When he was older, she told herself. After they had explained all the other awful stuff.

"Laura, promise me just one thing," he pleaded. "That you'll keep open the option-okay? Maybe after Brett's off and on his own?"

She sighed. "I'm out of promises," she said and turned off the light.

And as she lay in the dark, she wondered at the extraordinary muddle of their lives.

God Almighty, how was it going to end?

Eileen Rice was only half-conscious at how the coffee had turned cold in her cup. She was too lost in what she had discovered on her computer monitor.

The image was of partial loops with a count of eleven ridges on a bias from the triradius to the core of the inner terminus. Her best guess was the right index, although that made no difference since the morphologies were identical across the digits.

What set off the alarm in her head was the nearly full loop found on the latent print coded "Mark (4)-137-left II."

On the split screen, she enlarged the image and clicked on the base print. With the pivot ball, she rotated the axes until they were in alignment. Then she tapped a few keys and brought the two images into superimposition.

A perfect match.

The image on the left was the print lifted from the Carleton, Massachusetts premises in 1988. It was the same print found on household objects including a coffee mug at the same premises. The image on the right had been lifted seven weeks ago from a flower pot in a shop in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

It had taken that long because it was an old case and no prints were on file in the database. That meant Eileen had to conduct a hand search of all the latent prints from door handles, clothing, and household items included in the evidence files. And because of their recent move to new headquarters, boxes of old cases had been misplaced. Eventually she found dozens of different prints, scanned and entered them into the database, then classified and compared them to the nine different latents found on the Eau Claire fern pot, wrapping paper, receipt, and business card which also had to be scanned and classified.

That meant running over three hundred comparisons, carefully tabulating each elimination. Also, of the 43 million individuals in the National Fingerprint File/Interstate Identification Index, none matched any prints in the case.

But identifying the prints was not Eileen Rice's problem. With the mouse, she clicked the terminal to print out the matching prints-one for her own files, and one to the terminal of the field office in Madison, Wisconsin. She then picked up the phone and dialed the number of Agent Eric Brown.

Wally didn't quite know how to ask her.

It had been so many years since he had last dated-twenty-five, counting two years of cohabitation, nineteen of marriage, and four of celibate divorce-he wasn't quite sure how it was done. This was their sixth formal date and they had not yet been sexual. How exactly did you word such a request to the Now Generation?

"Say, are you feeling romantic?"

Or: "Gee, Sheila, you know it's been a hundred and four days since we met, and we've exchanged six hello-and-good-night kisses. It's all been nice and innocent, but isn't it time we moved to Phase Two?"

Or: "So far this has cost me twelve hundred and thirty-nine dollars, and I still haven't scored yet. What about it?"

Or simply: "Want to fuck?"

They were driving back from a movie in Wally's Porsche with the top up because it was unseasonably cold. But the stars were out, the traffic was light, and the cotton was high.

And Wally Olafsson felt as happy as Tinkerbell.

It was especially momentous since that morning he had dropped below the 185-pound mark into territory he hadn't known since college. He was also down to a thirty-four-inch waist and 15 1/2 shirt. Even more remarkable, his hair had started growing back. Somehow the tabulone stuff had restimulated the follicles, producing a new golden growth that had covered a once-vast dead zone. It looked like fine silk, like that of a newborn's hair. Already an inch long, he had actually fashioned a part. He told Sheila that he was taking hair-growth stimulants.

"You look like a different person."

"The same Wonderful Wally, just less of him."

"You should patent that diet you're on. You could make millions."

"You can't put willpower in a bottle, lady," he said in his best John Wayne. In the mirror he patted his new hair, still in disbelief. God, it felt good to be alive!

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were getting younger."

Gulp! he thought.

"I mean it. It's amazing."

"It's you, my dear. You bring out the boy in me." Then he broke into a few bars of "You Make Me Feel So Young."

"Bull! It's ninety minutes a day on the StairMaster and old Menudo tapes you've been hiding."

He laughed happily. "Aw, she saw through my cover."

"So, how old did you say you were?"

It had become a game: He, the coy older companion; she, the insistent young inquisitor.

"Why is knowing my age so important?"

"Just curious. Besides, it's women who don't tell how old they are, not guys."

"I'm liberated."

"I'd say forty-four."

"Forty-four!" He slapped his chest in mock horror.

She laughed. "Okay, forty… maybe thirty-nine."

"That's better," he sniffed.

"You're going to hate me, but when you first joined the club I thought you were about sixty."

He made a sharp swerve of the car.

She chuckled again. "Surely, I erred, but you know what I'm saying-the weight and the hair."

"Yes, I do," he smiled. Tomorrow he would meet Roger for his next shot-the first of three large dosages spaced a day apart. The high critical period, Roger had said. "I'll make a deal with you."

"Try me."

"I'll tell you my age if we can let the evening extend beyond a simple bon soir at your doorstep."

"Wally Olafsson, that's bribery."

"Or sexual harassment, depending on how badly you want to know my age."

She smiled and thought about it for a few moments.

In the rearview mirror he fixed his hair again and noticed the same big SUV behind him, its headlights like twin suns bearing down on him. These days every other car on the road was some kind of sports utility vehicle. He felt like an immigrant in his Porsche.

As he flipped the mirror to night mode, he felt Sheila's hand rest on his leg.

"Your place, or mine?" she asked.

The rush of joy returned Wally from the mirror. The big Jeep Cherokee could have driven over his car and he wouldn't have noticed. "Which is closer?" he gasped.

She laughed and gave him a great big kiss on his part. "Yours."