The Right Jack

Even past fifty, A

Certainly it had helped her get her foot in the door after Leif Harald was killed, when she had struggled to support herself and her toddler daughter with camera and typewriter. These days A

Sigrid had been too young at the time of her father's death to remember him clearly. She had only unco

If there had been truly romantic entanglements since Leif Harald's death, Sigrid was not aware of them.

As she grew into gawky adolescence, Sigrid had watched her mother with despairing envy, wishing over and over that she had inherited some of A

Although no longer as tongue-tied as in childhood, Sigrid knew she still seemed stiff and cold in social situations; almost as cold and stiff as A

Sigrid struggled to focus on their words as her grogginess lifted. The man's voice was a placating rumble under her mother's ragged tones, but there was something familiar about it. Doctor? Sleep pulled at her, but she resisted.

"She could have been killed," A

"A police officer's never completely off duty, A

Startled, Sigrid's eyes flew open. "Captain McKi

A

Captain McKi

McKi

Sigrid looked down at her left arm. It seemed to be tightly taped now from shoulder to elbow. Another sterile bandage was wrapped on her hand, which ached dully and more painfully than her arm. An IV drip was attached to her right arm. There had been a man, she thought, and a knife. Reality wavered, then she remembered that he'd slashed her arm.

"How bad is it?"

"You lost gallons of blood," said her mother. A

"No permanent damage," the captain assured her easily. "I asked the doctor."

Sigrid's boss was built like an overgrown teddy bear, but his tongue could be sharper than a grizzly's claws when he chewed someone out. In the time that she'd worked under him, Sigrid had come to respect the big rumpled man, yet he made her uneasy and she didn't know why. He was scrupulously fair and treated her like his other officers. Still, he seemed to expect something more of her. An indefinable tension cracked in the air whenever he called her in to discuss a case, more tension than her own prickly nature usually elicited. It wasn't because she was a female officer, she'd decided. There were other women in the department and she hadn't noticed that vague air of expectation when McKi

Even more puzzling was her mother's present reaction. A

First anger and now this fidgeting self-consciousness from a woman who'd learned how to twist men around her little finger before she started kindergarten?

"That was good work tonight," McKi

"Is the suspect okay?" Her throat was dry.

"He'll survive. Probably even be break dancing next month. You shot him through the calf."

"Good."

"Dear God in heaven!" A

McKi

Sigrid nodded, but A

"Mother, please."

"No, maybe she's right." The big man nodded. "Day after tomorrow will be soon enough. You take it easy tomorrow."

He hesitated, then spoke again. "I might as well tell you. Somebody set off a bomb in the Hotel Maintenon tonight."

At first it didn't register. She looked at Captain McKi

McKi

White-faced, Sigrid held her breath until McKi

A

McKi

As if sensing his ambivalence, Sigrid detained him with anxious eyes. "Who's going to handle it, Captain?"

"Me, right now." He looked down at her. "You want this one, don't you?"

"Yes."

There was nothing declamatory or dramatic in her simple affirmative, but the resolution.in her tone was unmistakable. McKi

As he moved to go, A

She turned and faced him coldly. "Good-bye, Captain."

In the split second before the door closed behind McKi

She looked up at A

"We don't."

"Oh, stop it, Mother," Sigrid said wearily. "I'm a police officer, a trained observer, remember?"

"He and Leif used to be partners."