Death Calls

by Caridad Piñeiro

  In the days since that discovery, Diana and her partner had assembled a team to investigate the money laundering since that crime was within the FBI’s jurisdiction. They had also defined the boundaries of their probe with Daly and his squad so as to not interfere with the ongoing search to find Sylvia’s killer.

  Sleepless nights combined with getting everything coordinated at work had stolen a great deal of her time and energy. She was exhausted, both mentally and physically. As she stepped inside her apartment she could only listen to the silence. Her home was devoid of any signs of life. Darkness swallowed her up.

  As empty as the apartment seemed at times, the loneliness of it was what she needed. Space to confirm whether what she truly wanted was happily-ever-after with a mortal man or a life with Ryder.

  It had been weeks since she’d left him and she still didn’t know. Maybe she never would.

  She quickly prepped for sleep and slipped beneath the sheets. She hugged the pillow next to her and inhaled deeply, recalling the scent of him, the cold of his skin that quickly fled at her touch—a touch that often roused the vampire and brought both fear and fascination on her part.

  With a sigh, she tossed the pillow away and chastised herself. She had to be strong enough to let him go, and to truly try to find out what it was she wanted from her life.

  She had to decide if the course she had chosen was the right one. The one that would finally make her happy.

  Ryder hadn’t known what to expect from the ancient vampiress the night before. Certainly not the charming creature who had blithely dismissed close to two thousand years of existence as if it was nothing.

  Millennia of life. Millennia of loss. That was all Ryder thought about when he should have been working on the club’s ledgers. That, and Diana.

  While it had been difficult to acquiesce to Diana’s request for time apart, he had done so. First because he wanted her to be happy. Even if that happiness didn’t include him. Second because he’d had time to more freely explore his demon side—the side that scared and fascinated her much as it did him.

  Humans were born to die, he reminded himself. Unless of course…

  What would he do if Diana did return to him? Could he be by her side and watch her grow old? When the time came and only a moment remained to her life would her last breath be his name? Would she ask him to turn her? And if she didn’t, could he restrain the beast—and the human—who feared being alone again?

  In his dreams, or maybe it was more correct to call them nightmares, he had imagined Diana’s death. He’d imagined the look in her eyes, shock that death had called, fear that time was almost gone.

  In his dreams, he lowered his head to her neck and sank his fangs through the fragile skin. He bit deeply and sucked her nearly dry before offering up his tainted blood to grant her near immortality.

  Would she hate him afterward the way he had hated the woman who had turned him?

  Maybe that was what had fascinated him about Stacia—her calm acceptance of her fate, of her power.

  Would he have similar strength one day? Would he have the kind of control that she possessed, not only over lesser vampires, but over herself? Despite what he’d heard about the elders, Stacia still possessed her humanity. Or at least, a small token of it.

  His powers and those of his friends paled in comparison to what he detected deep beneath Stacia’s visibly composed exterior. How he knew that, he was uncertain. Maybe it was some undead thing he had yet to understand, some protective barometer that existed to warn him when he was outvamped. Not that he was heeding that warning any more than he listened to those voiced by Diego and Blake. His two friends had spent a good part of the night telling him not to underestimate Stacia.

  Fascination with the elder vampire tempted him to return to the Blood Bank, but look where giving in to Diana’s appeal had gotten him. So he forced himself to stay at the Lair long after he’d reviewed the books and dealt with all the daily needs of running his establishment and long after the music below told him the club was open for business.

  When he allowed himself to leave his office, it was after two in the morning, close to closing. Just a dozen or so stragglers were being chased out.

  Nothing of interest and no unwanted visitors. And then Stacia walked in, dressed in all that sinful black leather. It made her fair skin even more striking against the darkness of her hair.

  Her wave of power crashed over him again. But he still had the presence of mind to think it a shame her skin didn’t have the healthy tanned splendor of Diana’s and that her eyes—almond-shaped like those of his ex-lover—were dark and absent the spark of life in Diana’s golden-green gaze.

  Shaking his head to drive both women out of his mind, he approached her. She looked surprised. Did she think he feared her?

  “I wasn’t expecting you,” he said.

  Obviously not enough of a greeting for her. She stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear, “I didn’t think you’d come back to me willingly.”

  As she retreated, she brushed a kiss along the side of his face, which sent a shiver through him. He wasn’t sure if it was one of desire or revulsion. Her breath smelled of fresh blood and the warmth in her skin said she had recently fed. But not a lot. Her skin lacked the colorful blush that came with a full feeding.

  A part of him was intrigued by that. It confirmed that she had dominion over her demon and, possibly, some semblance of humanity lurking within her ancient heart.

  He tucked his hands into the pockets of his pants and narrowed his eyes. “Why are you here, Stacia?”

  Once again she seemed taken aback, as if she couldn’t believe he was capable of resisting her charms. “You interest me. That’s not an easy thing to do.”

  The feeling was decidedly mutual. Stacia’s long existence and her apparent ability to deal with it made him wonder what he could learn from her.

  That she sensed his curiosity was obvious from her pleased smile. “So what do we do about this?”

  “Care for a drink?” He held his hand out in the direction of the bar. “Nothing illegal,” he clarified.

  “That’s a shame.” She walked past him, brushing her body against his in a way that warned she wanted more than just talk.

  This was going to be fascinating, he thought, and a second later he heard in his head, It certainly will be, my beloved.

  Chapter 8

  R yder’s absence from her life had provided an unexpected boon to her investigation on Sylvia’s murder—last night’s sleeplessness had allowed Diana to review the reports her team had assembled.

  De la Fuente’s import/export business had funneled money to more than a dozen companies with one fascinating connection. All of the fake corporations had been created based on the instructions of a partner at Sylvia’s law firm—none other than Steve Martinez.

  In time, Diana would make sure that Martinez paid for his role in her friend’s murder. She wouldn’t allow anyone to plea bargain the case or to grant Martinez immunity. In the back of her mind came the unbidden thought that in Ryder’s world, as grim and uncivilized as it might be at times, there would be no hesitation about meting out the right brand of justice.

  For the moment, however, her main goal was to track down de la Fuente so that she would have the evidence she needed to make her case.

  Which was why she and David were on their way to Spanish Harlem and de la Fuente’s office. The area was predominantly Latino, a
mix of Newyoricans and Dominicans, the Dominicans prevailing in number.

  She and David left their car and walked to a small bodega where a few older men sat in front, playing dominoes. She never got a chance to pull out her badge.

  “Niña. We know who you are,” one man said, slapped a domino down on the table and gestured for the man next to him to make a move.

  That man hesitated. She looked over his shoulder at the dominoes he held in his large grizzled hand. Bending, she whispered, “El nueve.”

  With but a quick look at the table, the man nodded, fitted the nine domino to one end and displayed his hand—a winning one.

  “Chica, that wasn’t nice. Ricky would never have gotten that on his own.”

  She smiled and tucked her hands behind her back. “Bueno, here’s how it is. I can stand here all day playing dominoes or you can answer a few questions so I can leave.”

  The choice of all of the men, except for Ricky, was clear. She quickly fired off a series of questions in Spanish and received the answers she needed. When she thanked the men and began to walk away, David asked, “What’s up?”

  “Besides you needing Spanish lessons, mi amigo?”

  “Maggie’s taught me plenty of Spanish. Taco. Salsa. Amorcito. And for those special moments, Co—”

  She held up her hand to keep him from muttering her most commonly used curse word. “I get it. We’re heading to Second Avenue. Artie keeps a love nest there with his assistant.”

  As she walked past the store next to the bodega, she paused. In the windows were all kinds of Latino specialties, from the familiar Cuban sandwiches to cheese-filled arepas, courtesy of the Colombian influence in the neighborhood. The area reminded her of Calle Ocho in Miami, where she had lived as a small girl before the Reyes’s had moved up and out to the Miami suburbs.

  But she had no time to ponder the feelings those memories inspired. She hurried her pace, eager to reach the apartment building off Second where the men had said she might find de la Fuente. She and David had just turned the corner of the block when she noticed none other than Arturo de la Fuente.

  He had taken no more than a few steps when the door of a parked car flew open. A large man jumped out and blocked his way.

  She ran beside David, no doubt in her mind as to who would take which suspect. The man from the car was at least six feet tall with the muscular build of a Mr. Olympia. She would be like a gnat swarming an ox if she went for him. De la Fuente, however, was just right. Pencil-thin. Petite. Dog meat, she thought as she and David raced toward the men.

  Mr. Olympia had nearly shoved de la Fuente into the waiting car when David tackled him to the ground, freeing de la Fuente. She clotheslined the man as he tried to run past. Once he was on the ground, she quickly flipped him and with a knee smack in the middle of his back, cuffed one hand and slipped the other cuff over the handle of a parked car.

  By the time she got to her feet, her partner had restrained the muscular man and was headed toward the getaway car.

  The man behind the wheel raised his hand.

  The adage about seeing your life flash in front of your face came to mind, only it was David’s life in her vision. David being shot. Going down. She imagined explaining to Maggie what had happened. How he had died.

  She couldn’t let it happen.

  Launching herself at her partner, she knocked him out of the line of fire.

  The sound of gunfire echoed from the interior of the car followed by the screech of tires.

  She cursed and looked at her partner. David rubbed his side.

  “Shit, Reyes. You are one bony thing,” he teased.

  She couldn’t let it go. He’d almost gotten killed. She couldn’t imagine being at his side and watching him die.

  Like Ryder might watch you die one day?

  With anger and fear overriding everything else, she grabbed his suit jacket and body-slammed him against the side of a parked car. “Don’t ever do anything stupid like that again unless you don’t want to continue being my partner.”

  “As if I like being your partner. You’re domineering. Aggressive. Hot-tempered.”

  The tension of the moment fled with his ever-calm demeanor and the teasing note in his voice.

  “You do know how to turn a girl’s head.” But she shoved him against the car again just for good measure.

  “Of course I want to keep being your partner. You make life…interesting.”

  “Then you will never do something stupid like that again.”

  She whirled from him to fetch de la Fuente.

  “Going soft on me?” he teased, but they both got back to the business at hand—bringing in these two suspects and locating the one that had unfortunately gotten away.

  Peter Daly met them at FBI headquarters and they headed to the interrogation room holding Max Moreno—Mr. Olympia.

  “Want to tell us what part you had in the murder of Sylvia Rodriguez?” Diana asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Artie owed me some cash and I was trying to collect.” Max leaned back in the chair, trying to appear unruffled by his incarceration, but the scared tone of his voice was apparent to all.

  “You understand that we’ve got you on a kidnapping charge at a minimum. If your friends are up to anything else, you’re going down for that, as well.” She assumed a very casual stance. “You got kids, Max?”

  The look on his face provided the answer she needed and she continued. “Think what it’ll be like, not being with them for…let’s say, the next twenty or thirty years.”

  A slight tremor echoed through Max’s posture. “You can’t prove a thing.”

  Diana pointed to Peter. “Do you think both the N.Y.P.D. and FBI were watching your friend Artie because they couldn’t prove anything? We’ve got messages, trails of money. A lot more, Max.”

  They didn’t have all of that yet, but it was only a matter of time before they did. They had already put in a request to use the National Security Agency’s Echelon system to start tracking things and they were employing their own Carnivore program to round up any e-mails.

  Max looked at David and tried to fake bravado. “You let a woman do all the talking for you?”

  “Let it go, Diana. This guy’s obviously too stupid to see he’s already a casualty in this war,” David said with no hint of anger or anything besides sheer boredom.

  Knowing he was adopting the role they used during their standard interrogations, she followed him and Peter into the hall.

  David said, “I’m getting a bad feeling about this.”

  “I totally agree,” Peter said. “Moreno and the friend who got away were just foot soldiers. But when you have soldiers, you have a general. By the way, the license plate you called in—the car was stolen this morning.”

  David glanced at her uneasily. “What now?”

  “We keep questioning Artie and Max. See where that leads.”

  “First, I’m going to get some java. Want some?” Peter asked.

  “You bet. A venti—”

  “Caramel macchiato. You’re so predictable, Reyes. Anything for you, Harris?”

  David shook his head and watched Peter walk away. “Is there something going on between you two?”

  “Just friends,” she answered quickly as she walked to her office under David’s close examination. “Peter’s a nice guy, but—”

  “You’re still involved with—”

  She held
up her hand to silence him. “Say the name and die.”

  He laughed. “Well, I guess that tells me all I need to know. Call me when you’re ready to start the interrogation again.”

  Diana watched David enter his office and wished that forgetting Ryder could be as easy as refusing to say his name. She hadn’t seen him since the night of the funeral—at least, not in person. But he had been in her dreams. She didn’t know what was worse—having him up close and personal and making her afraid of what she was feeling, or giving in to him in her nighttime fantasies and experiencing mind-blowing lovemaking.

  Until he put the bite on her, then reality flew back at her, reminded her of why she had broken it off with him. What she felt with him…it wasn’t normal.

  But, Dios mio, what it did…

  Her body tightened and she fought to keep her reaction under control.

  She sat at her desk and tried to concentrate on the de la Fuente file, only her mind was too busy thinking about the feel of Ryder’s mouth on her skin. The slight pain as he bit through it. The heat that spread throughout her body as he drank her blood.

  She had to have something wrong with her that she was now wondering if she should have left him.

  She had no desire to become one of the undead. While a life without end held appeal for some people, she wasn’t sure she could handle it. She had barely handled her father’s death. And now she was doing only a little better with Sylvia’s. She tried to imagine what it would be like to lose the rest of the loved ones in her life—her mother and Sebastian, Melissa and the baby she carried, Maggie, David.

  She couldn’t deal with it. And she had no right to inflict that kind of suffering on Ryder, either. She couldn’t make him watch her die.

  But could she spend the rest of her life without the kind of passion he roused?

  Breathing a disgusted sigh, she chastised herself for her uncertainty. Uncertainty brought weakness. And weakness brought failure.