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She couldn’t take another step. She stood there getting soaked with drizzle, her body frozen on the walkway below her Darkhaven apartments, unable to will herself to move.

Camden was out there somewhere, needing her—anyone—to find him. Yet she was failing him here. She couldn’t do anything but hold her head in her hands and weep.

CHAPTER Nineteen

Dusk came early that night, ushered in on the steady spit of a cold November rain coming down from a fog of thick black clouds. The Flats section of Boston’s Southie neighborhood—probably nothing special to look at during the day, with its thickly settled collection of aluminum-sided duplexes and brick three-decker tenements—was reduced to a wet, colorless slum under the monotonous deluge.

Dante and Chase had arrived on Ben Sullivan’s dilapidated block about an hour ago, right after sunset, where they still waited in one of the Order’s dark-windowed SUVs. The vehicle was out of place here simply on the basis of its well-tended appearance, but it put off a distinct don’t-fuck-with-me vibe, which helped keep most of the gangbangers and other street thugs from coming too close. The few who had wandered near the window to have a peek decided to move on in a hurry after getting a flash of fang through the glass from Dante.

He was twitchy for all the waiting and half-hoped one of the idiot humans would be fool enough to make a move just so he could work out some of his idle energy.

“You’re sure this is the dealer’s address?” Chase asked from beside him in the dark front seat.

Dante nodded, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

He had considered paying this visit to Tess’s Crimson-dealing ex-boyfriend by himself but thought he’d better bring along some backup just in case. Backup for Ben Sullivan, not himself. Dante wasn’t at all sure the human would be breathing when he was finished with him if he’d come alone.

And not just because Sullivan was drug-dealing scum either. The fact that the guy knew Tess, and no doubt knew her intimately, flipped a trigger on Dante’s rage. An unbidden sense of possession stole over him, a need to protect her from losers like this Ben Sullivan person.

Right. Like Dante himself was some kind of prize.

“How did you find it?” Chase’s question cut into his thoughts, snapping him back to his mission. “Aside from seeing the human jackrabbit out of the club ahead of us the other night, we didn’t have much to go on as far as IDing him.”

Dante didn’t even glance over at Chase, just lifted his shoulder in a shrug as memories of his hours with Tess swamped his senses in vivid recall. “Doesn’t matter how I got it,” he said after a long minute. “You Darkhaven suits have your methods; we have ours.”

Just as another wave of itchy impatience flooded through him, Dante caught a glimpse of his quarry. He sat up in the driver’s seat of the vehicle, glaring out into the dark. The human came around a corner, head down, face partially shielded by a gray hooded sweatshirt. His hands were thrust into the pockets of a bulky parkalike vest, and the guy was walking fast, throwing continuous looks over his shoulder as if he expected trouble on his heels. But it was him, Dante was certain.

“Here’s our man now,” he said as the human jogged up the concrete steps outside his flat. “Let’s go, Harvard. Look alive.”

They left the vehicle on alarm and followed him right into the building before the door closed behind him, both Breed males moving with the speed and agility that came naturally to those of the vampire race. By the time the human stuck his key in the lock of his third-floor apartment door and pushed it open, Dante was shoving him into the dark, tossing the guy across the spartan living room.

“Motherfu—” Sullivan came up out of his crash on one knee, then froze, his face caught in a wedge of light from the bare bulb glowing in the hall outside.

Something flashed in the human’s eyes, something beneath his immediate fear. Recognition, Dante thought, figuring