It was her turn to look shaken.

“I love you, Wy, he said again.

“Liam, she said with obvious difficulty, “we have to talk.

THIRTEEN

Newenham, September 3

Diana Prince had never wanted to be anything but what she was: an Alaska state trooper. Her great-grandfather had been with the New York City police, her grandfather had worked for J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI, and both parents were thirty-year detectives with the Anchorage Police Department who shared three citations for valor. Her brother and only sibling had disgraced the family twice over, first by becoming an attorney and second by going to work for the ACLU, so upon Dianas shoulders rested the honor of the present generation of Princes, and her parents and grandparents had made sure she knew it.

Her father, a gruff man with eyes that could bore holes right through you, had sat her down at the kitchen table her senior year in high school and had interrogated her as to her reasons for becoming a trooper. “Its in the blood, shed said, but he hadnt let her get away with that. It might have been partly family tradition, but it was also the reading of The Klondike Rush, which in part recounted the activities of Samuel Benton Steele, the Canadian Mountie whose forces had kept the peace during the Klondike Gold Rush.

Her father looked at her mother and said, “So. Its the hat, referring to the round-crowned, flat-brimmed hat that made all state troopers look like Dudley Do-Right.

Well, maybe it was, again only partly, but it was mostly because Diana had a strong sense of right and wrong, an even stronger sense of duty, and a liking for authority. She stumbled her way to an explanation of these feelings which omitted her main reason, which was that she had no wish to stand in her parents shadows, cast long in the Anchorage P.D., and which must have satisfied her parents because her father then pointed out all the disadvantages that came with the jobthe horrible hours, the daily stress of dealing with the lowest level of the gene pool, the alienation from the general population, the ever-present risk of injury, even deathand he had asked, no, he had demanded that she think it over before she made her final decision. This included, he decreed, four years at college, for which he and her mother would pay so long as she pulled down grades of B or better and elected a discipline that would be useful for promotion. “Its better to be boss, he said. “A degree will get you there.

She came home from the University of Washington with a B.A. in criminal justice, and filled out her application for the trooper academy the next day.