As they left the house, Reinhardt disabled the alarm next to the back door, using one of the keys he’d taken from Ben’s pocket. Outside, it was completely dark except for the moon, shining through a thin layer of clouds.
They took the path leading to the rear of the house, then cut across the damp grass. Reinhardt reached the rose garden first, easily hopping the short hedge and zigzagging his way through the bushes. Gasping for breath, Nicole struggled to keep up. At one point, she was forced to a stop by thorny branches that latched onto her jumpsuit and refused to let go. Almost at once, Reinhardt was beside her, seizing the branches and — after a couple of distinct ripping sounds — she was free.
He held out his hand. “Let’s go. They’ll soon have the dogs on us.”
With Reinhardt pulling her along, they quickly reached the fountain at the center of the rose garden. She glanced back and felt a fresh wave of alarm. “The basement light,” she said. “We forgot to turn it off.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Reinhardt said. “They know where Ben took us. The basement is the first place they’ll look.”
The rose garden ended, and they started across the last stretch of open lawn. Nicole, now getting a second wind, pulled her hand free and ran easily beside him.
She took another look, but the house appeared to be asleep. Other than the basement and a few dim lights on the first floor, the place was dark. Even so, she had the feeling that, any moment, Hayes’ troops would burst out the front door and come tearing after them.
Reinhardt grabbed Nicole’s arm and pulled her along. “It’s best if you don’t look back,” he said.
They passed through the opening in the hedge and onto a wooden footbridge leading to the woods. When they reached the trees, the darkness was all but impenetrable. Once again, Reinhardt took her hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve already scouted the route. Just follow me.”
As the path sloped uphill, she caught glimpses of the house through the trees, her first real look at its exterior. The structure, lit by a series of spotlights, was a squat baronial manor of granite and red sandstone. It was the sort of thing that might have belonged to a turn-of-the-century industrialist, built with money made on the backs of women and children working long hours in their factories.
On the other side of the house, a van was parked at an odd angle. The door stood open, as if the driver hadn’t expected to be gone long. She had a hunch it was Ben, that he’d locked them in the basement so he could get the van and take them away from the house. Hayes wasn’t the sort who’d want dirty work done under his own roof.
The path took them back and forth across the face of the hill, crisscrossing a wandering stream on a series of small wooden footbridges. The moon had moved out from behind the clouds, casting a glow on their surroundings. On either side of the path, flowerbeds were crowded with exotic plumes of foliage while dense banks of shrubs covered the slopes. Silhouetted against the sky were giant ferns and distinctive tree-sized shrubs she recognized as bird of paradise plants. They were as common as hibiscus back home, but she’d never seen any this large.
Her injured ankle, which she’d almost forgotten, had begun hurting again. After they crossed the fourth footbridge, she paused and looked at Reinhardt. “My ankle,” she said, “I have to stop.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “I have to stop here for something I left earlier. Rest a bit.” He gestured in the direction of a stone bench just off the path. She limped over to it and sat down.
Reinhardt retreated into the bushes, then reappeared a minute or so later carrying a backpack. After removing a flashlight, he slung the bag over his shoulder and held his hand out to her. “Do you think you can get back on your feet?” he said. “We haven’t much time.”
Her ankle felt a little better. She stood up, taking his hand.
As they resumed their trek up the hill, he said, “It’s all a façade, you know — this patch of rainforest. Hayes had some bulldozers carve up the hill. Brought trees over from the mainland. The big tropicals are plastic. Rather good imitations, if you fancy that sort of thing.
“He even smuggled in tropical birds,” he went on. “Parrots and the like. They didn’t survive. The harsh winter and the hawks…”
As Nicole glanced around, she understood her feeling of déjà vu. The place reminded her of the Jungle Boat ride at Disneyland, the perfect outdoor component of the dream world Alexander Hayes had created for himself. She was especially indignant about the parrots. What a rotten thing to do.
At the top of the hill, the path ended at a thick hedge of oleander, covered with blossoms. Well before they reached it, Nicole noticed something nauseating in the sweet heaviness of its perfume. Then she realized it wasn’t the oleander. Mingled with its scent was the unmistakable stench of something dead and rotting.
As if he’d read her mind, Reinhardt said, “I smell it, too. Wait here. I’ll have a look.” He was back almost immediately, pulling her in a new direction, away from the stand of shrubs.
As the stench began to fade, he said, “I saw signs of a shallow grave. Maybe it was here when I passed through before but hadn’t started to …” he hesitated and seemed to grope for the right word, “decay.”
They continued along in silence until they reached the hill’s crest. Here, Reinhardt turned on his flashlight and pointed the beam down a gently rolling slope. A narrow stream, no more than a couple of feet wide, meandered down toward the loch, which appeared as a vast stretch of darkness.
After locating the stream, Reinhardt snapped off the flashlight. There was a creaking nearby, a wild rustling of leaves, and a dark shape burst from the branches of a tree. Nicole’s heart leapt to her throat and seemed to stick there, as Reinhardt turned the flashlight on again. He swung the beam in an arc, catching the culprit — a large owl in flight. As it flapped away, the bird’s head swiveled around and stared back at them, its eyes iridescent in the light.
After it disappeared, Nicole couldn’t shake the feeling that the creature was some kind of omen—a warning. Reinhardt, unruffled as ever, tucked the flashlight in his backpack and pulled out a square bundle of dark cloth, which unfolded into two ponchos. He handed one to Nicole, “Here,” he said. “we won’t have much cover going down. This will us give a bit of camouflage.”
When she had put hers on, he reached over to pull up her hood. “Now,” he said. “Let’s go. To put the dogs off our scent, we’ll walk in the streambed. Mind your step. It’s slippery.”
They were just starting down, Nicole a few steps behind him, when she heard excited barking in the distance. She looked around. The hill behind them was still deserted, but the implications were clear. Their absence had been noted. The search had begun.
Nicole tried to remember how long it had taken them to climb up the hill. Seven minutes? Five? Surely it wouldn’t take that long to get down the slope and out of sight. From the top, it looked like an easy walk, but the rocks were indeed slippery, and maneuvering the creek bed was tricky.
Reinhardt tackled the terrain more easily, walking at a brisk pace and reaching the trees near the water’s edge well ahead of her. As he turned to look back at her, his head jerked up, as if he’d spotted something on the hill behind her. A second later, a beam of light swept the hillside from above, barely missing her as it stopped and moved back across the slope. In a panic, she stepped out of the creek onto solid ground and ran.
Only when she reached Reinhardt and the shelter of the trees did she look up at the hill again. At the top, two figures were using flashlights to explore the grassy slope. Several dogs were nosing about the bushes.
He hurried her through the trees and over a thick outcropping of rocks. At the water’s edge, he stopped. “We’re going to wade in the loch. It’s quite chilly but shallow along the shoreline. Take care—the bottom is covered with sharp stones.”
A moment later, she followed him into the icy water. Although it only came to mid calf, the chill reached all the way to her scalp. Reinhardt turned and began to wade along the shore. Teeth chattering, she forced herself to follow. The rubber boots offered little protection; with each step, the sharp-edged stones jabbed her feet.
It wasn’t long before he turned and waded back to her. “I think I’d better carry you,” he said. “It’s not far, but we have to be out of sight before they get here. When I turn round, climb up and hold on.” Reinhardt turned and bent over, and Nicole did as he said, settling behind the backpack. As he straightened up, she wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist.
They made their way around the end of the cliff and entered the next cove. From her perch, Nicole looked around and felt a wave of despair.
The cove offered no place to hide, nor did there appear to be a route out other than the way they’d just entered. The only cover, unlikely at best, was an occasional cluster of bushes, which had defied gravity by taking root on the face of the rock.
Reinhardt headed determinedly toward a clump of foliage growing near the waterline. “There’s a ledge of dry ground here,” he said. “I’m going to set you down.” He turned around and stood with his back to the ledge so she could climb down. When she was standing on the ledge, he said, “Hold on while I pull myself up.”
She grabbed a nearby branch to steady herself, but it came off in her hand, and she found herself teetering on the narrow ledge. Reinhardt dropped back into the water and reached up to hold her. “Sorry,” he said. “I meant to warn you not to touch that. Use the rock for support.”
Nicole rested her back against the cliff and studied the spot where they’d entered the cove. She could no longer see the lights of their pursuers, just a general glow from that direction. It was impossible to measure its progress. She looked at the tranquil lake, which held the full moon’s reflection. Then she turned to stare up at the solid wall of rock behind her, lifting her head to take in its dizzying height.
At that moment, her faith in Reinhardt evaporated. Now, as she looked up at the cliff, she could imagine him attempting to scale it. He’d pull her along by the hand, insisting, “It won’t be long now,” and “Hang on, it’s not far.”
Nicole shivered. In minutes, they would be target practice for the men who were after them. She wondered what had possessed her to follow Reinhardt on this long, futile trek when she could have stayed in the basement and died in relative comfort.
She watched Reinhardt as he pulled himself up onto the ledge. Just then she noticed a dark pool accumulating under her left foot. He spotted it, too. “What’s that?” he said.
When Nicole lifted her foot, she saw that the sole of her boot had been ripped away and, although she felt no pain, her foot was bleeding profusely.
She crouched down to take a closer look when Reinhardt grabbed her arm and pulled her through a narrow opening in the wall of branches.
On the other side was a damp-smelling space, hidden away behind a lean-to covered with dead branches.
Inside, they were enveloped in darkness. “I don’t dare light the torch,” he said. “But I think we’re safe for the moment. Now, let’s find my medical kit and see what we can do about that foot.”