His voice sounded so clear. “Taz sweetie, you need to rest. Go to sleep, baby girl. Let me take care of things.”
Eventually she drifted to a deeper slumber. When she awoke, she knew she was alone but felt better, comforted. If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel him pressed against her.
Taz looked at the clock, and with a start realized she’d been there two hours. When she sent out a probe, she didn’t sense Matthias anywhere.
She dressed, hesitating before removing Rafael’s shirt. He was just a little larger than her, so it fit comfortably. She pulled it off, donned her T-shirt, pulled his shirt on over it, and left it unbuttoned.
It felt right. She rolled up the sleeves and had another thought.
She returned to the closet and took several more and heard a soft chuckle somewhere in the back of her mind.
In the kitchen, she found a plastic zipper-top bag and grabbed his shampoo, soap, and deodorant. She ran her hands through her hair, and while it looked a little weird from drying the way it did, it wasn’t bad. She had a ponytail holder in the car. She could pull it back, and it’d be fine.
She remade the bed and took his pillow. She knew the scent would eventually fade, but for now it proved an invaluable comfort.
* * * *
Taz sat in the car, ready to leave, but something was different. She studied the MP3 player.
It was unplugged from the patch cable.
She didn’t remember doing that. She plugged it in and turned the player on. It set to the main menu, not on the album she’d been listening to.
What the hell?
She thumbed through the playlists and found a new one that wasn’t there before, she was sure of it.
Music for Taz.
A shiver ran through her. What the fuck? There was no one else around. Another fugue?
She glanced in the backseat. Rafael’s laptop case was there, but was it in a different position than before? She couldn’t be sure.
Did she sleepwalk? She’d had a damn good wet dream about Rafe, she remembered that much. But nothing about the MP3 player.
She wasn’t brave enough to investigate the new playlist. She wanted to get on the road. Picking a different playlist, Driving Music, she popped the garage door, backed out, and waited for it to close all the way again before heading north.
Chapter Nine
Taz stopped for the night north of Memphis, paid cash for a hotel room, and used her vampire charm to make the clerk accept her fake name without needing to see her ID.
No sign of Matthias in her mind when she checked for him. He hadn’t doubled back to find her.
She turned on her BlackBerry, then immediately went into the settings and shut off the tracking feature. There were several missed calls and two voice mails.
Robertson’s voice nearly broke her heart and will. “Taz, sweetheart, please call. We’re very worried. Matthias is practically beside himself. We understand you’re upset and overwhelmed, but please let us help you. We love you.”
The second was Matthias, left that evening. “Taz, I love you. If I did something to upset you, I’m sorry. Please call me so I can talk to you. Whatever you need, I’ll do it. I just want to make sure you’re safe.”
She saved the messages and turned the phone off again. She didn’t want to risk it ringing and breaking down and talking to them. Her next task was to go through her digital camera. Fortunately, Rafe’s laptop had a card reader that took her camera’s card.
Browsing through the pictures brought a sad, wistful smile. Taken by a waiter at their dinner that night in Yellowstone, Rafe wore a playful, teasing smile. In the last picture they looked at each other, their foreheads touching, like two long-married lovers instead of people who’d met that morning.
Taz touched the screen. She didn’t delete the pictures from her card. Instead, she saved copies to the hard drive and kept the original files on the camera card as backup. Then she shut down the computer.
She grabbed her keys and ran downstairs, grabbing two of the several photo albums from the trunk of the Mustang. She couldn’t handle reading his journals yet. An hour later she sat, alternately crying and laughing as she looked through the pictures. They spanned decades, yet Rafe, Matthias, Robertson, and Albert hadn’t aged a day. How could she have missed that Robertson never seemed to age?
He was family. Well, the closest thing she had to family with her parents dead. He’d been like a dad to her even while they were alive, practically raising her while her famous parents were gone all the time.
She closed the albums and neatly stacked them on the dresser. Now what to do about the mysterious new playlist?
Taz curled up on the bed with Rafael’s MP3 player. She navigated to the playlists, with titles like Driving Music, Work Music, Booty Call—that would be interesting—and then finally, toward the bottom, the new one. Music for Taz.
Her heart pounded. With trembling fingers she thumbed the control and scrolled through the song list. Romantic ballads, a few up-tempo love songs, sultry jazz numbers.
She powered Rafael’s laptop up again and located the MP3 software. There were the playlists, the newest one, Music for Taz, created that afternoon while she was at Rafael’s house.
While she was asleep.
“What the fuck?”
She stared at the screen. It must have been her. Yet she didn’t remember doing it. She didn’t even know how to do it, because his MP3 player was a different brand and used different software than hers.
She curled up on the bed with earbuds, listening to the playlist, tears falling. She loved Matthias, there was no doubt in her mind, but the emotion in the songs made her think of Rafe and his life cut short. Of who he was, the man she never truly got to know. The man she felt like she’d known her whole life.
At some point Taz fell asleep. The shadowy figure in her mind reached out and touched her. She couldn’t see his face and wondered if it was the same one who came to her when she was shot by the demon in Yellowstone, the one that encouraged her to hang on and pull through. Was this the source of the phantom voice in her mind? The one who seemed to know things?
The one who sounded like Rafe?
“I’ll always be here for you, Taz. As long as you want me, baby girl.”
Dropping into a fitful sleep, she dreamed about Rafe and the boardwalk, watched him walking toward her, kissing him…
* * * *
In this dream, their boardwalk kiss went uninterrupted by Matthias speaking in her mind. She and Rafe stood all alone on the boardwalk. Rafe pulled her to him, his stiff cock rubbing against her through their jeans. She tangled her hand in his hair, wrapped her legs tightly around him, and pulled his lips to her neck.
“Take me, Rafe,” she whispered as he nuzzled her flesh. “Do it.”
“I can’t bite you like this, baby girl. I wish I could.” She shivered at the feel of his breath against her skin. “You’re not mine to have.”
“I want you.”
“I know, sugar. Close your eyes.” She did, and then they were in the bed in his Yellowstone cabin. He slowly undressed her, kissing every inch of her body as he bared her, loving her. He worked his way to her breasts. His sweet, hot mouth engulfed first one nipple, his tongue flicking against her and turning it hard. Then he moved to the other one, repeating the action and sending throbbing waves of aching need straight to her pussy. Her clit throbbed in time with each stroke of his tongue until she begged him to move lower.
Even knowing it was a dream, she didn’t want to let him go, wanted to feel his body against hers as long as she could. When he finally bent between her legs, he glanced up at her with a savagely amused smile.
“Like this?” he asked. Then his lips and tongue found her clit. He closed his eyes as he took his sweet time, his delicious mouth doing things to her in this dream that she never experienced with him in real life. She closed her eyes and let herself go, enjoying the release he brought her. When she finished, he propped himself up on hi
s arms over her.
His intense blue eyes smoldered at her. “Are you ready for me?”
“Please!” she gasped.
He thrust his cock home. Once fully buried inside her, he took long, sensuous strokes, his gaze boring into hers.
“I love you, Taz baby. I wish I could give you more.”
“You’re giving me plenty, Rafe,” she whispered before she kissed him.
* * * *
Matthias paced, so surly and short tempered that Albert and Tim considered darting him with the tranquilizer pistol.
“Matthias,” Tim said, “all we can do is wait for her to let us know where she is.”
“What if it’s too late when she does?”
“I have the jet on standby. When we find out where she is, we can be in the air in thirty minutes. We know she can’t drive to Hawaii, so wherever she is, she’s not more than a five-hour flight away at this point,” Albert said.
“Why won’t she call? What if something’s happened to her?”
“She’s a grown woman,” Tim sternly cautioned. “This was bound to happen sooner or later as stressed as she’s been. She is a creature of habit, and her world completely upended. She needs time to decompress. She’s had a horrible series of shocks and needs time to make sense of it all. She will come back to us.”
“Aren’t you worried about her?”
“Of course I am! Had you kept a better eye on her, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now, would we?”
“What happened to it not being my fault?”
Tim shook his head, rubbing his eyes. “I’m sorry, Matthias. I know it’s not your fault. I’m as concerned as you are, but I have confidence in her. Now that she is aware of her powers, she can keep herself safe.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I can’t. But even if she was with us, it wouldn’t be possible to protect her every single second.”
Matthias sat. “I wish she’d let us know where she is.”
* * * *
Taz checked out of the hotel at dawn after a night of incredible dreams, grabbed a quick breakfast in the hotel lobby from their continental spread, then fueled up. She checked a map she found in the glove box and picked a route that wound through Western Kentucky and touched the southern tip of Illinois, taking her through St. Louis.
Taz started the car, let it idle, and looked at the MP3 player. A sleepwalking episode, that’s all. Strange voice, now this—definitely stress. Overwhelmed by stress.
And grief.
Let’s not forget Taz’s Big Honkin’ List O’ Guilt, either.
Thumbing through the playlists, she selected Driving Music and tapped play. It was spooky how similar their tastes were in music. She liked a wide variety of artists and genres, but when driving, she preferred something with a heavy, toe-tapping bass beat. Rock and roll. Apparently, so did Rafe. In fact, most of the songs in this playlist were on her own MP3 player.
Slipping Rafe’s sunglasses on, she pulled out of the gas station and pointed the pony toward the interstate.
It was easy to let her mind drift while driving. Rafe had—of course—an excellent sound system that did the music justice, including a small subwoofer providing just the right amount of thump to accompany the bass line. With the landscape peeling away on both sides, she focused on the asphalt ahead of her, trying not to let her mind drift to what happened at Yellowstone.
There would be plenty of time to deal with that soon enough.
Rafe, I’m so sorry. I wish I could talk to you and tell you how I feel, let you know how sorry I am this all happened.
The voice didn’t respond.
An Illinois state trooper tagged her doing ninety in a sixty-five zone just north of Paducah, a few miles inside the state line. She didn’t feel bad about smiling as he walked up and she chatted with him. She wished him a nice day as he returned to his patrol car, letting her go without even asking to see license and registration.
Now that Taz knew how her vampire mojo worked, she used it to her advantage. She didn’t hurt him, he just forgot to ticket her after pulling her over. She never got speeding tickets before she knew about her powers. Why should she start getting them now?
She left the St. Louis Arch in her rearview mirror after stopping for an early lunch, and just after dark she ate dinner north of Kansas City. She considered pulling over for the night, but with all the coffee and nervous energy she knew it was a waste of time.
Pushing on, she stopped for gas and coffee in Council Bluffs after midnight. Low on cash, she broke down and paid with a credit card, knowing Matthias could track the purchase but hoping she was still far enough from her destination he wouldn’t figure it out yet. Around two a.m., she pulled into a rest stop north of Sioux City and parked under a security light next to an RV with Virginia plates. She laid the seat back with Rafe’s pillow tucked under her head and tried to nap, eventually drifting into a fitful but dreamless sleep.
Two hours later, she was on the road again before dawn. She ate breakfast in Sioux Falls, and the hot summer sun chased her across the rolling South Dakota landscape. She hadn’t turned on her phone since Tennessee and wondered if she should check her messages. Nearly out of money, she pulled into Mitchell for gas and an ATM withdrawal. Fueled, fed, and flush with cash, she returned to I-90 and headed west.
* * * *
Albert tapped Matthias on the shoulder. “I know where she is.”
He sat up, immediately wide awake. “Where?”
“I should say, where she was early this morning.”
Matthias jumped out of bed and grabbed him. “Where?”
“Council Bluffs, Iowa.”
Matthias let go. “What? That’s not possible. That’s—” He considered the distance. “That’s not possible.”
“Look for yourself.”
Matthias pounded down the stairs to the office, looked at the computer, then pulled up a map. “She had to be driving without stops to make it that far.”
Tim walked in with a cup of coffee and handed it to Matthias. “She has a very strong stamina. And she’s running.”
“Why would she run from me? What did I do?”
“Not running from, Matthias. Running to.”
“All right then, running to where?”
Tim had logged into her bank account earlier that morning but didn’t tell Matthias. He didn’t want Matthias swooping in and scaring her. “I have an idea.”
* * * *
It was late afternoon when Taz passed Wall and rolled into Rapid City. As tired as she was, it was tempting to stop, but she felt the pull, so close she didn’t want to lose daylight travel time. She grabbed a light dinner and coffee and returned to the highway before dark. After consulting the map she jumped off I-90 near Ranchester, Wyoming, and pulled into a motel for the night.
At dawn she was on the road again, winding her way through the Bighorn mountains. She ate lunch in Greybull, then finally turned on her BlackBerry where four voice mails waited for her. She ignored them and used the browser to find the number she needed and made a reservation with one of her personal cards, hoping Robertson wouldn’t think about checking that account.
She wasn’t counting on it. Robertson knew her too well. If nothing else, maybe he would keep Matthias off her for a few days.
Then she turned the phone off.
She had an early dinner in Cody and gassed up, paying cash. They might think she went the other way, through Gardiner, and she didn’t want them figuring it out too soon. The ranger at the Yellowstone East Entrance smiled and took her money, handing her a park map, brochure, and newsletter.
“Have you ever been here before?” he asked. Was he looking her over carefully, or was it just her exhaustion?
She wistfully smiled. “Yes, I have.” Today was two weeks since Rafe died. It felt like yesterday that she’d kissed him, and yet a lifetime since.
“Be careful near Fishing Bridge. We’ve had bison getting into the road there a lot. You might
not see them in time in the dark.”
“I will.”
“Do you have a reservation?”
“Old Faithful Lodge cabins.”
“I love it over there. Beautiful.”
She nodded in agreement. “Yes, it is.”
* * * *
The ranger watched the Mustang’s taillights disappear into the thickening gloom and pulled out his BlackBerry. He sent a text message.
* * * *
Matthias looked haggard, drawn, and wouldn’t eat.
“You must eat something,” Tim scolded.
“I’m too worried.” He sat at the kitchen table, and Tim put a bowl of soup in front of him.
“Eat. Now.”
Matthias finally spooned some into his mouth.
Albert walked in. Matthias missed their shared glance.
Tim patted Matthias on the shoulder. “Finish that. I’ll be right back.”
They walked to the office, and Albert pointed at the screen. “You were right.”
“I didn’t want to say anything to Matthias because I don’t want him going after her. That would only make matters worse.”
“When do we tell him?”
Tim shook his head. “We don’t. Not yet. Let her have a day, she’s safe there. I’ve already made a few calls. She’ll have several people watching her once she checks in.”
“She had to really be moving to make it out there that soon.”
“She’s very determined. I’ll leave tonight, after Matthias is asleep. I’m sure she was smart enough not to take the north entrance. Probably cut through Cody, knowing her. I’ll fly into Livingston and send the jet back, arrange a plane to Gardiner and have a car waiting. Don’t tell him until I say so.”
“He’s going to be extremely upset, you know. At both of us.”
“I’m more concerned about her than I am him. She needs a chance to work through this in her way. Matthias must learn to give her space.”
Tim’s BlackBerry vibrated. He looked at it, then nodded.