Anne Stuart's Out-of-Print Gems

by Anne Stuart

  “Want to find out about the man you’re living with?” The voice at the other end responded to her husky greeting. “Want to find out about Billy Moretti?”

  “Who is this?” she demanded sharply, her momentary fog vanishing.

  “Want to find out who wants to hurt you, Ms. Emerson?” the damnably familiar voice said. “Don’t trust Rafferty—he’s a liar. Why do you think he hasn’t left your side in the past twenty-four hours? He doesn’t want you to find out the truth.”

  “The truth about what?”

  “The answers to all your questions lie with me.”

  “Who is this?” she said again.

  “Come and find out…1322 Clark Street. I’ll be waiting. But I won’t wait long.”

  “But…”

  “And come alone, Ms. Emerson. Rafferty wouldn’t lift a finger to help you anyway, but I don’t want him around. Come alone, and I’ll tell you what you need to know. Unless you’re willing to put your life in Rafferty’s hands.”

  That was exactly what she’d been willing to do. The phone went dead before she could say so, and she stared at the receiver in blank dismay, as the confusing events of the past day and a half swept over her. Rafferty’s sudden appearance in her life, an appearance that had started with a lie and never been explained satisfactorily.

  The supposed near miss outside the courthouse, the stranger in the hospital, the phony drive-by shooting at Greg’s that had left him white and shaken. What the hell was going on?

  He wasn’t going to give her answers, she knew that already. He’d just tell her more fairy tales. And while part of her wanted to pretend nothing had happened, that no one had called, the part of her brain that was sharp and legalistic wouldn’t let it be.

  She’d leave it up to fate. If Rafferty emerged from the shower before she’d dressed and left, then she’d confront him. Otherwise she’d find the answers to her questions at 1322 Clark Street.

  Why did that address sound so familiar? It wasn’t that far away, but it wasn’t a section of town she was that familiar with. It was decent enough—middle class, filled with apartment houses and small businesses and retirement homes, and it was still daylight. She had more to fear from the unanswered questions in her own apartment than a stranger in a residential neighborhood.

  He was still in the shower when she emerged from her bedroom, dressed in faded jeans and an old police academy sweatshirt she’d filched from her youngest brother. It had to be the longest shower known to man, and she was half surprised her meager hot water supply was still holding out. Unless he was taking a cold shower.

  Rafferty and his showers were no immediate concern of hers, she reminded herself, trying to ignore the telltale throbbing in her heart, the tingling in her skin, the tenderness in her lips. When she saw him again she’d be better equipped to deal with him, to demand the truth from him. And maybe then she’d be able to accept the fact that he simply hadn’t found her desirable enough to make love to.

  She took her car keys from the floor where Rafferty had dropped them, pulled on the fox coat for lack of anything better to wear and headed out into the late-afternoon air. A light snow was falling, the sky was bleak and a strong wind was whipping down the street. Somewhere young lovers were getting ready to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Somewhere people were eating candy and drinking champagne and flirting and kissing and planning futures.

  Not for Helen. Not for today. She was going to end Valentine’s Day just as virginal as the first one she celebrated. But at least she was going to have some answers.

  It was getting dark when she finally found 1322 Clark Street. She’d made a half a dozen wrong turns, driven slowly on the slippery streets, unsure of her direction, so that by the time she pulled in across the street from the place, she was beginning to have her doubts about the wisdom of her choice.

  The building was set back a ways from the neat sidewalk, with a wide expanse of stubbled, snow-covered lawn in front. She sat in the car for a moment, staring, as a woman walked down the street, two matched cocker spaniels at the end of a leash.

  The dogs had been well behaved enough, trotting along, until they came up to 1322. Suddenly they jerked, one of them snapping at the leash, straining at it to get away from the property. The other one promptly sat back on his haunches and began to howl.

  Helen had heard that sound before. The lonesome, eerie howling of a dog, and with sudden horror she remembered what 1322 Clark Street was: the original site of the garage where seven men had been gunned down so many years before.

  Her hands were trembling as she tried to start the car again. In her panic she ground the gears, and the car stalled. She tried again, as the door opened, and a hand reached in and came down over hers.

  “Running away, Ms. Emerson?” a soft voice asked.

  His hand was painfully, sadistically hard on her wrist. She tried to peer out the door at the man standing there, but she couldn’t see much beyond a pair of dark, half-crazed eyes and a wiry body.

  “Let go of my hand,” she said in a deceptively firm voice.

  “I thought you came for answers.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “You know where you are, don’t you, Ms. Emerson?” the damnably familiar voice continued. It was someone she’d prosecuted, she knew it, but she couldn’t place him. “Of course you do. Rafferty must have been more forthcoming than usual. But then, he couldn’t be, even if he wanted to. He can’t tell you about who and what he is. Who and what we all are. But he must have said something.”

  Irrational horror scampered down Helen’s spine. She tried to jerk her hand away, but the fingers tightened, grinding her bones together so that she had to bite her lips to keep from crying out.

  “Don’t be scared of an address, Ms. Emerson,” that evil, crooning voice continued. “A place can’t hurt you. The old garage was torn down decades ago. Sure, the dogs won’t go anywhere near the place, but other creatures aren’t so sensitive. I thought this would be a fitting place.”

  “A fitting place for what?”

  “For me to kill you. Sort of poetic justice, don’t you think?” And the man knelt down beside her, and she found herself staring into a pair of mad eyes that had once looked sanely enough out of Willie Morris’s face.

  “Why would you want to kill me?” Her voice didn’t even tremble. Even if her hands did.

  Morris smiled, a sweet, eerie smile. “Let’s just say I owe you.” And he brought a gun up into her vision, a very small, very lethal-looking gun.

  She was going to die. She accepted it calmly enough, having no other choice. This crazy man was going to shoot her, for no very good reason, and her fury at Rafferty grew. Damn it, she didn’t want to die a virgin. She didn’t want to die without having known love.

  The irrational anger was so strong that she kicked out, slamming the door open and knocking Morris onto the sidewalk. She didn’t need a second chance. She took off down the sidewalk, her fur coat flying after her, certain at any moment that a bullet would slam into her back. Morris didn’t strike her as the sort of man who would miss a target, even one moving as quickly as she was.

  She leapt across the street, directly into the woman with her two dogs. They went down in a tangle of howling and snapping, the leashes wrapping around the women, the dogs barking in fury as Helen tried to fight her way free, terrified that she was going to bring death to a stranger as well as to herself.

  He came up behind her; she could feel his presence before his hands caught her, extricating her from the leather leashes, hauling her upright. She turned, cold and ready to face certain death. And instead she looked up into Rafferty’s furious eyes.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

  She stared at him mutely, ignoring the vociferous anger of the other woman as she tried to sort out herself and her dogs. Helen glanced around, but there was no sign of Morris, no sign of anyone at all besides the disgruntled dog walker, who gave her a look of fury before stalking down the s
idewalk, her dogs still carefully skirting the boundaries of 1322 Clark Street.

  Rafferty ignored them as well. “Are you going to answer me?” he asked in a tight voice. “Why did you sneak off without telling me where you were going? Why did you come down here, of all places?”

  “I didn’t know I needed to account to you for my actions. I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed out on my own,” she shot back, irrationally angry now that the immediate danger was past.

  “Damn it, Helen…”

  “Stop saying ‘damn it,”’ she shot back. “You say it too damned much.”

  He caught her shoulders in his strong hands, and if they were hard on her skin, they were nowhere near as painful as Willie Morris’s lethal grip. “Why are you here?”

  “Willie Morris asked me to come down here. He said he had something to tell me. About you.”

  Rafferty said something a great deal more succinct than “damn it.” “And you came? Without telling me?”

  “I didn’t know it was Morris. He didn’t identify himself. And I didn’t think I could trust you.”

  He looked as if he were doing everything humanly possible to keep his temper. Somehow his towering rage was reassuring. He wouldn’t be that angry if he didn’t care for her, at least a little.

  “What did he want?” Rafferty demanded. “What did he tell you?”

  She tried for a cool, disdainful smile, but it came out woefully lopsided. “I think you know as well as I do what he wanted,” she said crossly. “He tried to kill me.” And then, to her utter shame and amazement, she burst into tears.

  Chapter Eleven

  They drove back to Helen’s building in silence. Rafferty paid less attention than usual to his admittedly erratic driving, but even a few near misses couldn’t force a protest from Helen. She sat with the seat belt wrapped tightly around her, staring blankly out the window, the tracks of her dried tears on her pale face.

  She probably got freckles in the summer, he thought irrelevantly. Not too many, just a smattering across her pert nose, maybe a dusting along her cheekbones. He’d never see her with freckles. He’d never feel the summer sun again. Funny, but up until this time he hadn’t minded. But right now he minded like crazy. Not seeing Helen Emerson’s freckles.

  There was no sign of Drago following them, but he took a circuitous route just to be certain. By the time they reached Crystal’s old house Helen looked as if she was on the ragged edge of control. And Rafferty knew he had no choice but to push her over, once they got inside. If he hoped to have any chance at all of saving her life.

  She climbed out of the car before he had time to even turn off the key, running up the stairs and disappearing into the apartment. He half expected to find the door locked, but she’d left it ajar, and he closed it carefully behind him, using all three locks and the security bar as well. He didn’t want to let Ricky Drago in without a sufficient amount of warning. And he didn’t want to give Helen the chance to run off again, perhaps straight into another trap. He wasn’t going to let her out of his sight until he had her safely delivered into the arms of someone who could protect her.

  He found her in the kitchen, staring into the half-empty refrigerator as if she were looking for the meaning of life. “The cupboards are bare,” Rafferty said, his deep voice startling in the quiet.

  Helen still leaned on the refrigerator door. “I’m not hungry.”

  “If you’re too hot we could always open a window,” Rafferty drawled.

  She slammed the door shut, turning on him, and he was glad to see that the frightened, listless expression had vanished, replaced by one of sheer wrath. “What the hell is going on?”

  He held himself very still, watching her. It was amazing to him, his total inability to terrorize her. Most people had only to come face-to-face with his impassivity and they’d back down. Not Helen. She was tough in ways unimaginable for such a vulnerable woman. It was little wonder that he was undeniably obsessed with her.

  “What do you mean?” He stalled.

  “Who are you? Why have you moved in on me, so that I can barely go to the bathroom alone? I must have been stupid not to have noticed before, but Willie Morris very kindly pointed it out to me before he tried to kill me,” she said, her voice acid. “Who are you, who is Billy Moretti, who is Willie Morris? Do you all want to kill me? What in God’s name is going on here?”

  Her voice was rising in agitation. She heard it as well as he did, and with a great effort she took a deep breath, calming herself. “I want you to tell me the truth, Rafferty. No more science fiction stories, no more time travel, no more fairy tales. Just the plain, unvarnished truth.”

  “I told you…”

  “I know what you told me. You’re a dead gangster from 1929, and so was Billy Moretti. Perfectly believable,” she snapped, and he could see the edge of panic dart behind her warm brown eyes. “So how does Willie Morris fit into all this? Who was he, Elliot Ness?”

  “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned Elliot Ness, Helen, and I don’t have the faintest idea who you’re talking about,” Rafferty said wearily.

  “Stop it!” Her voice broke, and she turned away. “I want to know what you’re doing here, and what you want from me. Are you going to kill me?”

  He wanted to touch her. He wanted to reach out and clasp her shoulders, pull her back against his strong body and warm her, soothe her, protect her. He clenched his fists to keep them at his side.

  “If I wanted to kill you I’ve already had a dozen chances,” he said. “I’m trying to protect you.”

  She turned back. “Why?”

  “Ricky Drago plans to kill you. I’m doing my damnedest to stop him.”

  “Who the hell is Ricky Drago? And where does Willie Morris come into this?” she asked fiercely.

  He’d forgotten Drago’s new identity. “Drago and Morris are the same man,” he said, trying to come up with something believable for a woman who didn’t want to believe. “I knew him a long time ago…you might say in another lifetime.”

  “Why does he want to kill me? And why do you want to save me?”

  “He blames you for his wife’s death.”

  “What?”

  Rafferty shrugged. “Don’t expect me to understand. I wasn’t even around when it happened. Apparently you brought him in for questioning, and he was in such a rage about it he drove into a cement bridge. He wasn’t hurt but his wife was killed.”

  “God, I remember,” she said, some of her ferocity fading. “But that was almost two years ago. Why would he want to come after me now?”

  “Drago…er…Morris is a very methodical, very meticulous man. He never forgets a grudge, and he’s not quite sane. Knowing him, I expect he always planned to get around to you in his own good time. And that time is now.”

  “Why you?”

  He reached for his cigarettes. “What do you mean?”

  “Who appointed you Sir Galahad, to come to my rescue like a knight in shining armor? Why do you care whether I live or die?”

  He toyed with a dozen answers, some of them plausible, some of them truthful. He went for the most painful. “It was a favor to Billy.”

  He might as well have slapped her. Her face turned even paler, and she leaned against the refrigerator to steady herself. “Why does it matter to Billy?”

  “He figures he owes you. You were right about him—he’s trying his damnedest to go straight. Drago decided to put a monkey wrench in the works, and it was simple enough to get Billy to play along. All he had to do was threaten his wife. You had the wisdom to see that Billy was worth another chance, and he’s not going to stand by and let Drago gun you down.”

  “And if it weren’t for the baby’s unexpected appearance he would have been the one in my apartment?” she asked, tossing back her long dark hair.

  “Until he found someone to protect you,” Rafferty agreed. His cigarette tasted foul, almost as foul as his temper. She was looking at him like a whipped dog, still ready to bite, and h
e knew he needed to demoralize her further.

  “But he did, Rafferty. He found you.”

  “I’m only a stopgap. I’ll be gone by tomorrow morning, and there won’t be anyone between you and Drago.”

  She took a deep breath, her eyes meeting his. “That’ll be just too bad, won’t it?” she said.

  “You come from a family of cops, Helen. I want you to call up one of your brothers and go stay with him until Billy can figure out what to do.”

  “No.”

  He stared at her incredulously. “A man tried to kill you,” he said, biting off the words. “It wasn’t the first time. Did you get a close look at the fur coat? There are bullet holes in it. Drago wants you dead, and he’s not going to stop until he accomplishes that goal. Or until someone stops him.”

  “That’s what you’re here for, right? As long as the ghost of Valentine’s Past is around, how can he hurt me?”

  “Damn it, Helen!” He slammed his fist against the refrigerator, not even flinching as the force of his blow reopened some of the tiny cuts on his lacerated hand. “I can’t save you!”

  “Why not?” she demanded coolly. “Don’t you have superpowers, or something like that?”

  “Hell, I don’t have any powers whatsoever,” he snapped. “I can’t shoot Drago. As long as I’m living in limbo I can’t harm another living being.”

  “Guess what, Rafferty,” Helen said softly. “You already have.” She pushed past him, walking out of the kitchen, and for a moment he stood there, absorbing the force of her verbal blow.

  She was standing in the living room, staring out into the snowy evening, her back straight and narrow beneath the baggy sweatshirt. Rafferty had never understood modern women’s predilection for baggy men’s clothes, but at that moment he couldn’t imagine anything more desirable than Helen Emerson.

  “I can’t save you, Helen,” he said again, more quietly. “And I don’t want to watch you die.”

  She didn’t turn. “Cheer up, Rafferty. You’ll be back in limbo by the time Drago or Morris or whoever he is gets to me.”