When she held her breath, a perfect silence filled the house. She watched the second hand sweep silently toward the twelve. The minute hand was poised at eleven thirty-two. The second hand touched the twelve. The minute hand released like a firing pin, jumping to eleven thirty-three--TOCK! The snap of passing time broke the silence. Pollard wiped a ribbon of sweat from her face as she considered the debris that had accumulated in her kitchen: cups, grape juice cartons, open boxes of Cap'n Crunch and Sugar Smacks, and bowls showing the first stages of whole milk curdled by the heat. Pollard lived in the Simi Valley, where the temperature that day--twenty-seven minutes before noon--had already notched 104 degrees. Her air conditioner had been out for six days and wasn't likely to be fixed any time soon--Katherine Pollard was broke. She was using the heat-stroked squalor to prepare herself for the inevitable and humiliating call to beg her mother for money. Pollard had left the FBI eight years ago after she married a fellow agent named Marty Baum and became pregnant with their first child.
What do You think about The Two Minute Rule (2006)?
