Split Second

Split Second is a thriller by the American writer David Baldacci, published in 2003.

The book takes two Secret Service agents whose careers were destroyed by events they were unable to explain and puts them on the same problem. Sean King was with a presidential candidate when the man was shot, and Michelle Maxwell was on duty when a man was abducted from a funeral home in the same week, and each of them has spent years being blamed for what happened. A series of assassinations and abductions appears at first to have nothing that connects them, and the investigation becomes a search for the thread that runs through the cases and through the two agents' own pasts. Baldacci writes political thrillers built on conspiracies that reach into institutions, and this novel begins a series in which the same pair work together on later cases.

The book was a bestseller on publication, and it was followed by several more novels about the same two agents, who work as partners from that point on.