Your Heart Belongs to Me

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.”
    She rose from the armchair, but because the pistol remained trained on Ryan, he had no clear chance to get from the recliner to the coffee table.
    “What accident do you refer to?” she asked.
    “The car crash. Her head trauma.”
    In the flat, uninflected voice of someone in a trance, Violet said, “Lily was in a car crash.”
    Her celadon eyes were hard and cold and glazed. She moved slowly around the coffee table, diminutive but no less the predatory tiger.
    “Listen…things happen,” Ryan said. “They just happen. It’s nobody’s fault.”
    “Things happen,” she said flatly. “Nobody’s fault.”
    “If maybe…”
    “If maybe?” she asked, pausing by the fireplace.
    “If maybe you were driving, you can’t blame yourself.”
    “You think I was driving.”
    Anything he said could be the wrong thing to say, but silence might itself inspire her to shoot him.
    “I don’t know. I just thought maybe that explains…explains the intensity of your feelings. Explains why…we’re here like this.”
    If eyes revealed intentions, hers told him that he was a dead man. Her stare felt as sharp as shards of porcelain, shatters of her insane rage borne on her gaze.
    “I was not driving, Mr. Perry, because there was no accident. No car crash, no head trauma, no international list. Fully alive, perfectly healthy, Lily was matched to you and then put to death so you could have her heart.”
     

 
    FIFTY-FOUR

    S haking his battered head made the throbbing pains swell stronger, striking up an internal sound like the repeated hard plucking of the bottom-note string on a bass fiddle, and fired off sharper pangs by the quiverful. Yet he shook his head, shook it, denying what Violet had said.
    “Why did you fly to Shanghai for a transplant, Mr. Perry? Why all the way to Shanghai?”
    “That’s where the car crash happened. She was on life support, brain-dead, they kept her alive until I could get there with Dr. Hobb and his surgical team.”
    “Do you know what Falun Gong is, Mr. Perry?”
    He shook his head. He didn’t know. She made it sound