For the Dead Travel Fast
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"Say it again," Castle demanded, his shoulder pressed up against the back of the passenger seat. He hated being stuck in the back, but he felt weak-limbed and weird, just coming out of phase, like surfacing after a deep dive. "He said what?"
"Ute Mountain Reservation, ask for Wahkara. I don't know how it's spelled, or even that I heard him right, but I repeated it to him and he didn't correct me." She gave a frustrated noise through her teeth, gripping the wheel. "I didn't mishear."
"I'm not—No—I apologize for making it sound like you're an unreliable narrator—"
"What's that?"
Castle blinked. Glanced at her sideways. "Uh, a device in a novel, where the point of view is from the main character who you later figure out wasn't reporting events accurately, so what you thought was true turns out to be not." He could have sworn they'd had this conversation. Many times.
"Oh, yeah, you've mentioned that before," she murmured.
There was a weird silence, which he hastily filled. "I'm only attempting to better understand—"
"I know, Rick," she said.
He paused once more, scrambled to reorient. Had he been interrogating her? Was she upset with him for sleeping all this way? He was so bewildered that he realized he was staring down into nothing, the blank front passenger seat, empty but for the remnants of their dinner.
She cleared her throat. "You seem anxious, tired." A glance at him that was far more compassionate than he understood. "How are you doing? Really."
"Oh, yeah, tired." He sank into the back of the passenger's seat, his cheek against his knuckled grip. "I'm feeling it this time."
She reached back and ran the flat of her nails against his jaw. "You're quite warm. You get any water?"
"I drank some water," he promised. His eyes were heavy as she stroked him. It was such a nice feeling, her fingers on his chin and cheek, the rhythm of the car on the highway. "Tacos were good."
"Mm."
There was such a nice long silence, as if they had both agreed to a truce in negotiations. Negotiations he hadn't even realized they'd been making, and for what? But her fingers stroking him... he could live here forever.
Until his brain kicked him again, reminding him that he'd spent six hours asleep, useless to her while she did all the hard work, and this was an important clue, this could be the clue, and the more they drove, the closer they got to make or break.
"What'd he say to you again? The phrase. Go to—"
"No, he said, Ute Mountain Reservation. Ask for Wahkara. Not a command, not a 'when you get there' go see this guy, just two statements." She scratched his chin, so evidently she was no longer impatient with him. If she even had been. If that hadn't all been in his head.
He'd spent so long second-guessing what she meant, what she had intended with the words she'd said, what that look was supposed to signal to him, did the brief touch of his arm have some special significance—
Oh.
No. That was then.
He took a slow breath, forcing the last of the haze to clear from his brain.
The phases had the tendency to push him back to those confusing years where he hadn't been sure if it was all some grand illusion in his head. Every time he came out of a deep one, it was as if he was back there, the hardscrabble life for a scrap of her attention.
But this was now. He turned his head into her touch and softly kissed the center of her palm.
Kate relaxed, a release all through her body. Self-defense, that had been her understandable reaction to his thinly-veiled tone of accusation. And now she was responding to his reorientation.
Her thumb brushed his lips and he let his eyes slide shut, reveling in it.
"He knew right away," she murmured. "And I've never had that happen to me before. As a vampire, I mean. For everyone to know."
"He smelled you then? Can't hide it anymore." Team Edward, she had snorted, that's how he told me he was a vampire too. And then he realized, "It's that strong in here?"
"It's strong," she said quietly.
"Is it… tempting?" he grinned. His eyes were still closed and at her silence, he startled upright and looked at her. "It is! Kate."
"It's nothing I can't control. The same tempting as coffee in the morning—"
"That's not comforting. If I'm the coffee. You'll drink me to the last drop."
She chuckled, her fingers running down his throat and then falling away. He watched her close her hand around the wheel again and wondered if she even should be resisting him. Maybe if she just sipped a little every time—
"Did you have some kind of insight?" she asked.
He paused, trying to remember where they were, what they'd been talking about.
"I don't even know where the Ute Mountain Reservation is," she continued. "I'm guessing Utah, because we're trying to get to Great Salt Lake, but I don't actually know that."
"I do believe that's partially where Utah gets its name, but no, I don't think they are." He rubbed his thumb into his forehead, trying to think. "Ute Mountain Reservation. I think they're in Colorado. But does that make sense?"
"I think this is another stop on the vampire underground. I'm worried that Dr Harris sent warning ahead that we were coming." She glanced back at him with a worried crease to her brow. "Do you think that's what it's about? The kid said we couldn't get in to Great Salt Lake without talking to Wahkara. Talk to Wahkara because he's the next on the line?"
"Could be, yeah." He nudged her shoulder. "That wouldn't be a bad thing, Kate. To be guided in."
"Devil you know," she frowned, her eyes back on the road again. "I don't want to be walking into a trap. Harris—"
"A kid at a taco truck told you to stop in at a reservation, Kate. First of all, I don't even know that we can get on the reservation—it's sovereign territory. They don't have to let us in."
"Well, that's when we ask for Wahkara," she said. "I assume."
"I wonder if Wahkara isn't a name of a person but more like a password for a speakeasy," he mused. He had to lay his head against the back of the seat again, whatever energy the mystery had given him now draining out. "I wish I had my phone. This is my specialty, doing research, deep dives. I'm no good to you otherwise."
"Don't say that," she murmured, glancing at him.
"Do the burners you bought have internet access?"
"Yeah, but you have to add the minutes to the phone plan to get internet, which requires a credit card."
"Oh." He wondered if he could use the company card again. "Did we blow our shot by calling Alexis at the same place where we used—"
"No, no," she murmured. "Nothing is blown. If you want to use the PI card for some internet research, then please do. We'll just toss the phone after."
"I wonder if we can get a map of Colorado at a rest stop?" he offered. "And then see where Ute Mountain Reservation is. I can do old school research."
"Would the map have it? What if the map doesn't include Native American property? Since it's sovereign."
"I don't know. Good question." He was so tired, but this wasn't something where he could take another nap and solve all their problems. If they missed the reservation because he needed to take a quick powder, no. Not acceptable. They were partners. "Okay, I'm going to do it. How long do you think I have?"
She chewed on her bottom lip, blew out a breath. "Just be as fast as you can. Nebraska and again in Colorado? Doesn't tell them much, if they are looking for us, but it's more than I want to give away."
He wondered who exactly she was worried about following them. Their friends at the NYPD or Dr Harris's Horde?
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