Dean Koontz - Breathless

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Grady Adams lives a simple, solitary life deep in the Colorado mountains. Here the thirty-five-year-old carpenter works out of a converted barn, crafting exquisite one-of-a-kind furniture. There's little about this strong yet gentle man to suggest the experiences that have alienated him from the contemporary world. But that is about to change.
One day, while hiking, Grady spots a pair of stunningly beautiful furred animals unlike anything he's ever seen. They flee the instant they detect his presence, but the mystery of that brief encounter remains. In the days ahead, Grady will approach the creatures again, gaining their trust but coming no closer to solving their mystery. For this he enlists the help of an old friend, veterinarian Camellia 'Cammy' Rivers, who, in turn, is stunned – and enchanted – by Grady's new 'pets.' But while Grady and Cammy carefully observe these enigmatic animals for clues to their origin, they, too, are being watched.
Soon Grady's home and hundreds of square miles of surrounding wilderness will be placed under quarantine by Homeland Security. And Grady, Cammy, and the two creatures they've come to feel they must protect at all costs find themselves virtual prisoners – and the unwilling focus of an army of biologists, naturalists, and research scientists. But it's a stunning event no one could have foreseen that convinces Grady and Cammy to do the unthinkable: to escape with the two creatures on a riveting race for freedom.

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“I’ll get a slice of bread,” Grady said, hurrying to a loaf on the counter by the ovens. “It’ll cool his tongue.”

Perhaps because the heat of the pepper lingered, Riddle became more alarmed. He raced out of the pantry and into the kitchen, wove past Merlin and circled Cammy twice before dashing into the hallway.

Grady started after him with the bread, but Riddle returned at top speed, dropped to his drinking bowl, and splashed his entire face in the water.

“Bread is better, short stuff,” Grady said-and then looked at Cammy in shock. “What did I just see?”

For a moment, she couldn’t answer him. What they had both seen was Riddle running upright like a man, as no animal that sprinted as fast as a cat on all fours should be able to run erect. When he had wanted to run tall, something had happened to his hips, to his knees and hocks and stifles, as if the joints had the capacity to shift from one configuration to another as required.

Riddle raised his dripping face out of the water dish, plopped backward onto his butt, and suffered a sneezing fit.

Forty-eight

As in the night, Tom Bigger felt accompanied in the light. No one shadowed him on either the golden hills to the east or in the seaside fields to the west. No coyotes slunk, no great blue herons stalked. Yet he sensed that he was not alone.

Traffic increased with sunrise, and some southbound cars slowed as the approaching drivers glimpsed his hulking form, his ravaged face. He was an also-ran Elephant Man, a walking third-rate sideshow worth a few minutes of dinner conversation, a self-made monster who hadn’t needed Nature’s assistance to discover his inner horror and manifest it in his flesh.

Having walked throughout the night, Tom could not walk all day. At ten o’clock, he came to a motel where the vacancy sign, lit even in daylight to give it punch, was made a laughable understatement by the empty parking lot. This establishment was not a unit in a lodging chain, but a mom-and-pop operation, a little too cute in its details but perfectly maintained.

In times not too far in the past, he would have been turned away with minimal courtesy or none, not primarily because he was a fright to see, perhaps not even because his beard stubble and tequila eyes and backpack made him a hobo variant, but certainly because he had no credit card, no ID, and wanted to pay cash up front. Suppose that in a drunken fit he trashed the room-how would they track him down to make him pay? He had been turned away from places worse than this one.

But these were harder times than people had known in a while. Cash ruled, and even more so in a downturn when few people were spending either greenbacks or plastic. He figured they would take his money, because if they were too picky about their clientele these days, they might as well burn the business down and collect the insurance.

At the door to the motel office, he hesitated. He turned away, retreated a few steps, but halted and then faced the entrance again.

For as long as he could remember, Tom disliked going inside places where he had never been before. Whether it was this place or any other, crossing a threshold for the first time made him nervous.

In fact, at all times he preferred the outdoors, because if he crossed the path of the wrong person, he could simply walk away in any direction. Without walls and with sky above instead of ceiling, he had choices. Inside, obstacles to flight and limited exits were always a concern.

The wrong person would not be one who merely giggled at him or made a rude remark about his looks or his condition. He feared a more profound encounter with someone who strongly affected him in ways for which he was not prepared.

He didn’t want to be affected. What had an affect caused an effect. Affect was another word for change, and Tom Bigger didn’t want to change.

He was what he was, and he didn’t know how to be anything else. At forty-eight, he’d been this way twice as long as he had not.

In the motel office, behind the registration counter, a white-haired guy, maybe seventy-something, was sitting at a desk, engrossed in a book. Wearing a gray cardigan over a white shirt, sporting a red bow tie, with a pair of half-lens reading glasses halfway down his nose, he looked as if he had been born an old man.

“Good morning, sir,” he said, setting his book aside and rising. “What may I do for you this glorious morning?”

“Need a room,” Tom said.

“Used to be bustling this time of the day, folks checking out, all in a hurry to settle up and hit the road. As you see, I’m not at risk of breaking a sweat this morning.”

“Walked all night,” Tom explained.

“That’s the smart way. When it’s cool. And when traffic’s light, so you aren’t breathing exhaust fumes every step of the way.”

The old man put a pen and a registration form on the counter.

“Don’t have a credit card, don’t have ID,” Tom said. “Cash in advance is how I do it.”

“Saves us both some bother. I’ve been hearing for forty years how cash money will soon be obsolete. There’s not much of it floating around these days, but it’s sure not obsolete. Just go ahead and print your name on the top line, sign at the bottom.”

Tom did as instructed. Then he counted out the cash.

Presenting a key, the old man said, “Number twenty-four. Out the door here, turn left, and go to the end. Twenty-four is the last room in the north wing, so your sleep won’t be interrupted this afternoon when all the big movie stars are checking in with their entourages.”

“You have soda and ice machines?” Tom asked.

“End of the south wing. Enjoy your stay, Mr. Bigger.”

In his room, Tom took off his backpack, dropped it on the bed.

He stared out the window at the empty parking lot.

He watched the fast traffic on the coastal highway.

He shut the draperies.

He looked at the TV but didn’t switch it on.

On the bed lay a complimentary copy of USA Today.

He didn’t pick it up.

He stared at his big bony hands.

He went into the bathroom.

He looked at his face in the mirror.

The old man in the cardigan had been reading a book, so he couldn’t be blind.

Forty-nine

For a preliminary interview with his potential client, Liddon Wallace wore a dark-blue Ralph Lauren Purple Label suit, a shirt and tie from Costume National, shoes from Gucci, a Rolex watch-and just a touch of Black by Kenneth Cole, a fragrance for men.

Although his primary offices were in San Francisco and he lived in Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge from the city, Liddon was also a member of the bar in three other states, including the state of Washington. The amount of wealth in Seattle and environs, crossed with the tendency of the high-tech rich in particular to think they were wizards of the Web and above all laws, could from time to time lead to the kind of trouble that allowed a stylish lawyer to expand his closet space to infinity.

The potential client lived in a 28,000-square-foot Georgian Revival-style house on six walled acres. The guard at the gatehouse admitted Liddon to the property. A doorkeeper came outside to wait for him while he parked in the two-lane driveway. Once inside, the doorkeeper took his Ralph Lauren topcoat and turned him over to a butler, who led him to a drawing room where the future defendant waited for him.

If Liddon accepted the case, he would be compensated for his services by the client’s father, Bob Marlowe. The twenty-two-year-old son, Swithen, was still making his way through college at a measured pace that had brought him to his junior year, and of course he had no job. The young man waited alone in the drawing room because Liddon always conducted the initial interview one-on-one.

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