The Vampire Diaries: Trust In Betrayal (Kindle Worlds) (In Time We Trust Trilogy Book 3) (3 page)

She just smiles. “There’s a motel down the road from here, and with the sun coming up, the Augustines will be stuck inside for long enough that we can relax for a while.”

“Before nightfall, we need weapons,” Ric says. “My stash in the trunk of Damon’s car isn’t enough. Plus, we need more concrete.” He tosses me a significant look and I curse and scrub my hand through my hair.

The grey-haired waitress chooses that moment to arrive, rapping me on the top of the head with bony fingers armored in the best costume jewelry ten bucks can buy.

“We don’t use that kind of language in this establishment, young man,” she rebukes.

Jeremy’s eyes bulge and he stuffs a fist against his mouth, his cheeks puffing out as he tries to hold back a guffaw. Stefan grins cheerfully and I scowl at him.

“Yeah,” Ric puts in. “Respect your elders, punk.”

Elena’s fingers twitch in mine with silent laughter but when I look over at her, she bats her eyelashes innocently.

The waitress gives Ric an approving smile and a nod, whipping out her order pad with a speed her feet haven’t seen since the disco ball days. “Normally I begin with the ladies, but today, I think we’ll start with you, honey.”

Ric winks at me and orders pancakes.

I swear I could feel my fingernails start to grow in the time it took for the geriatric waitress to repeat everyone’s orders through her dentures, pausing to "sweetie" and "honey" each of us individually. Except for me, of course.

And once Stefan smiled at her, it was all over because he reminded her of her grandson Willie and of course there’s never been such a dear and sweet boy in all the history of the world and she had to tell us his life story from his first dirty diaper. And I just bet he visits lots when Granny’s got fresh, uncounted tip money in her purse. I roll my eyes as she totters back toward the kitchen.

“So when I said a plan, I didn’t mean for tonight. I meant for how to stop the Augustines,” Stefan says, looking uncomfortable and obviously ready to stop being the center of attention.

Caroline clucks her tongue. “Ooh, that’s not what I’d expect from a ‘dear sweet boy’ like you.”

Stefan gives her an annoyed look and she giggles delightedly, flipping her hair back over her shoulder. When Elena doesn’t join in, I glance over and find her eyelids drooping. She’s barely going to last through breakfast, if that.

“Yeah.” I push away from the table. “I’m going to go get us rooms for the night. Or day. Or whatever. As for a plan, that’s 1-2-3 easy. Find out who they are, find out
where
they are, then get a one-day rental on a wood chipper and plenty of diesel. Problem solved.”

I bend my head to leave a kiss on Elena’s knuckles, tucking her hand back into her lap before I stride for the door.

“Um, he’s not serious, is he?” I hear Cali say uneasily behind me.

I straight-arm the front doors out of my way and take a deep gulp of air, the rising sun easing a little of the tension out of my shoulders.

She has no fucking clue how serious I can be when it comes to keeping the Augustines away from my family.

DAMON

My omelet is waiting, and it’s still hot enough to steam when I come back and drop five keys in the middle of the table.

“That’s all the rooms they had left. We’re gonna
have to spoon,” I sing song, winking at Elena.

“Who says I’m letting you in my room?” she says, lifting her chin. “I hear your kind has cooties.”

I smirk, and then turn back to the rest of the table. “Ric gets his own room. Everybody else has to share,” I tell them, and pick up my fork.

That little counter girl out behind Jack in the Box was good, but blood will never have anything on the fluffy texture you can get out of a well-made omelet. And what this place lacks in atmosphere and service, it apparently makes up for with a half-decent hand behind the spatula.

“Why does he get his own room?” Katherine pouts.

“Because he’s even more likely than you are to kill us in our sleep,” I remind her with an artificial smile. “Plus, he snores.”

Cali gives me another one of those stop-talking-like-a-crazy-person looks, but they’re getting milder from overuse.

Ric narrows his eyes at me in a half-hearted glare. “Thanks a lot, dick.”

I blow him a kiss with a flare of my eyes and snap off another bite of omelet.

“Cali’s the one who should get her own room,” Jeremy says, his eyes darting from her to the table and back up to me. “She doesn’t really know any of us well enough to be roommates anyway.”

“She can stay with me,” Caroline says, flashing her a smile. “Us girls have to stick together.”

Katherine sighs. “Fine.” She turns and bats her eyelashes at Caroline. “Ladies night at the spa, then?”

Caroline gives her an incredulous look. “Um, no. I said girls, not heartless, manipulative vipers. You killed me, remember? Not great for the beauty sleep.”

Cali pauses halfway through a bite of bacon, both eyebrows jumping as she looks to Jeremy for confirmation. He shrugs, a little sheepishly, and nods. She gives her bacon an odd, miserable look, then appears to change her mind and eats it anyway.

Katherine leans back in her chair and folds her arms irritably, the cottage cheese and bowl of fruit in front of her still untouched. “Looks like we’re having road trip déjà vu, then, boys,” she says to Jeremy, then winks at Matt with a touch of a smile bouncing back onto her lips. “Though you don’t have to sleep on the floor if you don’t want to, Matty.”

Matt blushes, his shoulders hunching as he wolfs down another huge bite of hashbrowns.

“Um, yeah, no,” Jeremy says. “That’s not happening.”

I should make him put up with Katherine, since he was the one who forced me to take her on this whole damn trip, but the look of betrayal that flashes through her eyes when she glances away from him is way too sweet to waste.

“Aww, don’t worry, Katherine,” I pout in mock sympathy. “You can still sleep with your old friend Silas. There’s plenty of room in the bed of the truck.”

She pushes back from the table, holding up her hands. “You know, I didn’t ask to come along on your stupid joyride. I have better things to do than eat in greasy diners and stay in threadbare little motor lodges.”

“Yeah, like watch
Arrow
,” Jeremy pipes up. “Over and over and
over
again.”

Caroline snickers and Elena smiles at her from across the table.

Katherine’s face hardens into an expression that used to mean she was about to snap someone’s neck, but now that she’s human, it just means she’s in a snit. I lean back in my chair, enjoying myself too much to even bother eating. Maybe Jeremy was right: bringing Katherine along will make an otherwise irritating road trip all the more entertaining.

“You can just YouTube all the workout scenes, you know,” Jeremy goads.

Cali points her fork at him with one arched eyebrow. “And you know this how, exactly?”

“Workout tips,” Jeremy says. “Guy’s got a hell of a routine.”

“Uh-huh,” Cali says, unconvinced.

Jeremy’s ears start to redden under her scrutiny and Matt chokes a little on his coffee as he starts to laugh.

“You know what?” Katherine slaps her hands down on the table in preparation for announcing whatever dire ultimatum she thinks she’s in a position to enforce. My grin widens in anticipation.

“You can stay with me,” Stefan says, and every head at the table turns to look at him. He clears his throat and forces a tight, unconvincing smile. “Katherine, you can have the other bed in my room. Okay? We don’t all need to start fighting on the first day.”

“Oh,” Katherine says, smoothing her face, but not quite quickly enough to hide the fact that she was as surprised as I was by the offer. Her lips curve up into a seductive smile, which usually curdles my appetite, but today it does the opposite as I watch my brother go a little green around the gills at the sight. “Won’t that be fun,” she purrs, and Stefan’s polite smile twitches and freezes into place.

“Hero hair, to the rescue!” I singsong, grinning at his pained look.

It’s almost worth it to have burned my house down just to see my brother’s martyrish tendencies bite him in the ass so thoroughly. Who knows? One night with Katherine Pierce, and he might be cured for good.

I take a smug sip of coffee and Jeremy catches my eye, nodding pointedly toward my left. I tense automatically but when I look over, Elena’s fine, her chin nodding toward her chest and her hands unfurling softly in her lap as she dozes beside me.

Something in my chest squeezes sickly as I remember her scream when the Augustines pulled me away from her, her bare skin flashing beneath the limbs of her attackers. I try to salve the memory with the sight of her now, so relaxed at my side that she feels safe enough to go to sleep right out in the open.

But even that doesn’t ease my mind, because I have eight other people to keep alive and for all I know, the Augustines already have their human allies out combing the state for us.

“Well, kiddies, it’s been fun,” I announce, flipping our one untraceable credit card toward my brother and picking one of the room keys off the table. “Make sure the waitress has good memories of us.”

His lips tighten at the thought of more compulsion but he nods, his eyes flicking away as I bend to lift Elena into my arms. She’s so used to me carrying her to bed when she falls asleep in front of the fireplace at the boarding house that she doesn’t make a sound when I pick her up. The geriatric waitress smiles at me, apparently finally forgiving me for my earlier profanity, and shuffles over to hold the front door for me.

I give the waitress a tight smile and bend my head to Elena as I carry her out into the dawning morning, inhaling the smoky scent of her hair like it’s a prayer for every impossible thing I need to pull off to keep her precious body whole and safe.

I have bluffed and blustered and crashed and burned through over a century and a half of dangerous living but now I need to do everything absolutely perfectly. Because I can’t afford the price of failure.

*
              *              *

JEREMY

I collapse onto the bed with an explosive exhale. We came straight over here after breakfast in the diner, but I’m already headed toward thirty hours without sleep and I am beyond ready to crash.

Matt gives me a sideways look as he drops his duffel onto the purple and orange hotel bedspread. I reach over and snap the Walmart sales tags off the zipper pull.

“What?” I
say.

“What do you mean,
what
? You bailed on the car with Katherine in it.” He rolls his shoulders and reaches up to knead the right one. “After our last road trip, how did I manage to forget how exhausting she is?”

I grab a pillow and stuff it under my head, my legs dangling off the end so my sneakers scuff the worn carpet. “No idea, unless you slipped Damon a twenty to erase your memory.”

“And give him free rein inside my head to convince me that I had a thing for dudes, and probably chickens?” Matt scoffs. “No thanks.”

There’s a hard, quick knock at the door, and we look at each other, immediately alarmed.

“I swear to God, if that’s her wanting to borrow my razor again, even though she’s the only one who got a chance to pack…” Matt trails off and just shakes his head.