One More Valentine

by Anne Stuart

  He turned Rafferty over, staring down into his unmarked face. There was no sign of a bullet wound, no sign of any trauma. He lay very still, and Billy put his head against Rafferty's chest, listening for a heartbeat.

  It was there, quite faint, but growing steadily stronger. There was no blood, no sign of a scuffle. Just Rafferty lying there, as still and silent as the grave.

  "What…what the hell are you doing?" his voice wheezed, and Billy sat back, relief washing over him.

  "You're not dead," he said foolishly, backhanding an unmanly tear from his eye.

  "That's a matter of opinion," Rafferty said, his wry voice sounding hoarser than usual. "What happened?"

  "Beats me. I was trying to catch up with Ms. Emerson. The door was locked, and I heard you shouting at her, and then a gunshot." He glanced around him. "Where is she? Did Drago shoot her? What happened… ?"

  Rafferty closed his eyes and began to curse, something far more intense than the mild "damn its" he'd favored Helen with. "Drago's got her," he snapped, surging to his feet, swaying slightly for a moment. "And I'm the one he shot."

  "Jeez, Rafferty!" Billy gasped, putting a supporting hand under his arm. "Where… how… are you okay?"

  Rafferty shook himself, almost in disbelief. "I'm okay," he said. "After all this time I should be getting used to crazy things, but I'm not. Drago shot me right between the eyes," he said, staring at Billy with his unmarked face. "I heard the noise, felt the heat and pressure of the bullet. And all I've got right now is one hell of a headache."

  "Does that mean he can't hurt Ms. Emerson?"

  "Who the hell knows what any of this means?" Rafferty countered wearily. "I don't trust fate, or providence, or Drago's aim. We've got to get her, and we've got to stop Drago, or maybe the next person he shoots won't have my amazing recuperative powers." The heavy mockery in his voice couldn't quite disguise the fear.

  "Where do you think he took her? I only heard one gunshot, so she must still be okay. Unless he used a knife…" Billy let the words trail off as he recognized Rafferty's expression. He'd known Rafferty for more than half a century, and he had thought that eerie stillness of his had lost the power to frighten him. He was mistaken.

  "She's all right," Rafferty said in a quiet, deadly voice. "She's hurt, she's frightened, but she's still all right."

  "You know that?" Billy asked, all admiration. There seemed to be no end to Rafferty's powers.

  "No," he said, disillusioning him. "But the alternatives are unacceptable. Helen's okay. She has to be."

  And Billy wasn't about to put up an argument. "Where do you think he's taking her? Maybe we can head him off."

  Rafferty slammed his fist against the wall with impotent rage, and Billy noticed for the first time that he was still holding the gun. "Why the hell can't I think straight?" Rafferty said. "I don't think he'd go back to Clark Street—he tried that once, and it failed. There's just an old folks home there now, anyway." He tucked the gun into his waistband. "We'll start at his place and go from there. Since he took her with him instead of killing her here, he must have something in mind. Are you coming with me?"

  "Is the pope Catholic?"

  "What the hell does the pope have to do with anything?" Rafferty snapped, heading down the hallway at an uneven run.

  "Sorry," Billy muttered, abashed, as he followed him. "It's just a saying. Does that gun work?"

  "Not for me. I tried when I saw Drago grab Helen. It wouldn't even cock. You want to use it?"

  "Not if I can help it. My parole is pretty shaky at this point—if I'm caught with a loaded weapon I'm looking at some hard time."

  Rafferty stopped and stared at him. "You'd let Helen die?"

  "No. But I'm looking for alternatives that'll keep us all alive. You included."

  Rafferty's smile was bleak and humorless. "It's too late for me. We figured that out a long time ago. The rules don't apply to me. All I need to do is get Drago. If I can accomplish that much, I don't give a damn whether I come hack anymore."

  "But she'll wait for you. She might not believe…"

  "I don't want her waiting. I'm no good for her, Billy. She deserves the best, not some remnant of another time and place, a time and place better left forgotten. Even if I had the choice, I'd choose to leave."

  "You're in love with her," Billy said, his voice soft with astonishment.

  "It's that obvious?"

  "To someone who knows you," Billy said. "Mary said something about it, but I thought she was just being crazy after the baby's birth. Did you tell her?"

  "Tell who? Ms. Emerson? Of course not. She doesn't need that kind of complication in her life. Once I'm gone she'll convince herself that it was all a dream. At least some of the more unlikely aspects of our time together. By next fall she'll be ready to move on."

  "You're awful dumb for such a smart man, Rafferty," Billy said.

  "I've got to find her, Billy. I've got to save her life," Rafferty said, his voice bleak and desperate. "Help me figure out where to start."

  Billy shook his head. "I haven't got the faintest idea. You're the one who seems so tuned in on her. Listen to your heart."

  "I don't have one," Rafferty said.

  "Don't give me that. Use your instincts, man. Sixty-five years ago you had the most powerful instincts in Chicago. Bugs Moran wouldn't spit if you didn't tell him it would be okay, Capone was shivering in his fancy boots at the thought of you. You've got talent, you've got a gift. Use it," Billy said.

  Rafferty leaned against the wall by the freight elevator, closing his eyes. "It never mattered so much before, Billy," he said in a hard, quiet voice. "If I make a mistake this time, it's for keeps."

  "You won't make a mistake, Rafferty. You're here to save her life. You're here to make her life. Don't blow it."

  Rafferty's eyes flew open, and for the first and only time in his life Billy saw fear there. Uncertainty, strength and love as well. "I know where he took her," he said, and the moment of fear was gone.

  "Then what the hell are we waiting for?" Billy said. "Let's do it."

  "Do it?" Rafferty echoed, punching the elevator button. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  Billy found he could smile. The night was far from over, and before it ended there would be blood and death. But he was a survivor, and so was Rafferty. They'd been through too much, too many lifetimes, to let it go now. When the smoke cleared, Drago would be dead, this time for good. And with any luck at all, Rafferty would still be here.

  "You'll learn, Rafferty," he promised, thinking of all the tomorrows. "You'll learn."

  Helen was cold, miserably, achingly cold. She didn't want to open her eyes, wasn't even sure they would open. Her eyelids felt frozen, her toes were blocks of ice and her fingers were numb. She huddled against the brick, wondering if the ice on her face was frozen tears. And then she realized it was wet snow, plastering her skin.

  She didn't move. She'd left her down coat in Mary Moretti's hospital room, but she didn't particularly care. Freezing to death was supposed to be a comparatively pleasant way to go. Everything went numb, and you felt sort of drunk, and then you just drifted off to sleep. She wasn't sure if that was taking into account the bitter wind that was ripping through her thick cotton sweater, slicing through her baggy jeans. She could have done without that. She would have preferred being blanketed in a layer of thick new snow, wrapped in a cocoon of whiteness, where she could lie like some medieval maiden, waiting for her knight errant to return from the crusades.

  "You awake, lady?" Ricky Drago's high, unpleasantly cheerful voice broke through her fantasy, and she decided to ignore him, seeing if she could summon back the hazy vision of Rafferty.

  "Hey, lady." His hand caught her chin, squeezing it painfully, and her eyes flew open, blinking away the snowflakes that had lodged in her lashes. "That's better," Drago said. "I don't want you out of it. Not yet, at least. I've got plans for you. Big plans."

  She just stared at him. There was nothing worse he could d
o to her, she reminded herself. He'd murdered Rafferty—life could offer no crueler surprises.

  Drago didn't like her silence. His fingers tightened cruelly, and she let out a small, involuntary whimper. "That's better," he crooned. "You don't like pain, Ms. Emerson? Few people do. I like it. I like to watch it. I like to make people hurt. I always have. It's something wrong with me, my mother told me that. She used to try to beat it out of me, but it never worked. You can't beat meanness out of a kid, Ms. Emerson. You just beat it in deeper."

  She didn't want to say anything, but she knew he expected it, demanded it, and she was finding the pain almost unbearable. "You're right," she managed to croak out.

  He laughed then, a high, eerie sound in the night air. "I'm right?" he echoed. "What do you know about meanness, Ms. Emerson? What do you know about what life does to you? You just sit behind your desk and ask your questions and you never listen to the answers. You make someone so damned mad that he… It was your fault." He switched track abruptly. "All your fault, not mine."

  Despite the pain in her head, the iciness of her heart, she had no trouble following his rambling train of thought. "I'm sorry about your wife," she said, not knowing what name to call him.

  He slapped her. Her head whipped sideways, her cheek grazed the brick wall that she was huddled against and her eyes stung with tears of pain. "You're sorry," he said in an awful, hissing voice. "You don't even know what sorry will begin to feel like. You're going to discover new levels of regret that no one ever thought possible. I'm good at what I do, Ms. Emerson. I was one of the best, in a time when there were a lot of experts in my field. And I haven't lost my touch. But you don't know what I'm talking about, do you? Rafferty never tells anyone. You want to know why? He can't. It's that simple. None of us could. It would have given us an unfair advantage. Only after I found Lizzie, after she showed me how things could be…how…" His voice trailed off again, and the sorrow and despair on his mad face were truly devastating.

  "What are you going to do to me?" she asked, unable to keep her voice from shaking. It was the cold she told herself, knowing it was the fear.

  The sorrow vanished from Ricky Drago's face, replaced by a look of gleeful cunning. "I would have thought that was obvious. I'm going to kill you. You're responsible for my wife's death, and you have to pay. It's been made very clear to me. You pay for the sins you commit. I've had to pay, and now it's your turn, Ms. Emerson."

  She looked past him. Snow was coming down heavily, layering his thinning black hair, coating his leather jacket. Ricky Drago was no formal throwback to the twenties, Chicago style. He was every inch a modern hood, with murder on his mind. Rafferty's murder, already accomplished. And hers.

  "What's keeping you then?" she demanded, no longer caring. It had to be well below freezing, and with the windchill factor she'd probably freeze to death before long. Not that such an end might not be preferable, but she was getting heartily sick of Drago. "You've killed Rafferty, why don't you finish me off?"

  "You'd like that, wouldn't you? But I've bungled the job three times already. I'm not about to make another mistake. I'm going to savor the moment, do it right. And I want to give him enough time to get here if he's smart enough to figure it out."

  "Who?" she asked numbly.

  "Rafferty."

  "He's dead," she said, fighting against the sudden surge of hope. "I saw you shoot him in the face. No one could survive…"

  "Probably not," he agreed. "But Rafferty is full of surprises. I think we'll give him a little time. See if he still has the ability to rise from the dead." And he laughed, a high-pitched, eerie giggle that made Helen's skin crawl.

  He'd warned her about regret, about sadistic pain. He'd just delivered her the cruelest blow imaginable—impossible hope. "Where are we?" she demanded, staring around her. Even coated in icy white, the bleak landscape looked familiar. A snow-capped desert, with strange shapes looming beyond them, she'd been there before, in another time, another place. Just like Rafferty.

  "Don't you recognize it?" Drago said, sitting back on his heels in the gathering snow. "It's your rooftop, Ms. Emerson. You used to come out here in the summer and lie on a towel and unfasten the top of your bathing suit. I watched you. I was waiting, waiting for the right time. Did you know I was watching you? Waiting for you to sit up and show me your breasts? Did you show Rafferty your breasts, Ms. Emerson?"

  Helen fought down the sudden panicked nausea at the thought of him, watching. "Why didn't you kill me then?"

  Drago shrugged. "Like I said, the time wasn't right. I was planning on waiting for Valentine's Day. For old time's sake. I haven't whacked anyone since I came back, and I thought you'd be the perfect one to start with."

  "But you started with Rafferty."

  Drago's face darkened. "Yeah," he said. "I didn't want to do that. I mean, things were working out pretty good. I never thought that dope Billy would really get you two together, but he did. He never knew that's what I had in mind in the first place. I really wanted to do you both at the same time. But then, life is full of little disappointments. I may still get the chance."

  "Why did you want to kill Rafferty? What did he ever do to you… ?"

  Drago's smile was very sweet. "It's like what they say about climbing Mount Everest. You do it because it's there. Rafferty was always a boil on my butt. All he ever had to do was look at someone and he'd scare the hell out of them. I had to use force."

  "Didn't you want to?"

  "Yeah," he said, after he thought about it. "Good point. But then, nobody ever said you were stupid, Ms. Emerson."

  She didn't know how much longer this could go on, carrying on a crazy conversation with a madman. Where was the drifting, cloudlike comfort of freezing to death? She was so cold she ached, a hard, solid pain that wouldn't stop, that matched the throbbing in her head, the stinging in her cheek, the icy numbness in her hands and feet, the devastating hole in her heart. She wanted it over, she wanted safety and comfort and Rafferty's arms around her. If death was the only way she could have it, then death it was.

  "Are you sure you want to wait, Ricky?" she asked in a taunting voice. "What if Rafferty does manage to survive? What if he shows up here, maybe with Billy? Do you want to take that chance? It must be strange to fail, after being such an expert in your field. Don't you want to prove to yourself you can still do it?"

  Drago was looking at her with astonishment wiping out some of his eerie glee. "What did you call me?" he asked hoarsely.

  "Ricky. Ricky Drago's your real name, isn't it? Not Willie Morris."

  He suddenly looked very pale. "How did you know that? It's not in my police records. It's not anywhere." He grabbed her shoulders, squeezing hard, and shook her. "How the hell did you know my real name?" he shouted in her face.

  "Rafferty told me."

  He flung her back against the brick wall. "He couldn't have. That's not the way it's supposed to work."

  "You want to keep it a secret, Drago? Then you should have done something about the newspapers. There's a couple of pictures of you in today's Chronicle—Billy showed them to me. One of you from 1928, all spiffy and elegant. And another one a year later, lying dead on a garage floor."

  "Bitch," Drago said viciously.

  " Why do you waste your time with me, Ricky? Why do you waste your time with someone like Rafferty? Wouldn't you be better off tracking down the men who shot you sixty some years ago?"

  "You stupid fool. They're all dead. They've been dead almost as long as we have, and they haven't come back. Don't ask me why. I hunted for them, every year, even caught up with a couple of them, and it was no good. I couldn't kill them. Just as I know Rafferty can't kill me. He may want to stop me, but there's not a damned thing he can do. All he can do is watch as I kill you."

  "But he's already dead."

  "Maybe. Maybe not. I'm keeping an open mind. We'll wait."

  "I'm cold," she said, her voice trembling with shivers.

  "Too bad you don't have C
rystal's old coat. Maybe I should consider going downstairs and getting it. There'd be a certain justice in that. Crystal was always sweet to me. Treated me real nice. Except that she treated Rafferty even nicer."

  "Is that why you want to kill him?"

  "Hell, no," Drago said, some of his former good cheer returning. "It just seems like the thing to do. Then maybe when I finish with the two of you I'll go after Moretti. Can't trust the little snitch."

  "He didn't tell me about you," Helen said, as panic whipped through her. "He refused to cooperate when he was arrested this last time."

  "Then why did you let him walk?"

  "Rafferty…"

  "It doesn't matter. I think I'm developing a taste for this. I didn't get to enjoy doing Rafferty, but I'm going to enjoy you. And then…"

  "Get away from her." It wasn't Rafferty's voice in the snow-whipped stillness. It was Billy's, sounding hoarse, determined, and deadly. Helen squinted into the darkness, but she couldn't see a thing.

  Drago didn't turn around. He stayed where he was, squatting on his haunches in front of her, and the muzzle of the gun was pressed underneath her chin. "You can't stop me, Billy," he scoffed. "I remember the time you puked, when we had that shoot-out over on Sycamore. You're not the killing type, and you know it as well as I do. Maybe to save your wife and child, but what the hell do you care about a state's attorney? She tried to keep you away from Mary. If she lives, she's your natural enemy."

  "Get away from her, Ricky." Helen's weary eyes followed the sound of Billy's voice. He was off to the right, silhouetted against the blue-black sky, the snow swirling around him.

  Drago knew where he was as well. "Make me, Billy," he said, turning his head in Billy's direction.

  And then Helen saw him. Coming up on the other side, silent, as still as always, stalking his enemy, and she couldn't control her little start of joy and disbelief.

  It was enough to alert Drago. He yanked the gun from underneath her chin, fired it at Billy, then whirled around to face the approaching figure, the burning metal against Helen's temple, scorching her. "I'm going to kill her, Rafferty," he wheezed. "You've made my dreams come true. You can't stop me, and even if I can't kill you, in another few hours you'll be gone. But don't worry about it. I'll be waiting for you next Valentine's Day. I'll have something really festive planned."