Split Second (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell, #1)

by David Baldacci

She had used many names over her brief life and currently went by “Tasha.” As dangerous as Simmons was, Tasha was even more lethal. She had that essential trait of a polished killer: she possessed no conscience.

In a few minutes everything was clean and back in order. If only he could do the same thing to his life.

Michelle was glad to feel her pistol riding on her belt clip. The .357 she’d turned in had been replaced by a sleek SIG nine-millimeter.

Your fourth year in the Service you broke the largest counterfeit ring in the Northern Hemisphere working solo from the field office in Louisville, Kentucky, of all places.

“Sean, for all your intelligence and sophistication, sweetie, you really know shit about women.”

“No, I didn’t. Arnold Ramsey was at Atticus about two years before I arrived. I’d been a professor at a college in Kentucky before coming here.”

They were on the spine of a ridge of the Great Smoky Mountains, and the tricky topography had pushed the truck’s four-wheel-drive power to its limits.

You took the curves life threw, and you either adapted or got left by the side of the road, a self-pitying wreck.

“I figure if you think too much about things, life sometimes just passes you by.