The Wolf (Black Dagger Brotherhood: Prison Camp #2)(35)

Except there was trouble in his not-really-paradise. Those fellow members of Caldwell’s paranormal underbelly didn’t seem in a big hurry to get a move on. There was even a third member of the species in the center of the road, talking to a human.

Great.

While Lucan impatiently waited for whatever business was going on to conclude, he checked out the abandoned apartments. All of the levels were dark—no, that wasn’t right. In addition to what appeared to be a light in the lobby, there was a subtle glow in the windows on the fourth floor on the left, like a heavy sheet or maybe even a proper drape had been pulled into place over all the dirty glass.

“Jesus, will you get on with it,” he muttered as he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned up against a spray-painted set of stairs.

After about twelve hundred years, the vampire and human combo in the street hugged each other; then an unremarkable car took off, a hulking black SUV drove away, and the blond vampire walked into the shadows and dematerialized.

Lucan gave things another minute or so, in case anybody forgot their wallet or their proverbial house keys, and then he limped forward and crossed the road. As he went along, his boot was even soggier, but he was operating under the truism that that which was not acknowledged did not exist. So no, he was not bleeding down his pant leg and into his fucking footwear. He’d stepped in a puddle, on this dry night, with his waterproof boot.

Nothing to see here, we’re walking, we’re walking . . .

Literally.

Going up the stone steps to the apartment building’s door, the bite of pain every time he put weight on his left leg was added to the list of shit he was ignoring. And he had to admit he was relieved that he didn’t have to fight with a lock or anything as he yanked things open. Given the crime in the neighborhood, there was nothing preventing a walk-in from anybody; then again, it wasn’t a surprise there wasn’t anything worth stealing in the place.

Other than the drugs on the fifth floor. And those would be guarded.

In fact, he could expect a twelve-gauge welcome wagon at any second.

As he waited for a bunch of heavily armed humans to rush out at him, he looked around the front hall. There was an apartment on each side of the building, and both doors were open, revealing interiors that were covered with dust and grime and furniture that was broken or upside down. The smell in the air was a dense compaction of old rot, and human urine, and ridiculously, he hated the idea of that woman walking by a place like this, much less coming inside.

But it wasn’t like she was a civilian or even a user. She was knee-deep in it.

Just like he was.

And what do you know, he didn’t want that for her, either.

What was it about sexual attraction that the shit made you find virtue in the object of your banging desire? He guessed it was some kind of guilt-free filter, so that you didn’t feel bad about wanting to be with someone who was on the fringes of morality.

As it dawned on him that no one was coming at him, he went to the base of the stairs and put his left, sloshy boot on the first step. Measuring how many landings were ahead of him, and dividing them by the sum of everything he didn’t care about—other vampires, humans, the drug trade itself—he was struck by a wave of fuck-this.

He’d been telling himself all day and all night that finding that woman was about getting the deal done, but maybe it was his sudden exhaustion—or a bog-standard, long overdue, reality check—that made him see the truth behind his mad scramble.

He was actually looking for her because he wanted to know that she was alive. That she didn’t need a doctor. That she was going to be okay after the fun and games of the evening before.

It had nothing to do with buying and selling the prison camp’s powdery wares.

If she was dead, or even if she wasn’t, that knowledge was not going to get him further with his own plans. If anything, it was going to tangle him in bullshit that had nothing to do with what he had to accomplish for himself.

This was worse than a wild-goose chase. This was going to rain shit on his own head.

The job he had to do was connected with that woman only if she was the one with the money. Other than that, she was not his business, and he needed to connect with that other guy, the one who’d taken the product originally.

Lucan looked around. If there were no guards here, there was no product here. No dealers here. No business here.

Unlike in that stretch of ten blocks between all those clubs, down by the bridge. Where he’d found the man he’d initially dealt with, before the woman had stepped in to do the negotiating.

Besides . . . if someone didn’t answer the phone when there were millions on the line?

He knew what had happened to her, even if he didn’t have the details.

On that note, he turned away from the stairs, and twisted his back to release some of the tension in his spasming abdominals—

What was that noise?

As he froze and held his breath, he listened. Out on the street, a car with loud music trolled by. Someone hollered at somebody else. In the distance, there were sirens—then again, when weren’t there sirens in downtown Caldwell.

Sniffing at the air, he just got more of the same. And the smell of his own blood.

Lots of the latter.

“This is bullshit,” he muttered as he went to the exit.

His eye on the prize needed to stay where it had been before that woman and he had crossed paths . . . and he’d ended up in a ditch.