Darkness Calls

by Caridad Piñeiro

  Diana looked at Melissa and pointedly inclined her head in the direction of the door. The young woman regally lifted her chin, turned and entered the living room. A moment later, she was seated on the couch by Sebastian’s side. “Help me find Ryder.”

  Diana slammed the door shut and approached the duo, her hands on her hips in an obvious sign of annoyance. “If you’re worried that I hurt your friend once he showed me what he was, you’re wrong. I wanted to, but he was in one piece when I left him.”

  “Now tell me something of value.”

  Sebastian chuckled and muttered beneath his breath, “Ballsy. I like that in a girl.”

  “Sebastian,” Diana warned at the same time that Melissa said, “I’m not a girl. I’m a woman.”

  Despite her pique, Diana had to admit she admired Melissa’s dedication and her ballsyness, as her brother had put it. And deep inside, in the part of her that still cared for Ryder, there was concern for Ryder’s safety.

  “Did anyone see Ryder leave the club?” she asked finally.

  “I called at six when I got worried because the sun was up and Ryder wasn’t home—”

  “You’re not doing drugs, are you, Diana, because this whole vampire thing—”

  “Sebastian, it would be best if you went to work,” Diana held her hand out in a pointed invitation for him to leave them alone.

  “I was worried this whole club thing might drag you—”

  “Into nothing I can’t handle, hermanito. Now, go.” But Sebastian didn’t budge.

  Melissa laid a hand on his thigh and said softly, “Your sister isn’t into anything harmful.”

  Diana let out a harsh laugh. “If you consider a vampire bite not harmful.”

  Sebastian jumped up, hands in the air to silence both women. “Okay, enough of the comedy routine. This Ryder guy can’t be a vampire.” He motioned to Melissa. “And you,” he continued, pointing a finger at Diana, “did not get bit by a vampire. Vampires do not exist.”

  “Ryder is a vampire.”

  “He’s been one since the Civil War when he got turned,” Melissa added.

  “And you’re human, I hope?” Sebastian questioned.

  “Definitely a mortal,” Melissa confirmed, then inclined her head in Diana’s direction. “And you…You’re the first person that Ryder has loved—”

  “He doesn’t love me. He couldn’t love me and bite me.” She almost reached up and rubbed her neck, then pulled her hand away as she realized what she’d done. Shaking her head, she said, “I don’t want to be the one he loves.”

  “And why is that?” Melissa asked.

  Diana closed her eyes against the pain. “Because I can’t give him the happily ever after that he deserves.”

  Chapter 24

  The security guard told Melissa that Ryder had left close to three, just before Diana and her colleagues had come by to get the surveillance tapes. No one had heard from him since. Diana checked in with David and Peter, neither of whom had more information. They all agreed that she should check out what had happened the night before. She promised to keep them posted if anything came up. In the meantime, Peter and David were headed to the FBI office to once again review the tapes.

  Diana parked her car in front of The Lair and turned to look at Melissa and Sebastian in the back seat. “How does he normally go to and from the club?”

  “He has a van. Parks it down the block in the loading ramp for another building he owns,” Melissa explained.

  “Let’s go check it out, then.”

  She followed Melissa to the back of a building about halfway up the block from The Lair. Ryder’s van was still parked there, and Melissa turned and gave Diana a worried look. “He never got here.”

  Diana advanced slowly and immediately noticed the smudge along the driver’s window and another on the side-view mirror. A closer inspection of the window made her flinch. There were faint droplets of blood in a splatter pattern.

  Turning her attention to the mirror, she noted a thumbprint and what looked like the mark of a palm along its black backing. Ryder must have held himself up, maybe after the first blow, she thought, knowing it would take more than one shot to take him down.

  If he’d fallen backward…She inspected the front bumper on the driver’s side and found more smudges that confirmed his fall. There was a small patch of blood on the sidewalk. Coldness settled within her as she looked around, spotted another telltale mark a few feet away, and then followed that trail up the steps of the loading dock. On the edge of each step was a stain that might not have caught someone else’s attention.

  Diana was well aware of what it meant. Ryder had been dragged up the stairs. The blood from his injuries had marked the edges of the steps. She shivered as the images from her dream drifted into her mind. A sick feeling settled in her stomach.

  At the top of the platform there were an assortment of garbage cans and a large bin from a commercial laundry company. The laundry bin was empty, but the garbage cans were still full. In the second that followed that observation, the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. She turned and called out to Melissa, “Do you know what businesses use this loading dock?”

  Melissa started to walk toward her, but Diana waved her back. “I don’t want you contaminating the crime scene.”

  The other woman stopped dead in her tracks and her pale skin blanched. Sebastian quickly offered his support as she swayed slightly. “He’ll be fine.” He glared at his sister for her bluntness.

  Diana didn’t wait for Melissa to recover. She needed an immediate answer if she was going to locate Ryder before…She wouldn’t think about her dream. She pulled on one of the restaurant doors and found it locked. She quickly went to the next one, yanked and it popped open. She withdrew her badge from her jacket pocket, stuck her head in and called out a warning before stepping inside. “FBI. Anyone here?”

  When there was no answer, she entered. It was a storage room lined with shelves that held row upon row of institutional-size cans of food. There was a shuffle from the front of the building and Diana proceeded up the small gap between the shelves until she reached the kitchen. She didn’t need to enter to know its specialty was Latino food of some kind. The smells of onions, garlic and citrus were enough proof. “Anyone here?”

  A young Latino man popped his head out of the kitchen, a worried look on his face.

  “Migra?” he questioned as he saw the badge and seemed ready to bolt.

  Diana reassured him in Spanish. “I’m not from Immigration. I’m FBI. All I need is a little information. I won’t do anything if you help.”

  The young man nodded and wiped his hands on the apron tied around his waist. “Qué quieres?”

  Diana quickly rattled off a question or two, mostly about who cleaned the restaurant’s linens and when that company picked up. The ready answers of the young man gave her a good start in tracking down where Ryder might be. She thanked the man and headed back out onto the loading ramp.

  Melissa and Sebastian still stood there, waiting. “All of the victims were wrapped in fresh linens and the last one had some kind of sauce in her hair. I think the killer dumps them in that laundry bin, or another like it. Then picks them up, probably while he’s making his rounds.”

  “How does Ryder fit into this?” Melissa asked, and wrung her hands together in worry.

  “Ryder thought there was something familiar about the suspect we pointed out in the tapes. Maybe because he had seen him here on the loading docks.”

  “Do you think Ryder caught him in the act?” Sebastian asked.

  Diana shrugged and whipped out her cell phone. “I need to call this in.”

  When her partner answered, she gave him the information she’d collected. “Call the company and tell them I’m on my way. I’ll need access to their employee records and routes. If they give you trouble, call me, get a judge to issue you a warrant and meet me with it.”

  After David’s confirmation, she hung up and faced her tw
o unwanted companions. “You need to go home. I’ll call when—”

  “No way. If Ryder needs help, I’m the one to do it,” Melissa protested.

  Diana raised her hands, signaling no, but Melissa didn’t stop. “There’s medicine in the van, in case of emergencies. We need to take it so that when we find Ryder—”

  “Just tell me what to do and go home.”

  But Sebastian immediately contradicted her. “What if you need to pick him up? There’s no way you can swing that.”

  “And there’s no way you can take him to a hospital or another doctor without compromising his secret,” Melissa added.

  Diana let out a harsh laugh. “Any more than it’s been compromised? There’re three of us, maybe even the killer by now, who know.”

  “And as big a circle as that is, we need it not to get bigger.” Melissa headed to the van. She pulled keys out of her purse, pushed the remote control button and opened the door. “Come on. Time’s a’wasting.”

  A warrant wasn’t necessary. The manager of the laundry called the owner and within minutes, Diana was looking through their schedules, pinpointing who it was that made the pickup for the restaurant. Gordon Randall. And if he kept to his schedule…

  Diana looked up at the manager. “Randall should be back within the hour.”

  The manager shook his head and held up his hands as if in apology. “Sorry, but Randall is long gone.”

  “The schedule says—”

  “He came in early this morning. Said he had something to do and could he run his route earlier. Wasn’t a problem since all the drops were ready.”

  She returned her attention to the papers. The employee record contained a copy of Randall’s commercial driver’s license complete with photo. Diana had no problem identifying Randall as the man who had danced with her the other night, despite his being known as Rudy at the club. Still, it was possible that the documents had been doctored or faked, or that he hadn’t given the people at The Lair his real name.

  With the manager’s permission, she quickly made copies and faxed them to David so he could get someone to track down Randall. She also faxed him a copy of Randall’s schedule and instructed that David get another team or two of agents to visit the sites at the end of the route and get more information on Randall.

  Thanking the manager, she walked out of his office with her copies of the materials and approached Melissa and Sebastian, who waited outside by Ryder’s van. As she reached them, she quickly explained what she had planned and immediately encountered objections from her brother.

  “Why didn’t you put more agents on checking those locations? If we need to find him soon—”

  It was Melissa who came to her defense. “She did the right thing, Sebastian. We don’t know what condition Ryder will be in and if someone else finds him…”

  “You’d have a big problem on your hands.” Sebastian looked up at the bright blue sky and the sun that was heading higher toward its midday peak.

  Diana quickly opened the van’s doors with the remote. “Come on,” she said. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Do you think he’s okay?” Melissa asked.

  Diana wished she could be optimistic, but she couldn’t. “This killer has a lot of rage. It’s why he did what he did to the women.”

  “But Ryder’s a guy,” Sebastian interjected.

  Diana shot a quick glance at Melissa, then said, “The killer may transfer that anger to someone else. Maybe someone he feels is responsible for what the women do.”

  “Someone like Ryder,” Melissa said with concern.

  “Maybe. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he just grabbed him for now. Either way, we need to get a move on.” Diana couldn’t fail to notice the fearful glance Melissa and Sebastian exchanged, nor the way he laid a hand on Melissa’s shoulder, offering solace.

  It was a struggle to draw breath. Each inhalation brought more pain than he had ever imagined.

  Ryder barely had the strength to pick up his head, but he struggled to do so, staring at the beams of sunlight reaching into the space through the gaps in the broken windows. The long fingers of the sun had bathed his body, setting his torso ablaze. Slowly stealing the life from him, making his skin and muscles stiff and painful. As the sun inched higher, the rays had moved downward, shifting their attack to his abdomen and then moving ever slower, taking more and more of him away with their touch.

  From mid-chest down, his body was stiff, as if in death. There was no way he could free himself now.

  Diana, he thought, and groaned, praying she would be safe. Trusting she had the intelligence and strength to avoid the killer and, maybe, find him. Perhaps he could see her one last time. Tell her how sorry he was for everything that had happened.

  His body protested as he feebly pulled at the hook, accomplishing nothing. The bindings were too strong and he was too weak. So weak it was an effort just to hold on to consciousness. He struggled to stay awake, his head hanging down. His eyes trained on the rays of light as they finished sweeping down his body, then thankfully slipped off onto the floor, signaling the arrival of high noon.

  Rudy would be back soon, Ryder knew. Back to torment him. Back to kill. Funny thing was, Ryder thought with a dry laugh that racked his body with pain, he almost welcomed Rudy’s return.

  Chapter 25

  The glare of the sun hurt her eyes, and Diana slipped on her sunglasses. She tried not to think about how Ryder must be feeling. She tightened her hands on the steering wheel. Too much time had passed and they were no closer to finding him.

  This would be their third stop. It was almost one in the afternoon. The other agents, who had begun at the end of the route, had only a few more stops before they all ran into one another. If they reached that point, it would probably be too late for Ryder.

  She was convinced he was somewhere in this area. It would make sense, according to the hypothetical timetable she had mapped out. The first stop was the restaurant and would normally happen at four in the morning.

  Rudy, for that was what she preferred to call him until they verified whether or not Randall was an alias, would normally be done with his route by midday. That would leave him plenty of time to return to his hideout and work on his victim. It matched the medical examiner’s approximate times of death for the victims—late afternoon to early evening for all of them.

  She stopped the van by the back of a small, upscale hotel on the edge of the South Street Seaport. Examining the area around the hotel, she didn’t even bother to get out. There wasn’t anywhere vacant enough for the killer to store and play with his victims.

  “What are you doing?” Melissa asked.

  “Thinking.” Before either of her two companions could say anything else, she grabbed her cell phone and dialed David.

  He answered almost instantly. “Anything?”

  Diana sighed and ran a hand through her hair in frustration. “I was hoping you’d have something for me.” She searched the area again through the windshield of the van.

  “Nothing, except that Randall is an alias. Social security number he gave was a fake. So was the address on all the papers.”

  “So we’re back to Rudy and nothing to go on.” She glanced at her companions out of the corner of her eye. Melissa’s face showed her concern and Sebastian grabbed her hand to offer comfort.

  Diana looked away, controlling her own fear as she grasped at straws. “Did Rudy have any bank accounts with the alias? Make any payments?”

  “Still checking on it,” David replied.

  Diana lost her temper. “Can’t you get anyone to check on it faster?” David’s tired sigh came across the line. “You’re letting the personal get in the way, Di. You know how long this can take.”

  She bit back her response, for it would only worry her companions more. Taking a deep breath, she finally said, “I know, David. But call me as soon as you have anything. Anything at all.”

  She turned in the driver’s seat and looked at Melissa and Seba
stian. “I need a second,” she said, and stepped out of the van.

  After pacing along the sidewalk, Diana looked toward the sky. A moment later, she hustled back into the van, started it up and pulled away.

  “What’s up?” Sebastian asked, leaning forward in his seat.

  “Something familiar,” she answered, but was unable to explain. It was the edifice from her dreams—the New York Life building with its unique golden top. But had she thought of it only because it was something she saw every day or because it was meant to guide her to Ryder?

  She didn’t know. “I’m backtracking to the road by the docks. He would have come that way on his route before reaching this stop.” She paused at a corner as the light turned red. She looked at him and then Melissa. “Look for a warehouse or building, probably abandoned. Or one with no activity at this hour.”

  It took a few more turns before they were on the roadway beneath FDR Drive. On one side of the street were assorted docks and buildings, some of them fitting the bill, but Diana suspected the killer would not have crossed the road and lost time.

  She drove slowly, ignoring the horns of the annoyed drivers behind her. She examined each building. At this hour of the day most seemed vacant. In the stretch of four or five blocks before the turn for the hotel there were dozens of possible buildings.

  Too many possibilities and too little time—unless she called in more troops. But if she did so, she risked exposing Ryder’s secret. Could she do that in order to save him?

  She didn’t know. For now, all she could do was turn off the road and repeat the trip. Maybe she would see something she hadn’t the first time.

  Moving even slower, she earned more horn blasts. Again, there was nothing, but the turn to the hotel was blocked by traffic. Too impatient to wait, she passed the intersection, hoping to head up a block or two and then cut across. As she did so, she noted a small alley. Barely large enough to let a small truck through. She pulled in and stopped the van. Looking skyward, she saw the top of the New York Life building. Then she knew. Ryder was nearby.