That was partly why she’d agreed to exchange information with Vincent. He’d been curious about her—although Lana couldn’t imagine why, other than to fuel what was, no doubt, his need to charm every woman he came into contact with. But since her history was quite ordinary, she’d been willing to trade the humdrum facts of her life for the far more intriguing details of his.
Vincent had gone quiet now, though. He didn’t seem inclined to play their game any longer, even though he hadn’t answered her first and most important question yet—how he’d become a vampire. Obviously, he hadn’t died the night he was shot, but just as obviously, it had somehow led to his becoming a vampire. She didn’t think he’d have shared something so personal otherwise. And what about his younger brother? Had John died? Or had he become a vampire, too?
She was dying to ask, but didn’t have the heart for it. For all that Vincent was acting cool and unaffected, no one could recount their own near-death experience and not feel something.
“Story time’s over for tonight,” he said finally. “The sun will be up soon. We have to think about stopping.”
Lana checked the in-dash nav system. They’d made good time, although they’d been forced to slow down for the more-populated areas. Vincent was determined to keep a low profile for reasons he hadn’t shared with her, so he didn’t want to risk getting pulled over for something as trivial as speeding. They could probably get away with nothing more than a fine, but even that would create an official record that a determined person could use to track their whereabouts.
They were also slowed by all that bulletproofing which made the Suburban an excellent choice for crossing dangerous territory, but also made the vehicle a lot heavier. It drank fuel like a motherfucker, and since there were stretches where they couldn’t be sure of a gasoline station, they sometimes had to stop even before the tank was empty, just to be sure it didn’t happen at the wrong time.
And let’s not forget that at each place they stopped, Vincent had to charm every female in sight. Old, young . . . hell, if there was a baby girl around, he’d probably have charmed her, too. And none of the women seemed to care that Vincent was traveling with Lana. For all they knew, she could be his girlfriend, even his wife. It didn’t matter. The worst one had been the teenager at the first place they’d stopped. She’d taken one look at Lana, scoped her up and down, and completely dismissed her. As if the girl knew that Vincent would happily replace Lana with some dopey teenage gas station cashier.
Not that Lana wanted him for herself. Hell, no. It was just the principle of the thing.
She narrowed her gaze on Vincent, then rolled her eyes in disgust, as much with herself as with him. What did she care how many women he flirted with? She pulled out her cell phone and punched up their location. Her energy would be better spent finding a place to stop before morning.
“What about Guamúchil?” she asked, zooming in on the map. “We can stop there. It’s a good-sized city, and we shouldn’t have any—”
“We’ll be stopping before that,” Vincent interrupted. “A small town about fifty miles northeast.”
“I don’t see—”
“It won’t be on the map. The town’s too small.”
“Then how do you—”
“I’ve been there before. There’s a cantina. She has a couple of rooms and the place should be empty this time of year.”
She. Of course there would be a she. It seemed that men, or maybe she should say males, were the same everywhere. At least the kind of males she seemed doomed to meet. They were risk-takers, thrill-seekers, high testosterone, adrenaline junkies who drew women like flies and seemed incapable of settling for just one. She reminded herself that she didn’t give a damn how many women Vincent charmed, seduced, or fucked.
“Did you program it into the nav?”
He glanced at her, perhaps sensing something of her mood, but his only verbal reply was a terse, “Yep.”
Almost twenty miles later, the nav system dinged a warning. Vincent immediately slowed, coming to a near stop in order to make a sharp left turn onto a road that Lana wasn’t sure she’d have noticed even in daylight. It wasn’t paved. She could see, and feel, that much. The Suburban took to the new surface with relative ease, but then, Vincent was barely doing thirty miles an hour. She could hear rocks pinging off the undercarriage, but there were no potholes and the tires weren’t slipping as much as she’d have expected if they’d gone truly off-road.
Vincent suddenly turned off the headlights, but kept going as if nothing had changed. Lana couldn’t make out a damn thing.
“What are you doing?” she asked, straining to see ahead.
“I can see better without them out here.”
Lana shifted her gaze back and forth between Vincent and the pitch black road. “You can?”
A tiny smile lightened his expression for the first time since he’d interrupted his own story. “I can. Don’t worry, Lana. I’ll take good care of you.”
“I’ll take care of myself, thank you. You just drive.”
His smile grew. “Whatever you say.”
“What about this cantina?”
“What about it? It’s fairly popular with the locals, mostly because of the music. There’s a classical guitarist there. One of the finest in the world.”
“What’s his name?”
Vincent shook his head. “You won’t have heard of him.”