Split Second

They agreed on what was to be done.

"When can you get to it?" King asked.

"Well, we're kind of backed up. If somebody cancels on us, we can pop you up higher on the list. I'll give you a call."

King signed the paperwork, they shook on it and the man left.

As night came, King thought about calling Michelle and having her come over. He'd kept her in the dark pretty long, and she'd been a trooper about it. Yet that was just his way. He always playedthings close to the vest, particularly when he was uncertain of the correct answer. Well, he felt more certain.

He called Kate Ramsey's apartment in Richmond. Sharon, the roommate, answered; Kate still hadn't turned up.

He told her, "Sit tight, and I'll let you know if she turns up. You do the same."

He hung up and stared out the big window at the lake. Normally when in a funk, he'd go out on the boat and think, but it was too chilly and windy for that. He turned on the gas fireplace, sat down in front of it and ate a simple meal. By the time he'd convinced himself to call Michelle he figured the hour was too late.

He thought about John Bruno's kidnapping. It was clear to King now that the man had been abducted because he had supposedly destroyed Arnold Ramsey's life with falsified homicide charges. Those charges had been dropped only after the intervention of a lawyer whose identity King now knew. He wanted very much to share this information with Michelle, and even glanced at the phone, thinking he might call her despite the lateness of the hour. It could wait, he decided. Next King thought about what Kate told them she had overheard. Or thought she had overheard. The name Thornton Jorst, supposedly uttered by the mystery man to her father. But King was convinced that what the man had actually said was not Thornton Jorst, but "Trojan horse."

And something else Kate said was troubling him. According to her, Regina Ramsey said a police officer was killed during a war protest, and implied that the incident damaged Arnold Ramsey's academic career. But Kate also told them the University of Berkeley let her father receive his Ph.D. because he'd already earned it. Kate had to know they could easily discern that 1974 was when Ramsey received his Ph.D. and easily conclude that the protest wasn't about the war. Why had she done that? No answer to that question came to mind.

He looked at his watch and was surprised to find it was aftermidnight. After making sure all the doors and windows were secured he carried the gun Michelle had given him upstairs. He locked his bedroom door, then slid a bureau across it for added security. He checked to make sure the gun was fully loaded and that a round was in the chamber. He undressed and crawled into bed. The gun on the nightstand beside him, he soon fell asleep.

65

It was 2:00A.M., and the person at the window raised a gun, took aim at the bulky figure lying in the bed and shot through the window, the glass tinkling as it broke. The slugs tore into the bed, blowing feathers into the air from the down comforter.

Roused from sleep by the shots, Michelle fell off the couch and onto the floor. She'd dozed off while going through Joan's notes, yet was now instantly alert. Realizing someone had just tried to kill her, she pulled her gun and fired back at the window. She heard footsteps racing away and crawled toward the window, listening intently as she did so. She reached the wall and cautiously peered over the windowsill. She could still hear the strides of the person running away, and he also seemed to be wheezing. To her expert ears, his strides were curious, as though the runner was wounded or injured in some way. Whatever the cause, they weren't normal. They were more like disjointed lunges, and her mind played with the idea that either she'd hit the would-be assassin or he'd already been wounded when he came to kill her tonight. Could it be the man she'd shot in her truck, the one who'd done his best to wring her neck? Perhaps the man who called himself Simmons?

She heard a vehicle start up and didn't even try to race to her truck and follow it. She had no idea if anyone else was out there waiting. She and King had run into one ambush that way. She had no desire to repeat the mistake.

She went over to the bed and looked down at the mess. She'd taken a nap there earlier, and the covers and thick pillows had gotten balled together. To the shooter it must have looked like her sleeping there.

Yet why try to kill her now? Were they getting too close? She hadn't done all that much. Sean certainly had found out more than-

She froze. King! She grabbed her phone and dialed his number. It rang and rang but there was no answer. Should she call the police? Parks? It could be that King was just sleeping hard. No, her gut told her otherwise. She ran for her truck.