Poison Flower (23 page)

Since then, Jane had gone out with runners twice. One was an advertising man named Stephen Noton who had somehow gotten his hands on a document about drug smuggling, and was being hunted for it. The third runner Jane had taken on since she'd quit was James Shelby.

Tonight Carey was tired. The loneliness, the obsessive brooding on where Jane must be at this moment, got much worse at night, and he couldn't fight it by staying busy. He looked at his watch. It was after midnight. It was Friday, so it wasn't as bad as it could be. He could sleep until noon tomorrow if he wanted, and then go in for hospital rounds at two or three in the afternoon.

He went to the kitchen without turning on the bright light, opened the cupboard, and took down the bottle of Macallan twelve-year-old single malt Scotch. He set a heavy crystal glass on the counter and poured, then held his glass under the faucet and gave it a small squirt of water.

"Doc Holliday, I presume"

He turned toward the kitchen door and there she was, standing in the dim light just inside the doorway. For an instant the word "hallucination" came to him, but her image didn't fade or waver. He said, "Calamity Jane," then lifted his glass to salute her.

"I meant he ruined his health drinking and smoking."

"You're leaving out the effects of tubercular bacilli, I think."

"Then how about a drink"

"Name your poison."

"I'll have what you're having," she said.

She set her purse on the counter beside her and watched him fill a second glass and add water. She took a step toward him and reached for the glass, and then saw his eyes widen.

"My God, Jane. What happened Was it a car accident Have you been seen" He looked down at her leg, and up to her face, hair, eyes. She could see that his assessment of her appearance was not good.

She took the glass and sipped from it. "A lot happened, not much of it good. And yes, a doctor saw me right away to clean the wound and sew me up. Since then I've taken care of myself."

"You said `wound.' What sort of wound"

"Oh, it's a lot to say at once. If you missed me, come give me a kiss."

He stepped to her, set their drinks on the counter, and gently put his arms around her. He did kiss her, but she could tell he was impatient. And he was so gentle it made her impatient, too.

"I won't break," she said. "I'm just a little tender in spots. A lot tender, actually. Fortunately for you, none of them are your favorite spots."

"All of your spots are my favorites."

"After I finish my drink I may be in the mood to let you prove it."

"There's nothing I'd like better."

"Well, I should hope not."

"But you've got to stop trying to change the subject. You're injured, and you look terrible. What happened"

"I'll tell all."

"How badly are you hurt"

"I'm actually waiting for your opinion and dreading what it might be. It happened about two weeks ago, so I'm out of danger-not stoically bleeding to death or anything. But I've got some marks on me. There's one that will be at least big and ugly forever, and might even make me limp."

"Okay," he said. "I'm about through waiting in suspense."

"I've been dreading your seeing me, and being disgusted or something."

"Hold on to your drink." He put an arm around her back and the other swung to the back of her knees. He scooped her up and carried her out of the kitchen, across the living room, and then to the stairway. He carried her upstairs to the bedroom and set her on her feet.

"The service around here is slipping," she said. "I almost spilled my drink."

"Disrobe, please."

"You have some nerve."

"This isn't funny. Do it."

She took another sip and set her drink on his dresser, then turned and unbuttoned her blouse, and took it off. She looked into his eyes, and kept looking at them as he bent lower to examine her stomach and ribs.

"Some bad bruises." He turned her around so he could see her back, and gently touched the skin a few times. "And what the hell Those are burns. How did you get burned"

"They heated some skewers, the kind you might use for shish kebab. They were trying to make me tell them where Shelby was."

"Somebody tortured you Tortured you Who did that to you"

"Enemies of Shelby's, who didn't want him to escape." She felt his arms circle her waist to come around and undo her belt. Her slacks fell to her ankles and she stepped out of them. She reached for her drink and took another sip, then put it back on the dresser.

"This is really something," he said. From the sound of his voice, he had gone to his knees behind her. He unwrapped the bandage on her thigh. "That's an exit wound. Who shot you" He turned her around again to look closely at the entrance wound in the front of her thigh.

She looked down at him. "I can tell you he was no gentleman," she said.

"Stop, Jane. I told you, this isn't striking me as funny."

"Okay. One of the same men. They were pretending to be cops. When I realized they weren't, I tried to get away, so one of them shot me."

"And who sewed you up and dressed this Some old mob doctor who doesn't report bullet wounds"

"He was young. His nurse was his girlfriend. I almost won her over to my side, but she was smitten with him, and a little stupid. The doctor was kind of angry. It was as if he agreed to treat a gunshot, and only after he got there realized it was likely to get him in trouble-that it wasn't an accident, and the victim wasn't going to be grateful for his work and for not reporting it."

"You probably already realized this, but he did a pretty good job. Good closure, no signs of infection, no indication there's anything inside. You were also very lucky. The bullet didn't hit bone or sever the femoral artery. It was a clean through-and-through shot. I'm sure he told you that. It's just a question of the muscle having time to heal now." He rewrapped the bandage. "I want you to tell me who did this."

Jane stared at him. She could see he actually intended to go find the men who had hurt her. "You can't do anything to him, Carey. He's dead." She paused. "The other one is dead, too." She didn't take her eyes off Carey. She could see that she must not let Carey know that the third one, Wylie, was alive. He lowered his eyes and glowered at a spot on the floor.

"You haven't told me what I want to know," she said.

"What's that"

"I guess it's, `Do you love me'"

"This is a lousy time to ask that question. I'm damned furious at you for putting yourself in the position to have this happen to you. But that doesn't change the situation between us-either the bad parts or the good. I love you." He paused, as though he dreaded what was coming next. "Anything I'm not seeing Is this the extent of it"

"Yes."

He took a deep breath, irritated that he had to be more specific. "Were you sexually assaulted"

"No. Maybe they would have, but they were very interested in finding Jim Shelby, and everything they did was intended to make me say where he was. Then I got away."

"I guess you didn't tell them where he was."

"No, he's still alive and relatively well." She frowned. "You still didn't really give me my answer."

"About what"

She put her hands on his shoulders. "Look at me. Do you think I'm ugly now"

"No. You're beautiful. I'm just upset at what you put yourself through. And I'm really angry. You don't have the right to marry somebody and then, whenever a stranger knocks on your door, run off and act like some kind of amateur police force. You told me that crap was over years ago."

"Yes, I did," she said. "I thought it was. But then one day somebody comes to your door and says, `My brother, who is innocent, is about to be murdered in prison.' You have only two choices. All you can be is the person who decided to keep him alive, or the person who decided not to. For the rest of your life, that's who you'll be. I decided I would be the one who did."

"No matter what it cost." He looked at her from head to toe. "Well, as I said, you're lucky this time. What you were apparently most worried about didn't happen. Your body is still beautiful and healthy, and with time, you'll be about the same as before."

"Thanks, Doc," she said. Then she waited for a few seconds, looked down at herself and then at him. "Are you even just a little bit turned on"

He nodded, but grudgingly.

She unhooked her bra, shrugged it off, slipped her panties down and stepped out of them. "Then I'd hate to have all this nakedness and hard liquor go to waste."

He frowned. "I'm sorry, Jane. I don't think this is a good time." He walked to the door, then turned. "Let's get a night's sleep, and then talk in the morning." He walked down the hall.

After a few more seconds she heard him go down the staircase. There were the familiar sounds of Carey checking the locks on the doors and setting the alarm. She showered, brushed her teeth, and got into bed with the light on. She waited an hour for him to come back upstairs, but when she heard his tread coming back up, he went to one of the other bedrooms. She turned off the light and went to sleep.

Later, when the night was at its darkest and the birds in the trees outside the old stone house had not yet begun the predawn chirping, she was aware of him. He was standing in the doorway, silent and motionless. She said, "If you're staring at me, you must have eyes like a cat."

"I'm looking. Can't see you, though. You had sort of an intriguing idea before."

"I thought you said it wasn't the right time."

"It wasn't."

"And now it is"

"If the offer is still open."

"Always," she said.

14.

Jane had been at home for ten days. She spent her evenings and nights with Carey at home in the big old stone McKinnon house in Amherst, New York. To her it was a bit like a honeymoon, a vacation from reality that had turned into a lazy enjoyment of the man she had married. This was not what she had intended in coming home, but she had felt that way the minute she had been in the kitchen with him the first night.

She knew the strength of her reaction to him and this taste of life was partly caused by the fact that she had never expected to be here again. After a few days with Wylie, Maloney, and Gorman, she had relinquished any thought of seeing Carey again. She had become like the old-time warriors, the Grandfathers. All she had hoped for was a chance to fight her enemies at the end-to snatch one of the tools of torture or an unguarded weapon and stab or slash until they overpowered and killed her. After she had become used to that idea and then escaped, even feeling the warmth of sunlight on her face had become a complex and delicious sensation. She had resigned herself to death, and now to be home again with her tall, strong husband was enough to make her feel as though she must be dreaming.

The days, from the time when Carey left at six in the morning for the hospital until late afternoon, she spent trying to speed her recovery. Carey had begun rubbing Neosporin on her burns and scrapes as soon as she had come home. There had been no need by then for any antiseptic effect, but the stuff seemed to help prevent scars. She did her series of tai chi positions, and she could feel herself stretching farther and becoming more flexible. After that she left the house and went for long walks, lengthening her stride a bit each day and raising the rhythm of her steps to go faster. She lifted light weights to strengthen her upper body, but most of the time she concentrated on her right leg. When she was not exercising it she was resting. She took special care to eat well and get lots of protein and take vitamins, and to get plenty of sleep.

On the eleventh morning when Carey left, she took a bus to Rochester, New York, and bought a used car at a big car dealership. It was a gray four-year-old Honda with low mileage. She bought it under the name Emily Westerveldt, an identity she had built with many others, but had seldom used. When she got her car back to Amherst, she had it washed and waxed at the car wash on Niagara Falls Boulevard, and then drove it to her regular mechanic. She asked if he could check it over for a friend of hers. He glanced at it and said, "I'll take a look at it."

"Thanks," she said. She knew he would take care of it, even if it meant he had to drive across the county for parts.

"Pick it up after four."

When she picked it up, she filled it with gas and then stopped to buy the things she carried when she was on the road-a case of bottled water, bags of nuts, trail mix, dried fruit. Then she drove the car to her old house in Deganawida, put it in the garage, and went inside to make other preparations.

This was the house that her grandfather and his friends had built, the house where her father had been born, and where Jane had lived until she'd gone off to college, then returned to after graduation, and stayed in through the death of her mother. She had lived here until she had married Carey. She had kept it since then, partly because she couldn't sell it to some unsuspecting stranger who might wake up in the middle of the night to hear an unfortunate runner knocking on the door for help-or to hear someone worse coming in a window.

There were still things hidden in the house. For a few years she had stopped thinking of them as the tools of her profession, and had begun to think of them as precautions, like the fire extinguishers in the kitchen and the upstairs hallway in Amherst. She went down the cellar stairs gingerly, trying not to put too much weight on her wounded thigh. She walked to the far end, near her father's old workbench, took the stepladder, and carried it back to the area beside the old coal-burning furnace that had been left here when the oil furnace was installed when she was a child.

She climbed to one of the old, round heating ducts, disconnected two sections, and reached inside. There was a box that contained four pistols, all of them loaded, and boxes of extra ammunition. There was a metal cash box full of money. There was another in the back. When she opened it she found, carefully wrapped in plastic, pieces of identification. Some were for a woman who looked like Jane, and some for a man who looked like Carey, but who had names that weren't McKinnon. There were birth certificates, passports, driver's licenses, and credit cards.