“Oh, Albie, of course I’m aware of your situation.” A soft rain started to fall, the drops dappling the glass. “You’re worried about the man who stayed with your daughter last evening.” Another shot of quiet. “You didn’t know that he’d been there at your house all night? Well, children don’t always tell their parents everything, do they.”

“She’s not involved. I promise you, she knows nothing—”

“She didn’t tell you she had a guest during the dark hours. How can you really trust her?”

“You can’t have her.” The man’s voice cracked. “You took my son. . . . You cannot have her.”

“I can have anyone. And I can take anyone. You know that now, don’t you.”

Abruptly, Matthias became aware of a strange sensation in his left arm. Glancing down, he saw his fist had cranked on the steering wheel so hard his biceps were doing the shimmy.

He willed the grip to release . . . but it didn’t.

Bored with his body’s little spasms and tics, he ignored this newest one. “Here’s what you have to do if you want to be certain about your daughter. Give me Isaac Rothe and I go away. It’s just that simple. Get me what I want, and I leave your girl alone.”

At that moment, the entire block went dark—courtesy of his little phone call.

“You know I mean every word,” Matthias said, going for his cane. “Don’t make me kill another Childe.”

He hung up and put the phone back in his coat.

Swinging his door wide, he groaned as he got out, and chose to stick to the concrete sidewalk as opposed to the lawn, even though it was a less direct route to the back. His body ambulating over grass? Not a good thing.

After picking the dead bolt on the rear door—which proved that even though he was the boss, he hadn’t lost his nuts-and-bolts training—he sipped inside the funeral home and set about finding the body of the soldier who had saved him.

Confirming the identity of Jim Heron’s “corpse” felt as necessary as drawing his next breath.

Back in Boston, in that defense attorney’s rear garden, Jim braced himself for the fight that was coming, literally, on the wind.

“It’s just like killing a human,” Eddie shouted over the gale. “Go for the center of the chest—watch out for the blood, though.”

“The bitches are sloppy as shit.” Adrian’s grin had an edge of madness to it, his eyes sparkling with unholy light. “It’s why we wear leather.”

As the brick house’s kitchen door slammed shut, and the lights went out, Jim prayed that Isaac kept himself and that woman in there.

Because the enemy had arrived.