Poison Flower Page 16

  Ranged around her on three sides she saw men whom she recognized. Near the front was Rhonda Eckersly's ex-husband. She hadn't seen him in fifteen years, but he looked at her with eyes that seemed almost inhuman, eager and hungry. There was Phil Barraclough, the brother of the man she had killed in the snow outside the deserted factory. He looked like his brother, but his face was unmoving and pitiless, just a mask of patient hatred. She looked away to keep track of her captors. There was Maloney, who was watching the door, and Gorman, who seemed nervous and eager to be finished with her and gone.

  Wylie lifted his arm up and gestured at her. "There she is, gentlemen. She's the one you've all been searching for, and we have her once again. I'll bet when you first learned about her, you all thought you were hunting for someone else who had run away from you. But by now you know that she's the one you really should have hunted. The people you wanted didn't hide themselves. She did it. She knows their new names and where they are right now, because she made up the names and took them there."

  "Come on, Wylie," said Gorman. "The sooner you start the bidding-"

  "What's the hurry"

  "Every cop in the country is looking for her. So let's get her sold and on her way before we all get put away."

  Wylie frowned at him, but seemed to relent. "Gentlemen, I'd like to hear some bids."

  She saw the bidders lined up before her, and it was like an inventory of her nightmares. She looked at Rhonda Eckersly's husband, and felt a wave of nausea. Rhonda had tried to leave him because of his cruelty. He was from an old southern family with lots of money and influence, so when she ran away, he simply reported her car stolen, and the police brought her back. He had put an iron ring in the floor of their living room and kept her chained to it by the neck. When he was tired of hurting her, he invited some like-minded friends and let each of them have a turn. Jane had taken her out of the world at least fifteen years ago. She had a new name, was married to a man who cherished her, and had two boys and a girl who were growing up fast. Every year she sent Jane an unsigned card that had something to do with "Indian Summer" from a different city to let her know she was still safe.

  Eckersly looked old now, his cheeks sunken like an unwrapped mummy. He said, "A million."

  Wylie frowned. "The bidding has begun at a million. And all the bidder wants is a chance to convince this woman that she made a mistake. Remember, everybody. She knows where somebody you want is hiding. But she also knows where somebody he wants is." He pointed at Eckersly. "And where somebody he wants is." He pointed at Phil Barraclough, the brother of the man she had shot.

  Barraclough raised his hand. "Two million."

  "I hear two million," said Wylie. "I want to remind every-one that all bids must refer to cash money. No checks, real estate, stocks, bonds, or precious stones; no gold or business partnerships." He looked around. "If you outbid Mr. Eckersly and Mr. Barraclough, you know they'll each pay you a couple of million to get the use of her, and find out what she did with someone they're hunting for. And you'll still have her."

  The bidders looked at each other, as though each were trying to assess how much the others might pay. Grady Lee Beard said, "Three million."

  Jane said, "You don't have that much."

  Wylie's right arm straightened and he hit her, a punch on the jaw. The punch knocked Jane to the side, so she fell off the table, but Gorman leaped forward to catch her before she hit the floor in the midst of the bidders. Wylie shook his hand and blew on the knuckles as though they hurt him.

  Grady Lee Beard said to Jane, "I'll have that and plenty more after I get you. I know a dozen guys like these who will pay big for a chance to talk to you. They just don't know we've got you yet."

  "I've got a bid of three million," Wylie said. "You bidders might also think about the fact that she doesn't just know about somebody you're hunting for. She knows about you. She knows whatever her client knows about you-anything you might have done that wasn't strictly legal, and even what we're doing now. You can be sure she never tells any secrets that could put you away. Buying her is the only way to buy your safety. Her new owner will get every one of your secrets. What will it cost you to be sure that Mr. Beard, here, guards those secrets"

  "Four million," Eckersly said.

  "Four million to you, gentlemen. This is a slave market. Once you own her, you can do anything you want with her. If you hate her, you can show her how much pain can be inflicted on a person before she dies. Or you can find out what you want and then resell her to the next customer for a profit. Whoever wins the bidding tonight reaps the benefits, because she'll only get more valuable. Any more bids Do I hear five"

  There was silence. Some of the men in the room stared at Jane, as though they were trying to read her mind and determine how much the contents of her memory were worth. She refused to let them make eye contact.

  "The last bid was Mr. Eckersly at four million. Final offer"

  The silence took on a resentful, shamefaced quality, the bidders looking down at their shoes rather than at Wylie. "Mr. Maloney, call our employer and see what he thinks of four million."

  Maloney dialed a cell phone and spoke into it. "Hello, sir. The bidding is now at four million, and no counterbid. Is that an acceptable price" There was a pause while he listened. "Thank you, sir. I'll tell them." He put his phone in his coat pocket. "I'm sorry, gentlemen. At four million the price is not high enough. Our employer has submitted a token bid of eight million dollars. He's going to give you one final chance to do better. If nobody beats eight million, he'll take her off the market."

  Phil Barraclough said, "I thought the rule was that you had to bring your stakes and pay off at the end of the auction."

  "That's right," Wylie said.

  "You're telling me that you've got eight million here in this house"

  Wylie shook his head. "We brought the merchandise for him. She's worth eight million."

  "That's just bullshit," said Barraclough. "He's wasting our time. He's not going to sell her."

  "If that's how you feel, I can't say I blame you for dropping out. If anyone wants to go on with the auction, the bidding will start again at eight million."

  "When do we have to hand over the money" asked Beard.

  "When we get the cash, you'll get her. But we've got to be gone in twenty-four hours, so it'll have to be before then."

  Beard looked around him at the others. "All right. I want to be in on this. There are people I've been looking for, and she knows where they are. I have two million in cash in this backpack. If a couple of you want to go in with me, we can get together and make eight million."

  The other bidders were silent. Two million was clearly not a big enough percentage to make them risk an ongoing partnership with Grady Lee Beard. He was tall and rangy, with very light skin that had the ability to hold scars as raised pink lines, so the history of his dealings with others was written on his face.

  Wylie said, "Our employer doesn't care how you get together, or who contributes what. All he wants is that we go home with upwards of eight million, and somebody else goes home with the woman."

  A few of the bidders whispered together and there were muttered expletives, but no deal seemed to be concluded. There were frustrated scowls in parts of the room, as several bidders whose pitches had been rejected looked for each other in the crowd.

  "Eight million and one thousand."

  The whispering and murmuring stopped. One by one, the men in the room found the source of the words. Jane felt sick.

  "Is that a bid" asked Wylie. "I believe we have a bid. It's eight million, one thousand dollars. Does everybody hear the bid"

  The murmuring increased again, and this time Jane could see that the men were talking faster. There was some desperation as they tried to cobble together instant alliances to beat the bid. After a few more seconds, the side conversations died out and the men's attention was on Wylie. "Mr. Eckersly has bid eight million one thousand." Wylie was much more animated, and Jane c
ould tell he must be delighted. His cut would be eight hundred thousand.

  "Let's get our boss on the phone," Wylie said, looking at Gorman.

  Gorman leaned into the alcove that led to the kitchen and talked into his phone rapidly, with his free hand covering his ear so he could hear above the hum of side conversations. He nodded and said "Okay." He held the phone up so his boss could hear, and called out, "The bid is in range. He doesn't want to beat it."

  This set off some more conferring as aggressive bidders tried once more to put together partnerships.

  Wylie let it go on for a few minutes, until the voices began to die off. "I have a bid of eight million and one thousand. Do I have any other bids Does anyone want to beat eight million and one thousand Any bids for the woman who has hidden so many people for so long" He stood tall, moving to look over the heads of the nearby bidders who had been walking around to talk to others. "No bids Then it's going . . . going . . . gone! For eight million one thousand to Mr. Eckersly."

  The men who were still seated all seemed to pop up at once and mill around the room talking to the others. Between two of them Jane could see Eckersly sitting in his chair with a smile just barely lifting the corners of his lips. He suddenly seemed to be aware of her, and his eyes turned to settle on her and the smile broadened. The effect was like looking into an open coffin and seeing the corpse open its eyes and the face powder at its mouth wrinkle and crack as it smiled.

  Jane knew terrible things about Eckersly. Rhonda had been twenty-five when Jane had taken her away, and Eckersly had been in his late forties. Now he was in his mid-sixties, but he looked ancient. The people in this room probably all thought that he was an astute speculator who would make a profit by forcing her to betray the people Beard and Barraclough and the others wanted, and then kill her for simple revenge. Jane knew him better than that. After all these years he wanted Rhonda back. He wanted to drag her to the same room and renew her torment where he had been interrupted, and then he wanted to do the same to Jane. He was a sadist, and simple murder would not be enough after fifteen years of waiting. He would prefer to keep them both alive for months, maybe years.

  Jane saw a few of the bidders begin to leave. Some seemed angry at particular men who had not seen fit to join an alliance. Others looked merely tired and frustrated. She saw Wylie and Gorman make their way through the group to talk to Eckersly. She hoped there would be a delay, a problem of some kind with the cash. He had a large hard-sided case that sat between his feet. Was it big enough to hold eight million dollars

  Wylie and Gorman were obviously thinking the same thing. Jane looked around her for Maloney, and she found him near the front door, watching the bidders filing out. As she watched, she saw Ronald Hanlon stop at the door, give her a smirk, and then blow her a kiss.

  She looked away as he stepped outside, and she had to keep herself from shuddering. She hadn't thought about him in years. When she had crossed his path, he had been a trafficker in women from eastern Europe. His business was buying groups of them from a fake employment agency based in Kiev, and promising them jobs in the United States. In order to get into the country they had to sign loan papers for his high fees, and then swear to false answers on what they thought were immigration papers, but were just requests for tourist visas. When they arrived he kept them in isolation and forced them to work as prostitutes for two or three years until they paid off his fees. One of them who had served her indenture had come to Jane to ask for help to get her sister away. Jane had managed to get a dozen other girls out with the sister and into new lives. Hanlon had apparently been waiting for a chance for revenge.

  As the rest of the bidders left, Jane looked at each one and remembered. It occurred to her that in this small house tonight there had been only a few whom she didn't know to be killers. The few faces Jane had never seen before had simply been speculators in misery, professional hunters who had heard of Jane's existence and shown up to see if she could be had for a reasonable price.

  Now the bidders were all outside, and Maloney stood beside the front door looking out the small window set into it, with the shotgun in his hands. He was watching to be sure the disappointed men really were getting into cars and driving off. She looked at Wylie and Gorman, who were still occupied with Eckersly and his suitcase. Jane did her best to look weak and in pain. Finally she stepped down from the low table and then sat on it. Wylie noticed, but it didn't seem to worry him. It didn't matter if she couldn't stand up on the table anymore, because the sale had been made. He looked down at Eckersly and listened to something he was saying.

  "You can't seriously expect me to sit here all night watching you count my money."

  Wylie said, "What we're going to do is count out a hundred thousand in hundreds and weigh it. Then we're going to weigh the rest of it, a bunch at a time. And we're going to look at it while we do that. So if there's something wrong, tell me now."

  "There's nothing wrong with it," Eckersly said. "This is four million. The other four million is in Jack Killigan's car. He's sitting up the road waiting for my call, and he'll bring in the rest of the money anytime you want."

  "I'm just giving you fair warning. If we find a one-dollar bill, you'd better be able to make it a hundred. If we find blank paper cut to dollar size, we'll kill you. Got it"

  "You have no reason to talk to me like that. I came here and bid in good faith."

  "If you pay in good faith, too, you've got nothing to worry about."

  Jane felt the tension building in her chest. She had been waiting for a chance, an opening, an opportunity, for two days, but Wylie and his friends had never seemed to lose their interest in watching her. She had always been in their sight, tethered and hobbled by ropes. But now she sensed that her chance was coming. The men weren't watching her now. They were watching each other.

  Jane's eyes moved to Gorman, who was at the front window with his hand on his pistol. She saw the watchful look on his face, then looked at Maloney, who was still standing at the front door. He had the same stern look, almost squinting to be sure he missed nothing that was going on outside. They were on guard, but not guarding Jane anymore. Then she realized that they were right to be anxious.

  The house had just been visited by fifteen or twenty men who had killed people and were engaged in trying to find other victims who had eluded them. All of them knew that each of the others was carrying a lot of money-enough to bid in a million-dollar auction. Somebody was going to be attacked for that money, and it had to happen in the next few minutes, before the bidders dispersed. Jane retrieved the razor blade from the waistband of her pants and sawed through the rope that held her hands. She kept the hands together behind her.

  Jane focused her eyes on Sarah Shelby, and Sarah understood that it was a summons. She edged close to Jane with her hobbled legs. Jane whispered, "In a minute there will be gunfire. When it happens, I'll be running. You'll have to stick close to me."

  "How can-"

  "Sit."

  Jane put the razor blade behind her on the table, where only Sarah could see it. Sarah sat on the table beside her, picked up the blade, held it behind her back while she adjusted her grip on it, then bent to tie her shoe while she sliced through the rope that held her ankles close together to prevent her from running. In one motion she sat up and set the blade behind her near Jane.

  Jane picked it up, keeping both hands out of sight behind her back.

  Suddenly all thought was obliterated as the world seemed to explode into deafening noise and flashes of light. Glass from the dining room window blasted into the house and peppered the hardwood floor. There was thumping as someone ran up the hallway near the back of the house. There was firing outside, but it was impossible to tell who was shooting at whom.

  Eckersly half-rose from his chair and then collapsed to the floor, bleeding. There was random fire from the direction of the dining room as someone emptied a magazine in the general direction of the men standing near Eckersly's suitcase. Wylie and Gorman dr
ew their pistols and fired a half dozen shots each at the opening in the window.

  Maloney raised his shotgun to his shoulder and flung open the front door, then fired into the night. He pumped the shotgun and stepped back as Jane hurled herself toward him. Instead of letting go of the gun and fighting his much smaller attacker, he tried to swing the barrel around to shoot her. She was less than a foot away from him when she slashed the razor blade down the side of his neck, just below his jawbone. He dropped the shotgun and grasped his throat with both hands as though he could hold it together and save himself, but the blood spurted out between his fingers while Jane moved past him to the front door. He collapsed to the floor as she ran out into the night with Sarah beside her.

  Jane ran to the yew bush where she had left her gun, knelt and grasped it, then raised it in both hands and spun around just in time to see Gorman come out the front door after her. She fired at his chest. He jerked backward, but still stood, so she fired twice more. The second shot went high through his throat, and the third hit the center of his chest. Jane could hear volleys of shots from somewhere up the road. The bidders must be fighting each other for the cash they'd brought.

  She turned to look in the front window of the house, but she saw only Eckersly lying on the floor. She pivoted and followed Sarah to the left front corner of the house. She had not seen Wylie yet, and she couldn't go anywhere while he was alive. "Stay here," she whispered, and cautiously made her way along the side of the house to the back corner. Lying there was the body of Ronald Hanlon, probably shot through the dining room window by Wylie or Gorman. She stepped around it and aimed at the back steps by the kitchen door, but the door was already wide open and there was nobody to be seen. She advanced toward the garage quickly, trying to get there in time. She heard a car start, and knew she was too late. She heard the car squealing out of the garage, then kicking gravel up from the long driveway.