Page 42 of Soulmates
Trajan hits the key fob. Lights flash and his SUV beeps. “There’s at least two of them behind us. Get in quickly.”
I do as I’m told…mostly, pausing only to taste the air. Is it Connor back there? No, not a horse shifter or a phouka. Is it? I clamber into the vehicle, unsure whether I’ve identified our tail or not.
He puts the car in gear, leaning over the seat, his gaze raking the darkness. I buckle in. This isn’t the time for idle reassurance. The vibe is bad, like the scene in the movie where the hero thinks he’s home free and Chuckie jumps out of the backseat waving his butcher knife around.
We pull out into traffic. I’m not sure where we are, nor how long it’ll take us to get back to the hotel. It’s three in the morning, which means we’ve got a couple of hours before Trajan has to be inside.
But what if they follow us? What if we can’t shake them? I start marshalling my arguments. If I’m the one they’re after, Trajan will just have to let me out. My chances won’t be great, but better than a vampire in the sun.
He makes a quick left, and then a right.He speeds up. Slows down. I’m watching out the back window. There are no headlights matching us. He turns one more time and drives close to the speed limit.
“Would Connor follow us like that?” Apparently dodging a tail disconnected my filter.
Trajan shoots me a glance. “Connor?”
I rake a hand through my hair, pissed that it’s all floppy and not held in place by product. “He was there.” Trajan’s expression stops me. I swallow hard and keep going. “Tonight. He came up to me on the dance floor.”
Trajan tips his head to check the rearview mirror, then the side mirror. His lips are tight, like he’s trapping the words inside. “You should have brought him to me.”
“Yeah.” Another rake of my saggy hair. The SUV’s speed is accelerating. “He said we should lay low, and things would work out.”
We hit a freeway on-ramp at about seventy mph. “You heard the part where we all decided we needed to talk to him, right?”
I smack the door with the side of my hand. “Guess you should have taught me the vampire mind-meld thing.”
He shakes his head, not at all impressed with my snotty-brat voice. Any hope I have for raunchyfun dies a ragged death. We’re doing about ninety, darting around other vehicles.
“Look.” I turn in my seat so I’m facing him. “If we die on the freeway, we never will figure out what’s goingon, because it won’t matter anymore.”
He inhales, solidly aggrieved, but he does ease up on the accelerator. It’s just a few more minutes tillhe says we’re almost there.Either we weren’t that far away or Tony-the-drag-racer broke more than the speed limit.
OXO
“I’m worried they’re following us.” Trajan mutters his concern to the hotel room door, sliding the key card into the slot. “We probably shouldn’t stay here.”
I tap the hall’s glossy wallpaper with my knuckle. “Sun’s coming up pretty soon.”
He scowls at the door. I reach around him to push it open. The room is just the way we left it. Dirty mint carpet, slumping mattress, discouraging comforter.The contents of my surviving suitcase draped over every surface. The air is foul with old smoke.
“Seriously. I didn’tsee anyone, but what if they hit us when I’m down?” He braces himself on the plywood dresser, obviously frustrated. “Maybe we’d be better off in one of Jacques’s safe houses.”
Jacques.Trajanhadn’t mentioned his makerin a while, and something about him tweaks my gut. Trajan and I hadstayed in one of those safe houses, up in the Hollywood Hills.It’d be more luxurious than a shitty Pasadena hotel, but there areso many pieces to unravel in this mess, I’m notsurewe want to be drawing any more into the mix.
“Not unless we can get in without letting him know.”
Trajan gives me a measured look, and I like that he’s thinking things through instead of just blowing me off.”Okay.” He straightens. “Let’s pack.We won’t go through the lobby, and we’ll use separate exits.”
“Sounds good.” I pretend confidence I don’t quite feel.”Move the cara couple of blocks away. Text me, and I’ll meet you.”
There are lots of ways things could go wrong, but I jam my clothing into the duffel bag anyway. Trajan spends a few minutes peering through the gap in the window drapes, then disappears in the vampire room.
A few minutes later, we’re both in the SUV, the pink-and-green hotel room fading in the distance. No one accosts us as we make our escape, and it takes most of my self-restraint not to wonder aloud if we really needed to leave.
The traffic is light, and if I close my eyes, the smell of the street drowns out the smell of smoke from my bag. When the silence starts to weigh more than I do, I break it. “Where are we going?”
“Pacific Palisades.”
I squint at him, unsure of how far is too far. “We’ll get there before sunrise, right?”
