"We may not even need Daly," Sebastian added and wiggled his fingers as if he was busy typing on a keyboard. "Most records are electronic now. A little hack here, a little hack there-"

Diana angrily slashed her hand through the air. "Hermanito, don't even think about it."

Sebastian held his hands up in surrender. He knew his sister well enough to know she wasn't kidding. "We do it whatever way you want."

"Whatever way I want." Ryder slammed his hands flat on the table. "It's my secret-"

"But it's my parents who were possibly murdered," said Melissa as she jumped to her feet. "And it's my neck that's on the line if whoever took the journal wants more."

She looked from one person to the other, and finally to Sebastian. "So unless there's a risk that the good detective will nose around for info on Ryder, I don't see why we shouldn't ask him for help."

Melissa glanced at Ryder, but he just muttered, "I have no problems with Daly so long as he keeps out of my business."

Melissa coughed uneasily to draw attention back to herself after a too-long silence. "So we're done, right? Diana, you'll let us know when you have more news."

"And I'll get to work on the equipment and programs," Sebastian said, jumping out of his seat and grabbing Melissa's hand. "I think I owe you coffee and dessert."

Once out on the street, Sebastian took a deep breath. "It was getting a little-"

"Tense up there," Melissa said, b.u.t.toning up against the night chill and burying her hands in the deep pockets of her wool peacoat.

"Was it me, or was Ryder getting all alpha male?" Sebastian asked as they strolled westward.

Melissa rolled her eyes. "It was definitely getting run-with-the-wolves with him."

Sebastian chuckled and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "And you. That was pretty alpha to call the shots."

A broad smile erupted on Melissa's face. "It was, wasn't it?"

"Is Ryder generally so-"

"Jealous?" Melissa raised an eyebrow to underscore her query.

"Si. Would he get, you know...all demony if Daly got in his face?" As he said it, Sebastian made a snarly face and curled his hands as if they were claws ready to scratch someone.

Melissa chuckled. "I've never seen Ryder get fangy except to feed." "Was it weird? To see him...What's the right term? Change? Transform? Seems to me if I'm going to be dealing with this-"

"You don't have to deal with Ryder, Sebastian. That's my job." Clearly uncomfortable with the new direction of their conversation, she said, "You did mention dessert, didn't you?"

"I did, only I'm not really a sweets kind of guy."

She paused in her walk, forcing him to stop and face her. "That's a shame," she said.

Puzzled, he asked, "Why?"

"Because dessert is the best part of the meal. It's the reward after a hard day."

Sebastian eyed her up and down and shook his head. "No offense, but it seems to me you don't pack away dessert all that often."

Melissa examined herself, beginning with the coat she wore. She realized for the first time that it hung loose on her. It had fit just right when she had bought it, but that had been before the death of her parents. Before her world had gone topsy-turvy. Meeting Sebastian's gaze, she said, "You're right. It's been a long time since I've had the leisure of getting dessert. Or being able to take long walks with nowhere to go."

He pointed at her. "Doc, don't ever let it be said you're not direct and to the point. So a mobile dessert is in order."

Melissa grabbed his finger and gave it a playful shake. "Around the block. There's a tiny coffee shop that has an awesome hot chocolate they drown with whipped cream and little drizzles of caramel."

Sebastian grinned and looped his arm through hers. "Sounds like a plan."

Sebastian was used to working alone. It went with the territory of being a computer programmer. Despite that, he had been a trifle uneasy as he set up the equipment in Ryder's office. What could he blame it on? Maybe the fact that he was alone in an apartment with a vampire?

Not that he wasn't used to working with night owls, being one himself. Only Ryder was...

A bloodsucking, possibly lethal night owl?

It was crazy, Sebastian told himself as he set up the computer and a.s.sorted peripherals so he could commence the scanning. His sister was involved with this thing and Melissa not only lived with him, but was obviously quite fond of him.

He'd wondered about Ryder for days as he worked in his apartment to create the program for saving the scanned images and made arrangements with friends to create a peer-to-peer network to securely hold all the data. He'd tried to concentrate on the technology, but in the back of his mind were questions about Ryder and his relationships with both Diana and Melissa.

Sebastian knew Diana could take care of herself, but Melissa...

Didn't need a hero, he reminded himself, recalling how capable she had been the other night.

As he kneeled beneath the desk to check the connection of the scanner to the USB port, he reminded himself that all Melissa wanted from him was his techno-knowledge. Nothing else.

"Need anything?" Sebastian jumped up, banging his head on the bottom of the desktop. "s.h.i.t."

He eased from beneath the desk, rubbing his head as he glared at Ryder, who was standing almost on top of him. "Don't sneak up on me like that."

Ryder stepped away. "Not sneaking. I knocked. Repeatedly."

Sebastian crammed his hands into his jeans pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels. "Yeah, well. I didn't hear you."

Ryder narrowed his gaze. "You're uncomfortable around me, aren't you?"

Evasion was not one of Sebastian's traits. "You might say that."

Ryder gave an amused smile and sat down on the sofa at the far end of the room. "There's no need to worry. I don't bite humans."

"You bit my sister," Sebastian challenged. He leaned against the edge of the desk and tried to adopt a nonchalant stance.

"She told you about that?" There was a hint of surprise in Ryder's voice.

"We're close. Have been since before Papi was killed."

Ryder rubbed his index finger across his lip as he considered the young man across the room from him. He'd sensed something between Sebastian and Melissa and had worried about it.

Sebastian was too young, with a rebelliousness that normally boded ill. Despite that, he'd helped when called upon and Ryder had no doubt Diana strongly believed in her brother. Melissa also had clearly developed feelings for him. Feelings that could not only cause her a great deal of pain, but could place her in danger if she trusted this child to keep her safe.

Child. It was the only way Ryder could think of Sebastian, given the age difference between them and the differences in their life experiences.

"Melissa and I are close," Ryder said. He was unprepared for what came next.

Sebastian skewered Ryder with his gaze. "Do you love her?"

Ah, so he has feelings for Melissa, as well. "I do. As a friend. As a sister. As my companion."

"Your companion," Sebastian said with a strangled laugh. He walked across the room to stand directly before Ryder. "She's trapped by that and by the loyalty she feels toward you."

Ryder didn't need to be reminded. Melissa had confessed as much to him. It had come as a shock that she felt so differently from all the Danverses before her. Or maybe they had all felt the same, but lacked the courage to say it. He'd borne that guilt for months now and had told himself he was capable of dealing with it. Until now.

"She's free to go when she wants," he growled.

Sebastian surprised him again. He squared his shoulders and stood up to Ryder. "She won't go until you set her free."

They stood there nearly nose to nose for several seconds until Sebastian finally stepped away.

"I need to get some other equipment. I'll be back later." He walked out the door.

Ryder watched him go. There was no hint of his having tucked his tail and run. On the contrary, there was a swagger that said Sebastian had no problems with standing up for what he believed.Ryder had to admire him for that. He also had to admit that he might be wrong about whether Sebastian was right for Melissa.

But Sebastian was definitely wrong about one thing. It wasn't Ryder who had to set Melissa free. That was something she had to do herself.

As Ryder left the room and returned to his floor of the duplex it occurred to him that Sebastian could provide the goading Melissa needed to do it.

Amazingly the thought didn't displease him the way he thought it would have.

Chapter 6.

S he'd made a list.

She'd checked it twice.

She didn't know who'd been naughty, only who'd been nice.

The problem was, those who'd been nice might have been the ones who'd been the most naughty.

Melissa hated having to second-guess everyone's motives. It wasn't in her nature to question what was behind someone's actions or whether she was misreading a glance or an errant look. With as much time as she spent in the hospital, having to wonder about each of her co-workers was creating quite a strain.

Tossing the list onto her desk, she closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair, once again going over the events of the night the journal was stolen. Where she had been and whom she had seen. How long she'd been in the E.R. and after, what she recalled from her walk back to her office and the discovery of the theft. As it had every other time, the same list of names came up.

Number one on that hit parade was her friend Sara, the nurse in charge of her floor.

Sara had been on duty that night and free when Melissa had been called to the emergency room. She'd been on the floor when Melissa had returned from the E.R. and had come by immediately after the theft to offer her help. Had her offer been a smokescreen to throw Melissa off?

Although Melissa wasn't one to normally plug into the hospital grapevine, she'd done so the last few days and discovered a great deal. Gossip said that Sara had been working a ton of extra hours, but no one knew why. Only that Sara needed the money.

Tony, the muscle-bound security guard who had been with Melissa in her office, had supposedly been tossed out of some kind of compet.i.tion for testing positive for steroids. Melissa knew little about Tony other than that he had always been unflaggingly polite and helpful. As for his purported steroid use, the grapevine hinted that he had pa.s.sed the random drug tests done by the hospital.

Nevertheless, the rumors made him a possible suspect. Who knew if he could trade the prescription medicines stolen from her office for the steroids he needed to bulk up?

There had been a few other orderlies and nurses there that night, along with her father's old friend, Dr. Edward Sloan, but overall, it was a rather short list. And she wanted to take her friend Sara off of it.

Sara came from a tough neighborhood on the Upper East Side and had risen from poverty the hard way by doing a stint in the Army that had taught her the basics of being an EMT, and later had helped pay for a nursing degree. Melissa knew Sara had been trying to move her family to a better area. Maybe that was why she needed cash.

Being her friend, Melissa could probably come right out and ask, only Sara was prideful about certain things, money being one of them. Melissa had it and Sara didn't. That was always a source of conflict between them. Was it enough of an issue that Sara would steal or deal drugs to balance the scales? And why would she take the journal?

It left a sour taste in her mouth as she scooped her list of names off her desk and stuffed it into her lab coat pocket. Taking a look at her watch, she realized it was time for her last rounds before going home.

To most people, home was a sanctuary where they could escape the grind of their daily lives. For Melissa, it just meant a different kind of grind except...

Sebastian might be there. He'd been around the last few days; busy wiring and setting up equipment. So far with her schedule, it had been easy to avoid him, but now that it was her turn for some midday shifts, they might finally run into one another. She was still conflicted about whether that might prove difficult...or decidedly interesting.

The door to the women's locker room was ajar.

Melissa caught sight of Sara, who looked around before stuffing something into a knapsack. The knapsack tipped over and two blood bags spilled onto the floor. Sara quickly scooped them up and jammed them back into her bag.

Melissa pushed through the door.

Sara whirled, a look of worry on her face that turned to a broad smile as she recognized her friend. "Whew, you scared the c.r.a.p out of me."

"Worried?" Melissa asked, trying to appear nonchalant while angry that she'd now have to move Sara back to Number One on her list of suspects.

Determined to find out what was going on with her friend, Melissa entered the combination on her lock, but kept an eye on Sara to see if any other interesting things fell out of her knapsack. Like the stolen journal.

Sara nodded and turned back to her locker. "Just spooked since the other night."

Melissa took off her white coat and hung it up, pausing to slip the suspect list into her knapsack. She glanced at Sara, who was easing off her nurse's scrubs and tossing them into the laundry basket. Her friend seemed calm and no longer worried. Had she misread Sara's actions? Could there be some logical reason for her to be taking the blood?

Like the reason you do? an annoying voice in her head challenged.

"Were you on the floor when it happened?" Melissa asked as she, too, slipped off her hospital garb and pitched it into the hamper.

"I was with a patient. They'd buzzed me about some pain, so I had to call the resident," Sara began, part of her explanation m.u.f.fled by the shirt she was putting on over her head. "You know, I thought I heard something, but it wasn't all that loud. And I didn't see anyone come down the hall from the elevator, so I guess they used the stairs."

Melissa reached for her oxford shirt. "Sounds like they had it all planned out."

Sara shook her head. "But we were around. We were sure to see them unless...Maybe they wouldn't have taken a chance if they saw someone on the floor. Maybe they would've just gone to another office."