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by her desk. Dr. Romero lit a cigarette, and remained standing.
    “She could have killed me,” she said after a moment.
    “She could have.”
    “You’re supposed to keep that from happening.”
    “Yes.”
    She turned and looked at me, waiting.
    I hated this part of the job. This was the Cold Hard Truth part. I said, “I can’t protect you completely. No one can. If somebody really wants you dead, if they’ve got the patience, half a brain, and a little money, they’ll get the job done. It might take them ten years, but they’ll do it. No depth of security will keep it from happening, no number of bodyguards, no amount of money. You could move to the Yukon Territory, and if somebody really wanted you dead, they would follow and find a way. There is no such thing as absolute protection.
    “What you’ve hired me to do is to protect you to the best of my ability. My ability is substantial. I work with some of the best people around, and I’m very good at my job. But I can’t guarantee you anything. From now on, we will search all bags that enter the building.”
    “Invasion of privacy,” Dr. Romero said.
    I nodded. “Yes, it is. But that’s your choice. We can risk another Mary Werthin, or I can have every bag searched. No gun is going to find its way in here.”
    “But there are guns that can be smuggled past metal detectors.”
    “Knives, too,” I admitted. “But both take a lot of money and some connections, and the odds of either of those items finding their way in here without whoever’s carrying them attracting our attention are very low. And we’re still not certain that the threat against you is lethal. What that woman did reeks of terrorism, not murder.”
    She struggled with it for almost a minute, finally sitting down in her chair. “All right, search the bags,” she said.
    I pulled my radio and keyed it, saying, “All units, SOP change: Search the bags.”
    Natalie radioed a confirmation, followed by Dale, followed by Sheldon.
    “That woman . . . she didn’t want to kill me,” Felice said. “Even what she said, that was just a scare tactic, wasn’t it?”
    “I think so. She had a wanted poster for you.” I took the sheet out of my pocket and unfolded it, placing it on her desk.
    She smoked for a few seconds, looking at it. 1 waited. “Not a good picture,” she said finally.
    “No.”
    “You think this came from Sword of the Silent?” 
    “Possibly.”
    “I am used to being harassed, I’ve told you that. This won’t work on me. Common Ground is in six days, and I won’t be scared off.” She said the last more to herself than to me. “I have done nothing wrong.”
    For nearly a minute Felice was quiet, thinking, and then she remembered I was there, and she ground out her cigarette. “Have the police officers stop by my office, please. I want to swear out a complaint.”
    “Natalie and I will do that, if you like. It’ll keep your name out of it.”
    She thought about that, then nodded. “All right.”
    I stood up. “We’ll leave at six-thirty,” I said. “Call me if you need me.”
    “Of course.”
     
    Mary Werthin was taken away by two of New York’s finest, who returned my cuffs to me before they left, having replaced them with a set of their own. After briefing Natalie and Dale on my conversation with Romero, I went to the Two-six to take care of the paperwork and to speak to Detective Lozano.
    “You’re not doing a very good job,” he told me. His black hair was short and receding, and sweat shone on his forehead.
    “She’s still alive,” I said.
    “True enough.” Lozano wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, then offered me a cup of horrible coffee, and I took it more out of courtesy than need. “She’s made a statement,” he said. “She says that you and Miss Trent assaulted her. She has no idea where the paint came from.”
    I laughed and handed him the letters that had arrived in the morning’s mail. Four more, all offensive, which