They passed through the gate into expansive estate-size property with low box hedges, formal rose gardens, bowl fountains currently dry, antique French terra-cotta walkways lit by bronze-tulip path lights, and multi-level terraces with limestone balustrades rising to a Mediterranean mansion. There were phoenix palms, ficus trees.
Massive California live oaks were underlit by landscape spots: magisterial, frost-and-black, free-form scaffoldings of branches.
Because of the artfulness of the landscape lighting, no glare spoiled any corner. The romantic grounds cast off tangled shawls of shadow, intricate laces of soft light and hard darkness, in which the four of them surely could not be seen by the pilots even as the helicopter now drew almost even with the bluff on which the estate made its bed.
As he followed Rose and Mark up stone steps onto the lowest terrace, Joe hoped that no security-system motion detectors were installed on the exterior of the enormous house, only within its rooms. If their passage activated kleigs mounted high in the trees or atop the perimeter walls, the sudden dazzle would draw the pilots’ attention.
He knew how difficult it could be even for a lone fugitive on foot to escape the bright eye of a police search chopper with a good and determined pilot—especially in comparatively open environs such as this neighbourhood, which didn’t offer the many hiding places of a city’s mazes. The four of them would be altogether too easy to keep pinpointed once they had been spotted.
Earlier, an on-shore breeze had come with the grace of gull wings from the sea; currently, the flow was off-shore and stronger. This was one of those hot winds, called Santa Anas, born in the mountains to the east, out of the threshold of the Mojave, dry and blustery and curiously wearing on the nerves. Now a loud whispering rose from the oaks, and the great fronds of the phoenix palms hissed and rattled and creaked as though the trees were warning one another of gales that might soon descend.
Joe’s fear of an outer security line seemed unwarranted as they hurriedly climbed another short flight of stone steps to the upper terrace. The grounds remained subtly lighted, heavily layered with sheltering shadows.
Out beyond the bluff’s edge, the search chopper was parallel with them, moving slowly northward. The pilots’ attention remained focused on the beach below.
Mark led them past an enormous swimming pool. The oil-black water glimmered with fluid arabesques of silver, as though schools of strange fish with luminous scales were swimming just beneath the surface.
They were still passing the pool when Rose stumbled. She almost fell but regained her balance. She halted, swaying.
“Are you all right?” Joe asked worriedly.
“Yes, fine, I’ll be okay,” she said, but her voice was thin, and she still appeared to be unsteady.
“How badly were you hurt back there?” Joe pressed as Mark and Joshua gathered around.
“Just knocked on my ass,” she said. “Bruised a little.”
“Rose—”
“I’m okay, Joe. It’s just all this running, all those damn stairs up from the beach. I guess I’m not in as good a shape as I should be.”
Joshua was talking sotto voce on the cell phone again.
“Let’s go,” Rose said. “Come on, come on, let’s go.”
Beyond the bluff, above the beach, the helicopter was almost past the estate.
Mark led the way again, and Rose followed with renewed energy. They dashed under the roof of the arched loggia against the rear wall, where they were no longer in any danger of being spotted by the chopper pilots, and then to the corner of the house.
As they moved single-file along the side of the mansion on a walkway that serpentined through a small grove of shaggy-barked melaleucas, they were abruptly pinned in the bright beam of a big flashlight. Blocking the path ahead of them, a watchman said, “Hey, who the hell are—”
Acting without hesitation, Mark began to move even as the beam flicked on. The stranger was still speaking when Mark collided with him. The two men grunted from the impact.
The flashlight flew against the trunk of a melaleuca, rebounded onto the walkway, and spun on the stone, making shadows whirl like a pack of tail-chasing dogs.