“Stop!” Brad shouted. “You’ll hit one of us.”

Moss lowered the gun and fell against Justice David’s tan Mercedes. Brad staggered toward his boss.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

“Better than you,” Moss said. “That might need stitches.”

Brad saw where she was looking and put his hand to his chin. It came away covered in blood.

Moss took a deep breath and shook her head. “I’ve never fired a gun before.”

Given her lack of accuracy, Brad hoped that she never did again.

“Please get me my cane, Brad. Then see to the guard. I think his leg might be broken. And get the police down here.”

Brad handed the cane to the judge and started up the ramp toward the policeman, who was holding his shin and writhing in pain. He was halfway to the officer when he noticed the pages of his memo scattered across the concrete. He picked them up on his way to help the policeman.

A security guard accompanied Brad and Justice Moss to her chambers. An EMT cleaned the cut on Brad’s chin, decided that it didn’t have to be stitched up, and applied a large Band-Aid. Then a member of the Supreme Court police force took their statements.

Brad was badly shaken. He and Dana Cutler, a private investigator from Washington, D.C., had been in a shoot-out in Oregon while investigating President Farrington’s involvement in the murders of several young women, and it had been Brad’s fervent wish to never be involved in another. His voice shook as he recounted what he remembered of the action in the garage, and his hand was trembling when he signed his statement. Before the police officer left, he assured them that a search of the building was under way, a guard was stationed outside Justice Moss’s chambers, extra security was being provided for the judge, and the FBI had been notified.

Aside from asking for a glass of water, Justice Moss seemed unaffected by the mayhem in the garage. Unlike Brad, her voice had been steady when she recounted what she’d seen.

“How can you be so calm?” Brad asked as soon as they were alone.

“When I was a teenager, I ran with a pretty tough crowd. We didn’t have the firepower that you can get so easily today, but I was in my share of knife fights, and there were chains and zip guns.” She shook her head. “Of course, that was a long time ago. I haven’t been in a fight since high school, and this took the wind right out of me.”

“You sure reacted quickly. If you hadn’t knocked the gun out of the killer’s hand, we’d both be dead.”

“Amen to that. I guess my old instincts aren’t too far beneath the surface.”

“Lucky for us.”

“Lucky isn’t the half of it. I was seconds away from being an obituary. But it’s not the attack that’s bothering me; it’s the reason I was attacked that has me worried.”

Chapter Fourteen

Keith Evans had gotten home a little before six and nuked a TV dinner. It was chicken something with a side of something else, but ten minutes after he’d tossed the tray into the trash, he couldn’t remember what he’d eaten.

After dinner, Keith channel-surfed for ten minutes before turning off his set. One mystery Keith wished the FBI could solve was how, with two million cable channels, there was never anything on TV that could hold his interest. He dropped the remote on an end table and wandered over to the bookshelf that stood against the front wall of the small living room in his small apartment. Keith could have afforded something a little bigger, but he was home so rarely that he’d decided it wasn’t worth the money to upgrade. He looked at the titles of a few books he’d picked up from a used-book bin at a local mystery bookstore, but nothing excited him.

Keith hated to admit it, but he was bored. He had started his professional life as a cop almost twenty years ago in Nebraska, where an intuitive leap had helped him track down a serial killer who had baffled the FBI for five years. The agent assigned to the case had been so impressed that he’d recruited Keith for the Bureau. Keith had never duplicated his uncanny series of deductions in any other case since joining the FBI. His successes were the result of dogged police work. At forty years of age, he had given up on any dreams he may have had of being the Bureau’s Sherlock Holmes, but his involvement in the D.C. Ripper case, which had ended Christopher Farrington’s presidency, had revived him. Now that the case was over, he missed the excitement of being at the center of the law-enforcement universe.

Keith was trying to decide what to do next when his cell phone rang. The display identified Maggie Sparks, his partner. It had to be important if she was calling so soon after he’d left the office.

Brad was in the middle of a conversation with the judge when Keith Evans and Maggie Sparks walked into Justice Moss’s chambers. The two FBI agents represented a study in contrasts. Evans was six two with thinning blond hair, streaked with gray, and tired blue eyes. He was carrying extra weight around his middle, and his once broad shoulders were stooped. Sparks was slim and athletic with glossy black hair, high cheekbones, and a dark complexion. She looked young and vigorous, and the grim tasks that had weighed down her partner’s psyche did not appear to have touched her yet.

“What are you doing here?” Brad asked Keith.

“Maggie and I have been assigned to investigate the attempt on Justice Moss’s life,” Keith said. The agent pointed at Brad’s chin. “What happened to you?”

“Mr. Miller was wounded in the line of duty,” Moss said.

Brad turned to his boss. “You lucked out, judge. The FBI has put two of their best on this case. Keith was the head of the D.C. Ripper task force and his investigation was one of the threads that brought down President Farrington’s presidency.”

“I’ve seen Agent Evans on TV,” Justice Moss said. “Pleased to meet you.”

“This is Maggie Sparks, my partner. May we sit down?’ Keith asked, indicating two armchairs positioned across from the couch on which Brad and Justice Moss were sitting.

“Please.”

“I know you’ve already given a statement to the police,” Keith said to the judge, “but would you mind telling us what happened?”

Justice Moss gave a detailed description of everything that occurred from the time the killer stepped from behind the pillar until her assailant fled into the Supreme Court Building.

“Has there been any luck finding this guy?” Brad asked when the judge was finished.

“The building is being searched, but it’s pretty big. Hopefully, he’ll be found, but he could have left the building before the search was organized.”

“I’d be surprised if the person who tried to kill me is still here,” Justice Moss said. “He seemed very professional.”

“Why do you say that?” Maggie asked.

“I had the impression that he knew what he was doing, and I assume that includes working out an escape route. When you go to the garage, you’ll see that he couldn’t have planned on getting away by car. There are barricades at the top of the exit ramp that would have been up if the alarm was raised. So he must have worked out a way to get out of the Court once he was through with me.”

“Why are you so certain your assailant was a professional?” Keith asked.

“It was the way he moved. He handled Brad and the guard easily, and his gun was equipped with a silencer. He definitely had some type of training.”

“Can you think of any reason for this attempt on your life?” Keith asked.

“No, I can’t. My assailant may just be a mental case or some right-wing fanatic.”

“Are you considering a case this term that might set off someone like that?”

“No, we don’t have any hot-button issues like abortion or gay rights before the Court this term.”

“What about a case that affects an individual or a business?” Agent Sparks asked.