Annja put her backpack on the chair next to her.

Embarrassed and off balance, Bart sat across from her.

"Have you ordered?" Maria asked.

Bart shook his head. "I was waiting for Annja."

Maria threw her hands up. "Don't you worry. I'll prepare your meals. I'll make sure you get plenty." She turned and walked away.

Bart shook his head and grinned. "This is a big city. How do you get to know these people so well?" he asked.

"I like them," Annja said.

"Then you like a lot of people. It seems like everywhere we go, you know somebody." Bart didn't sound jealous.

"I've met a lot of people."

"But you're an absentee resident. Gone as much as you're here."

"I grew up in an orphanage," Annja said. "I learned to meet people quickly. You never knew how long they were going to be around."

Bart leaned back in his chair. "I didn't know that."

Annja smiled. "It's not something I talk about."

"I mean, I figured you had a family somewhere."

"No."

He shook his head. "How long have I known you?"

"Two years."

Smiling, he said, "Two years, four months."

Annja was surprised he'd kept track. It made her feel a little uncomfortable. She didn't timeline her life other than when she was on a dig site. In her daily life, she just… flowed. Got from point A to point B, with an eye toward a multitude of possible point Cs.

"I'll take your word for it," she told him.

"It's been that long. And in all that time, I didn't know you were adopted."

"I was never adopted," Annja said. For just an instant, the old pain twitched in her heart. "I grew up at the orphanage, went to college and got on with my life."

Bart looked uncomfortable. "Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get into this."

"It's no big deal," Annja said. But she remembered that it used to be. She'd walled all that off a long time ago and simply got on with living. Just as the nuns had counseled her to do.

Gazing into her eyes, Bart said, "It's just that you have this way about you. Like with that woman – "

"You mean Maria?"

"See? I didn't even know her name."

"That's because she's never been a homicide suspect," Annja said.

Bart gave her a wry look. "No. That's not it. You're just… someone people are lucky to get to know."

"Thank you." Annja felt embarrassed and wondered if the meeting was going to suddenly get sticky and if Bart wanted to explore the possibilities of a relationship.

"I was telling my girlfriend about you. That maybe we should try to fix you up with somebody we knew."

Annja didn't think she'd heard right. "Girlfriend?" She suddenly felt let down in ways she hadn't even imagined.

"Yeah. Girlfriend."

Hesitating, Annja said, "How long have you had a girlfriend?"

"We've dated off and on for the last few years," Bart said. "It's hard to maintain a steady relationship when you're a cop. But a week ago, we got engaged."

"You asked her to marry you?" Annja was reeling.

He grinned and looked a little embarrassed. "Actually, she asked me. In front of the guys at the gym."

"Gutsy."

"Yeah. She's some piece of work."

"So what did you say?"

Bart shrugged. "I told her I'd think about it."

"You did not."

"No," he agreed, "I didn't. I said I would." He shifted in his seat. "I'd like to ask you a favor if I could."

"You can. I seem to ask you for favors from time to time." Annja didn't like the little ember of jealousy inside her. She knew she didn't want commitment at this point in her life, but she'd liked the idea of having Bart kind of waiting in the wings. She didn't like how casually that had just been taken off the table. Or how she'd made the wrong assumptions about his feelings for her. She felt foolish.

"I'd like something special for a wedding ring," Bart said. "Something that has… a history to it. You know. Something that has – "

"Permanence," Annja said, understanding exactly what he was looking for.

Bart nodded and smiled happily. "Yeah. Permanence. I want to give her something that didn't just come off an assembly line."

"I can do that. How much time do I have?"

Spreading his hands, Bart shrugged. "A few months. A year. We haven't exactly set a date yet."

"What does she do?"

He gazed at her through suspicious, narrowed eyes. "Are you curious about the kind of woman that would go out with me? Or choose to marry me?"

"I figured I'd be checking a psych ward."

Bart snorted.

"Actually," Annja went on, "I was thinking it might be nice to get her something that might tie in to her profession. Give her a duality. A bonding of her life with you as well as the life she's chosen."

"I like that," Bart said seriously.

"Good. So what does she do?"

"She's a doctor. In Manhattan."

"A doctor is good," Annja said. "What kind of doctor?"

"She works in the ER. She patched me up three years ago when I was shot."

"You never told me you'd been shot," Annja said.

"I didn't die. Nothing to tell. But I got to know Ruth."

"Ruth. That's a good, strong name."

"She's a strong lady."

"So the offer you made earlier about coming up to my loft and helping me dress – "

"Whoa," Bart protested, throwing his hands up. "In the first place, I knew you would never say yes."

Feeling mischievous, Annja said, without cracking a smile, "And if I did?"

"You wouldn't."

She decided to let him off the hook. "You're right."

"So what about you?" he asked. "Do you have a special guy stashed someplace?"

"No."

"Then you should let Ruth and me fix you up."

"I'm not looking for a relationship," Annja said. "I have my work."

"And that's why I knew you wouldn't let me come up." Bart smiled. "Speaking of work, yours, as I might have mentioned, has taken on a decidedly weird twist."

"How?" Annja asked.

"Those fingerprints you asked me to run? They're connected to a homicide that took place sixty-three years ago."

Surprise stopped Annja in her tracks for a moment. "A homicide?"

"Yeah. They belong to the prime suspect."

Chapter 20

"SIXTY-THREE YEARS ago," Bart McGilley went on, "a woman was found dead in a hotel room in Los Angeles. She worked for MGM studios. Bought set pieces. Stuff they used in the backgrounds to make a scene more real."

"Anyway, from the way everything looks, this woman, Doris Cooper, age twenty-eight and an L.A. resident, was murdered for one of the things she bought."

"What was it?" Annja felt a sudden chill.

Bart shrugged. "Nobody knows. Nobody knew what she'd bought that day. The detectives working the case didn't follow up all that well. During the heyday of the movies back then, the death of a set designer only got a splash of ink, not a river of it."

"She was a nobody," Annja said, knowing the sad truth of how things had gone.

"Right."

Annja wondered if Roux was the type to kill a woman in cold blood. It didn't take her long to reach the conclusion that he was – if he was properly motivated. She was doubly glad that she hadn't followed Roux and Garin. Their talking about having lived five hundred years was already weird enough without also thinking of them as murderers.