“Yes, Jack.” She nodded. “If you’re serious, I can get copies of the reports written by the investigators my parents have hired over the years. That’s probably the most accurate way to bring you up to date. My parents have a full file of reports.”

“Of course I’m serious. Get them to send you copies of those reports and we’ll take a look.”

“Thank you. I’d really appreciate that. And I know my parents will. I’ll give them a call right now.” She patted her pockets for her phone. “I must have left my phone upstairs when I changed after the meeting with the bank. Hang on for a sec while I run up and get it.”

She was almost out of the room when he asked, “Daria, do you ever worry that you spend more time in the past than you do in the present?”

“Why would you ask that?”

“Because you never talk about your own life in terms of today or tomorrow.”

“I never think about it. But I suppose it’s because the past is my job, my career.”

“But it doesn’t need to be the focus of your life,” he said softly. “What do you do when you’re not working? What do you do for fun? Who are your friends?”

“There aren’t too many times when I’m not working, and frankly, I think my work is fun.”

“And your friends?”

“Mostly people I’ve worked with.” She crossed her arms defensively. “How many of your friends are in the FBI, Connor? How much of your life do you devote to your job?”

“Point taken.” He nodded. “Most of my friends are in the Bureau, and I do spend much of my time working on my cases.”

“So what’s the difference between you and me?”

“The difference is that I live my life in the present,” he told her. “You seem to live a lot of yours in the past.”

She reddened but did not reply.

“Don’t you want a here and now?” he asked. “Don’t you want a story of your own?”

She stared at him for a long moment, then left the room.

Good move, Shields, he chastised himself as her footsteps echoed down the hall, then seconds later on the stairs leading to the second floor. What had he been thinking, saying such personal things to her? And who was he to question how she lived her life?

“No one,” he answered himself aloud. “No one at all.”

Daria was an intelligent woman who’d made her choices a long time ago, and appeared to be happy with those choices. She was well-known, had published widely, and was successful on an international level.

Connor wryly thought that he, too, could make this last claim, though his success was certainly on a far different level than hers.

“The eagle and the dove,” he muttered aloud.

“What?” Daria walked back into the kitchen, her shoulder bag over her arm and a folder fat with paper in her hands.

“Listen, I’m sorry. I had no right to say what I did. It’s your life and one you’re obviously happy with, so just forget what I said.”

She waved a hand dismissively. “My parents are going to send me a copy of their file on Jack. I’ll let you know when it comes. They said to tell you thank you. But right now, we have other things to talk about. Was your friend at the FBI able to locate any of the missing artifacts?”

“Yes, he was.” Connor opened his briefcase and took out several pieces of paper. “Quite a few, actually.”

“Yes!” She grinned and reached for the papers, her previous pique apparently forgotten.

Connor handed them over, saying, “There are several galleries that have objects on loan, and two or three that have purchased pieces outright. Assuming that these are authentic and are in fact from Shandihar…”

“Easy enough to check.” She opened her folder. “Here’s the list of items we’re missing. Let’s see what matches up.”

Daria took the chair next to Connor and handed back his papers. “What’s first on your list?”

Connor picked up the top sheet of paper and read, “Bronze and gold figure of woman believed to be high priestess of Ereshkigal. Circa 1000 B.C. Shandihar. Gift of Celina Shaw, 1965.”

Daria scanned the list she’d made of the missing objects.

“Bronze and gold priestess. Check.” She glanced up from the list. “Where is it?”

“In the Raines Gallery in Boston.”

“Great. What else?”

“Large silver jug. Circa 900 B.C. Shandihar. On loan from a private collector, 1998. The William Joseph Peaks Gallery, St. Louis.”

“Silver jug…large. Yes, got it.” She tapped her pen on her bottom lip. “I wonder if we can get the gallery to tell us who the owner is.”

“If you can’t, we can.” He leaned against the back of the chair. “I’m still not sure we shouldn’t turn this over to the art-theft people. I understand all your reasons, and I respect the fact that you want to protect the owners. But the more I think about it, the less I think anyone is going to simply hand something over to you. I mean, why would they?”

The pen continued to tap away on her lip.

“Because somewhere along the line, these artifacts came into the mainstream through the back door. At some point, there was an illegal sale, and no respectable collector or gallery wants their name sullied. No one wants to be suspected of having bought from the black market, or from a shady dealer.”

“These people, who probably paid large sums of money for the pieces they bought, are going to believe you…why?”

“Because I’ll have the journals with me, I can show them-”

“Yeah, yeah, the journals. The inventories. Daria, that sort of thing can be faked.”

“Well, then, I’ll have you with me.”

“You are very naïve if you think that you’re going to walk out of anyone’s house with any of these artifacts in your hands.”

“I never expected that to happen. What I expect is that people will call their lawyers, who will then call the university, their lawyers will talk to Howe’s lawyers, and things will go from there. There will be meetings, negotiations, that sort of thing. In the end, I suspect that some of the pieces will be ‘donated’ to the university by the present owners. Besides giving them the cachet of being donors, it gives them a healthy tax write-off and the opportunity to get some very positive press when the museum is ready to open. Howe is more likely to see the return of at least some of the items that way.”

“That makes sense. I think.”

“Look, you have to understand the people who collect these things. They invest a lot of money to have something that no one else has.”

“All the more reason not to hand it over because some very pretty woman rings the doorbell and asks for it.”

“They’ll respond better to me-someone who understands the piece, who understands the way the market works-than they will to having a couple of badges waved in their face. One badge makes it official business. More than one badge makes people think they’re about to be arrested. Plus, when given the choice between having your reputation damaged and the chance to come out looking like a philanthropist, most people are going to choose door number two.”

“All right. We’ll try it your way and see what happens.” His eyes dropped to the report. “A pair of bronze griffins…are these the ones you mentioned earlier?”

“No, those were gold. Where are the bronzes?”

“The Hollenbach Gallery in Chicago. Purchased through the gift of Emory and Doris Wilcox, 1951.”

“They’re not going to want to give those back if they purchased them. That one might have to go to your team of experts,” Daria told him. “If the piece is on loan, the gallery or museum doesn’t have to make a decision; they can just refer back to the owner. But if funds were spent to purchase the item, you have a board of directors to be dealt with, and you might have corporate issues. Those pieces could end up in litigation.”

“So let’s put together a list of the items we’re going to go after, and I’ll turn the others over to the Bureau.”

“All right,” she said with some reluctance. “It’s probably for the best. Let’s see what else you have.”