Mike Chapman screamed my name and came running around the last curve.

Tormey was crawling to me on his left elbow, his right arm hanging limp beside him.

Mike's gun was drawn, and with his other hand he flattened Tormey on the cold brick pavement. "Get down, both of you."

I couldn't see where the students had scattered but I could hear them shouting in the background.

Mike positioned himself in front of Poe, face-to-face with the bronze head, rising to his full height and peering around the writer's brow at the steep hill below.

I tried to dislodge myself from beneath Tormey's arm. Blood was seeping through the sleeve of his jacket onto my leg and he was groaning in pain. I tried to sit up.

"Down, dammit," Mike said.

He waited a second until I lowered my head again and let off two shots. Again I heard the sound of the rifle as it returned fire, bullets wildly hitting pillars and pedestals and poets before bouncing onto the floor. Beneath the canopy of the brick ceiling, each volley sounded magnified, like rounds from a cannon.

"You-Tormey-you okay?"

He was lying on his stomach now, his left hand covering the top of his head. Mike ducked and pulled him flush up against the front part of the wall.

"I'm gonna stand up and throw off a shot, Coop. I want you to get on all fours and retrace your steps back to the entrance as fast as you can."

I turned my head to the side as I squatted behind Mike and looked up at him.

"Don't fuck with me, kid. Target practice isn't my strong suit. Move!"

All my attention was on moving forward. I tried to do it as quickly as possible, knowing that Mike was exposed to the shooter while he was trying to cover my back. I doubted there would be enough bullets left in his gun to get us to the iron entrance gate if the assassin was tracking our retreat.

I could hear the sound of sirens coming closer. I was hoping the gunman could hear them, too.

More shots echoed around my head. I couldn't tell how many had actually been fired and how many were simply resounding off the various surfaces. I looked back and saw that Mike was still standing, just a few feet behind me, shielded by the statue of David Farragut.

I was as low to the ground as I could manage to be and still propel myself forward, passing Henry Ward Beecher and John James Audubon. I hadn't heard Louis Agassiz's name since I left Wellesley and didn't stop to make note of his many accomplishments.

I took another corner and Mike let go with another round. I glanced back again to make sure he hadn't been hurt. "Keep going, Coop. You're almost there."

Pushing along the rough surface of the bricks had worn back the tops of my gloves. My wrists were raw from rubbing against the ground as I tried to scoot along.

Now I could hear what seemed like a small army of footsteps pounding toward us. "Stay back. Someone's shooting at us," I yelled, as I saw a guard dressed in the uniform of the campus police coming toward me. I pointed at Mike. "He's a cop!"

Mike was too engaged to pull out his gold badge. The danger was off to the side and below him, not in the form of bewildered and unarmed security guards.

He took one look at the startled officers, called out to them to watch me, and vaulted over the two-foot-high balcony that bordered the hilltop. In that split second given me to decide what to do, I knew that if I made the mistake of calling out his name, it would cause him to look back and think I needed help.

I picked my head up and watched him slide down the embankment, rolling only ten or twelve feet until he crashed into a tree trunk. Everything down there was silent now, with no sign of an attacker.

"The professor's been shot," I said to the officer who reached me first. "He needs an ambulance."

"Who's the…?" one guard asked, while I directed two others down to the far end to tend to Tormey.

I looked over the side of the wall. Mike was sitting with his back against the large tree trunk. The guards glanced back and forth at each other, uncertain about what lay below.

"Can you help him, please? He's a detective-NYPD-Homicide."

"He do the shooting?"

"No, we were fired at," I said. "From somewhere down there."

I had just killed their enthusiasm for climbing down to help Mike. One of the men leaned over and picked up a bullet.

"Looks like a twenty-two-caliber-"

"Please don't touch anything. We'll have to get the Crime Scene Unit here."

I could hear more sirens. Guards checked on Tormey and assured me that he was conscious and coherent, and that an ambulance had been called. I stood up, and ignoring Mike's gestures for me to stay with the men from security, I swung my legs over the balcony and lowered myself onto the densely wooded hillside.

"Graceful, huh?" Mike asked as I made my way down the slope to him, bracing myself against trees along the way, and helped him to his feet. "How's Tormey?"

"Looks like he's hit in his upper arm, from the way he's just dragging it and the amount of blood soaking through his jacket. They've got a bus on the way. D'you see anything?"

"Somebody knew exactly what he was doing. Had Tormey's arrival timed to the minute, didn't he? And wouldn't have minded shaving some peroxide off the top of your scalp, either. He was comfortable in these woods," Mike said, looking around at the rough terrain.

"Unless he was over there," I said, pointing at the railroad tracks on the far side of the highway. "There's enough scrub to conceal yourself, especially if he was shooting with a scope. Did you fire down because you saw someone?"

Mike started to walk back up to the colonnade. "Nothing. Nada. I just wanted to draw the guy out if he was still around."

"Hey, Chapman. Clara Barton's down the hall, if you need a hand," a uniformed cop called out, clearly delighted to have seen Mike on his ass, then being guided back up the hill by a woman Sherpa.

Mike scrambled over the metal railing behind the entrance gate, while I stretched my arms out overhead so two cops could hoist me up onto the balcony next to a stone-faced Elias Howe.

Medics were loading Noah Tormey into the rear of the ambulance and I followed Mike over to check on him.

One of the EMTs spoke first, shaking his finger at us. "Sorry. You'll have to question him at the hospital. We can't hang out here with a gunshot wound."

Mike boosted me up into the rear of the van. "We're going with you. We need medical attention, too. I'm full of cuts and scrapes." He stepped up and swung the door closed behind him. "We're going to Columbia Presbyterian," he said, flashing his badge.

"This ain't a taxi service, boss. We're a Bronx unit."

"And I think too much of the professor's life to go to an emergency room in the Bronx, okay? Right across the river and you're practically there."

The medic chose the path of least resistance. He told his partner to go across the University Heights Bridge to one of Manhattan's premier medical facilities, near the northern tip of the island, which was actually the closest hospital.

We watched while the serious young EMT stabilized Noah Tormey, removing his jacket, ripping off the sleeve of his shirt to examine the wound in the fleshy part of the upper arm, and starting an intravenous drip so that he could go straight from the ER into surgery, if that was necessary.

My wrists were bleeding, and there was a long scrape on the side of my chin from the moment Mike directed me to flatten out on the pavement. I rested my head on his shoulder and could feel the rapid beating of his heart.

Mike's face was cut in several places from the tree branches that had whipped against him as he rolled down the incline. I dabbed at the marks on his forehead with some tissues until he pushed my hand away.