Dead Certain

same moment I felt the hard barrel of the gun in my hand. I scrabbled desperately to get it turned around, groping for the pistol’s walnut grip. As I turned the gun in my hand my brain registered quite calmly the fact that Laffer had injected me with Pavulon. Indeed, I felt the blackness of paralysis starting in my thigh and working its way up my left side. I watched him stand up slowly, put the cap back on the syringe, and tuck it into the pocket of his warm-up jacket, waiting for the drug to take effect. It was only a matter of seconds before I was completely helpless. I thought about the pristine block of Henckel knives on the counter in the kitchen. I wondered whether he’d risk it or if he’d brought something with him to do the job.
    I knew that I was almost out of time when I squeezed the trigger. I managed to get off three rounds through the bottom of my purse before the blackness enveloped me completely like a kind of dark ice. I realized with horror as Laffer collapsed noisily on top of me that the drug was not going to make me lose consciousness. Instead I was going to lie there and watch Carl Laffer’s sightless eyes staring into mine as his warm blood oozed over me and as every oxygen-starved molecule of my body screamed out for air.
    I remembered thinking that this is what drowning must be like. The agony of running out of air was unbearable. I felt the darkness closing in around me like the aperture of a camera closing down and knew that this is what it must feel like to know that you are about to die.
     

CHAPTER 30
     
    Another Monday morning, another press conference on the courthouse steps. This time my mother wore a telegenic suit of fuschia silk. I was dressed in black.
    I’d spent the night at Prescott Memorial under observation for shock and any possible adverse effects from having been injected with Pavulon. Elliott had stayed the night in the armchair beside my bed, and when the sleeping stuff they’d given me wore off, he’d come upstairs with me to say hello to Bill Delius.
    This morning Mother was triumphant. Not only had she announced to the assembled reporters that the board of trustees of Prescott Memorial Hospital voted to refuse to sell the hospital to HCC, but they had agreed to join in a class-action suit with Northwestern Memorial Medical Center and the Archdiocese of Chicago against HCC. Among other things the suit alleged that the company had engaged in unlawful business practices.
    She said nothing about Carl Laffer. When I asked Elliott about it, he said that Blades had already spoken to the D.A., who’d agreed to handle the whole thing with a minimum of publicity. That was fine with me. I figured I’d already had about as much of the spotlight as I could handle.
     

If you liked
    DEAD CERTAIN
    by Gini Hartzmark,
     
    don’t miss the other Kate Millholland novels.
     
    PRINCIPAL DEFENSE
     
    The First Kate Millholland Novel
     
    Although she’s an heiress, Kate Millholland works hard for her money as a mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer in Chicago. When Azor, the high-tech, high-profit pharmaceutical company founded by her sometime lover, Stephen Azorini, faces a takeover, Kate will do anything to stop it from happening.
     
    The stakes rise even higher when Stephen’s teenage niece, Gretchen, is killed. Everyone knows that if Gretchen’s shares go to the corporate raider, Stephen will lose everything.
     

by GINI HARTZMARK
     
    FINAL OPTION
     
    When lawyer Kate Millholland arrives at the home of Bart Hexter, one of Chicago’s most powerful players in the futures market, she finds him behind the wheel of his Rolls-Royce, clad only in a pair of red silk pajamas, with two bullets in his head. This scheduled meeting with the dead man places her at the top of the suspect list.
     
     
    BITTER BUSINESS
     
    At the request of a colleague, Chicago attorney Kate Millholland agrees to represent the Cavanaugh family’s company, Superior Plating & Specialty Chemicals—and discovers that the family is as corrosive as the chemicals it produces.
     
    FATAL REACTION
     
    For Chicago attorney Kate Millholland, navigating the male-dominated legal profession was a piece of cake... until Danny Wohl’s brutal murder. Head of the legal department at Azor Pharmaceuticals, Danny was in the midst of pivotal negotiations with Tokyo investors. Now Kate dives into the billion-dollar deal midstream and finds the water filled with career sharks, secret affairs, lethal chemicals, and one