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working with the killer to eliminate judges and attorneys who they think are working for the Dark Side.”
    “Plenty of those around,” she said neutrally.
Dark side?
That was so quaint she was charmed. “What about the attorney who lived here? What kind was he?”
    “A pretty good guy, for a lawyer. He didn’t do many criminal cases, though he’d take some of the small stuff. Mostly he handled property disputes, divorces, wills, that type of thing. Not a guy I’d say would attract anyone’s attention.”
    “So there goes the ‘dark side’ theory.”
    “There’s another angle. Mr. Allen’s murder may not be connected with your cases at all. But whoever killed him could have been lurking nearby, maybe watching the house for some reason, and when he saw you poking around, he took a shot at you.”
    That theory had a bit more weight than the “accidents happen” theory. Killers did tend to hang around, for some reason, maybe because most of them weren’t very intelligent. Except . . . “So why not shoot you? You’re a bigger target.”
    “There’s that,” he conceded. “But until we prove one way or another what’s going on, it’ll be safer for you to leave town and not tell anyone where you’re going. I saw you talking on your cell phone; did you report in?”
    “No. I was checking a digital file.”
    “Won’t there be a record of that?”
    “If someone knows where to look, yes.”
    “Or they access your cell phone records. Look, I know you’re federal and have a lot more resources than we do here, but if someone’s out to kill you, then that means somehow Mr. Allen’s murder
is
connected to the Wichita homicide, that someone in your office is involved, and the best thing for you to do is disappear. Those other possibilities are small, and you can’t afford to play the odds.”
    “I can’t afford to walk away, either, not knowing who’s behind this.”
    “Meaning you’re going to stay here.” He said it as a fact, not a question.
    “Unless you run me out of town, yes.”
    “All right. Then I’ll see if I can find some way to make you hard to find while you’re here.”
    His easy acceptance of her decision took her slightly off balance, and gave her a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach. She narrowed her eyes at him. “Why are you being so accommodating? I know local law enforcement resents the FBI getting involved in their cases.”
    “Oh, it’s just the way I am,” he said, smiling. “I just love a good mystery.”

6
    The SWAT team and deputies combed the tree line behind the Allen house and found where the shooter had likely stood, as evidenced by some scuffed-up leaves and a handy low branch on which to rest the rifle, but he himself was long gone. They had determined the angle by the simple means of sticking a pencil in the bullet hole in the house; since the bullet traveled in a straight line over a relatively short distance, the pencil would show the exact angle of impact and point toward where the shooter had been standing.
    Nikita stood where the shooter had stood, Knox Davis beside her, and studied the geometry of where she and Knox had both been standing. From this angle, Knox had been on the left and she’d been on the right, facing him. The bullet had passed slightly behind her, imbedding itself in the wall. If Knox had been the target, the shot had missed by several feet; assuming the shooter had any degree of competency with a rifle, the person had definitely been aiming at her.
    “Damn it,” she said mildly.
    His eyebrows lifted. “Damn it, what?”
    “I wish you’d been the target.”
    “Gee, thanks.”
    “You know what I mean. If someone shot at you, that’s fairly straightforward. You live around here. Maybe you got on someone’s bad side. Maybe whoever murdered Mr. Allen wanted to take out the investigator, too.”
    Instead, she had lost her last hope that her mission hadn’t been sabotaged. She was truly and completely alone, cut off from any