Dean Koontz: Your Heart Belongs To Me

As he tried to push up from the chair, the next blow landed on the top of his skull, so swiftly delivered after the first that the agony in his ear had just begun to bloom.

A scintillation of pain followed the natural sutures between the frontal bone of his skull and the two parietals. Behind his eyes, which had squinched shut with the pain, he saw the squiggly line of those sutures picked out in the darkness by sputters of coppery sparks.

Defensively, frantically, he clasped the top of his head with his hands, so the third blow cracked his fingers. He cried out, or thought he did, but even if he screamed, the fourth blow cut it short, and knocked him unconscious.

He regained consciousness in stages defined by an increasing tolerance for light. At first, rising from oblivion, he found the oil lamps unendurably bright, their flames so sharp that it seemed each flicker lacerated his eyes. He didn’t know where he was or to whom the lamps belonged, and his head was such a mass of pain that he could not think of the words to ask that the wicks be snuffed. He sank back into senselessness, returned, sank again, and by degrees adapted to light and recovered his memory.

When he knew who he was and where and in what circumstances, he raised his chin from his breast and focused on Violet, who sat in an armchair, across the coffee table from him.

“Do you know your name?” she asked.

He could hear her clearly with his left ear, but her words came to his right as though water flooded the canal. Perhaps the torn ear was only pooled with blood and he was not to any degree deaf.

“Do you know your name?” she asked again.

His answer cracked unspoken in his dry throat. He worked up some saliva, swallowed, and said shakily, “Yes.”

“What is your name?”

“Ryan Perry.”

He sensed that she possessed the skill to administer a pistol-whipping without risking a concussion, but that she lost control this time and was concerned that she would be able to have less fun with him than she originally intended.

“What is the date?”

He thought for a moment, remembered, told her.

From ear to ear and nose to nape, his head ached, not in a way that mere aspirin could address. In addition to the ache were more intense paroxysms, recurring and receding waves radiating from the right side around to the back of the skull, and trailing these stronger tides of pain were quick but even sharper pangs, six and eight and ten at a time, tattooing a line from his right temple, across the orbit of that eye, and down the bridge of his nose.

When he lifted his left hand off the arm of the chair, intending to put it to his head, he inhaled with a hiss through clenched teeth, because it seemed that broken glass must be embedded in his knuckles.

The index finger was bent immovably at an unnatural angle, and the little finger appeared to have been crushed beyond repair. His hand dripped blood, and the leather upholstery glistered with a slickness of it.

Half of Violet’s face lay in soft shadows, half shone gold in lamplight, but both celadon eyes were bright with interest.

“Once more I ask-who gave you a photograph of Lily?”

“Supposedly the family. It came through my surgeon.”

“Dr. Hobb.”

“Yes.”

“When did you receive the photo?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“Sunday morning?”

“Yes. And I saw she was your twin.”

“And then you fled to Denver.”

“First to Las Vegas. Then to Denver.”

“Why there?”

He could not explain Ismay Clemm to himself, let alone to this woman. He said, “You cut me in the parking lot. You invaded my house and covered every trace of how you got in and out. You screwed with the security recordings, opened blind deadbolts-”

“Electromagnets can open blind deadbolts. Did it seem like sorcery?”

“I was scared. I had to go somewhere you couldn’t find me, somewhere I could think.”

“What thoughts did you have in Denver to bring you home again?”

He shook his head, and that was a mistake. A liquid pain sloshed through his cranium.

When the agony passed, he said, “There’s no way to put it into words. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” he repeated.

Ryan began to contemplate using the coffee table to turn this situation around. The two glass vessels, if overturned and shattered, might splash burning oil not only on the floor and furniture but also on Violet.

She said, “I didn’t expect you to come here.”

“Yeah. You already said.”

“I thought you would let me kill your father.”

“I didn’t come here just for him.”

“What else did you come here for?”

He did not answer. He didn’t have to answer everything. She would eventually kill him whether he replied to all her questions or not.

Violet said, “Do you wonder who I am-besides being her sister?”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not a schoolteacher.”

“What does that mean?”

“A schoolteacher like she was.”

“Lily was not a schoolteacher.”

Because space had been allowed for the La-Z-Boy to expand to its full length as a recliner, the chair stood farther from the coffee table than Ryan would have liked. If he had been closer, he could have thrust out his legs, kicking the table, tumbling the lamps to shatter on the floor.

“Lily was a seamstress.”

“Why would they lie about what she did?” he asked.

Instead of answering the question, Violet said, “I am a security agent. Government security. But different from the FBI, the CIA. Oh, very different, Mr. Perry. You have never heard of this bureau, and you never will.”

“Secret police.”

“Yes. Essentially. Your bad luck to take the heart of someone with a sister capable of taking it back.”

“I didn’t take anything. You feel the way you feel. I understand why you might feel that way. I really do. But I was on a recipient list, and she was on a donor list, and we matched. If not me, someone else.”

“The list you were on-the United Network for Organ Sharing.”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“How long did you wait for a heart, Mr. Perry?”

If she pointed the pistol away from him or if she started to get up from the armchair, or if she was distracted for any reason, he might be able to throw himself off the chair, overturn the table, spill the lamps, and in the flare of flames and chaos somehow avoid being shot. The scene played in his mind, admittedly a Hollywood moment of stuntman choreography, but it might work, just might, because there were moments when life imitated movies. He had to play along with her, keep her talking, and hope she gave him an opportunity.

“Dr. Gupta-he gave me a year to live. A year at the most. But I might have been dead in six months, even less. They didn’t find a match for almost four months.”

“Some people wait a year, two years,” she said. “Many never find a match. You had a perfect match…in one month.”

“No. Four. Four months.”

“One month after coming under Dr. Hobb’s care.”

“Because Dr. Hobb is an exceptional surgeon with a worldwide reputation, licensed to practice in several countries. He can get his patients on the list of the International Network for Organ Sharing.”

Her pale-green eyes widened as if he had told her something she did not know, information that she must now factor into the equation. “The International Network for Organ Sharing.” She nodded thoughtfully, as if absorbing this news, but then her eyes narrowed. “There is no such list, Mr. Perry.”

“Of course there is. I was on it. Your sister was on it. After her accident, they matched us, and Dr. Hobb got the call.”