Dean Koontz - Your Heart Belongs To Me

Jolted by the shot, ripped, with the stink of blood now seeming to him like the lovely scent of sacrifice, he saw shadows throughout the room moving toward him.

Little more than an hour earlier, at the airport, before Cathy Sienna had boarded her limo for Los Angeles, she had hugged Ryan fiercely and had whispered in his ear four words no one had ever said to him before. Now for the first time in his life, he spoke those same words to another, with a humility and a sincerity that he was grateful to find within himself: “I’ll pray for you.”

Because he had one foot outside of time, Ryan could no longer accurately gauge the passage of seconds, but it seemed to him that Violet regarded him for a full minute or more between shots. He was summoning the strength to reassure her again when she turned away from him and fired at one of the posters.

Six shots remained in the magazine, and she used them on dead celebrities, on Chairman Mao, on the lava lamp, which burst brightly.

Without another look at Ryan, she walked out of the room and left him to die.

Whether he was weak from loss of blood or loss of motive, Ryan made no attempt to move from the La-Z-Boy, where he curled like a dog seeking sleep, both legs drawn up, his head resting upon one arm of the chair.

When the lava lamp had exploded, one of the two table lamps was knocked over and extinguished by flying debris. Now largely lit by candles and by two wicks floating in pools of scented oil, the room, though little damaged, seemed strangely like a ruin brightened only by the last residual flames of a great fire.

Whether long after Violet had gone or immediately in her wake-Ryan could not be certain-a hunched and scampering figure entered, muttering worriedly, cursing angrily. It hovered over him, touching and poking, its breath sour enough to be the exhalations of a troll that ate whatever might wander under its bridge, and then it went to a tall sapphire-blue cabinet painted with stars and moons.

When the figure had been bent over him, Ryan hadn’t been able to focus his failing vision; but from a distance, he now identified his father.

The cabinet of stars and moons featured doors on top and drawers below. Jimmy pulled out one of the drawers and emptied its contents onto the floor.

“Dad.”

“All right, I know, all right.”

“Call 911.”

Carrying the drawer, he hustled back to Ryan. Reflected oil-lamp light made lanterns of his eyes.

“Can’t let the sonofabitch cops find my stash.”

He released the false bottom of the drawer, plucked it out, threw it aside. Next he removed a four-inch-deep, rectangular metal lockbox of the kind in which small businesses secured their folding cash at the end of the day.

“I’m shot.”

Fumbling with the lockbox latches, Jimmy said, “Minute, minute, minute.” From the metal box he took plastic bags of pot and hashish. “Gotta flush, then I’ll call.”

“Call then flush.”

“Too much shit going down here, too much shit. Can’t get caught with this stuff, too.”

“Dad. Please. Call.”

As Jimmy scuttled away through the baleful light, muttering to himself-“Gotta flush, gotta flush, gotta flush”-he was reminiscent of no one so much as Rumpelstiltskin, except more demented.

Ryan tried to get up from the chair. He passed out.

Approaching sirens woke him.

Jimmy was bent over the La-Z-Boy, pressing a rag to Ryan’s head.

“What’re you doing?”

“Gotta stop the bleeding.”

The damp rag smelled like dishwater, but Ryan didn’t have the strength to push it away. He spoke through it as it fluttered against his face: “Dad, listen.”

“They’re almost here.”

“Wore masks.”

“Who did?”

“Broke in wearing masks.”

“Like shit they did.”

“We never saw faces.”

“I saw their faces.”

The tail of the rag flicked into his mouth, and he spat it out. “They had…wrong address.”

“Be quiet. Keep your strength.”

“They wanted Curtis someone.”

“Shit they did. No Curtis here.”

“Shot me before they realized.”

As the sirens died, Jimmy said, “Pullin’ up in front.”

Rallying himself, Ryan grabbed the rag and tore it away from his face. “Listen. That’s the story.”

Confused, his father said, “We need a story?”

Ryan would not finger Violet and her two associates. He didn’t want the old man to do it, either.

“Deep shit, Dad. We need a story.”

“Masks, wrong address, Curtis someone,” Jimmy said.

“Can you do it?”

“Bullshit cops? Been doing it all my life.”

A moment later, paramedics were in the room.

So recently willing to die, Ryan was surprised, as the medics bent to him, how much he wanted to live.

Three years and five months after the release of her first novel, Samantha published her third. Lexington, Kentucky, at the end of her twenty-one-city publicity tour, was not a standard stop on authors’ promotional schedules. She had asked her publisher to include it after Atlanta, to bring her close to St. Christopher’s Ranch, which would give her an excuse to phone him.

She thought he might feel less comfortable agreeing to see her if she came across the country just for that purpose, and might be more relaxed if he thought she happened to be in the neighborhood. Two weeks earlier, when she called him, he seemed pleased to hear from her, and she secured an invitation without pressing for it.

That morning, she rented a car and drove deep into the Bluegrass region, taking back roads where she could, in no hurry, enchanted by the rolling rural landscape, the miles on miles of black plank fences, white plank fences, and limestone walls, beyond which magnificent Thoroughbreds grazed in pristine meadows.

St. Christopher’s Ranch sat on seventy acres. Its meadows were as lush as any in the area, and the horses at pasture were beautiful though not Thoroughbreds. The main house stood far back from the county route, at the end of a driveway overhung by ancient oaks.

Encircled by a deep veranda, this enormous but elegant Kentucky manor house, white with black trim, was shaded from the worst of the June sunshine by the largest willow trees that Sam had ever seen.

Both ramps and steps rose from walkways to the veranda. She took the wide steps.

This spacious porch was furnished with gliders and large padded wicker chairs, in one of which sat a tow-headed and freckled boy of about thirteen, tanned and barefoot, in blue-jean shorts and a DOGS ROCK T-shirt. He was reading a book and, because he had no arms, he turned the pages with his toes.

“Hey,” he said, looking up from his book, “you ever been told you sure are pretty?”

“Heard it a couple times,” she said.

“What’s your name?”

“Sam.”

“With a name like that, a girl better be pretty. If I was ten years older, you’d be toast.”

“You ever been told you’re a terrible flirt?”

“Heard it a couple times,” he said, and grinned.

As instructed by phone, she went through a screen door into a front hall with a lovely old walnut floor. Here the ranch offices were situated in an atmosphere so relaxed, all the doors stood open.

Father Timothy was in his office, at his desk, where she had been told he would be when she arrived. Tall, stoop-shouldered, with a face weathered by sun and wind, he could have passed for any ranch hand or experienced horseman if he had not been in a monk’s habit.

“Because this is a dog-wash day, Binny had a lot to do this morning, and since he wasn’t sure exactly when you’d get here, he asked me to take you to him.”