Randy White - Seduced

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Randy White - Seduced» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: Детектив, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

Seduced: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Seduced»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Hannah Smith returns in the stunning new adventure in the New York Times best-selling series by the author of the Doc Ford novels.
A fishing guide and part-time investigator, Hannah Smith is a tall, strong Florida woman descended from many generations of the same. But the problem before her now is much older even than that.
Five hundred years ago, Spanish conquistadors planted the first orange seeds in Florida, but now the whole industry is in trouble. The trees are dying at the root, weakened by infestation and genetic manipulation, and the only solution might be somehow, somewhere, to find samples of the original root stock. No one is better equipped to traverse the swamps and murky backcountry of Florida than Hannah, but once word leaks out of her quest, the trouble begins. "There are people who will kill to find a direct descendant of those first seeds," a biologist warns her – and it looks like his words may be all too prophetic.

Seduced — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Seduced», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

My eyes swung, hoping for a reaction, but there was nothing to watch. The python’s tail lay as immobile as a frozen chunk of pipe.

I’d holstered the pistol but drew it when the man noticed me for the first time. Immediately, he turned his back and hollered, “Once I get the motor started, you’re welcome to come aboard. But not with that damn gun.”

“Look what’s on the deck,” I said. “You might change your mind about me and my gun.”

He swung his head around, still sitting on his butt in the water. “In here?” He rapped the hull with his knuckles. “I don’t give a shit. All I know is, you won’t shoot an unarmed man in the back. That would look real good in a magazine, the famous girl fishing guide…” His voice trailed off because of a sudden change in my behavior. He’d seen a swift shift in countenance, and I’d raised the pistol as if to shoot him in the head. “Hey, don’t! I said you can come along. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“I warned you,” I said, barely able to whisper. “Move… Get away from there.”

The man considered the pistol’s angle and looked up to see what I was aiming at. His brain had only a microsecond to process the image-a swaying lamppost with a serpent’s head, a flicking tongue the width of a pitchfork.

I fired.

The python struck.

Larry screamed.

TWENTY-NINE

More than a month after returning from Choking Creek, I drove Roberta to her obstetrician’s office in South Fort Myers. We were unaware that March 30, a Friday, was considered National Doctors’ Day until we entered to find baked goods on a tray in a room decorated with balloons. Fittingly, they were about fifty-fifty pink and blue.

I am not a bows-and-ribbons type of person, so could only pretend to appreciate their gaiety.

Roberta said, “See why I like the place? Only a woman doctor would feed me brownies before ordering me to lose weight. Not that she will”-my friend and business partner took a bite-“but she might if someone doesn’t finish off that fudge. Get to work, Hannah, or I’ll have to fight that skinny nurse for the tray.”

I selected crackers and a wedge of cream cheese instead. Roberta felt betrayed until I opened my shoulder bag and produced a jar of marmalade, which I dolloped out liberally.

“Is that new?”

“Right off the stove. I made a fresh batch yesterday.”

“Not that. That! I don’t remember seeing it.”

She was referring to the vintage leather bag I’d placed beside my chair. Yes, it was new. A present to myself after, despairing, finally throwing away my favorite shoulder pack. Bloodstains are tough to remove from ripstop nylon. I associated them with Larry Luckheim, another form of stain. He’d bled a lot-not an episode I cared to revisit. An afternoon spent answering questions from police, then reporters, had taken the dazzle out of what happened after the python anchored its teeth in Larry’s head.

“Try this,” I said, and heaped marmalade onto a cracker.

With roots in 4-H homemaking, Roberta would not have faked her wonderment when she took a bite. “Oh my lord…” Her eyes widened “You made this?”

I showed her the hand-lettered label:

Mother Tree

Sour Orange Marmalade

“Incredible. And so… different . I’ve never had anything that comes close.”

“It’s easy to make. Just sugar and oranges, then a lot of boiling. Separate the pulp, and the more sliced peeling you add, the better. That makes it gel-the natural pectin in the skin. You already know the real secret.”

“Special oranges.” She smiled, and reached for another cracker.

Special. Yes, they were.

In the vintage leather bag was my laptop. Through emails, Dr. Gentry and her husband had kept us updated on their campaign to make our efforts profitable. An application for a provisional patent had been filed. Every t and i crossed and dotted. According to their inside sources, ours was the first to claim a foothold in an important, esoteric niche.

Roberta got up to use the restroom, muttering something about “Even faucets get a break.”

Pregnant women, I had learned, do love a good joke about peeing.

I watched her waddle away, then opened my computer and found Dr. Gentry’s most recent email.

Ladies, I had a great conversation with Vern Norviel of Berkeley, one of the nation’s leading legal experts on intellectual properties and biotechnology. I have good news. Sequencing of samples you provided last month suggest they are more closely related to original Spanish seed stock than any previously tested. Congratulations!

According to Vern, if the clones prove to be more resistant to parasites/pathogens, the beneficial DNA from your plants can be reproduced. This is done via a gene processing device, then inserted into the DNA of modern varietals. The technique is a genetic breakthrough, recently named with the acronym CRISPR. (See below.)

Vern is going to put me in touch with Harvard geneticist Dr. George Church (he was the first to do Neanderthal sequencing), who might be willing to join in as a partner for profit (and fun).

There was still a lot of lab work and experimentation to be done, of course. Various scion varietals would have to be grafted onto our Spanish rootstock, then nurtured to fruition-something Roberta looked forward to during her maternity leave. The process was daunting. It would be two years or more before any conclusions could be drawn regarding how resistant our hybrids were to citrus greening disease. Yet, at any stage of the process, Dr. Gentry had told me, I could sell my percentage of the partnership and walk away. She had an investor who’d already offered 1.5 million dollars for my share, and the Gentrys were confident the figure would double within a year.

Roberta returned from the restroom only to be summoned by the nurse. I shouldered my new bag and went out for air, focusing on the door rather than a room full of very ripe, rosy-cheeked women. How much champagne and backseat jockeying, I wondered, did their numbers represent?

My peevish attitude accompanied me outside to the parking lot, where I rationalized my mood. Seduction isn’t a word, it’s a drama. Implied are three components: an instigator, a willing participant, and an objective, although the participant can be just as eager; slyer, too.

I was also aware the objective might be a whistle-stop. Or a life-changing destination.

As the women inside might agree, the distance that lies between the two is incalculable.

***

Marion Ford was on my mind. Under the guise of awarding him a partnership, I’d hoped to meet him for dinner to explain the windfall he might share.

Pure optimism on my part. The biologist is a difficult man to locate, let alone pin down. I think it was only out of concern for my mental health that, a few days after my return from Choking Creek, he answered the phone.

“How’re you holding up?” he’d said. “That was quite a story in the newspaper.”

Ford didn’t read newspapers, but the deception was a kindness. Because of recent headlines, I couldn’t fuel my skiff without being gawked at or congratulated for courage I do not possess.

“Fine, just fine,” I replied.

The biologist understood. He skipped to the reality of the matter, saying. “Yeah. It can take a while.”

We’d met at sunset on Useppa Island, a small, historic resort that lies equidistant between his lab and my transient floating home. Dinner transitioned smoothly into a night in the Barron Collier Suite, on the second floor of the Collier Inn.

Champagne wasn’t involved; several margaritas were. Ford is not an abstemious man, but he is disciplined. It took some effort to charm him into more than one drink.

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Seduced»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Seduced» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Randy White - Deceived
Randy White
Randy White - Gone
Randy White
Randy White - Haunted
Randy White
Randy White - Ten thousand isles
Randy White
Randy White - Night Vision
Randy White
Randy White - Dead Silence
Randy White
Randy White - Black Widow
Randy White
Randy White - Dead of Night
Randy White
Randy White - Everglades
Randy White
Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit
Randy White
Randy White - Shark River
Randy White
Отзывы о книге «Seduced»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Seduced» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x