"Why, he hit you! You're
wounded!"
"Only in the necktie," Rand reassured him. "I have a hole in my shirt,
too." He reached under the latter garment and rummaged, as though to
evict a small trespasser. When he brought out his hand, he was holding a
battered .25-caliber bullet. He held it out to show to Varcek and Ritter.
"Sure," Ritter grinned at Varcek. "Didn't you know? Superman."
"I'm wearing a bulletproof vest; Mick McKenna loaned it to me yesterday,"
Rand enlightened Varcek. "I never wore one of the damn things before, and
if I can help it, I'll never wear one again. I'm damn near stewed alive
in it."
"Think how hot you'd be, right now, if you hadn't been wearing it,"
Ritter reminded him.
"Then you knew, since yesterday, that he would do this?" Varcek asked.
"I knew one or the other of you would," Rand replied. "I had quite a few
reasons for thinking it might be Dunmore, and one good one for not
suspecting you."
"You mean my dislike for firearms?"
"That could have been feigned, or it could have been overcome," Rand
replied. "I mean your knowledge of biology and biochemistry. If you'd
killed Lane Fleming, there'd have been no clumsy business of fake
accidents; not as long as both of you ate at the same table.
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