The Ninth Day Read online

  Chapter 12

  Halfway 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.”

  Emma shrugged. “There are too many cameras to allow me to slink away unnoticed. Even if I could quietly disable one, they would be alerted once it went off line. Blowing it up has the same effect. The key point is that they won’t see the crucial information, which is the direction I take over the fence.”

  “That will never work,” Oz said.

  Emma put her hands out. “It’s all I’ve got.”

  “I have a better idea.”

  Emma paused. “And that would be?”

  “I’ll block the camera. Hijack its frequency and play them a fake tape. You can leave from the ranch, and they’ll never see you go, because they’ll be otherwise occupied.” He hoisted the bag off his hip to show her. “I’ve been thinking about this all day, and I’m pretty sure it will work. I have everything I need to do it right here.” Emma walked over and flipped the top off the bag to peer inside. What looked like a metal laptop was all she saw.

  “That’s all it takes to block the cameras?”

  Oz shook his head. “Not all of the cameras, just those that sit within twenty or thirty feet of where I place this, so you’ll have to pick your location wisely.”

  “Let’s get to the ranch. We can try it there.”

  “After you,” he said. They walked toward the parking lot where the ever-present white van sat, as well as Oz’s motorcycle. He climbed on and she moved behind him. More shrieks came from the pool.

  “Think they’ll notice the sound of the engine?” Emma asked.

  “Doubtful. They’re pretty far into party mode now.”

  They headed to the ranch, the darkness broken only by the flickering headlight. They made it to the carport and killed the engine. A camera placed high at the ranch house’s corner glowed red, but it was pointed away from them.

  “Ready?” Oz said.

  Emma nodded. “You have no idea how ready.”

  “Then let’s go.” Oz reached into the messenger bag and pulled out a small, portable DVD player and his laptop computer. He connected the two, turned on the DVD and waited. The screen sprang to life, and showed an image of the ranch house’s yard. The only movement was the flitting of insects as they shot through the glow thrown by a lit porch light. Oz pointed at the screen.

  “That’s what the guards are seeing right now. I’ve rigged the player to send a wireless signal, and I’ve set it to use the same frequency as the security cameras.”

  “Where did you get this?” Emma said.

  Oz smiled. “I asked Serena if she had any portable DVD players. Told her I wanted one for my room to watch a movie. She gave this to me, and offered some discs from La Valle’s personal collection.”

  “Does this mean that if I walk across the lawn, they won’t see my image, but just this?”

  Emma pointed at the screen.

  “No. That’s live. If you walk into the frame, they’ll see you do it. Once I start the player, the movie will play and the security cameras will pick up that image instead of the yard.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Oz nodded. “You’ve heard of people in a neighborhood who have their baby monitors set to the same frequency? One picks up the signal from the other’s house and, bingo, you get an image of whatever the other monitor is viewing. This,” he indicated the player, “is going to do the same thing. Except they won’t see the interior of a room, they’ll be seeing the movie.”

  “What did you pick?”

  Oz gave her a sly grin. “La Valle had an extensive porn collection. I figured once they saw it, they wouldn’t be in any great hurry to run out and stop it.”

  Emma laughed. “That’s brilliant.”

  Oz nodded. “I hope so.” He sobered. “When do you want to leave?”

  Emma took a deep breath. She put a hand on his arm. “If I make it to the village, I’ll call for backup. Just stay out of sight as much as you can until they arrive.”

  Oz nodded. “I can’t wait.”

  She jerked her chin at the player. “Hit it.”

  Oz pushed “play.”

  The image of a writhing couple came into view on the screen. Emma didn’t stay to watch, she inhaled and took off running.

  Chapter 13

  Emma sprinted into the yard and ran across the lawn, heading to the fence. A quick glance at the camera on the pole showed that the red light still glowed. She felt her heart skip a beat, but she ignored the fear that wanted to grab at her. She could only trust that Oz’s plan was working and the guards were seeing the couple, not her.

  She leaped onto the lowest rail, threw her leg over, landed on the other side, and dug her heels into the ground to catapult herself forward. She stumbled once when her foot dropped into a small depression in the ground, but recovered her balance and kept going, dodging brush and cactus on one side, and darting through a small stand of trees. The moon glow was weak and nowhere near enough to reveal every little divot or hole, but enough to allow her to dodge larger obstacles. Once she cleared the trees she picked up the pace to a speed that felt faster than her familiar training pace. A large beetle of some sort, like a June bug, smacked into her cheek. She did her best to ignore it.

  The first hill loomed ahead. Emma glanced right and left, looking for a cut through, but the hill face extended on both sides as far as she could see. The ground rose straight up, starting at a forty-five-degree angle, but rising to a nearly sixty-degree angle at the top, with no visible trail. Shrubs, a few cactus, and a couple of meager trees dotted the hillside, but she would be exposed for the duration of the climb. Loose gravel, larger rocks, and deep, soft dirt covered the ground, providing no real footing. Her feet sank into the loose topsoil and skittered downward before she was able to dig the tips of her shoes into a small depression. She continued upward, and began to feel the burn in her calves as they took the brunt of her weight at the canted angle. On the next step her treads failed to grab and she slid downward three feet. She leaned forward and kept going. The climb grew steeper, but she kept the pace, hustling up the hill.

  An alarm rose through the night. Emma looked back, dismayed to see the large, circling spotlight flash in the distance. La Valle’s men were well trained. She’d only gained fifteen minutes at the most. She started calculating the time it would take for them to reach the foothill. In a Jeep, five minutes, maybe ten, maximum. While they’d have to stop at the base, they could simply look up and see her making the climb. With a decent rifle they’d pick her off. She needed to get to the top and over before they made it there.

  On a horse it would be a bit longer, because they’d need to saddle up before riding out. That would chew up at least twenty minutes, and then it would take ten more to make it to the base of the hill. Better for her initially, because she would be over the top before they got there and out of rifle range, but worse in the long run, because they would continue their pursuit. Her heart pounded in a fast rhythm—equal parts exertion and fear. She was closing in on the summit, and slowed to a climbing pace as the angle steepened. She pushed with her feet and clawed with her hands, inching her way higher. She heard the sound of an engine rising and then cutting out when it bounced into the air and presumed it was a Jeep or all-terrain vehicle lurching over the small hills that dotted the area before the massive rise.

  She didn’t look back, didn’t waste the time. She propelled herself upward even faster, her legs burning with the exertion. Now the angle was such that she c
ould grab at the brush with her hands while staying relatively upright. Her left shoe lost traction and she went down on one knee, banging her kneecap onto a small stone. She winced at the sharp pain, but straightened out and kept moving.

  She was ten feet from the peak. The engine noise filled the air. She glanced back to see the headlights bouncing, thirty feet from the hill’s base. It was an ATV, with an open carriage, a roll bar and two passengers. One held a gun with its butt on his thigh and the long muzzle pointed to the sky. The noise stopped. Now it comes, Emma thought. She strained up, only three feet from the summit. She flung herself to the side, straight left. A rifle shot cracked through the air and bits of dust from a hit only two feet away flew into her face. She propelled herself upward, uncoiling in an explosive push the final two feet, and crawled over the ridge.

  She was back on her feet and racing down, now reversing her weight distribution so that she leaned back into, rather than away from, the hill. The pounding on her shins increased threefold, as she slammed downward with both her weight and the force of gravity, but she’d trained enough to know that her legs would survive it. She reached the bottom in half the time it took for her to climb to the top. At the base the ground leveled out. The next hill sat over three hundred yards ahead, and she began to sprint toward it. No sound came from behind her.

  She pushed her speed up a notch, racing over the uneven ground and up and down two small rises before she pulled her compass out of her pocket and pressed on the glow button to check her direction. She was running dead south. Right where she wanted to be.

  She heard nothing behind her. Not the sound of alarms, motor engines, yells, or even other animal calls—only the crunching noise made by her shoes as they hit the dirt and stones in a rhythmic cadence. Her breathing evened and she felt her body settle in. This was the best part of a run, when everything functioned as a unit. She knew that any minute a feeling of well-being would wash over her, and her mind would detach and grow peaceful as though she was meditating. In her current state of conditioning, she could maintain this pace and feeling of ease for the next two hours.