Mitchell Smith (67 page)

She got up on one knee, and felt nauseated, but that passed after she rested a little while. She bolstered her revolver, left-handed, then reached out to collect the man’s pistol-put her left hand, the gun in it, on the tabletop, and pulled herself up all the way, until she was standing in drifts of gunsmoke, swaying, leaning on the table. -There was shouting in the hall.

The big man sat sagging against her stove in a small spreading puddle of rich red, still heaving in his difficult breaths. He was trying to hold his head up, trying to see through ruined eyes.

“You’re under arrest,” said Officer Klein-and gave him his rights from memory.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mitchell Smith, a veteran of the U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps, has written a dozen paperback novels under various pen names.