"Agreed," she said, wondering just how much of what was left of her life van Winter was going to steal with his deception.

Chapter 18.

T he two deliverymen carefully transferred the crate with Ramona's painting onto a hand truck and grabbed their toolboxes. Diego followed them as they walked up to the door of Alicia Tipton's Upper West Side apartment building, where the doorman greeted them with familiarity and opened the door. Inside, a security guard likewise recognized the two men and efficiently checked off their names from a list.

Diego walked up next and handed the man his business card. The security guard scrutinized it, but said, "Picture ID?"

"He's with us, Louie. Wants to make sure we hang this painting just so for Mrs. Tipton," one deliveryman said.

At that the guard waved them on, and they walked to the freight elevator.

"I guess they know you here," Diego said as he scrutinized the men. Both were from the same transport company that had picked up the paintings from van Winter's Midtown penthouse.

"Mrs. Tipton has to approve everyone who comes and goes. We're the regulars for anything coming here."

"So you handled the auction house delivery for the van Winter sale?" he inquired, trying not to appear too nosy. The freight elevator slowly clanged its way to the penthouse. Through the gated door, he could count each level as it pa.s.sed before them.

"Not everyone is bonded for the really expensive stuff, so we get to do all that work," one said, and from the corner of his eye, Diego noted how the thin man puffed his chest out with pride.

"Makes for nice tips, too," his brawnier friend interjected.

"Heard van Winter is a cheap old b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Diego said, and half turned so he could fully gauge their reactions.

"Stiffed us on our last pickup. Said we hadn't done any work, since his staff had packed up the paintings," Mr. Brawny replied with some annoyance.

The thin man screwed up his face, reminding Diego of a ferret. With an annoyed huff he said, "As if Luis could do as good a job as us."

Luis Rodriguez. The dead thief, Diego thought, recalling Diana's report from the night before. His death and supposed theft had made him the most likely candidate to be involved in switching the paintings. Now Diego had confirmed that. But it still didn't prove that Luis had done the switch, only that he had crated the paintings. Possibly the copies.

Diego played dumb. "Luis is..."

"Handyman. Manservant. You name it. He's at van Winter's beck and call," Ferret Face replied.

Diego judged from the man's use of the present tense that he was unaware of Luis's death. "Not anymore. I heard that one of van Winter's people was killed in a hit-and-run. I think that was the guy."

"Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He'd just survived prostate cancer," Mr. Brawny said, shaking his head and mumbling again more softly, "Poor Luis."

"Yeah, and his youngest just starting college," his partner added.

A pattern seemed to be emerging, Diego thought. First Ramona, now Luis. Ill people in desperate straits. It only added to the possibility that Luis had switched the paintings, and made it more likely that van Winter had ordered the "accident."

As the elevator shuddered to a stop, Diego recalled the near hit-and-run Ramona had experienced. Van Winter clearly had no qualms about tying up loose ends.

The police report against Luis further insulated van Winter from any connection to the switch. What had he planned to do to implicate Ramona? Diego wondered as the brawny deliveryman shoved open the gate while his colleague threw the switch to open the exterior door.

The elevator opened onto a back hallway, and once they'd hauled out the hand truck and crate, the two men, well familiar with the layout of the floor, moved their burden to a door at one end and pushed a b.u.t.ton. From the intercom came a tinny voice asking for identification. After they gave their names and Diego's, the door unlocked with a loud buzz.

Inside, the Tipton butler met them and led them to Alicia's private art gallery. At a pad by the door, he punched in a series of numbers to allow them entry. Within the room, walls and shelves were lined with an eclectic mix of art, including one of Ramona's earlier works that Diego had sold the heiress. The large room had been split in half by a part.i.tion whose pristine surface suggested it was new or had just been cleaned. Judging by the size of the wall, this was where Ramona's large canvas was to be hung.

As the men wheeled the hand truck toward that s.p.a.ce, Alicia herself floated in wearing an exquisite charcoal-grey chiffon lounging garment that billowed about, adorning her fit, sixty-year-old body. She smiled and waved at the two deliverymen and then approached Diego, hugging him as she said, "I'm so glad you were able to personally oversee this."

The embrace lasted a little longer than was comfortable, until Diego managed to gently put some s.p.a.ce between them. "My pleasure, Alicia. After all, as a lover of all things beautiful, how could I not come see you and your wonderful gallery?"

"Feel free to look around. Maybe you can stay for a late lunch?" Alicia asked, a hopeful tone in her voice.

Summoning all the skills that had made him one of Spain's more welcomed courtiers, he picked up her perfectly groomed hand, bent over it and dropped a kiss on the back. "It would be my pleasure."

With a girlish t.i.tter and a blush across her surgically enhanced cheekbones, she exited the room in another flourish of fabric. The scent of her expensive perfume lingered, as if to nag him about his deception.

As he faced the two deliverymen, their amused and sly glances annoyed him. He tamped down that emotion, having more important things to do. He might have distanced himself from Ramona, but his five-hundred-year-old promise to be a better man nagged at him to finish what he had begun, namely, proving her innocence.

With a wave of his hand, he instructed the two men to uncrate the work. While they did so, he sought out the masterpiece that Alicia had purchased from van Winter. Though Diego searched the exterior walls of the room, it was nowhere to be seen, so he walked around the part.i.tion and there it was, on the opposite side all by itself. Ironic, he thought. Two works by Ramona back- to-back.

Snagging his cell phone from his belt, he quickly snapped off a few pictures, which might help someone undertake a detailed a.n.a.lysis of the brushstrokes and proportions of the various figures in the work. Quite complicated methods had been devised for rating aspects of paintings, based on the discovery that artists tended to be predictable with certain details, such as the ratios of facial elements.

Bending, he sought out the signature in the bottom right-hand corner-a signature Ramona claimed she hadn't done. Getting as close as his camera phone would allow, he shot a photo or two before turning on the small light and snapping another few. No sense pa.s.sing up the opportunity, since he might not get this chance again for a long time, if ever.

With that done, he e-mailed the photos to Diana, hoping she could tap her resources to begin the a.n.a.lysis of the masterpiece. He hoped it would confirm their suspicions that it was a copy, and that the signatures might provide some way to clear Ramona's name.

When his phone beeped, confirming receipt of the e-mails by Diana, he stepped around the part.i.tion and once again turned his attention to the deliverymen. They had unpacked the canvas and cleared away the crate to give themselves ample room to work.

Alicia had selected his favorite piece-the one that had led to his first kiss with Ramona. The one that when he closed his eyes for a vampire's version of slumber, played in his brain, reminding him of her pa.s.sion. Of their pa.s.sion, captured on the canvas for all the world to see.

There was only one thing better-the real deal.

He forced that thought away, considering how to hang the piece on the wall. He wasn't sure whether Alicia would want to put another work beside it, much as she had done on all the other walls save one-the one with what might possibly be a multimillion- dollar fake, if Ramona was right.

But then again, why else would van Winter be threatening her if she wasn't right?

Alicia returned at that moment and seemed to note his dilemma.

"It should hang alone, don't you think? All that ardor and hopefulness is singular."

Her words caught him off guard. He had seen the fervor of the lovers in the painting, but hopefulness? Glancing at the image once again, he was a.s.sailed by a flurry of memories. Of the first time he had met a much shyer Ramona, in her last year of art school.

Of how she'd grown into the mature, poised woman who could create such wondrously moving art.

Unbidden came the vision of her beneath him, her eyes betraying her emotions as he made love to her. He saw, too, her last look of the other night, filled with love and so much more. Maybe there was hopefulness in the painting, hope as Alicia had so perceptively noted.

"It should hang alone," he confirmed.

The word from Melissa that morning was good. The new medicines had stabilized Ramona's cell counts, although keeping to the altered drug regimen was key to maintaining that stability. With the extra time, they might find a bone marrow donor and risk a transplant.

She was supposed to meet Diana again for lunch, at a place close to the hospital this time-a Mexican restaurant on Second Avenue. The agent apparently had some news. Good news, Ramona hoped, as the elevator deposited her in the hospital lobby and she exited onto York.Getting her bearings, she realized she had to head downtown a few blocks before cutting west to Second. A few steps into the crosswalk, she saw a white delivery van come squealing around the corner right at her. Ramona immediately stepped back toward the safety of the curb, but b.u.mped into someone right behind her. Someone big and muscular who covered her mouth with his hand and slipped a tree trunk of an arm around her waist.

The panel door of the van slid open violently as the truck screeched to a halt before them. The man tossed her inside and then followed her. She kicked at him, but her sneakers made little impact.

He pulled the door closed and the van sped on, sending her rolling across the metal floor even as she continued to shove ineffectively at the large man. A second later, he'd covered her body with his, the way he might go after a fumbled football. The weight of him drove the air from her lungs, not that screaming would have done much good.

She swatted at his head, and for the first time realized that she knew him. He was one of van Winter's bodyguards. Before she could do anything else, a strange lethargy entered her body. Numbness immediately followed, then black circles danced before her eyes.

Struggling to focus, she thought she saw a needle in the man's hand, pulling back from her, but then her vision faded and she lost her hold on consciousness.

Chapter 19.

D iego paced as Diana filled him in on what had happened just a few hours earlier.

Ryder sat beside her, along with Melissa Danvers and her husband, Sebastian. Diana obviously felt Ramona's absence was important enough to call this meeting at Ryder's apartment.

"Ramona was supposed to meet me at one o'clock for lunch. Right after her appointment with Melissa."

"One of my a.s.sistants, Sara Martinez, remembers seeing Ramona get on the elevator at around twelve-thirty," Melissa added.

"Time enough to get to the restaurant on foot. After waiting for half an hour, I tried calling her, but there was no answer," Diana said. "After that I raced to the hospital."

"But there was no sign of her?" Diego wondered aloud, in a way not surprised that no one had seen anything. New Yorkers set on their typical routines had a tendency to wear blinders.

"One of the hospital guards said a homeless man came into the lobby claiming that someone had been grabbed on the corner,"

Melissa said, worry evident in her tone. "We have to find her. She needs to take her medications."

"Why didn't the guard alert the police?" Diego asked.

Diana shook her head. "After mentioning the kidnapping, the homeless man went on to say the Men in Black had done it so that no one would know it had been an alien."

Diego raked back his locks and blew out a frustrated sigh before venting his anger on her. "Why did you let her run around alone, anyway?"

Ryder seemed ready to come to her defense, but Diana laid a gentling hand on his thigh. "Ramona insisted. She thought it would be better for me to spend my time investigating rather than babysitting. Hard to argue with that logic."

"Except now she's missing," he nearly shouted. Fear was gripping him, hard. Esperanza had been gone for several hours, as well, before they had realized she'd been taken. They hadn't discovered her whereabouts until it was too late.

He didn't want to lose Ramona like that, too. His desire to save her went way beyond the promise he had made to help her. In the past few days without her, his life had been bleak, lonely. In the short time they had been together, she had made an irrefutable impact on his life. He wasn't sure he wanted to go back to the way his life had been before she'd come into it.

But finding her wouldn't change that. She was human and she was dying. Only one thing could alter the ultimate outcome of that linear human existence.

Ryder's voice interrupted Diego's musing, and he looked up. The other vampire's face mirrored his own emotions. The want. The despair. The love.

Diego realized he was in love with Ramona, much as he might try to deny it. But he couldn't allow that emotional mora.s.s to cloud his mind right now. He would deal with her mortality when the time came. "We need to find her, and fast," he declared.

"Definitely. Her system is too compromised to be without her medications for any length of time," Melissa reiterated.

"Her phone is still on, so I can try to track it. That is, if it's with her and wasn't dropped somewhere along the way," Sebastian said. With his hacker skills, he would be able to use his computer to get some information on her whereabouts.

"Hopefully the GPS chip is enabled. Can you do it from here?" Diana asked, inclining her head in the direction of Ryder's home office.

"Better I go to our apartment. My equipment's got more bells and whistles," her brother explained, and with a parting kiss on his wife's forehead, left the room.

"What if we can't track it?" Diego asked, and began pacing again, thinking about whether any of his vamp abilities would be of use, not that they had helped to save Esperanza. Smells would carry only so far, and Ramona's mortality meant she wasn't as traceable as one of his vamp friends, whose power and presence he could sometimes sense from quite a distance.

Diana rose from the couch, stood in his path and laid a hand on his chest. "We have options. I've got some other developments, but I need you to calm down."

Balling his fists, he loomed over her pet.i.te form, almost glowering as he said, "Tell us what you've got, because right now I'm all for flying over to van Winter's place and tearing him apart until I get an answer."

"Which would accomplish nothing. We need to get the goods on van Winter to clear Ramona. To keep her from going to jail," the agent explained.

"Ramona says she didn't sign the copies. Will the pictures I took help prove that?"

"I've got a friend in handwriting a.n.a.lysis who said he would compare the signatures. The problem is, if Ramona didn't sign them, who did?"

"It could have been Luis Rodriguez or even van Winter himself," Ryder suggested. "There were probably few people who had access."

Diana nodded. "I'll try to get samples of their handwriting for additional comparison."

Reining in the demon who would willingly inflict punishment to meet his needs, Diego stepped back. "What other information do you have?"

From the coffee table Diana picked up an envelope she'd tossed there earlier. She pulled out a series of photos.

"John Henry, nicknamed Big John. He's got several priors."

Something niggled in Diego's mind about the man in the mug shots and he struggled to recall where he had seen the face before.

"He's familiar to you?" Diana asked, reading his body language. "He is," Diego admitted, and as he flipped from one set of mug shots to the next, he realized where he had seen the man. "I think this is one of van Winter's bodyguards. He was at the gallery the day of the show."

He pointed to a later photo of the felon, where he carried a little more weight than in the earlier ones. If memory served Diego correctly, the man was even stockier now. "His face is heavier, and he's thicker through the chest and arms."

Diego flinched as he looked at the notations on the various rap sheets, which detailed a long history of arrests for violent crimes.

"Why would van Winter hire a goon like this?"

"To do his dirty work," Diana replied, easing the photos from his hands. "I suspect he's the one who grabbed Ramona. The hospital promised us access to the feeds from the outside security cameras. Hopefully, they got a good glimpse of him."

"And you'll be able to do something with all this?" Diego asked.

She hesitated, and at that delay, Ryder finally piped in. "Can you do anything, given your current duty a.s.signment?"