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."

"Telling me to back off on this, Melissa? We haven't known each other very long, but I didn't think that was like you."

"Please be careful, Diana. I just want a little more time with the journals so I can give you more to work with."

"Both victims are ex-cons with long records, so it may be possible for my contact to stonewall for a few days. But only for a few days. In the meantime, I'm going to visit the M.E. to talk over the toxicology report. Hear what he has to say that he can't put in writing."

For a moment, Melissa wished there was more that she could do. More that would help Diana with the investigation, but for now, there was nothing. "Thanks for all that you're doing. And if you need me for anything-"

"I know I can count on you, Melissa. As soon as there's anything else, I'll let you know." Diana hung up.

Melissa replaced the phone in its cradle and headed to the sofa, out of camera range. It was time to get back to her father's journal and try to discover what could be so important that someone would have killed for it.

It was harder than I had thought and not just because guilt made me reconsider what I had done. Putting the patient down was not easy. With his sense of taste, I didn't dare put anything in his food. I did the only thing I could think of-I delayed one of his feedings, hoping his hunger would be so strong that he wouldn't notice the taste of the sedative. Watching the patient feed has always been difficult for me, but it was even harder this time knowing that I would violate first his trust, then his body.

Melissa kept on reading, carefully making mental notes of all her father had done. Waiting for the moment when he would explain why he'd needed Ryder's blood. What her father had hoped to find once he'd examined the specimen. It was slow going as she kept vigilant for clues as to what her father may have learned and whom he might have trusted with the knowledge.

An hour pa.s.sed. A knock came at the door to her office. Melissa hastily marked her spot, closed the book and tucked it into the large pocket in the front of her lab jacket. Her father had favored small slim journals that could be carried easily. "Come in," she called out, and grabbed the copy of The New England Journal of Medicine from her coffee table.

The door opened a crack and Sara poked her head in. "You okay in here? I buzzed you about the patient in 420, but you didn't answer."

Melissa glanced at her phone. The red message light was blinking off and on. "Sorry, I must have been so engrossed in this," she said, waving the magazine in the air, "that I didn't hear it."

Tossing the magazine onto the coffee table, she followed Sara down to the patient's room. The young man had been diagnosed with leukemia five years earlier, but had gone into remission after only a minimal round of treatments. That had lasted for about two years before the disease had returned. Another round of treatments, longer and more intense, had again forced remission of the disease for a couple of years, but now the young man was back in the hospital. So far, the treatments were not helping.

"He's complaining of pain in the abdominal area," Sara explained. "It seems distended, as well."

Melissa conducted a brief examination that confirmed Sara's observations. She turned to her friend. "Afraid the spleen's been compromised?"

"That's why I called you," Sara said.

Melissa calmly asked the patient a few questions, extended her examination a little further to better pinpoint the source of his pain.

When she was done, she said, "Don't worry, Billy. We're going to run some tests and in the meantime, I'll have Sara give you something for the pain."

She was just finishing up with her notations on the young man's chart when Edward Sloan came by.

"Problems, Dr. Danvers?" He glanced from one woman to the other. "Nurse Martinez?" Ice dripped from his voice as he addressed Sara.

"On the contrary, Edward. Sara made some keen observations about Billy Preston. Unfortunately, I think he's having problems with his spleen. After the tests-"

"You'll let me see the results. We'll decide whether or not surgery is warranted," Edward instructed, his tone so paternal it bordered on insulting.

"Certainly, Dr. Sloan. If you have a moment, may I speak with you in my office?" Melissa asked. When the older man nodded and walked away down the hall, Melissa finished up with Sara.

As she turned to meet Edward, Sara laid a hand on her arm. "Don't let that ol' snake do a number on you."

"I gather you two don't get along." Melissa wondered why she hadn't noticed it before.

"He got in my business a couple of times. Got in your father's face, as well, if I recall." Sara moved to walk away. This time, it was Melissa who stopped her in her tracks.

"When?"

Sara looked upward as she seemed to search for an answer. Finally she said, "A few weeks before your dad died. I heard them arguing about something in your father's office when I went to drop off a chart your father had requested."

"Do you know what it was about?" Sara shook her head. "Not really. Something about a new treatment, I think."

Maybe the treatment her father had planned on trying on her mother. Melissa took a step closer to Sara and in tones soft enough so that only Sara could hear, said, "Don't mention that again to anyone. Especially Sloan."

There was a confused look on Sara's face. "What's up, Melissa?"

"Something bad, Sara. You need to keep quiet about that conversation and anything else you might remember about my father and Sloan. Trust me on this," Melissa urged.

Sara nodded. "You know I trust you, girl. If I remember anything else, you'll be the first to know."

Melissa watched her go, then returned to her office. Inside, Edward had made himself comfortable at her desk and was busy looking at the photo of her and her parents. "Ah, the good ol' days," he said, and held the photo out to her.

It was almost as if he was testing her. Without a moment's pause, she grabbed the frame, examined the photo and faked a smile.

"It was a wonderful night. My mother and father were in such good spirits. Even my mother-"

"Looked beautiful, just like her daughter," Edward said.

There was an unusual tone in his voice. A wistful one she'd never heard before. She handed the photo back and he glanced at it one more time, almost longingly, before he returned the frame to its spot on her desk. His actions brought a round of doubt, which she needed to dispel. "My father was hopeful about the treatments she was taking."

Edward's face hardened immediately. "You knew about them?"

"Not really. He only mentioned them in pa.s.sing that night, when I commented on how well mother looked." She was surprised at how smoothly she'd lied. Prevarication was a not a trait of which she'd thought herself capable.

"Oh," was all he said.

"Did you know about them?" she pressed.

"Frederick mentioned them to me in pa.s.sing, as well. Quite frankly, your mother's condition was so severe that I wrote it off to Frederick being unable to deal with reality." As he spoke, Edward looked back to the photo. "She was dying, you know."

Melissa laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I didn't know, Edward. My parents and I were never very close."

There was a ripple in his body. One of shock, it appeared to her. When he met her gaze, his was inquisitive and disbelieving.

"You expect me to believe that your father didn't tell you her condition was that grave. That he didn't tell you he was trying something new in an effort to cure her."

"Believe what you will, Edward. The truth is, I knew little about their lives." The sad part of that statement was that it was the truth.

Because of that, doubt left his gaze. "If your father kept any papers, you should look through them. See what he was doing."

"I don't think there are any," she lied.

"He was a marvelous researcher in addition to being a fine doctor. I find it hard to believe-"