Desperate Measures by David R. Morrell Page B

you expect? There's nothing I can do! Yet again Pittman turned to flee.
    Instead, surprising himself, Pittman reached into his pants pocket and took out his keys and the tool knife-similar to a Swiss army knife-that he kept on his key ring. He removed two pieces of metal from the end of the knife. He was fully prepared to shoot himself to death in eight days. But there was no way he was going to stay put and watch while someone else died-or run before it happened and try to convince himself that he didn't have a choice. Millgate was about to go into a crisis, and on the face of it, the most obvious way to try to prevent that crisis was to reattach his IV lines and put the oxygen prongs back into his nostrils.
    Maybe I'm wrong and he'll die anyhow. But by God, if he does, it won't be because I didn't try. Millgate's death won't be my responsibility.
    Thinking of the .45 in the box at the diner, Pittman thought, What have I got to lose?
    He stepped to the French doors and hesitated only briefly before he put the two metal prongs into the lock. The tool knife from which he had taken the prongs had been a gift from a man about whom Pittman had once written an article. The man, a veteran burglar named Sean O'Reilly, had been paroled from a ten-year prison sentence, one of the conditions being that he participate in a public-awareness program to show homeowners and apartment dwellers how to avoid being burglarized. Sean had the slight build of a jockey, the accent of an Irish Spring commercial, and the mischievously glinting eyes of a leprechaun. His three television spots had been so effective that he'd become a New York City celebrity. That was before he went back to prison for burglarizing the home of his attorney. When he had interviewed him at the height of his fame', Pittman had suspected that Sean would end up back in prison. In elaborate detail, Sean had explained various ways to break into a house. Pittman's enthusiasm for information had prompted Sean to elaborate and dramatize. The interview had lasted two hours. At its end, Sean had presented Pittman with a gift-the tool knife he still carried. "I give these to people who really understand what an art it is to be a burglar," Sean had said. What made the knife especially useful, he explained, was that at the end of the handle, past miniature pliers, screwdrivers, and wire cutters, there were slots for two metal prongs: lock-picking tools. With glee, Sean had taught Pittman how to use them.
    The lesson had stuck.
    Now Pittman worked the prongs into the lock. It was sturdy-a dead bolt. It didn't matter. One prong was used to free the pins in the cylinder, Sean had explained. The other was used to apply leverage and pressure. Once you did it a couple of times, the simple operation wasn't hard to master. With practice and watching, Pittman had learned to enter a locked room within fifteen seconds. As he freed one pin and shoved the first prong farther into the cylinder to free the next, Pittman stared frantically through the French door toward Millgate's agonized struggle to breathe.
    Pittman increased his concentration, working harder. He worried that when he opened the door, he would trigger alarm. But his worry had vanished when he'd noticed a security-system number pad on the wall next to the opposite entrance to the room. From his interview with the Bugmaster, Pittman remembered that owners of large homes often had their security company install several number pads throughout their homes. These pads armed and disarmed the system, and it made sense to have a pad not just at the front door but at all the principal exits from the dwelling.
    But in this case, the security company had installed the pad in the wrong place-within view of anyone who might be trying to break in through the French doors. From Pittman's vantage point, as he freed another pin in the cylinder of the lock, he could see that the illuminated. indicator on the number pad said READY TO ARM. Because so