Gino sighed. ‘I should have brought my pajamas.’

‘Not necessary, thank God,’ Grace said, her fingers busy. ‘Instead of pulling photo images off the Web and entering them individually into a recognition program, I put together a program that would go into the Web instead, and do the search that way. It’s still slow – I can only route it to about ten sites at a time – but it’s a hell of a lot faster than the old way. I’m going to run Fischer’s photo through the Nazi watch group sites first, because that’s our best chance to get an early hit – they’ve archived more photos of the period than any of the historical sites.’

Magozzi frowned. ‘Fischer would have been a lot younger then.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Skin sags, chins fall, people get fatter, thinner, have cosmetic surgery, whatever; but the bones remain essentially the same. The program focuses on thirty-five key structural points in the face. So even if you had your jaw and your cheekbones reconstructed, for instance, that still leaves twenty-some identifiers the program will jump on. It’s never wrong.’

‘Never?’

‘Not unless somebody put their head in a mangle and had the whole thing rebuilt.’

Gino smiled and elbowed Magozzi. ‘She’s quick.’

‘Like a bunny,’ Maggozi agreed.

‘It’s still pretty primitive,’ Grace conceded. ‘But eventually you’ll be able to slap a school photo of your fifth-grade sweetheart into a scanner, push a button, and if there’s a picture of her anywhere on the Web, the program will find it.’

Grace rolled down to another computer and held out her hand. ‘Give me the stats on the overseas victims. I’ll start the standard search program on them while we wait.’

Gino’s stomach made a noise that sounded like a large volcanic eruption. ‘I’ll give you my first-born son for a cracker.’

Grace raised an eyebrow. ‘The Accident?’

Gino frowned and thought a minute. ‘I’ll give you a picture of my first-born son for a cracker.’

Grace shooed them away with a wave. ‘Give me five minutes alone to work this, and I’ll get you a cracker. Go sit in the dining room.’

Gino, Magozzi, and Charlie took their seats at the dining room table while Grace finished up in the office.

Gino kept eyeing the dog in the chair at the head of the table. ‘Jeez, he really does sit in chairs like a person. That’s kinda creepy.’

Charlie turned his head to look at him.

‘Shit. Does that dog understand English?’

‘Hell, why not? McLaren understands French.’

Gino’s stomach let out another rumbling protest. He leaned sideways to peer through the archway to the kitchen. ‘Maybe I could just go in there and rummage around until I found a crust of bread of something.’

‘The cupboards are all booby-trapped.’

‘Oh.’

Magozzi rolled his eyes. ‘Kidding, Gino.’

‘Well, I believed it. She’s still got the house locked up tighter than a drum.’

‘A lot of people have home security.’

‘Most of them don’t run around in their own house with a gun strapped to their ankle.’

‘She’s getting better, Gino.’

‘You keep saying that, but personally, I don’t see it.’

‘She bought me a chair.’

Gino arched a brow. ‘You mean for here? Your very own chair?’ He looked over his shoulder into the living room. ‘Where is it?’

‘Outside.’

‘And that doesn’t tell you something?’

‘You don’t understand.’

Grace came from the hall into the kitchen then and started making little domestic noises. A minute later she walked into the dining room balancing four plates. Three held mounds of glistening greenery topped with large, snowy chunks of lobster. The fourth held kibble buried under some kind of chunky gravy that smelled like the greatest hotdish ever made.

Gino looked pointedly at that one. ‘Smells terrific,’ he said, saddened a little when she set it in front of Charlie. ‘But jeez, Grace, this is some cracker.’

‘I figured you hadn’t had a chance for lunch with all that was going on today. We might as well eat while we’re waiting for the program to kick out something.’

Gino looked down at the generous pile of lobster on his plate and almost wept. ‘This is the nicest goddamned thing…’ was all he managed to get out before his fork found his mouth. When he was finished, he patted the corners of his mouth with a napkin. ‘Grace MacBride, I will tell you this. Aside from Angela’s marinara, this is, without a doubt, the best food I have ever eaten in my life.’

‘Thank you, Gino.’

‘And I like the way you decorated the plates with all this green stuff, too.’

‘That’s not decoration. You’re supposed to eat that.’

‘No kidding.’ Gino prodded warily at the greenery. ‘So what are these little round things that look like worms?’

‘Eat one.’ Grace pointed with her fork. ‘Then I’ll tell you.’

Gino sorted through the meadow on his plate, finally stabbed one of the scary little green coils, and eased it carefully into his mouth. He chewed tentatively a couple of times, then scooped up another forkful. The real measure of Gino’s eating pleasure was taken by the number of times he chewed. Steak got three chews, pasta got two, dessert got one, but this time Magozzi could have sworn he swallowed it whole. ‘Man, this stuff rocks.’

Grace looked on in satisfaction; Magozzi looked almost alarmed. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat anything green before. Am I going to find a pod in the car?’

Gino looked offended. ‘I eat green stuff sometimes.’

‘Like what?’

‘Lime popsicles.’ He grinned at Grace. ‘Okay. What is this stuff, ’cause I gotta get some.’

‘Fiddlehead ferns in a champagne vinaigrette with Comte cheese.’

Gino nodded. ‘That explains it. I’d eat Leo’s shoes if you poured champagne on them. There is no culinary road I won’t travel.’ He pushed away from the table and laced his hands over his protruding stomach, looking at Grace. ‘You are going to make some lucky man a wonderful wife someday.’

Grace stared at him for a second. ‘That is the most sexist thing I ever heard anyone say. You do know I’m armed, right?’

Gino grinned. ‘That was just my little attention-getting intro.’

‘Okay. You’ve got my attention. Intro to what?’

‘Well, I’ve just been wondering what your intentions are.’

Grace’s blue eyes widened a little, which made a startling change in a face so normally devoid of expression. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Toward my buddy here. I’d like to hear your intentions. And you see? I’m not sexist at all. Usually you ask the guy that question.’

Magozzi dropped his head in his hands. ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

Grace’s eyes went back to their normal size. Gino had done the near-impossible by catching her off guard, but she recovered quickly. ‘And that would be your business because…?’

‘Because he’s my partner and my best friend, and partners and friends look out for each other, and because you two have been seeing each other for damn near half a year and I’m guessing neither one of you ever brought up the subject of where this thing is going, or whether you’ll ever get there.’

Magozzi looked up, embarrassed and angry. ‘Jesus, Gino, shut up.’

‘I’m doing you a favor here, Leo. You’d do the same for me.’

‘Not in million years.’

A faint chime sounded from the office. Grace was still staring at Gino with that flat, emotionless expression that had bothered him the first time he’d met her. He couldn’t read her at all, and it made him wary. When the chime sounded again, she got up from her chair. ‘I’m going to get that. There’s dessert and coffee in the kitchen, Magozzi. Bring it in, would you? Feel free to dump it on Gino’s head.’

A few minutes later Gino had forgotten the mysteries of Grace MacBride as he gazed happily at a layer cake with a gleaming shell of chocolate. ‘Jesus, Magozzi, cut the damn thing. I’m dying here.’

‘You’re lucky I didn’t dump it on your head. What the hell was that all about?’