the press. “Detective Maxwell.”
“Find any two-thousand-year-old dead bodies in that city today?”
He smiled as he leaned back in his chair. “No. You know of any I should be looking for?”
Lisa laughed. “Not yet. How are you, little brother?”
“Miserable. What else?” He picked up a pen and tapped it against the edge of his desk. “Where are you?”
“Still in Italy. Shane, listen, I need a favor.”
“Sure, anything.” She was the only woman in the world who could draw those words from his lips.
“I faxed you a picture a few minutes ago. You should be getting it anytime. The guy’s name is Rafael Garcia—or at least that’s what he told me his name was. He gave me the impression he was a professor at the University of Barcelona, but no one at the university has ever heard of him. No one fitting his description lives anywhere near Barcelona. Can you run him through the system, see if you can find anything?”
Shane glanced toward the fax machine on the corner of his desk. It beeped and clicked as paper fed into the tray. “Looks like the pic is coming through now. How do you know this guy?”
“I met him at a conference here in Milan.”
The tone of her voice had warning bells going off in his head. “Did something happen?”
“Sort of.”
“Lis?” he asked with concern.
“I’m fine, don’t worry. But I need to find this guy. I have a hunch he’s not Spanish, like I’d thought.”
“You think he’s American?” He took a close look at the photo. The dark-haired man was sitting at a table in a restaurant, the photo taken from the restaurant’s security camera. “Why?”
“The waiter said he paid for dinner with U.S. dollars.”
“In Milan?”
“Yeah.”
“So all you’ve got to give me is a photo of a guy who may or may not be an American, and a name that may or may not be accurate.”
“Pretty much.”
He frowned and tossed the photo on his desk. “Lis, this’ll take me ten years.”
“Would a fingerprint help?”
“Hell, yeah. But only if the guy’s got a record. Otherwise it’s still like looking for a needle in a haystack.”
“I’ll fax you one of those as well. My gut tells me he’s got a record.”
“Wait. How’d you get a print?”
“A cute officer with the Milan polizia got a partial print off a wineglass.”
Shane pinched the bridge of his nose. “Don’t flirt with the kid, Lis. It’ll just frustrate the poor guy.”
“I’m older than you. Don’t try to tell me what to do.”
“By five minutes, and you know that doesn’t count.” He dropped his hand. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Not yet. But I will.”
He knew that was the best he was going to get. “Where will you be in an hour?”
“Here at the hotel.” He jotted down the number when she rattled it off. “I still have some more packing to do.”
He turned toward his computer. At least this gave him an excuse to ignore the persistent Shelley Hanson and her identical pair of silicone-enhanced microphones. “Okay, don’t go anywhere until I get back to you.”
“Thanks, Shane. I owe you for this.”
“You owe me for a lot more than this. One of these days I’m gonna call in all these little favors.”
“Anytime, cutie.”
He smiled at the warmth in her voice. For a second, it lifted his spirits. “I’ll talk to you later.”
With his hands tucked into the pockets of his slacks, Rafe stared up at the massive relief on the lobby wall of the Art Institute of Athens. The ancient marble depicted Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite and Eros deep in conversation. The plaque just to the right of the relief dated the piece to ca. 420 B.C.
He let out a low whistle. Old. And probably worth a fortune. A burst of excitement raced through him at the thought. If the marble in his briefcase matched the one he had back in Florida, he was close to collecting the payoff he’d been waiting for his whole damn life.
“Mr. Sullivan, Dr. Gotsi will see you now.”
Turning at the sound of the deep female voice, he lifted the case at his feet and followed the lithe woman down a long hallway. He waited while she punched in a security code and pressed her hand against a fingerprint analysis screen. The metal door at the end of the hall opened with a swish.
“This way.”
She led him to a secure conference room and slipped an electronic key into the slot near the door. She waited for the light to turn green, then