were trees in front of her, and more trees, and more. And suddenly none. She stumbled out of the forest onto the road. The driveway, her panicked mind informed her. You’re on the main road leading to the colony.

But which way?

She stopped for one precious moment, listening. Yes, the faint music was coming from her left. The main house. Go there, the survival voice ordered. Get to them. Get close enough, then scream. Scream your head off. They won’t hear you from here, not with the music. Go
now!

She turned in the direction of the party and began to run.

She didn’t get three steps. In one sudden, chilling instant, her hair was grabbed from behind and she was being whirled around. Nate—Victor Dimorta—loomed up in front of her, a horrible grin, a rictus of death and destruction plastered to his suddenly ugly face. He drew back his fist and smashed it into her jaw.

She heard a crack and saw white light, and she was falling, falling backward into the snow, and floating out to some unknown destination. Then the darkness enveloped her, and she knew no more.

Victor Dimorta reached down and picked up the unconscious woman. Moving slowly, carefully in the
deep snow, keeping to the shadows at the edge of the forest, he carried Jillian Talbot toward the lake.

Water. The fourth element.

He smiled as the snowflakes fell on him, flying into his face and instantly melting. He could hear the sounds behind him: someone was trying to chase him, but they were going the wrong way. They were obviously lost, disoriented in the dark woods. Ignoring the sounds, he pressed on.

He’d finally figured out the phone tap and the listening device Tara had told him about. It must have been the late detective, Fleck. He must have put them there without her permission, in a feeble attempt to catch Valentine.

He laughed. As if that idiot—as if
anyone
—could catch Valentine! He was too smart: hadn’t he fooled all those women? Hadn’t he fooled Jillian Talbot for
ten months?!
Hadn’t he been clever enough to hire that street person, that drug addict, to go into the flower shop and order the roses? How could they catch him? He was invulnerable. Invincible. Invisible.

And Fleck was fertilizer. In Mother’s flower garden.

Tara, the actress, had not once suspected the presence of a far greater performer. Mary Daley had liked him and trusted him, enough to reveal Jillian’s hiding place. Dr. Philbin had fallen for his performance on the phone and let him into her office. And Doug
Baron, Stacy Green’s widower, had no idea that the man who had befriended him after the chance meeting at Henry Jason’s gallery had only done so because of Stacy. To be near someone who had actually slept with the model who looked so much like Jillian, the dead model whose photographs he had defiled so many times on his prison cot. To savor his power, Valentine’s power, over all of them.

Mother.

Father.

Sharon Williams.

Belinda Rosenberg.

Cass MacFarland.

And now, Jillian Talbot.

The enemies of Valentine.

He spared no thought for Dorothy Philbin or Barney Fleck. They were nothing to him, mere impediments. Stones in the road.

Smiling, he gazed down at the beautiful face of the unconscious woman. His love for her had long since turned to hatred. She was the last, and now she would go the way of all the rest of them. His vengeance would be complete.

He suppressed his laughter. The music was growing louder, and the big main house loomed up on his left as he arrived at the edge of the lake. He would have to be very quiet now. Like when he
made his way down the hall and into his parents’ room that night. Quiet; oh so quiet . . .

Holding his breath, careful to make no sound, he headed for the dock.

She was floating through the air, borne up by powerful arms. Nate’s arms. Nate had arrived to save her; he was here to protect her from—

No! her mind cried. Nate is not Nate. There is no Nate, he had said.

Nate is Valentine.

Nate is Victor Dimorta.

The shock brought her fully back to consciousness.

Even so, the little voice that had not deserted her told her to remain still, to keep her eyes shut. The music was very close now: they must be near the house. If he puts me down, she thought, I can rim. I can scream . . .

Then she became aware of the hollow sounds below her, the clomping of his boots on wood.

Oh, God! The dock!

He’s going to throw me in the lake!

He burst out of the forest into wide-open space and doubled over, gasping for breath. He was sweating profusely, despite the freezing cold. As his breathing returned to normal, he strained his ears for any sounds that might indicate where they were. He
could hear only the distant laughter and the music from the gramophone.

Then he stood up and looked around him. A snowy field, a flagpole, a backstop. The baseball field! And there was the main house, down by the—

The lake.

He saw the tall, black shape emerge from the shadows by the lake and step out onto the dock. Even at this great distance, with the snow falling, he could see that the figure was carrying something in its arms. Someone: Jillian Talbot.

He began to run again.

The panic overtook her, forcing her to open her eyes, to stiffen in his arms. She had never learned to swim. Water terrified her. She was going to drown.

No! her mind cried even as she reached up with her nails to claw at his face. The nail of her index finger poked at his left eye, and the other drew blood from his cheek.

He uttered a hoarse, startled cry, and then she was falling through space and landing with a jolting thud on the dock. She scrambled to her knees, looking wildly around her. They were at the very end of the dock: the edge was mere inches from her. And Nate—
Victor
—was standing above her, his body between her and dry land.

But now she had made him bleed, and that had
made him angry. She was rising to her feet when the blow came, and the pain of it was greater than any pain she’d ever experienced. With every ounce of his considerable strength, he smashed his fist into her stomach. She fell facedown on the dock, paralyzed with pain. After a moment her vision returned: she was staring down at the wood mere inches from her eyes. When she could move again, she rolled onto her side, her legs curled up under her, and her hands found their way to her stomach. Oh, my baby, she thought, my baby . . .

“You’re going to die now, Jillian Talbot. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

At first she thought she’d imagined the words, but she realized an instant later that they had been uttered from somewhere above her. The words were followed by the most awful sound she’d ever heard: the keening, high-pitched laughter of Victor Dimorta. Then the little voice inside her cut through her pain and shock, through his dreadful laughter, barking its last orders.

Get up.

She took a deep breath. Ignoring her broken jaw and her other, greater pain, she dragged herself up to her knees, facing him. Her feet hung over the edge of the dock behind her.

Speak.

She looked up into his eyes, the eyes of the man
she had loved. But that man was gone now, replaced by this vile thing in human form. His gaze bored down into her: she could feel the waves of hatred emanating from him. From
it
Whatever it was. And beyond him, beyond
it
, she saw the hazy, dark figure step silently out of the shadows onto the dock.

Speak!

On her knees, she reached out toward him with her arms in a bizarre parody of supplication.

“Vic—Victor,” she slurred, trying desperately to enunciate despite the smashed jaw. “Victor, I told the dean what they did to you. I tried to help you. Please, please—don’t—hurt—me.”

He continued to stare down at her. The sounds came again, the high-pitched hyena snorts, the laughter of a small child. Behind him, at the other end of the dock, the dark figure raised its arm.

“Oh,
sure
, you tried to help me! When did
any
of you try to help me? You’re dead, bitch!”

With that, he reached out his hands to push her backward into the lake. He must have moved swiftly, even violently, but to her fevered mind it seemed to take forever, as if he were moving at the wrong speed, in slow motion. She even had time to think one last rational thought: so this is it, this is death. She closed her eyes and flinched, steeling herself. She would fight him. She would not,
must
not die. Not like this. Not now. The hideous eyes stared down at
her, and the large hands came closer, closer. She drew in a painful breath, forming her hands into fists.

The explosion that followed ripped through the darkness and resounded across the lake. It also ripped away most of Victor Dimorta’s head.

At first it didn’t register: her mind did not grasp what had happened. Then she opened her eyes and saw. She was staring up at him, at what remained of him, as the blood and bone and brain tissue rained down on her. She was raising her hands to cover herself from the onslaught when his body smashed into her chest, and then she was falling and falling and she heard a splash and she was freezing and she was—

Wet. She was in the water,
under
the water, and Victor’s nearly headless torso was on top of her, weighing her down, pushing her down to the bottom of the lake. She struggled briefly, attempting to remove the heavy weight, but her mouth was full of water and she was swallowing it and there was nothing to breathe, only water and more water and still more water, and she was a little girl standing in the living room doorway watching her parents dance and she was laughing and everything was very bright and then it was dark and the cold was going away now going away going away and she was floating . . . floating . . . floating. . . .

He lowered his arm, and the Beretta fell heavily onto the dock beside him. He shut his eyes and held his breath, aware of the odd silence. The dock, the lake, the falling snow. And nothing else, not a sound anywhere, as if the world had suddenly come to a complete stop.