The Ninth Day (9 page)

“You can’t deliver that shipment. You know that, don’t you?”

Oz gave her a grim look. “I’m going to do what it takes to stay alive. If that means I take out the DOD security, then I will.”

Emma could see he was serious. “I won’t let it come to that. I have friends who work there. I won’t let La Valle hurt them, or you.”

Oz stared at her a moment, then sighed. “I’ll help you escape.” She wanted to tell him to join her, and almost did, but clamped her jaw shut. He wouldn’t make it.

“I’m headed back to the far end to look at some slides. Let’s talk about this after dinner. I can’t make a move until it’s dark in any event.”

Emma returned to the ranch house by the stables and began preparing the slides for review. She used some of the scrapings from the sores to innoculate petri dishes containing various mediums. She wanted to see if the disease grew under various circumstances, not just when offered a plant or human host upon which to feed.

The camera attached at the center of the ceiling contained one glowing LED pin light underneath a dark glass globe. While Emma worked on the slides, her mind was elsewhere, creating and discarding escape ideas. She wanted to attempt it without including Oz if she could. She didn’t know him well enough to be sure that he wasn’t acting as the “good cop” in a “good cop, bad cop” scenario, but her gut told her he was just as desperate to leave as she was. Even so, she would rather not involve him.

Her mind wandered to the world outside the compound. By now her absence from her office would be noted, but she doubted that anyone would have begun worrying about it. The plants that she scoured the earth for were often in remote areas accessible only on foot and after hours or days of hiking. As a result, she routinely slept in the field, and had become adept at carrying her own tent, water, and all the supplies she would need for an overnight. Her colleagues knew this. Banner, the CEO of Darkview, might grow suspicious, but if he was in the field as well, there was no telling how long she’d be gone before someone worried about her.

She completed her work and put the petri dishes aside. She placed a slide under the microscope and peered through it at the tissue. The image sprang into focus, a large red scale with irregular edges. Emma recognized nothing unusual.

She blew out her breath in irritation. Solving this problem with such inadequate tools was impossible. Emma removed the slide and added another. Same picture, same problem. Ten minutes later she’d viewed them all and was no further enlightened. She pushed away from the counter and headed to the armadillo barn.

The sun had long since peaked and was heading downward. The air remained heated, but large clouds of gnats flew low, keeping below the tree line. Emma glanced at the sky. Heat lightning flashed in the distance. Cameras placed at the corners of the armadillo barn remained stationary despite her movement. A glance at them revealed that they were mounted on rigid arms. These eyes, then, were fixed. Staring. Their LED lights didn’t glow. They were the only ones she’d seen on the compound that remained dark.

“Dummy cameras,” she thought with satisfaction. La Valle must have thought the ground-armadillo-plate border would protect anyone from taking his pets, though Emma thought it more likely that no one wanted the damn things anyway.

She passed into the barn and was once again struck by the smell of animal dander, straw, and the funk of old water and dried dung. Emma loved the smell of horses and liked the smell of dogs. She was less than thrilled at the smell of armadillos. Not overwhelming, but not familiar either. She walked up and down the center aisle, peering into each enclosure, and glancing upward whenever she could to peer at the ceiling. The dark rafters were bare of any surveillance technology.

The best place for her escape was right there. While there were cameras inside the house, they did not extend to the barn, and the nearest exterior camera focused on the perimeter. By Emma’s estimation, she could take out the one functioning camera, and the others on the barn were fakes.

She removed her rubber bracelets and peeled apart one. It ripped in half easily, and had striations running the length of it. She pulled on the striated section and was left with a long piece of rubber the thickness of an ordinary rubber band. She strolled out of the barn and over to the pole that held the one camera that she thought was functioning. Its red eye glowed at her.

Pretending nonchalance, she leaned against the pole with her hands behind her. As she did, she took the thick part of the rubber bracelet and pressed it onto the wood, flattening it like clay. The remaining thin band she slid into her pocket. She removed her compass from the other pocket and spotted due west.

With her weapon in place, she was free to stroll back to the main house. She’d eat and rest. When the darkness came, she’d make her move.

Chapter 12

H
alfway to the hacienda, Emma heard the sound of pulsing dance music and murmuring voices punctuated with the occasional high-pitched laughter of a woman who sounded well on her way to being smashed. As she neared the pool, Emma spotted the source of all the merriment. At least fifty people were scattered across the yard and Emma could see more inside the hacienda’s family room. The french doors were thrown wide to allow the guests to move freely between the house and the pool.

Flaming torches placed in the ground about ten feet apart smelled of citronella oil and smoke, the tangy scent floating on the air. Several people sat on the chaise longues arranged poolside. Two thickset men smoked cigars and conversed, while others smoked rolled joints. The pot smokers handed theirs off to a group of nearby women. A rolling cart loaded with liquor bottles sat at the pool’s edge. The containers glowed amber in the yellow light thrown by the torches. Someone cranked up the music and the milling crowd started dancing, moving in the evening air. Emma changed direction to walk in a large semicircle, skirting the pool area. She was halfway past the hacienda when Raoul rounded the corner. The skinny coyote walked next to him.

“You go back to the stable. Carlos will take you there.”

Emma hadn’t planned on spending any more time locked in the stall. “I need to eat and get back to the farm. I should keep working.” She improvised her answer.

Raoul fixed her with a frown. “No more working tonight. The others are here. I don’t want you to be seen. Carlos will bring you dinner. Get moving.” He waved a hand at Carlos as he said this.

“I can go the long way around the house to the stables. No one will see me. I need every available minute to try and solve this problem.” Emma put some steel into her voice.

“Enough!” Raoul said. He gave Carlos a curt nod and cut away, heading toward the pool and the lights.

“La Valle won’t like this!” Emma called to Raoul. He turned and smirked at her.

“La Valle is having a party. While he does, he won’t give a damn about anything.”

Carlos grabbed her arm and started dragging her away from the hacienda, back to the stall. He pulled a pistol out of his waistband and held it in his free hand, making sure she saw it. They reached the stable where she’d been that morning. A quick glance at the cameras placed on the outside confirmed that they were live. Red lights glowed. Carlos dragged her into the stable’s breezeway. She spotted two more cameras at either end, but neither had a red light. More dummies, she thought.

Carlos got to the stall where she’d started her day and shoved her in, sliding the door after her. She heard him snap the locks closed and walk away.

Emma checked the rubber band she’d placed that morning. It was still there, stuck on the side of the door. Satisfied, she settled onto the straw. Her stomach growled, and she did her best to ignore it. She hoped that Carlos would remember to bring her food.

The moon shone through the bars on the high rectangular window, lighting the area enough so that Emma could once again see the streaks of blood on the interior walls. She moved as far into the center of the small space as she could and settled into the hay, bunching parts of it into a pile to form a makeshift bed, and waited.

Twenty minutes later Carlos reappeared with a plate in his hand. He opened the stall door and handed it to her, along with a bottle of water. He closed the panel with a thud, and snapped the locks closed once again.

Emma tore at the shredded pork and munched on the corn bread that accompanied it. She washed the entire meal down with the water. When she was finished, she subsided again onto the straw. The party noises increased, with the shrieking of high-pitched voices growing more shrill and coming more often. Every few minutes she heard a splash as a guest jumped into the pool. The water landings were each time followed by laughter and a smattering of applause. Electronic dance music punctuated the splashes. The party sounded like it was getting louder, the attendees wilder. Emma would wait a little longer before making her move. She settled into the straw for a short nap.

She woke with a start, disoriented. The music cranked higher, blaring across the empty area. The splashes were constant. It seemed as though the entire party had migrated to the pool. Somewhere a dog barked incessantly, its flat tone cutting through the synthesized music. Now the smell of marijuana reached her, carried on the soft breeze. The moon had moved only a little. Emma estimated she had slept for half an hour, no more. She heard the faint buzzing of a mosquito in her ear. She batted at it with the back of her hand.

It was time to leave. She rose in one movement and walked to the rubber band. She removed the pack of matches she’d stolen from the stable, twisted off a single one, and scratched it across the pack. It lit with a fizzing noise, accompanied by the smell of sulphur. She reached through the bars to get the flame as close to the band as she could.

She froze when she heard the sound of boot heels hitting stone. She yanked her hand back inside and blew out the match.

Oz appeared in front of the stall door. He gazed at her. Gray shadows and milky white light covered his face. He looked drawn, tired, and grim, yet he was the only friendly face she’d seen in a while, and she smiled a tentative smile. His responding smile was sad. Poignant, almost. It seemed as though he had accepted his fate.

“I came to get you out of here,” he said. She released a breath that she didn’t realize she was holding. He walked to the end of the corridor and stared in the direction of the pool. While he did she gently removed the band from the door. She shoved it in her pocket for use at a later time.

“Aren’t you worried about the cameras?” she said.

“The ones in here are fakes. As for when the others catch sight of us, I’ll make up some sort of story.” His right hand was wrapped around a longneck beer, the other holding something that Emma couldn’t see. He lifted it up, and she saw that he held a large ring with a mass of keys attached.

“I bring you the key to heaven. Or at least to freedom from that tiny box they’ve put you in.” Oz took a swig of the longneck and placed it on the ground at his feet. A messenger bag, its strap slung over his shoulder diagonally, swung against his hip. “Now it’s just a matter of finding the right one.” He inserted a brass key into the lock. Emma watched him try to turn it. It didn’t move. He glanced up at her. “Clearly not the right one.” He inserted another. No go. He moved the next into position. Shoved it in the lock and tried to turn it. From the hacienda came the sound of a huge splash and the yells of the partygoers.

“Are they all in the pool?” Emma asked.

Oz kept his eyes on the lock in front of him. “The men are cannonballing into the deep end and the women are congregating at the shallow end. The wet bar area is covered with little piles of every type of drug imaginable. Cocaine, meth, marijuana, ’shrooms, little pill piles of oxycontin, you name it. It’s like a drug buffet. Every one of them is blasted and washing their powders down with alcohol. At some point they’re either going to fall unconscious or fight.”

He shoved yet another key into the lock and Emma wanted to shout with joy when she saw it turn. “Got it.” He pulled the door aside.

Emma stepped into the center corridor. “Thank you,” she said.

Oz retrieved his beer and took a full gulp. He handed it to her. She took it and swallowed a mouthful. It was smooth and still decently cold. It tasted like heaven.

“Let’s get out of here.” Oz replaced the panel and locked the stall. “Stay close to the stable walls. They’re so hammered at the pool that I doubt anyone will spare a glance this way, but you never know.”

“I want to head to the farm,” Emma said.

Oz raised an eyebrow at her. “Any particular reason you chose that area?”

Emma moved to the edge of the stable wall and peered around it, doing her best to keep herself out of sight, both from the revelers and the cameras on the corners. Through the trees she could catch glimpses of the men as they moved back from the pool in order to get a running start for their cannonballs.

“The cameras on the barn are dummies. I’m almost sure of it. The only one that needs to be disabled is on the high pole next to the ranch house.”

“How do you intend to do it?” Oz asked. Emma turned to face him.

“Blow it up.”

Oz’s mouth dropped open. “You mean, like a bomb?”

Emma nodded. “Just like that. Let’s go.”

“Wait a minute. You can’t blow up that camera. The guards at the front are hardly going to miss an exploding camera. They’ll be all over you in a minute.”