"Tess," Dante said amid the quiet, "you know you can talk to me."
"Do I?" she said, finally pushing words out of her mouth. "I'm not sure what I know right now, Dante. I'm not sure what to think--about anything."
He swore, a snarled oath spoken in Italian. "What happened? Are you... hurt? Jesus, if he touched you in any way--"
Tess scoffed. "I suppose that answers one thing for me already. We're talking about Ben, aren't we? He was the drug dealer you were after last night?"
There was a slight hesitation. "Have you seen him today, Tess? Have you seen him at any time since you and I were together last night?"
"No," she said. "I haven't seen him, Dante."
"But you spoke with him. When?"
"He called last night and left a message, evidently while we were... " She shook her head, not wanting to remember how wonderful it had felt to lie in her bed in Dante's arms, how protected and peaceful she' d felt. Now all she felt was a pervading chill. "Is that why you've been screwing around with me, because you needed me in order to get close to him?"
"Christ, no. It's a lot more complicated than that--"
"How complicated? Have you been playing me all this time? Or did the real game start the night you showed up here with your dog and we--Oh, my God, now even that makes more sense. Harvard isn't your dog at all, is he? What did you do, take some stray animal off the street to use as bait for reeling me into your sick game?"
"Tess, please. I wanted to explain--" "Go ahead. I'm listening."
"Not like this," he growled. "I'm not going to do this over the phone." She felt a dark tension growing in him as he spoke, could almost see him pacing on the other end, alive with restless energy, his black brows low over his eyes in a scowl, his strong hand raking over his scalp. "Listen, you need to stay away from Ben Sullivan. He's involved in something very dangerous. I don't want you anywhere near him, do you understand?"
"That's funny. He said the same thing about you. He said a lot of things, actually. Crazy things, like how your partner brutally assaulted him last night."
"What?"
"He said he'd been bitten, Dante. Can you explain that to me? He said the man you were with when the two of you broke into Ben's apartment took him away in a car and then savagely attacked him. According to Ben, he was bitten in the throat."
"Son of a bitch."
"Can that be true?" she asked, horrified that he hadn't even attempted to deny it was possible. "Do you know where Ben is? I haven't heard from him since that call. Have you or your friends done something to him? I have to see him."
"No! I don't know where he is, Tess, but you have to promise me you'll stay away from him."
Tess felt miserable, scared, and confused. "What's happening here, Dante? What are you really involved in?"
"Tess, look. I need you to go somewhere safe. Right now. Go to a hotel, a public building, anywhere --just go right now and stay there until I can come and get you tonight."
Tess laughed, but it was a humorless sound that grated in her ears. "I'm working, Dante. And even if I wasn't, I don't think I'd go anywhere to wait for you. Not until I understand what's going on here."
"I will tell you, Tess. I promise you. I had planned to tell you all of it, even if this hadn't happened."
"Okay, fine. My schedule is booked solid today, but I can break for lunch in a couple of hours. If you want to talk to me, you'll have to come here."
"I... God damn it. I can't do that right now, Tess. I just... can't. It has to be tonight. You have to trust me."
"Trust you," she whispered, closing her eyes and tipping her head back against the office door. "I guess that's something I can't do right now, Dante. I have to go. Good-bye."
She flipped the cell phone closed and shut the ringer off altogether. She didn't want to talk anymore, not to anyone.
As Tess walked over to put the cell on her desk, her gaze caught on something else that had been troubling her since she'd found it earlier that morning. It was a computer flash drive, a slim, portable data-storage device. She'd discovered it underneath the lip of the examination table in one of her clinic rooms--the very room where Ben had been yesterday, when she'd caught him unexpectedly and he'd made excuses that he came in to repair the table's sticky hydraulics. Tess had suspected he wasn't being truthful with her--about a lot of things. Now she knew that was the case. But the question was, why?
In a furious mental outburst, Dante glared at his cell phone and sent the device hurtling against the opposite wall of his living quarters. It shattered with the impact, emitting a shower of sparks and smoke as it broke into a hundred tiny pieces. The destruction was satisfying, if brief. But it did nothing to assuage his anger, all of it self-directed.
Dante resumed the tight pacing he'd been doing while on the phone with Tess. He needed to be moving now. He just needed to keep his limbs in action, his mind alert.
He'd been making a brilliant mess of everything lately. While he'd never held an inkling of regret for being born of the Breed, now his vampire blood seethed with frustration over the fact that he was trapped inside. Denied the possibility of fixing things with Tess until the sun finally retreated below the horizon and freed him to move about in her world.
He thought the wait was going to drive him out of his mind.
It nearly had.
By the time he went to find Tegan in the training facility at a few minutes to sundown, his skin was hot and prickling, too tight everywhere. He was antsy and itching for combat. His ears were ringing, the incessant buzz like a swarm of bees in his blood.