was happening outside the door? As sturdy as it was, Caston was seated close enough to it that he could detect the vibrations from some sort of-well, scuffle.
"Unfortunately for her, she had a problem. Lorna was a junkie. Speed, then heroin. Then she started to deal, mainly to be sure of having a steady supply for her own use. When she was arrested, well, her life was effectively over. New York has those Rockefeller drug laws, of course. Sell two ounces of heroin, and it's a Class A felony, a sentence of fifteen to life. And fifteen's the minimum.
That's where we stepped in. Because a talent like that doesn't come along every day. Through a PSU liaison officer, we had a federal prosecutor broker a deal with the local DA's office. After that, we owned her. She was a special project of ours-and she proved an awfully apt pupil. Really grasped the vision."
"And so everything has unfolded according to plan," Caston said heavily; his eyes darted from one to the other. Two infuriatingly smug faces, one shared vision.
Madness!
What frightened him most, he realized, was how un-frightened they were.
Abruptly the door burst open. A burly, barrel-chested man loomed in the door frame; others were crowded immediately behind him.
Caston turned and looked at the man. "Don't you ever knock?"
"Evening, Clay." His hands on his hips, the ADDI stared at Whit-field and Palmer with recognition but without surprise. "Wondering how I figured out what you were up to?" he asked the auditor.
"What I'm actually wondering, Cal," said Caston mirthlessly, "is what side you're on."
Norris nodded gravely. "I guess you're about to find out."
Time and space, the here and now, all seemed transformed to Ambler. The Congress Hall felt as airless and as cold as outer space, and time ticked by in slow, thudding seconds, keeping rhythm with his own pumping heart.
Harrison Ambler. How hard he had worked to reclaim that name-a name that would soon be nothing other than a byword for infamy. He felt sickened, battered by nausea and self-disgust, and still he would not stand down.
She must have seen that in him, for while eye contact between them remained unbroken, he detected-saw or sensed-the faintest movement, some muscle contraction preparatory to the squeezing of a trigger, or perhaps he simply knew it without seeing or sensing at all, because for just that split second he was she and she was he, the two sharing an instant of transparency that was an instant of identity, a connection no longer of love but of loathing, and Ambler threw himself at her even before he realized what he had done, threw himself at her at the very moment she squeezed the trigger.
The weapon's loud report pulled him back into himself. An explosion overhead a microsecond later-a popping noise, the shattering of brilliant, tiny fragments of glass, a faint but perceptible diminishment of illumination-told him that the bullet had gone awry, had struck one of the tank lamps racked at the ceiling. Even as that thought sunk in, he felt a searing pain at his midriff, felt the pain even before he registered the flashing motion of her hand, the shiny steel of the blade it held. Some part of his mind reeled, baffled-it made no sense.
It took another split second before he realized that she was stabbing him now for a second time, that she had slashed at him first unseen, was slashing at him-yes, slashing and plunging, again and again, penetrating him in a spasmodic frenzy.
Blood poured from him, like wine from an overfilled goblet, and none of it mattered, for he had to stop her or he would lose everything-his name, his soul, his being. With all his remaining strength, he lunged at her, even as the long blade plunged once more into his entrails. His hands formed grappling hooks that wrested her arms up and to her sides, pinning them to the floor. The screams and shrieks around him sounded as if they were coming from miles away. He was conscious of nothing other than her, the woman he had loved-the killer he had never known at all-thrashing and struggling beneath him, a grotesque parody of lovemaking that was fueled by the opposite of love. Her face, inches from his, showed nothing other than fury and the pure vicious determination of a jungle predator. The loss of blood began to cloud his mind, even as he relied on his own body weight to supplement his ebbing strength and prevent her escape.
A