Death Calls

As for her earlier decision not to see Ryder…It fled in the wake of her rising desire.

Diana shrugged her shoulders and her blouse dropped to the floor. Reaching up, she undid the front clasp of her bra.

His rough groan caressed her psyche. And then a shadow shifted on the fire escape. Ryder’s shadow.

Staring straight at him, she parted the bra and let it fall. She stood there, expectant. Her pulse racing.

Her earlier thoughts about needing something more normal—more controlled—reared up, telling her that she should ask him to leave. She had proved her point, reminding him that she had power, but her determination failed her.

I want you to touch me, she told him.

But he stayed on the fire escape, exerting a self-control she couldn’t muster.

Closing her eyes to block out the sight of his silhouette, she cupped her breasts and ran her thumbs across her nipples. Her body grew damp and tense with rising need. With want of his hands and mouth and…his bite.

Dios, but she couldn’t forget how the demon made her feel.

Ryder.

A thud forced her eyes open. He stood by the window, dressed in black, breathing roughly, fists balled at his sides. His nearly black hair, long and tousled, hung to his shoulders. The goatee surrounding his mouth…

She imagined how that would feel on her skin and then had little time to wait as he stalked over, dropped to his knees and took one aching nipple into his mouth.

She moaned and dug her hands into the waves of his thick hair.

“I’ll take it that you like that.” Despite his chuckle, a hard edge marked his voice.

As conflicted as she might be about their future, it was impossible to deny that, at least right now, she wanted him, no matter what. No matter that by the wanting, she lost a piece of herself.

The inky locks of his hair were a shock of darkness against the pale creaminess of his skin and her own olive coloring. The contrast made her ache inside as her excitement escalated. Whenever he was near, her senses were on overload, with everything more clear and alive. More demanding.

“I want you.” His brown-eyed gaze was so intense it made her insides quiver.

“As much as I want you—”

“You’ve been doubting the wisdom of this. I know. I felt it…. You didn’t want me here tonight, did you?”

“No.” But she raked her hands through his hair, the silk of the longer strands alive in her hands. He had let it grow since she had first met him.

“I know it scares you—the need. But don’t you think I need you as badly? Or can’t vampires need?” He once again tortured her by running the soft bristle of his beard across her nipples. But that wasn’t her undoing. It was the confusion and pain that laced his words. Confusion much like she was feeling. Pain so deep her heart faltered from it.

“I care for you, only…Foley says that each bite—”

“I won’t bite again,” he said. Not unless you ask me to.

“I won’t ask again. I can’t lose myself like this. I can’t stay with—”

“Don’t push me away, darlin’. I know you’re scared, but I am, too. In all my life, you’re the only woman I’ve ever…”

Ryder didn’t finish. Instead he buried his head against her midsection and wrapped his arms tight around her like a supplicant embracing his reason for being. Then he shocked her by kissing the scar along her ribs—a product of the drive-by shooting that had killed her father.

Diana closed her eyes against the sudden threat of tears and the constriction that closed her throat. She cradled his head and stroked his hair, trying to ease his pain. Trying to curb her own.

She might tell herself that she was afraid of what was happening with them. Of how he invaded her senses and her mind. She might even delude herself into believing that she could make love to him tonight or any other night and walk away whenever she wanted. But in her heart, she suspected that what she felt for him she would never feel for anyone else.

She wasn’t sure she could live with that, but she couldn’t deny him, either.

She made the next move. She parted the fine black linen to reveal his chest. Nothing marred the pale expanse of his skin. If anything, his muscles were more defined than when they’d first met. His body leaner, more…powerful. The energy seemed to pour off him, calling to her.

She laid her hand above his heart. It beat fast and a little erratic. She wanted to believe its hurried rhythm came from her touch.

“I don’t regret…us,” she whispered. Funny, but it was the truth despite her doubts. He was her damnation and her salvation.

“Let’s not talk about this now. The night is short and…I don’t want to spend it…”

Burying her head against his chest, she wrapped her arms around him. Her embrace shook loose something inside of him.

He needed to make it impossible for her to deny that this was real, no matter how many doubts both of them now seemed to be having.

It was sweet torture, the feel of her breasts skimming his chest. Her warmth slowly worked its way into the cold of his body. The heat of her passion drove the chill from his skin.

She tugged him toward her bed. “This is what you want, isn’t it?”

She wore her false bravado face. Funny how he could recognize it so easily. Funny how he wanted to drive the fear from her until she truly welcomed him into her bed. Invited him into her heart.

“Can you deny it’s what you want, as well?” he said.

She couldn’t lie to herself. She needed more of him. She always needed more even if she refused to give a name to that desire. Even as she wondered if it was a result of some vampire head game, much as Foley had suggested.

Ask me to touch you, he said.

Why?

His demanding reply came swiftly. Because I need you to want me as much as I want you.

“Dios, Ryder. I need you.”

Slowly, way too slowly, he lowered his hand until it rested on top of the nest of curls between her legs. She pressed her hips up, urging him on. He breached the edge of her panties and unerringly found her center.

Beneath his fingers, Ryder experienced the pull of her. The scent of her arousal perfumed the air, so strong that the vampire within begged for a taste. He had lost the battle last time. He wouldn’t allow it to happen tonight. If the animal came…she might hate him—or herself—for surrendering to the demon.

He dropped a trail of kisses along her body. She opened her legs, knowing his intent and welcoming it. He slipped between her legs, brought his mouth to her sensitive nub.

Her hips arched in acceptance.

Her wetness—slick against him—and the smell of her…the heat…He groaned and she held his head to her.

He lost the battle.

The change surged over him. It was almost too much. The smell of their sexual musk. Her racing pulse reverberating in his ears. Her nether lips, wet and flush with blood. The demon imagined feeding there, at her most private of places.

He gasped at the roiling passion making his loins ache and looked up at her with his vampire face. Fangs exposed. Eyes glowing. Skin flushed and warm.

Diana stared at him. His arms were braced at her sides, shaking. Shoulders heaving from the force of his breaths. His rough, harsh pants reminded her of a lion at a zoo, caged. The human in him was barely keeping the animal behind bars.

In her mind, suddenly, she saw herself as he did. Her breathing. Sharp little pants. His teeth, sinking into her swollen flesh. Blood, rich with life. Passion. Flowing through both of them. Charging them. Her strangled cry of pain followed by pleasure that would rob her of herself.

She nearly climaxed from the images. The vampire in Ryder wanted her to desire his bite, so he could do as he wished. So he could control her as Foley had warned.

She shook away those thoughts and with years of self-defense skills, reversed their positions. She drove down onto him before he could continue messing with her mind. With her heart. Riding him to slake the burn, to draw out the human, to make him Ryder again and not the beast.

As she locked her gaze with his and moved on him, the demon fled. Ryder’s eyes became their intense dark brown once more, losing their demony glow. Only his fangs remained, as if he couldn’t muster that last little bit of command.

“I won’t bite again,” Ryder promised.

Long minutes passed before she finally answered, “I know.”

Without waiting for more assurance he flexed his hips and shifted upward, bringing her to the edge.

She followed his growl of release with her own cry of completion. After he cradled her in his arms. But earlier conflicts and fears rose up faster than the passion that had overwhelmed them.

When she had first met Ryder, she had sensed that he was a loner. A man who had suffered great loss and somehow endured. She understood such loss and the strength it took to overcome it. Like Ryder, she carried scars within her that hadn’t healed.

Back then she’d thought that two injured people didn’t bode well for a happy ending. And now, after tonight, she realized that continuing her life with Ryder…

“I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

A tremor ripped through his body again. He snatched up the clothes strewn across the floor and dressed, his movements stiff. Irate.

“Ryder?” She heard fear and indecision in her own voice. And an indefinable something…caring, possibly love. She was too confused to know anymore.

He didn’t answer. So she provided her own.

“I need some time.”

A barely perceptible nod of his head acknowledged her request before he returned to her open window and fled into the night.

Chapter 3

The alarm beeped furiously. Diana half turned and shut off the noise. She had been awake for some time.

Was it her imagination or could she still smell him on her pillow?

It was barely 6:00 a.m., but she tossed aside the covers and rolled out of bed. The barest hint of red in the morning sky promised a clear day ahead. She would have time for a quick run before work.

Work, where things over the last two weeks had become routine. Normal. As they had been before Ryder.

A load of cases waited for her to profile. Two others were actively being investigated. Later that day, she had a much-anticipated lunch date with her FBI partner. Afterward, if she didn’t get hung up too late with her active cases, she’d call Sylvia for a girl’s night. It had been too long since they’d had one. Their last lunch together had reminded her just how much she missed seeing her friend.

Just as having dinner the other night with her brother Sebastian and his wife, Melissa, had demonstrated how removed she had become from her family. For years she and Sebastian had shared an apartment and they had always been close. After the death of their father, grief had united them even more strongly. But Sebastian’s marriage to Melissa had complicated things, Melissa being Ryder’s keeper and all.

Their recent carefree dinner, however, made it clear that whatever happened between Diana and Ryder would have little impact on her relationship with her brother. She’d had a wonderful time and had even gotten to feel the baby move.

Now, she shifted her hand downward, laid it over the flat, almost concave plane of her abdomen. Imagined a baby within. Alive. Its tiny heart fluttering beneath the palm of her hand. Growing and being born. Suckling at her breast.

In her mind’s eye, the baby had Ryder’s dark eyes and hair, but she forced that impossible thought away. Instead she remembered how her little niece or nephew had rolled beneath her palm. Sebastian had smiled at her reaction, looking happier than she had ever seen him.

Things were working out for him. He was all right.

Just as she was beginning to believe everything would be all right for her one day. The weeks away from Ryder had been hard, but with each day that passed, with each day of a human routine, she felt her control returning.

Each day brought more lightness to her spirit, something she hadn’t felt in…forever.

She could imagine soon being back to a place where her life seemed in order. Where she could enjoy her friends and family. A good place.

Though more often then she cared to admit, Ryder slipped into her thoughts. Strange as it was, her life with him had in some ways made her believe anything was possible. But the unpredictability had kept her constantly on the edge. An edge that had grown difficult to walk.

Without him, however, a bit of emptiness existed that none of the routines of her day managed to fill. Routines that had, at one time, sustained her.

She told herself she just needed to relearn balance, the yin and yang of things. And that couldn’t happen in only a couple of weeks. It would take time. Something Ryder had plenty of, while she…Her time was finite. Unless she gave in to the call of the demon.

She drove that thought viciously away.

She knew how hard life was for Ryder and his vampire friends. How they battled to contain the demon’s desire for domination. How they suffered over and over again from the pain of who they had become, of losing those they loved.

Her father’s death had taught Diana what it was to live with that kind of pain. She couldn’t imagine living with it for eternity. She needed the everyday human world she had been struggling to reenter these past few weeks.

The cell phone on her nightstand vibrated. As she picked up the phone, the Caller ID indicated it was her friend, N.Y.P.D. Detective Peter Daly.

Whatever Peter had to say at this early hour couldn’t be good.

“You’re making a big mistake.”

The sound of her shoes on the hard tile of the police station hallway echoed as Peter escorted her to the interrogation room.

“Neighbors reported hearing a shot. Then we got Raul Rodriguez’s 9-1-1 call. When we arrived, he was incoherent. The gun was on the bed where he had supposedly been asleep. And his wife—”

“Stop.”

Raul’s wife was Sylvia, who Diana had been thinking about calling only a short time earlier. It was impossible to believe her friend was dead.

“Diana. I know you’re close to this—”

“She was one of my best friends. She asked me to be the godmother for their baby. Did you know that? Did you know she was pregnant?”

Peter had the grace to look chagrined. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? Sorry!” Unable to control herself any longer, she faced the wall and pounded the rough cinder block with her fist.

Peter pulled her into a tight embrace as if to keep her from hurting herself. “I can’t imagine how tough this is.”

She held on to him, needing his stability because of all she was tempted to do. Sylvia’s life—her normal, happy, human life—was gone. Destroyed by violence. Violence like that within Diana, so strong she didn’t know if she could hold it back. And if the killer turned out to be Raul…

Dios. She would give in to the darkness and kill the bastard herself.

“Di? You need to get a grip if you’re going to talk to him.”

With a deep shuddering breath, she pulled herself together. Stepping away from Peter, she wiped at her eyes. “Do we have any other leads?”

Frowning, Peter shook his head. “Everything we have points to the husband. Maybe he found out the baby wasn’t—”

Diana silenced him with a pointed slash of her hand. “Don’t go there. Sylvia didn’t mess around,” she said, then stalked down the hall to the interrogation room, Peter trailing behind her.

Raul sat at a Formica-topped table, jailbird-orange clothing hanging loosely on his hunched shoulders. His bloodstained pajamas had been taken as evidence. He was hollow-eyed and obviously still in shock. “Tell me what happened, Raul,” Diana said.

“No se. We had dinner out. Un poquito de vino, but not much wine since Sylvia…” He stopped as tears spilled down his cheeks. He wiped at them with shaky hands and haltingly continued. “We went home. We were both really sleepy. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out.” His hands tumbled in the air. “No se que paso. There was a sound. A loud sound. I started coming to, but everything was fuzzy…” He stopped once more, buried his head in his hands. The tears fell more furiously.

Diana laid a hand on his shoulder. “I know this is difficult, but you have to try to remember.”

“I don’t know what happened,” he replied brokenly, and held out his hands as if pleading with her. “De verdad que no se. When I woke up, Sylvia was bleeding. I tried to wake her. When she didn’t respond…I called 9-1-1. I held her. She was so still. Then I saw the gun.”

“Did you touch the gun, Raul?”

He shook his head and wiped at his runny nose. “I don’t remember touching it.”

“Forensics will be able to confirm whether you did or not, Mr. Rodriguez. You may as well tell us now.” Peter moved to the table.

Raul snarled at the detective, “I did not kill my wife. I don’t know what happened, but I didn’t do it. I couldn’t do it. She was my life. Mi vida.” He jabbed at a spot above his heart to emphasize the point.

The sincerity in his words convinced Diana. She touched Raul’s clenched fist. “I believe you.”

He slumped into his chair. “Gracias, Diana.”

She glared at Peter. “I want to see all the reports. Anything you have.”

“You’re not assigned to this case. If the suspect hadn’t asked for you—”

“I would have found out and—”

“You don’t have jurisdiction here.”

He was right. Taking a deep breath to control her anger and frustration, Diana nodded and followed Peter out of the room. Peter wouldn’t refuse if she asked. So she did. “Ask me to help. I need to know what happened to my friend.”

Peter gave her a long look. “Unofficially and…whatever I say goes on this one. I’m the lead.”

“You’re the boss, Detective Daly.”

Peter let out a soft chuckle. “Right, Reyes. As if that will ever happen with any man in your life.”

“May I see the evidence, Detective? Pretty please?”

Peter chuckled again and shook his head. “Cut the shit, Di. You don’t do submissive very well.”

No, she didn’t, come to think of it. Maybe that was part of the reason her situation with Ryder troubled her so much. What she felt for him made her weak, made her surrender a piece of herself. She wasn’t good about not being in charge.

“Okay, so I’m asking straight-up. Show me what you’ve got.”

He motioned down the hallway. “CSU is processing most of it. But we can head to the M.E.’s to see the body—”

“Don’t call Sylvia that.”

Peter sighed and dragged a hand through his ragged sun-bleached hair. “I’m sorry. But you need to get perspective.”

“I will deal with it. But if it were Samantha—”

“Low blow, Reyes,” he said, his tone filled with anger at the idea of harm coming to his lover—who had sired Ryder more than a century earlier.

Ryder.

Like the intertwined strands on a web, everything in her life inevitably led back to him. Could she ever be truly free of him? Or would she be forever ensnared in that web, trapped by what she felt for him?

Had once felt for him, she reminded herself. As for those emotions and anything connected to them…she had to put them aside and focus on what was most important now—avenging her friend’s death.

Diana let out an exasperated breath and laid a hand on Peter’s sleeve. “I’m sorry. I will try to handle it better. Let’s go see Sylvia. Por favor.”

She would do what needed to be done to find Sylvia’s killer. And when she located him…

Living with vampires for two years had shown her just what she was capable of—fierce, swift action with no hesitation. Justice without the complicated rules of the human world.

She pitied Sylvia’s killer when he, too, found that out.

Chapter 4

Just a few weeks ago, the swell of Sylvia’s pregnancy had been a sign of hope for good things to come. Today, as Sylvia lay on the shiny metal of the medical examiner’s table, it was a grotesque reminder of promises that would never be fulfilled.

Diana stood by patiently as the M.E. went over the details of the evidence. Bullet entry and exit wounds. Proximity of the muzzle—a close-contact kill with a large-caliber weapon, straight to the heart. Sylvia could never have survived the trauma. The delay in getting help had sealed the fate of the baby.

Gunpowder burns and stippling marked Sylvia’s pajamas and skin. The bullet had gone straight through her and into the mattress below. CSU had recovered the bullet, but no casing. Ballistics was already attempting to link the bullet to the gun found and to any other crimes recently committed.

“Do you know if your friends owned a gun?” Peter asked as he picked up the .45 caliber revolver in an evidence bag.

“In law school Sylvia lobbied on behalf of the Assault Gun Ban. What do you think?”

With a quick nod, he held the bag out for the M.E. “Any prints?”

“Palm print as well as four fingers. We’re running them now against the suspect.” The M.E. reached into a tray holding more evidence and extracted a bag containing clothing. “Mr. Rodriguez’s pajamas tested positive for blood in various locations, as well as high-velocity blood splatter along the right sleeve.”

A possible inconsistency suddenly occurred to her. “Palm and fingerprints. Right or left hand?”

The M.E. flipped the bag containing the gun back and forth and examined the fingerprint powder residue. “Right.”

“Raul’s a lefty. Sylvia was always getting him those silly gadgets for lefties.”

“That doesn’t rule out that he used his right hand,” the M.E. said.

Diana went over the M.E.’s earlier report on the entry and exit wounds. “He was lying on his side, facing her, when he did it.”

The M.E. bobbed his head up and down. “That would explain the lack of defensive wounds. He could get the weapon in place and fire without her noticing.”

“Or someone could put the gun in his hand, hold it in place and pull the trigger. Especially if Sylvia and Raul had been drugged. What about gunshot residue?”

“We haven’t tested him for GSR yet. Before you arrived, he clammed up and asked for a lawyer,” Peter said.

Years of experience had taught her that the innocent rarely felt the need for a lawyer, but then again, being married to an attorney might make Raul hesitant to provide assistance without legal advice. He had probably heard his share of horror stories from Sylvia about how things got twisted into something other than what they really were.

“The GSR test would confirm whether or not he was close to the gun when it was fired,” Peter said.

“But not whether he was the one who actually pulled the trigger,” Diana reminded him. “The blood splatter pattern, however, might tell us.”

With an annoyed sigh, likely at the prospect of doing additional work, the M.E. said, “Special Agent Reyes, you can’t actually believe the husband didn’t do it? The case is almost airtight.”

“Airtight? If someone placed the gun in Raul’s hand and pulled the trigger—”

“There would be an area on the sleeve that lacked splatter,” Peter finished for her. “Have CSU check the entire right sleeve and make sure those toxicology reports are carefully reviewed for any unusual residues.”

“Of course, Detective Daly,” the M.E. answered. The glance he shot Diana was anything but friendly. As if to retaliate for the extra assignment the M.E. picked up the scalpel and let it linger above Sylvia’s body. The light caught the sharp edge and a chill transferred itself to Diana’s skin.

She had seen hundreds of autopsies before, but this one…

“I need to get back to the office.” She bolted from the room, Peter hot on her heels.

“You okay?” he asked as she leaned against the wall outside the autopsy room.

Swallowing to keep down the bile, she could only nod. “Will you call me later? Let me know what’s up and if toxicology finds something?”