Poison Flower by Thomas Perry Read Free Book Online Page A

trooped in after him. He eyed the nurse as he passed her, then stopped at Jane's bed. "I see you're awake again. That's convenient."
    "Why"
    "I didn't want to wake you up." He turned to the nurse and said, "Okay, honey. Why don't you go take a break We'll call you if we need you."
    "Yes, sir," the girl said. She stood up, walked to the door, and went outside. Jane saw that the parking lot was dark.
    Jane watched the tall man. He took his time appraising the progress of her decline. He stared at her bruised and swollen arms and hands above the sheet. "Do you have anything to tell me yet"
    She moved her head from side to side slowly, not taking her eyes from him.
    "The thing is, we're in a bit of a bind here. You've taken something of mine. Not to mention hurting several friends of mine in a public place, where they couldn't really give you an idea of the consequences."
    "You're persuading yourself that whatever you do to me, I deserve it, and that you'll just be paying me back. That's not true. Nothing you or your friends have done was legal or justified."
    His eyes narrowed. "I don't think you're going to help your cause any by pissing me off. Fair warning."
    "I don't have a cause."
    He looked angry. "Not much of one. So, before things get a hell of a lot worse, I'd advise you to listen to me for a minute. The doctor tells me you're too weak to run away, even if you could get out of your bed by yourself. What you've managed to do by getting shot is to delay things by three days. Your boy Jim Shelby has had seventy-two hours. He could be anywhere in the country by now. Isn't that true"
    "If he drove most of the time and didn't stop long, sure."
    "What that means isn't what you seem to think. His arriving where he was going doesn't take the responsibility to talk off you. It makes you even more important. You're going to have to tell us where he is."
    "I still don't know."
    "Tonight, I expect to find out if that's true. Each time you don't answer is going to cost you. Maybe it will be a finger. Maybe the next thing will be an ear, a toe, or an eye. I can tell you that it's best to give in early."
    "I don't have anything I can tell you," she said, "so it will be a very unpleasant waste of time."
    "Well, in a little while the others will get here with the tools, and we can get started. So sit tight." He walked off.
    Jane tightened the muscles in her uninjured left leg. That was still strong, and so were her hands and arms. But her right leg would barely hold her, and she was too weak to put up much resistance.
    The air where the tall man had stood still held his smell. A smoker. He had probably just gone out for a cigarette. He certainly would before he began to torture her. That was the way the habit seemed to work-a cigarette before anything and one after.
    She wondered where her purse was now. She had sacrificed it when she had fought on the courthouse steps to buy time for Jim Shelby to get away. Inside it was a bottle of a particularly strong batch of water hemlock she had harvested and processed last summer.
    Some people in upstate New York called the plant cowbane, because now and then a cow would eat a bit and die. The Latin name for the plant was Cicuta maculata, and it was related to the carrot, but the water hemlock was the most deadly plant on the continent. The traditional Seneca method of suicide was to take two bites of the root. About once a year Jane went to swampy places to look for the tall plant with tiny white flowers arranged in a flat circular group. She cut the roots from the stems and mashed them to get the clear yellowish liquid that held the strongest cicutoxin. Then she repeatedly strained the liquid until the particles were gone, and distilled it to remove most of the water. One swallow from the cut-glass perfume bottle she carried in her purse would have killed her in minutes.
    Without the water hemlock, Jane would have to wait and see what tools her captors planned to use on her. If they were the