"Or maybe they would have hurt someone? Is that why you were spooked before?" Melissa offered, hoping to find some reason for Sara"s furtive actions.
"Si," Sara answered and gripped the edge of her locker with one hand, facing Melissa. "I"ve been working a lot of hours. If I can"t be safe here..."
"Is everything okay?" "Mami hasn"t been well." Sara"s face grew hard and unreadable, her motions slightly fl.u.s.tered. "I"d rather not talk about it." As they both finished dressing, she remained silent.
As they walked out of the locker room together, Melissa didn"t press, sensing Sara"s unease. When they neared the elevator bank, Melissa laid her hand on Sara"s arm and said, "If you need to talk, if there"s anything I can do to help, just let me know."
Sara gave Melissa a tired smile. "Thanks for the offer, but you can"t even begin to guess the half of it."
Melissa considered the possibility that she knew exactly what was up with Sara, but she said nothing else. It was safer to go to the source, for if there was one person sure to know more about other vampires and their keepers, it was Ryder.
The journal flew across the room and hit the wall with a dull, but satisfying, thud.
Useless. Totally useless.
The Danvers clan had apparently been guarding some kind of secret for a long time, only this journal hadn"t provided any information on the nature of their clandestine duties or how those duties tied into Frederick Danvers"s recent experiments.
Another lab rat had died. Just one more rat to go and there was still nothing to keep the cell strain going. Nothing to give a clue as to how to activate the frozen samples.
It was risky to try anything else right now. Security had been tightened at the hospital and the surveillance of Melissa"s office had revealed nothing. If she had other journals, she wasn"t endangering them by bringing them to the hospital.
Which meant she might have them at home. Only a home intrusion posed many increased risks, including injury to the inhabitants.
Not that collateral damage of that kind was a problem, but if Melissa was the last Danvers with knowledge of the secret, the risk of losing her was too extreme. At least for now.
There was one lab rat and a fresh supply of human blood to inoculate with the cell strain. Maybe this time it would take.
Chapter 7.
"A re you sure it was a blood bag?"
Melissa dragged a hand through her hair. "As sure as I could be without checking her knapsack." With an exasperated sigh, she continued, "Is she like me? A keeper? It would make sense, wouldn"t it? As a nurse, she knows a lot of medical stuff. She could take care of needs like yours."
"Possibly." Ryder lowered his gaze as if further considering her question.
Diana, who was perusing the list Melissa had given her earlier, jumped in with, "Sara Martinez. It"s a common name. Anything else you can give me? Birth date? Social Security Number?"
"We"re both Virgos. I think she was born on August 27th."
"Virgos, huh? That makes you headstrong and intelligent. And would it be so bad if you had fellow-keeper company?" Sebastian asked.
Ignoring him, Melissa shot up off the sofa and paced a step or two before facing Ryder and Diana. "So is it possible? Could Sara be a keeper like me?"
"I know there are other vampires, but I don"t know who they are or where they are." Melissa examined him, trying to figure out how he could be so d.a.m.n complacent about this. But she saw that while his tone sounded relaxed, he tapped his closed fist against the arm of the sofa in a nervous gesture. "How could you not know?"
To stop the growing tension between Melissa and Ryder, Sebastian quipped, "It"s not like there"s some secret organization like VLAD, Melissa."
"VLAD?" She faced him, a confused look on her face.
"Si. Vampires, Lycanthropes And Demons. Get it? VLAD. Like the Impaler." He made a staking motion with one hand.
It brought a small smile to Melissa"s lips and dragged a strangled chuckle from Diana.
"Is it possible that your father knew somehow? Maybe he figured out what Sara was up to? Confronted her about it?" Ryder asked, completely ignoring Sebastian"s attempt at humor.
Melissa seated herself on the arm of the sofa, so close Sebastian could smell her perfume, a scent with a hint of lilacs. So close he could detect the tightness of her body as she answered, "My father was kind of old-fashioned that way. He was a doctor. She was a nurse. There was no reason for him to get to know Sara."
"But maybe she knew about him," Ryder replied. "Maybe she wanted something from him."
"What?" Melissa pressed, her hands fluttering in the air with her distress.
"Information she obviously didn"t get," Sebastian supplied. Then he asked Diana, "Are we sure someone killed Melissa"s parents?
There"s no room for doubt about that?"
"None. The copies of the reports Peter Daly got for me show gross errors during the initial investigation." She turned her attention to Melissa. "Is there anything else you can think of-"
"Nothing, but maybe there"s more in my father"s journals. Maybe I should get started there instead of with the older ones."
"Not without some safeguards," Ryder advised and looked across the small distance to Sebastian, pinning him with his gaze. "Are you ready to get started?"
Sebastian sat up straighter and squared his shoulders, bracing himself for anything else Ryder might say. "I finished all the programming and setup this afternoon. We can scan tonight if you"d like."
"The sooner, the better," Ryder confirmed.
"I need a break and even though I"m not really hungry, I need some dinner. After that, Sebastian can get started. Once he"s done with Father"s first journal, I"ll start reviewing it to see if I can make sense of what was going on."
Diana"s stomach grumbled noisily and she placed a hand over her midsection to quiet the rumble. "My stomach seconds the dinner plan."
Some of the earlier tension dissipated as the talk turned to routine things.
Ryder offered, "Chinese? Now that it"s dark, Diana and I can go pick up something while Sebastian scans."
"Sounds good. Make mine Kung Pao Chicken, very hot," Melissa said.
"Like it spicy, do you?" Sebastian teased, and a gleam entered his eye to let her know food was the last thing on his mind.
Business only, Melissa thought. Only something inside made her want to shock him. Grinning boldly, she answered, "The hotter, the better."
Sebastian worked as quickly and efficiently as one of his fancy computers, Melissa thought as she occasionally looked up from the older journal she was reading. There didn"t appear to be a wasted action as he placed her father"s first journal on the flatbed scanner and methodically digitized the pages. The first volume was a slim one and Sebastian was halfway through it by the time Diana and Ryder returned with dinner.
By tacit agreement, the conversation during the meal stayed away from their investigations. Anyone eavesdropping on their dinner would never have thought anything out of the ordinary was going on. It could have been a double date, without the fear of murder and mayhem looming over their heads.
After dinner Diana returned to her office to get some second opinions from her staff, and Ryder, sensing he was no longer needed or wanted, excused himself.
"Do you mind if I change into something more comfortable?" Melissa asked. When Sebastian grinned at her, she blushed hotly.
"As in sweatshirt-and-pants kind of comfortable, and does your mind always have to be in the gutter?"
Sebastian raised his hands in surrender. "Sorry, but the cliche was too much to resist."
"Well, try. This is supposed to be business." Although she was having serious doubts about her own abilities to resist his charm and keep to the agreement.
"Yep, just business. So go get comfortable-" he did a Groucho Marx kind of eyebrow wiggle "-while I scan away."
Despite her better judgment, his actions dragged a laugh from her. She playfully jabbed him in the arm and retired to her bedroom to change.
Quickly slipping into sweatpants and a T-shirt, she returned to Ryder"s office, where Sebastian was now three-quarters of the way through the journal. Melissa held up another diary-the next one by the second Danvers-and asked, "Mind if I keep reading this in here until you"re done?"
Without shifting his gaze away from the monitor or breaking the rhythm of his work, Sebastian inclined his head in the direction of the couch in the office. "Make yourself at home."
Home. As she settled herself onto the leather couch and pulled a light throw over her legs, she did feel homey with Sebastian in the room.
What did he think of everything that was going on? Would he be glad to be done with his end of it? Would he volunteer for something else or go his own way, much as he seemed to do with everything in his life? It saddened her to think he would leave without a second thought.
As he lifted his gaze, it collided with hers. She guiltily shifted her attention back to the journal, telling herself to concentrate. She wasn"t sure whether she"d read the page before, so she began again.
And again and again. She yawned, the dinner and comfort of the couch making her sleepy. She battled drowsiness, but it was a losing fight. Closing her eyes, she told herself it would only be a quick nap.
At the speed Sebastian was going, he"d soon be done with the first of her father"s journals. She counted on him to wake her so she could get to work and find a cure for Ryder, or at least find out if she had some keeper company.
Chapter 8.
S ebastian slipped the last pages of the journal onto the bed of the scanner. With a few keystrokes, he imported the image into his program, then named, encrypted and saved the doc.u.ment to a disk located at a remote server.Done, he thought and looked in Melissa"s direction to see if she was ready for the next journal.
She clearly was not.
He slowly rose from Ryder"s chair and padded quietly across the room. Placing the journal he had just finished on the coffee table, he knelt by the edge of the sofa.
She looked younger while she slept, but there were still smudges of dark circles beneath her eyes, a testament to the fact that she had not been resting well. Who could? he thought and delayed waking her, content to sit there and observe her for a moment. He was feeling decidedly guilty about having to pull her from what was probably a well-deserved rest.
Her lips formed a smile. He itched to trace the edges of it, remembering another slumbery one the morning after their sole night together. Their amazing night together.
Down boy, he told himself. It was just business.
He was about to reach out and wake her when she chuckled, surprising herself out of sleep.
Her eyes, a deep midnight highlighted with brighter bits of aquamarine, slowly opened. When she saw him there, her smile grew wider. "I was a little tired," she said in soft husky tones.
Sebastian brushed back a lock of hair that had fallen onto her forehead. "You laughed in your sleep. Something funny?"
"VLAD.".
He s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand back, obviously surprised. "VLAD? As in-"
"Vampires, Lycanthropes And Demons." Melissa sat up and stretched. "I thought it was funny."
Sebastian tried his best not to notice how the soft fabric of her pastel pink T-shirt clung to her curves and rode up with her stretch to expose the taut muscles of her midriff. Get your mind elsewhere, he warned himself. "Ryder clearly didn"t think so."
Melissa shrugged. "Ryder needs to lighten up. Lose that broody immortal act."
It was Sebastian"s turn to chuckle. "Give Diana time. I"m sure she"ll shake him up."
Melissa rested against the arm of the sofa. "I guess all I"ve seen is FBI Agent Diana. It"s hard for me to see her as-"
"A wild and crazy kind of girl?" Sebastian glanced her way. "I"m sorry again. I know it couldn"t have been easy to hear Diana tell you about your parents tonight."
Another shrug, only this time she wrapped her arms across her midsection, belying her unease. "Thanks. This may sound weird, but I wasn"t feeling sad. It kind of made me angry."
Sebastian sat next to her on the couch. "Care to explain?"
"When they died the first time, I was angry. At myself for not calling the police right away. At the weather and G.o.d and even at my parents. Especially my parents."
Sebastian could understand the anger, having lived through it himself when his father died. "Unresolved issues."
A confused look crossed Melissa"s face. "How-"
"My dad was killed in a drive-by shooting when I was eighteen. We hadn"t really had a good relationship." Melissa reached out and covered his hand. He was surprised by her actions, but when he faced her, her gaze was tender. "I"m sorry."
He smiled tightly. "So why the anger again?"
"Because whoever killed them robbed me of the chance to settle things between us. To maybe make things right," she admitted with no hint of evasion.
Another first. From her touch to her being open with him, this was something new. Something...He stopped there, because this something was supposed to be all about business. Only sitting here, holding her hand and talking with her was definitely about something more. He liked it and wanted to keep the conversation going. "I felt the same way. Like there was so much more I could have said to my dad. So much more I could have done to make him proud of me."
"He"d be proud of you now." Melissa gently squeezed his hand as if to rea.s.sure him.
When Sebastian met her gaze, Melissa realized he didn"t agree with her a.s.sessment. It was almost a repeat of the other night when he"d left her on the balcony and she wondered what could have made Sebastian so uncertain of his worthiness.
As if you don"t know, a little voice in her head challenged, reminding her of her own failed relationship with her father.
"You don"t know me all that well, yet," he said, but there was a hint of both challenge and jest in his tone.
"Not yet," she replied. "But there"s time."