Excerpt from High Time To Kill by Raymond Benson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He pulled her chin toward him so that he could kiss her, but her eyes widened and she gasped. "James!"

Bond whipped around to see what had startled her. A body was lying just off the path. The shadows would have completely hidden it had it not been for the moonlight reflecting off pale skin. Bond moved quickly to the corpse and saw that it was Frank, the security guard. He had been stripped of his shirt and white jacket; his throat had been cut, ear to ear. He was lying in a pool of fresh blood.

"Wait here!" he commanded. He turned and sprinted across the lawn toward the house. He heard her call behind him, "James! I'm coming with you!" as he took a shortcut over a set of stone benches surrounding a stone fountain. He ran through the gardens toward the back of the house, searching frantically for the Governor. He found the man's wife standing beside some guests.

"Where's your husband?" Bond asked.

Startled, the woman replied, "Why...I believe I saw him go upstairs to the office with one of those security men."

Bond left abruptly, entered the house, bolted up the stairs three at a time, and ran to the open doorway. The former Governor was lying on the floor in a ghastly pool of red. Like the guard, his throat had been slit so fiercely that his head lopped at a grotesque angle. There was no one else in the room, but two distinct footprints in blood led from the body toward the door to another bloody patch on the carpet. The killer had wiped his shoes clean before leaving the office.

Others had made their way up the stairs by this time. Bond was unable to stop the Governor's wife from glimpsing the horrid sight. She screamed loudly just as Bond pulled her away and slammed the door shut. He told one of the men to call the police and look after her, then he rushed down to the first floor. The bewildered head servant was at the foot of the stairs.

"Did you see a guard come down the stairs?" he barked.

"Yessuh!" Albert said. "He went through the kitchen."

"Would that lead to the motor scooter you saw earlier?"

Albert nodded furiously. He ushered Bond into the kitchen, where several servants were cleaning up after the huge meal. He then led him into a corridor and pointed to a door at the end.

"That's the servants' entrance," he said. "Go out of the gate and turn left. It was just down the street a bit."

"Tell the girl I came with to wait for me," Bond said as he went outside.

He found himself in a small parking area reserved for the servants. He ran to the open gate and peered carefully around to look at the street. Sure enough, a black man dressed in a guard's white jacket was on an old Vespa motor scooter. He was just beginning to pull away.

"Stop!" Bond shouted. The man looked back at Bond before accelerating down the street. Bond drew his Walther PPK and fired at him but missed. His last chance was to give chase on foot.

The man was a quarter-mile ahead of him. He had turned onto Thompson Boulevard and was headed north through busy traffic. Bond ran into the street in front of a bus traveling in the same direction. The bus driver slammed on his brakes, throwing several passengers to the floor. The bus still hit Bond hard enough to knock him to the pavement, stunning him slightly. He got up quickly, shook his body, and continued the pursuit.

The Vespa crossed Meadow Street and zipped into the entrance of St. Bernard's Park, circling around St. Joseph's Baptist Church. Bond jumped on the hood of a BMW and scrambled over it just in time to see the assassin slam into a street vendor's kiosk that had been set up at the corner of the park. T-shirts and souvenirs went flying, and the angry proprietor shouted and shook his fist at the driver. The scooter then disappeared into the park.

This excerpt reprinted from HIGH TIME TO KILL by Raymond Benson by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright (c) 1999 by Ian Fleming (Glidrose) Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.