Face of Fear by Dean Koontz Page B

wall?”
    Bollinger waited until a city bus rumbled past the booth. His choice of quotations was clever ; and he wanted Billy to appreciate them. “Yeah. I’ve got a long one from Nietzsche.‘I want to teach men the sense of their existence, which is Superman, the lightning out of the dark cloud man.’”
    “Oh, that’s excellent,” Billy said. “I couldn’t have chosen better myself.”
    “Thank you.”
    “And Blake?”
    “Just a fragment from the alternate seventh night of The Four Zoas. ‘Hearts laid open to the light ...’”
    Billy laughed.
    “I knew you’d like it.”
    “I suppose you do intend to lay their hearts open?”
    “Naturally,” Bollinger said. “Their hearts and everything else, from throat to crotch.”

13
    Promptly at six o’clock, the doorbell rang.
    Sarah Piper answered it. Her professional smile slipped when she saw who was standing in the hall. “What are you doing here?” she asked, surprised.
    “May I come in?”
    “Well ...”
    “You look beautiful tonight. Absolutely stunning.”
    She was wearing a tight burnt-orange pantsuit, flimsy, with a low neckline that revealed too much of her creamy breasts. Self-consciously she put one hand over her cleavage. “I’m sorry, but I can’t ask you in. I’m expecting someone.”
    “You’re expecting me,” he said. “Billy James Plover.”
    “What? That’s not your name.”
    “It surely is. It’s the name I was born with. I changed it years ago, of course.”
    “Why didn’t you give me your real name on the phone?”
    “I’ve got to protect my reputation.”
    Still confused, she stepped back to let him pass. She closed the door and locked it. Aware that she was being rude but unable to control herself, she stared openly at him. She couldn’t think what to say.
    “You seem shocked, Sarah.” “Yeah,” she said. “I guess I am. It’s just that you don’t seem like the sort of man who would come to a woman—to someone like me.”
    He had been smiling from the moment she’d opened the door. Now his face broke into a broad grin. “What’s wrong with someone like you? You’re gorgeous.”
    This is crazy, she thought.
    She said, “Your voice.”
    “The Southern accent?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That’s also part of my youth, just like the name. Would you prefer I dropped it?”
    “Yeah. Your talking like that—it’s not right. It’s creepy.” She hugged herself.
    “Creepy? I thought you’d be amused. And when I’m Billy ... I don’t know ... I kind of have fun with it ... kind of feel like someone altogether new.” He stared hard at her and said, “Something’s wrong. We’re off on the wrong foot. Or maybe worse than that. Is it worse than that? If you don’t want to go to bed with me, say so. I’ll understand. Maybe something about me repels you. I haven’t always been successful with women. I’ve lost out many times. God knows. So just tell me. I’ll leave. No hard feelings.”
    She put on her professional smile again and shook her head. Her thick blond hair bounced prettily. “I’m sorry. There’s no need for you to go. I was just surprised, that’s all.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “Positive.”
    He looked at the living room beyond the foyer arch, reached down to finger the antique umbrella stand beside the door. “You have a nice place.”
    “Thank you.” She opened the foyer closet, plucked a hanger from the clothes rod. “Let me take your coat.”
    He took it off, handed it to her.
    As she put the coat in the closet, she said, “Your gloves too. I’ll put them in a coat pocket.”
    “I’ll keep my gloves,” he said.
    When she turned back to him, he was standing between her and the front door, and he was holding a wicked switch-blade knife in his right hand.
    She said, “Put that away.”
    “What did you say?”
    “Put that away!”
    He laughed.
    “I mean it,” she said.
    “You’re the coolest bitch I’ve ever met.”
    “Put that knife in your pocket. Put it away and then get