Thomas Perry - Poison Flower

"If you want to do it that way, you can," said Sarah. "But I'll need to ask you the rest of the questions afterward."

"Fair enough," Jane said. "I would like another glass of water in a minute. I'd like a bath and then something to eat, and then a place to sleep for about eight hours."

Sarah waited for a couple of seconds, but nothing more came. "Those are easy." As she took Jane's glass and refilled it, she said, "We have about seventy women and children with us right now, most of them in secret, secure locations."

"What kind of locations"

"They're mostly houses, single-family houses that are owned by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. We keep them occupied and kept up. If someone comes to us looking for a particular woman, we ask her if she wants to see him. If she does, she meets with him here. If she doesn't, we never heard of her."

"Sounds smart."

"Is someone looking for you that you'd like to avoid"

"Yes. Anyone who comes looking for me is someone I'd like to avoid. But I don't think people can find me here, or I wouldn't have come."

"All right. Take this clipboard and fill in all the blanks that you can."

Jane took the clipboard and worked her way down the form. Her name was Melanie Kraft. She had no current address, but had last lived in Salt Lake City, and wanted to go back. She had been driven to Las Vegas a few days ago by a man she had known in Salt Lake City. But he had beaten her up and burned her, so she had stolen some clothes from him and run away.

She filled in all the spaces, but left out the wound in her thigh. In some places there was a law that people like social workers and nurses had to report all gunshot wounds to the police.

When Jane handed back the clipboard, Sarah said, "I can see why you're afraid. I'm a nurse. Would you mind if I looked at the burns"

Jane turned away and raised her shirt.

"Oh, my God," the woman muttered. "Hold on right there. I'd like to take a picture of that."

Jane let go of the shirt. "No pictures. I'm sorry."

"You have to think ahead. Someday, a man like that is probably going to kill you. Even if you aren't up to charging him right now, you're going to wish you had evidence of what he did to you."

Jane said, "What happened is over if I can keep it over."

"If you won't do it for yourself, think about the rest of us. Now that he's out of your life, he's looking for somebody else right now. He'll do the same to her, or worse, unless you stop him. This thing we're doing here really works only if we all help. I can hide people from creeps. But the only one who can take him off the street is you."

Jane said, "I agree strongly with every single thing you've said. I can only tell you that this time it's a one-of-a-kind situation. I have no personal relationship with this man. I escaped the first second I could. Calling the police would only endanger me."

"Are you a sex worker You didn't check it on your form."

"No. Please. Just listen. You can see I have injuries. I escaped with no money, no identification, not even my own clothes. I want to move on. As soon as I can get a job and earn enough to leave, I'll go. Sometime later, I'll send you a contribution that will more than repay what you invest in me, I promise. But please. I can't leave photographs of myself, or have any conversations with the police."

Sarah Werth stared at her for a few seconds. "I assume you've given me a false name."

"Of course."

Sarah Werth set the clipboard on her desk and stood. "Come on, and we'll get you bathed and fed and assigned to a bed."

In the bath Jane kept her bullet wound dry, but washed it in hydrogen peroxide from the first aid kit and rewrapped it with gauze and tape. There were no signs of infection, and the stitches had held. The rest of her body was a pattern of welts, bruises, and scars. Everything hurt, every surface was sensitive, but in the end she didn't feel as though any of the injuries but the bullet wound was deep enough to need much attention. She thought about Carey. He would know what to do about the injuries. But even if she'd had a phone, she couldn't call him from here. The number would be on the bill, and a phone number was as good as an address.

When she was finished, she was given a pair of black exercise pants and a T-shirt. She put them on and went into the bedroom she was to share with a woman named Iris. Iris was not in the room yet, so Jane got into the bed she was assigned and slept.

The escape from Wylie, Gorman, and Maloney; the burglary; the five-hour drive to Las Vegas; and the long, painful, limping walk to the shelter had left a deep exhaustion and a flood of impressions and images that gave her quick, bright, unsettling dreams. One was about walking through a city that had huge buildings without doors. Then it got dark and she could see that there was a man walking to overtake her. As he came closer and walked into a bit of light aimed downward from one of the buildings, she recognized him.

"Hello, Harry." As always he was wearing the gray-green coat, and this time he had a hat, a man's snap-brim like the one she had seen him wear the night when she had first taken him away from his troubles.

"Hi, Janie."

"I thought you'd be around soon."

"Do dreams come to you, or do you come to us"

"That's too idle a question for right now. I'm in terrible trouble, Harry. I was captured and they tortured me. They lamed me so I can hardly walk."

"I know. I know the things you know because I exist only in your mind. The hurt was a revelation, wasn't it Maybe it was supposed to change you."

"It made me weak and slow and afraid to be hurt again."

"Maybe Hawenneyu the right-handed twin needed you to be in one place and not another at a particular time, and the price of having you there was the wound. Maybe it made Hanegoategeh the left-handed twin think he had won and turn his head away for a moment. Or maybe what happened was meant to remind you that some people have been amazingly tough."

"The Grandfathers"

He shrugged. "Every one of them was a relative of yours. When they were fighting far from home, and one of them decided to stay back and die, it terrified their enemies."

"My enemies aren't terrified. They can't wait to find me."

"You could just as easily have killed the last two in that building."

"If I had killed them, what would make me different from them"

"Are you different from them"

"I would never take anyone's life unless I had no choice."

"You're alone, hurt, and hiding. You may not have choices from now on. Everyone is a warrior, and every last one of us falls in the fighting. For now, one of the brothers has kept you alive. He must have had some purpose in mind. Be ready." He looked to the left, nodded to her, and then crossed the street. He hurried up the sidewalk, but when he stepped into a shadow, he never stepped out of it again.

Jane slept in dark, unremembered dreams for hours, then woke before dawn to find a woman standing in the doorway. The woman saw that Jane was awake. "Good morning," she said.

"Good morning."

She went to the other bed and gently touched the sleeping woman in it. "Iris, get up, honey."

The sleeping woman jumped, uttered a little cry, and held her forearms up in a gesture that Jane recognized as an attempt to protect her face from blows.

Jane said, "It's all right, Iris. You're in the shelter. You're safe."

Iris took in two deep breaths that were like sobs, then sat up and rubbed her eyes. "I'm sorry. I was having a bad dream." Jane got a chance to study her. She was about twenty-five, with very white skin and the kind of thin blond hair that looked like cornsilk. It had been cut short, but it looked uneven and jagged, as though she had cut it herself.

The woman who had awakened them said, "The dreams will go away, too. Don't worry. I'm here to take you two to another house. It's just across town, but I'd like to get going right away, because there's less chance of being seen before dawn."