Chapter 2

I shouted desperately, “Have the station staff place the container onto the express train. Once it gets to the destination, someone will pick it up!”

As long as the heart was on the train, there was still hope.

The SWAT officer hesitated for two seconds.

During that brief moment, Ariana moved. She rushed forward and kicked the bottom of the temperature‑controlled container.

Thump.

The container fell out of my hands and hit the marble floor.

The lid popped open, and refrigerant splattered across the ground. In the cold air, the heart wrapped in a sterile bag rolled out, tumbled twice, and stopped after hitting the base of a trash can.

“No!” I screamed as I lunged toward it.

My knees struck the floor, and my vision darkened. I ignored everything else. I held the heart in my hands as its temperature rose quickly. The preservation fluid leaked from the torn sterile bag.

“It cannot be exposed to the air,” I whispered. I shivered and hugged the heart to my chest, wrapping it with my clothes as tears streamed down my face.

Ariana stood nearby, clapped her hands, and shrugged. “You all saw that, right? What could she be hiding that is so important?”

The flashlights from the onlookers’ phones flickered nonstop.

Four armed police officers stepped forward. Two held my shoulders, and two pried my hands open.

“Put down the item. Hands behind your head.”

“You cannot take it. Please. It is a heart. A human heart.”

My fingers were pried open one by one.

The warm donor heart was placed in an evidence bag and sent to the laboratory.

I collapsed onto the cold floor with no strength left.

Ariana walked over, smiling at me. She turned off the live stream, bent down, and whispered in my ear. “Vivienne, who told you to disobey?”

In the interrogation room, I sat handcuffed to the interrogation chair as I tried to explain. “Officer, the temperature‑controlled container does not contain drugs. It really is a heart. Every minute it stays at room temperature, the transplant success rate drops by ten percent. The recipient is a seventy‑two‑year‑old man with multiple organ failure. This is his last chance.”

The interrogator remained expressionless. “The evidence cannot be returned until the test results are in.”

“It is not drugs. It really is not.” Tears streamed down my face as I broke down.

“Call our hospital. Call Dr. McGrath. He can vouch for me. The entire surgical team of seventeen people worked from three in the morning to eight in the morning to remove this heart.”

The interrogator glanced at his colleague and hesitated. “We can contact your hospital to verify, and you must stay here until the results are in.”

I nodded repeatedly. “Okay. I will not leave. Call now.”

The interrogator pulled out his phone and handed it to me. “Dial the numbers yourself and put it on speaker.”

My hands trembled as I dialed Dennis McGrath’s number.

It rang twice before he answered, and Dennis’s anxious voice came through. “Vivienne, where are you? The neighboring province urged us eight times. The recipient’s blood pressure dropped to sixty.”

I cried out, “Dr. McGrath, I am being held in the interrogation room at the express train station. Ariana reported me for drug trafficking. The heart fell out. They are testing it. You need to tell the police that it is a donor heart, not drugs.”

Dennis yelled, “Damn it. Which interrogation room? I am switching to video calling right now.”

The interrogator nodded, and I switched to video call.

Dennis’s face appeared on the screen. Behind him was the hospital director’s office, with his medical license and several awards on the wall. “Officer, I am Dennis, the head of Citizen Hospital. Vivienne Linch is the head of our organ transplant department. There was a donor heart retrieval surgery this morning. I can provide all surgical records and the organ allocation system number.”