Free Poison Flower by Thomas Perry Page A

had the gun, and now she was taking steps toward the steel door at the end of the building. And then she saw the chain. There was a thick, heavy chain running through a bolt hole in a vertical I beam, then across the door, around the nearest support pole, and back. It was fastened there by a big padlock. She lifted the padlock and looked beneath it. There was no key. It was obviously intended to keep someone from forcing the door from outside, so there was no reason for the key to be gone. Where was it She looked everywhere nearby-any sort of small ledge created by the structure of the building, or by the floors. She went into the bathroom and looked there, too.
    For the first time, Jane's eyes began to water. She was so badly hurt, so weak and tired after the past few days. She had dared to feel some faint hope, and now this. No. No weakness. She blinked her eyes clear, gripped her pistol, and walked back to the table that held the tools they'd used to torment her. She put the gun in her belt and snatched up the pair of bolt cutters with the long handles. She brought them to the chain on the door and closed them on the shaft of the padlock. She squeezed the handles as hard as she could, but they made no impression on the lock.
    She knelt and examined every link of the chain, looking at the weld that closed each oval. At last she found a weld that looked a bit thinner than the link, so it formed a small indentation. She fitted one blade of the bolt cutters into it, then tried to bring the two handles together to cut it. She kept trying, but she wasn't strong enough. She stopped to catch her breath and let her muscles relax. Sweat had made her hair damp and streaked her forehead. The various pains in her body seemed worse. She set down the bolt cutters and examined the weld of the link she'd been attacking. It did show some signs of wear, a slight distortion.
    Jane got up, went back to the table, picked up the blowtorch and the plastic cigarette lighter, and returned. She struck the lighter and then turned the knob on the blowtorch. It hissed for a second and then ignited. She adjusted the flame to make it smaller, a deep blue point that was hot and intense. She set the bottle-shaped torch down so the point of the flame was on the weld of the link.
    She waited for a long time, watching the link get hotter and hotter, then red-orange, then cherry red. She decided it was time. She lodged one handle of her bolt cutters against the wall of the building, opened its jaws, and set one blade in the red-hot weld. She stepped out of her shoes so her bare left foot was set against the floor, and grasped the other handle near the end with both hands. She pushed, hard. She used her strong left leg and her back and shoulders and arms. She thought she felt movement, but it wasn't enough to cut through. She knew she had to use her injured right leg. Even if it could exert only a hundred pounds of pressure, it would help. And if she died later tonight, she would know that she had used everything.
    She used both legs, she pushed harder, and the blade cut through and the handles came together. She pushed the red-hot link against the hinge of the steel door and used the leverage of the bolt cutters to bend it, so the opening widened. A length of chain slipped through and fell to the floor. Jane pulled the bolt cutters away, turned off the blowtorch, and stepped into her shoes.
    She walked to the door and reached for the knob. She was relieved that the knob turned and the door opened. She held on to the bolt cutters as she stepped through the doorway into the night.
    The air was cool and moving, and she loved the sweet taste of it. There were no cars on the asphalt outside. The lot was shielded from view on three sides by other buildings sharing the same parking lot, and on the fourth by the building where she had been held. She had a bad feeling about limping along the street that Wylie would use to enter the lot, so she slipped between two of the