Dead Asleep (27 page)

Chapter 48

E
mma shrugged into her coat, pulled on the Wellington rubber boots, and picked up the flashlight.

“I need a scarf to cover my face and some sunglasses,” she said.

“I'll get them,” Warner said. Two short beeps rang in the house.

“What was that?” Sumner said.

Warner turned pale. “The alarm pad. It's on chime, which notifies you when someone's opened a door or window.” She went to a keypad located on the wall next to the French doors. A series of words ran across the LED screen.

“What does it say? Where is he?” Sumner asked.

“The far west bedroom window.”

“He's driving us toward the other guy,” Sumner said.

“Forget the scarf and glasses, I'm gone,” Emma said.

“Let's go. Now,” Sumner said. Emma nodded at him, pulled the doors open and ran into the backyard.

The storm's increased intensity took her by surprise. It was one thing to watch it through the windows while safely inside a house and quite another to experience it firsthand. She bent against the wind and had to turn her face from the driving rain. Visibility was so bad that she thought it unlikely that either she or Carl would get a shot off. The lawn flowed with water and she splashed through several deep pools that had formed in various places. She began to run, her feet slipping in the grass and the heavy boots slowing her down. Still, she was glad for the protection, however minimal, that they provided.

She headed toward the area where she thought the trail began. She was only able to see a few feet ahead of her and didn't want to turn on the flashlight to pinpoint her location until she was near the trees. The intermittent lightning helped. Each time it flashed she looked at the ground ahead of her and did her best to remember what she'd seen. When she got to the tree line she turned back toward the villa and switched on the flashlight. She played the beam of light around, making sure to point it in the direction she'd last seen Carl running.

The light hit him full in the face. He stood twenty feet away from her. His small eyes narrowed as he squinted in the glare of the beam, water streaming down his face. He moved his arm as if to raise the gun and Emma darted into the tree line. She ran, keeping the flashlight in her hand and pointed in front of her. She heard the crack of a gunshot, but nothing hit around her and she kept moving. The tree branches above her head bent downward with the storm's force but acted as effective windbreaks, making it easier to run. But her boots sank with each step and their cumbersome weight made her usual graceful stride awkward and lurching. She consoled herself with the thought that her pursuer was also stuck with the same conditions.

The trail continued downhill, and she leaned back to keep from falling face-first. The path curved right and then left before going lower in a steep angle. Her boots lost their grip and she started to fall. She caught herself with her free hand behind her, her fingers sinking into the ooze before she got back up.

It didn't work, she thought. He's not following.

A beam of light hit a tree trunk next to her head and she leaped forward. Another cracking noise pierced through the cacophony of howling wind, crashing lightning, and booming thunder. She kept running, keeping the flashlight on. The path became steeper and slicker. Water ran down her neck into her coat collar and down her back. Her hair was in a ponytail, but pieces had fallen out and the wet strands stuck to her face. The boots were covered in layers of mud. They were even heavier than before. Her thighs began a slow burn with the effort of pulling her feet up and out from the sucking mud over and over again. She wished she could discard them altogether, but the manchineel trees were ahead of her and she didn't want her feet covered in blisters. She'd be unable to move at all if that happened.

She reached the poison garden and stopped with a cry.

The voodoo priestess hung from a tree branch. Her face was black and her tongue protruded from her mouth. Emma opened hers to scream and the vision was gone.

Emma started to shake. She kept going, keeping her eyes on the trail and avoiding looking up into the trees. She'd always relied on science and rationality to get her through the challenges she had to face. Intellectually she knew that the hallucinations weren't real, but emotionally she reacted as though they were. The events felt like black magic. She could only imagine what Sumner was experiencing at the dosage level he'd ingested.

Emma came to the last portion of the trail before the beach. This section of the path wound through an open meadow, and once again the wind pummeled her. It yanked at her coat tails and drove water into her face. She turned off the flashlight, because the open field provided no cover whatsoever. She was counting on the poor visibility to keep her alive until she made it to the bottom.

The manchineel trees came into view on her right. She stopped, put the flashlight in the pocket that didn't contain her gun and ripped off her coat. She put it over her head and held it closed under her chin as she ran. Within a minute she was even with the first of the tree stands. The wind swirled around her. She felt rather than saw the milky white sap hit the side of her coat. It made a heavier, stickier sound than the pounding rain. After a moment the tip of her nose began to burn as the wind blew the acid sap her way. Her eyes were next. They felt as though needles were stabbing into them and they began to tear. She kept blinking, but that seemed only to coat her eyes with the acid.

She tripped over something on the path, stumbled and fell face-first, tumbling down onto the grass. Her forearms hit the ground and took the brunt of the fall. She rolled and sat up, then looked back to see what she had fallen over.

Belinda Rory laid on the path, her face and arms a mass of blisters, and her mouth moving but making no sound. Emma crawled the few feet to the woman and knelt next to her head, trying to shield Rory's face with her body.

“It's me, Emma Caldridge. You can't stay here. The rain is blowing the acid from the manchineel trees onto you,” Emma said.

Rory's eyes were swollen so badly that they would soon be shut and she'd be effectively blind. She moved her lips again, and this time Emma could tell that she was forming words.

“You need to move,” Emma said again. “Get up. You can't stay here. The acid is deadly.”

“The dead,” Rory said. Emma grabbed at her arm to encourage her to sit up.

“I said deadly, not dead,” Emma told her. “The dead aren't here. Get up.”

“They
are
here. They say I'm in hell. They're burning me.”

Emma reversed around the woman to kneel at her head and did her best to push her shoulders. To her great relief Rory sat up.

“Good. Now stand up. We've got to go. There's a man after us that wants to kill us. You have to move. Now.”

Rory nodded. “Yes, he comes because I called him. He's the messenger for the devil. They said that they would send him.” Emma felt a coldness run through her at the woman's words.

“What do you mean, you called him?”

“I called and told him where you were. The evil man. Now he's coming to kill you
and
me. The dead are saying that I was wrong. That the burning is hell. I've been sent down.”

Emma looked back up the path. She saw the flickering of Carl's flash at the top of the meadow. He was only 150 yards up the mountain.

“The burning is acid from the trees. Get up and run.” Emma felt several drops hit her skin and she almost groaned out loud at the sudden pain from the acid.

The woman shook her head. “I borrowed money from the skinny one. A loan. But I couldn't pay and he told me that he would waive some interest due if I stayed and told him when you and Carrow were going out to the blue holes. I did. And now I called him. I shouldn't have, but he was going to tell everyone about me. That I don't see the dead. That it was a hoax. I didn't, that's true, but I do now. And I see Lucifer. The skinny one is Lucifer in human form.”

“Get up,”
Emma said. She gave the woman a shove, and Rory staggered to her feet. Emma dragged her along down the path. Rory wore flip-flops that slipped with every step.

“You're wrong. The dead are here. There's a man at your shoulder. He looks frightened for you.” Emma focused on the path and keeping both her and Rory on their feet. “He says you need to avoid the water.”

A gust of wind from the direction of the manchineel tree stand hit them and the part of Emma's exposed forearm wrapped around Rory's waist erupted in a scatter shot of burning pain. A portion of a nearby branch exploded and bits of bark showered them. Rory screamed as each piece landed on the skin of her face and neck. The burn in Emma's exposed arm increased.

“He's shooting at us,” Emma said. “Keep moving. You'll be a tougher target.”

“The dead man says not to use the water to make your green grass tea.”

Emma's heart plunged and she gasped. Memories of Patrick, her deceased fiancé, flashed through her mind. How he'd bring her boxes of the special tea that she loved and complain that it tasted like grass. An image of his body twisted in a car crash when he was hit by a drunk driver followed, which she knew was her imagination. She'd never seen a picture of the wreckage. At the time, she was too crazed with grief to even attempt to look at it.

Now tears clogged her throat and she swallowed. She hadn't thought about Patrick for nearly six months, a record for her. With Rory's comment about green grass tea she'd felt herself slipping backward, returning to the dark place where she was when it all began. Before Patrick died she'd been a conservative, careful woman looking forward to a life of the lab work she loved and marriage to a wonderful man. After, she became the daredevil in search of excitement that she now was. She pushed her body to run ultramarathon distances and took projects from Darkview. She ran her own company and drove herself to exceed in every way, mindless of the toll it would take on her.

A second gunshot sound brought Emma back to the present.

“Keep moving or we're going to join the dead,” she said.

Twenty feet from the beach she stopped.

The beach was gone. In its place was twenty feet of water slamming against the mountain.

“Watch out for the water,” Rory said. A third gunshot rang out and Rory jerked. Her body sagged. She was dead.

Chapter 49

E
mma lowered Rory's body to the ground, the frothing ocean in front of her. To the left there was a vertical drop too steep to traverse. It would be a challenge on a dry sunny day, but impossible under the present conditions. To her right lay the manchineel tree stand, and beyond that the mansion. She only had two options: either reverse and go back up the trail and into the arms of the killer, or risk even more acid burns by running through the manchineel trees. One thing she was certain of, though: the man would encounter as much pain as she would if he decided to chase her through the trees. He wore no hat and his head, forehead, eyes, and face were exposed.

Emma could see the weak glow of the mansion's lights through the cascading rain and tree trunks and headed in that direction. She pulled the coat back over her face as she ran. The already present burns began to blister. Her eyes were her most precious asset, and she kept the coat's edge low, to her eyebrows. What she lost in peripheral vision she gained in safety. If the acid reached her eyes she would be blind for as long as it would take to heal. The coat over her head concentrated the sound of her breathing, and it echoed in her ears. She listened to the ragged breaths and kept her legs moving. The burn in her muscles remained, but she was used to the type of pain that came from a grueling run and ignored most of it. Plunging on, she kept her pace even and her face covered. After what seemed an eternity she reached the tree line on the mansion side. Still, she kept moving, running away from the trees and their spraying acid sap as fast as she could.

Emma came to a halt for a moment on a rise that faced the side of the mansion. It was shaped like a crescent that curved toward the ocean on each end. Behind it and closest to her was a pool and pool cabana. Beyond that were tennis courts, and beyond that another row of trees that hid the staff buildings from the main grounds. The mansion's outdoor lights were on, but the drenching rain dimmed their brilliance.

A second section of trees crowded around the side. Emma took a deep breath and ran toward them. The ground leveled out at the hill's base, where large sections of the lawn had disappeared under inches of rainfall. She hammered through several standing pools of water. When she was far enough from the manchineel trees she lowered her raincoat and glanced back.

No flashlight beam bisected the area behind her, and a flash of lightning revealed only dark tree trunks and flailing branches. She saw nothing that resembled the shape of a man or that could be described as man-made illumination. Emma felt a certain satisfaction at the idea that her guess had been correct; he hadn't wanted to risk passing through the acid trees. His only option was to take the path back up, which would at least buy her some time to get an idea of whether this mansion was the one hosting the auction.

She skirted around the side, keeping low and jogging through the water. Meanwhile, she listened for the howl of dogs, but doubted that the animals or their handlers would be patrolling the grounds. If they were, she was counting on the chaos of the storm to render the dogs' noses less useful and their hearing less acute.

She made her way to the side of the house, darting from tree to tree. A camera mounted at the corner of the mansion faced the back. As she had suspected, the owner was relying on the manchineel trees to protect the house's flank.

The final twenty feet to a side window was open. She made it there and peered inside at a bedroom with a king-sized bed and an armoire. Light from a nearby door flowed into the room. She could see a bit of marble through the opening. It was an attached bathroom, and every so often the light would alter, indicating that someone was there. Emma crouched back down and ran along the side to the next window. This one was a tall piece of glass. She pressed her face against the house's exterior and peeked inside.

She saw an ornate library. Floor-to-ceiling shelves held books, and a couch and nearby leather club chair were arranged in the center. On the far wall there was a desk next to a bay window that faced the back of the house. A slender, dark-haired middle-aged man with a narrow face sat at the desk frowning down at some pages. Sitting on the paper, she saw a pile of small, blue, bullet-shaped objects.

Gotcha, she thought. She backed away from the window and ran along the wall toward the water. She reached the corner and took in the view.

The front lawn sloped down onto a portion of what must have been the sliver of beach but was now just water pounding upward. To the far side of the house she saw a dock. A large yacht bobbed in the pounding waves and three more were anchored offshore. Presumably the others were owned by the buyers. If she could get to the dock unobserved she might have been able to get the names of the boats. She could then transmit that to Banner and Stromeyer for later follow-up. She counted windows, trying to determine whether an occupant in the library would be able to see the dock and determined that he probably would notice her pass by. The house design maximized the view, and probably every room on that side would look out over the water.

She watched the waves crash over the dock. Even if she could reach it undetected she wouldn't be able to run to the end to get closer to the offshore boats. In the driving rain it would be impossible to read the licenses from the shore. The potential gain wasn't worth the risk.

Emma backtracked to the first tree line and began working her way around the lawn toward the staff quarters. She breathed a sigh of relief once she plunged into the darkness of cover and jogged past the various staff buildings until she reached a utility building at the back. Like a large barn, there were two ride-on lawn mowers parked outside in the rain, as if someone had forgotten to put them away. She checked for cameras, saw none, and ran to the door.

It was open, and a relief to get out of the rain, if even for a moment. She stood still in the dark room, pulled out her gun while letting the water flow off her coat, then flicked the flashlight.

The shed contained yard equipment in one corner, pool cleaning equipment in another, and a section that appeared to be spare nets and paraphernalia for tennis court maintenance. Piled alongside this was a wet/vac vacuum cleaner, and next to that an industrial fan shaped like a snail shell. She walked down the open aisle, scanning it with the flashlight. At the far end of the room she saw a stack of firewood wrapped in burlap carry bags and a double door shed with a cabinet inside. She opened the cabinet and found rows of bottles and mason jars. Several contained dried leaves and were marked with labels. She recognized most of the plants grown by the voodoo woman.

Emma closed the door and looked at the firewood. Next to it was a basket with a lone, half-rotted apple from a manchineel tree. She took a closer look at the firewood and spotted a leaf left on one of the sections. The wood was manchineel.

Emma took a step back, heard a noise and spun around, gun raised and ready to shoot. The beam of her flashlight fell on Richard Carrow.

“Don't shoot,” he said.

Emma swallowed. “What are you doing here?”

“Hiding. I managed to get away from Joseph. The owner here hired him to kill you and Sumner. I don't know why.” Carrow told her about the voodoo priestess and overhearing Joseph's claims that she and Sumner were dead. “She hit me with her powder.”

“Any hallucinations?”

Carrow nodded. “A few. But nothing as awful as reality. He made me ride in the trunk with her dead body.”

Emma closed her eyes. She couldn't imagine a ride so horrific.

“I've been sitting in here trying to think of ways to kill him. And his boss. He's the owner of this villa. His name is Shanaropov. I've never met him and I doubt many on the island have. He's been a loner. Now we know why.”

“He may be an arms dealer looking to sell a revolutionary new bullet that can pass undetected through metal screening devices. The auction is tonight. I've been asked by a contract security company to derail the sale.”

“We won't get off this island alive if we don't do something drastic. Joseph is still out there and I watched him leave with a second man.”

Emma nodded. “Carl. He's one of them.” She looked at the stack of wood. “I've got an idea.”

“Whatever it is, I'll help you.”

“Let's start a fire, shall we?”