But Doyle was shaking his head. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and I think we’re ready to take the next step in our relationship.” He picked up a black band from the tabletop that might have belonged to one of the wigs, got down on a knee, and held the hair tie out like a ring. “Will you marry me?”

The door to Doyle’s office opened without warning, and Senior Artist Bailey poked his head inside. “Doyle, don’t forget you’re working with that Cold Case fellow—what’re you doing?”

Doyle didn’t seem fazed in the least as he said, “Proposing.”

Bailey looked at Larkin, rolled his eyes, and said as he saw himself out, “I keep telling Hannah I’m hanging on until the big six-oh—but this place is a zoo.” The door shut.

“Congratulations,” Larkin said. “You’ll likely be promoted due to the stroke your supervisor is going to suffer.”

“Is that a yes or no?”

“I’m already married and polygamy is illegal in the United States.”

“You would strictly be my work husband.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I’m really hanging out on a limb here.”

“Please get up.”

Doyle raised the band higher. “Don’t break a guy’s heart.”

Larkin snatched the hair tie, pondered what to do with it for half a second, then tugged it onto his left wrist. “There. Happy?”

“Thrilled,” Doyle answered, getting to his feet. He flashed that all-caps smile one more time before reaching across the table for his notepad and Larkin’s molested pen that he’d not returned. “Do you have digital copies of the mask?”

Larkin opened his emails again. Detective Millett with CSU had sent him plenty of crime scene photos yesterday afternoon. He scrolled for a time until he found what they needed, tapped, and enlarged the photo. To be polite, he studied the already memorized details of eternal sleep for a second, then directed his attention to the bust. “John Doe is the face of the death mask.”

“Yeah.” Only one word, but there was gravity and fire in Doyle’s voice.

—a directional shift of the wind, the heat and the smoke kissing his face, a lingering taste of burned marshmallows and Jameson on his lips, with nobody in the entire world to see them but the banished queen overhead—

It wasn’t an association.

Not exactly. A similarity. A comparison. Something more.

Something better.

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Well?”

It’d been the first thing Doyle had said since setting Larkin up at his work laptop and leaving him to go nuts with NamUs.

Doyle had, in the meantime, done a few more touchups on John Doe’s bust—the sort of modifications that a man like Larkin wouldn’t notice, but that clearly dug under the skin of an artist. Then Doyle had snapped several photographs of his work to use in the event they found jack in the missing persons reports and had to submit a new case to the unidentified portion of the NamUs dashboard and hope someone else found them. He had been cleaning his worktable when he finally spoke.