Part 12 (1/2)
He battled his natural inclination to say something, especially something witty or funny. He just held her, providing comfort. He had sensed from all their encounters that she'd had little of that in her life.
He intended to change that.
Melissa's eyes were riveted to a section in her father's journal.
I know what I am going to do is wrong. It violates all the duties with which I have been entrusted, but I cannot bear to lose Elizabeth. She and Melissa are my life. Melissa. I know I have failed her in so many ways but if this experiment succeeds, Melissa may be free from the burdens I have had to bear. From the duty I must otherwise pa.s.s to her to honor.
”Melissa?” Sebastian said, jarring her from her father's memoir.
She handed Sebastian the journal and motioned to the entry. He was silent long after he had finished. Finally he turned to her.
”The only way he would violate his duty is if-”
”His experiments had to do with Ryder. If something my father planned to do to help my mother involved Ryder.” She took the book back from Sebastian. Running her hands over the neatly written words, she wondered at what her father had intended.
What Ryder had that- ”Ryder's immortal,” she said. ”He can't die the way we can. The way my mother was dying.” With a quick look at Sebastian, she pressed onward. ”Maybe my father thought that if my mother was like Ryder, she'd be cured.”
With a shrug, he asked, ”So why not just let Ryder turn her?”
”Because he wasn't sure what she'd become,” Ryder said.
He stood in the doorway, his body rigid with tension. Diana was by his side.
”How long have you been there?” Melissa asked.
”Long enough.” He strode into the room and held his hand out until Melissa gave him the book.
She stood, and just as Diana came to stand beside Ryder, Sebastian rose and took his place at Melissa's side. If lines were to be drawn, it was clear who would be with whom.
Ryder thumbed through the pages, too quickly for a human to read. But Ryder wasn't human. ”Anything?” Sebastian asked.
”Nothing I can understand, but maybe Melissa can.” He took a step toward Melissa, his stance almost menacing.
When he spoke again, his voice was lower, with an odd rumble to it, like that of a big jungle cat. Sebastian was transfixed by it and by the gradual transformation that was taking place. ”Maybe you can figure out what your father did.” Ryder thrust the diary out at her and by now his eyes were glowing with a strange light, and sharp, bright white fangs protruded from beneath his upper lip. ”How he betrayed me. Endangered both of us.”
”Ryder, it isn't that simple,” Melissa pleaded, which only made him angrier and way scarier. Sebastian took a step to place himself between Ryder and Melissa, and his sister did the same.
”Ryder.” Diana laid a hand on his chest. ”This won't accomplish anything.”
He spoke in low tones. ”Frederick Danvers knew what his duty was. He knew the dangers of revealing what I am to others.”
”His wife was dying. He wanted to help her,” Diana said.
”Keep it simple, Diana. Remember?”
Sebastian sensed it would only get uglier if it went any further. He cared too much about both Melissa and his sister to let it continue. ”We could go around on this all day, but isn't the most important thing to find out exactly what Melissa's father did and how Sloan found out about it?”
Ryder turned his glowing gaze on Sebastian. Ever so slowly, he returned to normal. It was only when his human side resumed control that he spoke again. ”So your short list of suspects is down to one? On what basis?”
Sebastian quickly rattled off what he had been able to determine that afternoon in Melissa's office. It had been clear both from the network administrator's screen and a surrept.i.tious visit to Sara's station that she was not the one receiving the video from Melissa's office.
”And so that makes Sloan our guy?” Ryder interjected.
Sebastian counted off each reason on his fingers. ”He has sufficient knowledge to understand what Frederick Danvers was doing.
He had access to Danvers on almost a daily basis. He may have known Melissa's mom's condition had become serious. Then there's this whole NSA gig.”
”So shadowy government types are always guilty of something? Am I hearing you right?” Diana said in challenge.
Melissa'd had enough. Taking a step past Sebastian, she pleaded her case, ”If it isn't Edward, who is it? We have no other suspects. No other leads.”
”But no motive. Why would he want your parents dead?” Diana countered.
Melissa had no answers. Not yet. She turned her father's journal over and over. Holding it up, she said, ”There may be something in here, but then again, there may be something in Edward's NSA file.”
With an exasperated sigh, Diana said, ”I can't access his file. I'm not sure I have anyone who can-”
”Except me,” Sebastian said. ”I can-”
”No, you can't. Not ever, hermanito, because if you did, I wouldn't hesitate to lock you up,” Diana repeated the warning she'd issued the other night before storming out of the apartment.
Melissa glanced from brother to sister. Sebastian's defiant brown gaze was locked with his sister's determined green one, but in both gazes there was regret, as well. Sebastian would be as hard-pressed to ignore his sister's request as Diana would be to enforce her threat.
Melissa only hoped that neither would be necessary.Chapter 17 ”Y ou may not want to hear what I've got to say,” Diana told Melissa the next day over the phone.
Melissa leaned back in her office chair to listen to Diana's report. ”Please go on.”
”Our hospital break-in suspect turned up in the morgue. Possible drug overdose.”
She closed her eyes and sighed. Diana had been right when she said Melissa wouldn't like the news. ”Truly a dead end.”
”Not really.”
Sitting back up with a snap, she said, ”There's something that can help us?”
”My detective friend told me the suspect died of an overdose of an unusually potent synthetic heroin. Not very common, which is why the M.E. decided to call in Homicide. And guess what the good detective found?”
”Another overdose like this one?” Melissa guessed.
”Exactly like this one. Plus, that overdose occurred just after the crash that killed your parents. Two dead bodies within days of incidents connected to the Danvers family means something, both to me and Detective Daly,” Diana replied.
Melissa released a tired sigh. ”But I still haven't confirmed what my father discovered that someone was willing to kill for.”
”Four bodies adds up to something very valuable.”
Valuable? Ryder wouldn't consider his state one of value, but since reading the short but d.a.m.ning excerpt from one of her father's last entries, Melissa knew her father had seen something in Ryder's vampirism that could help her mother. She had little doubt he'd acted upon that belief and she was just waiting for something else in the journal that would confirm her suspicions.
”Whoever did this...It may make sense just to let this lie for a little while.”