2 Empath Read Online Free PDF Page A

all night; I was so hoarse I could hardly understand myself.
    “What happened the next time you saw him?” Kylee asked, her dark eyes sparkling. My perky, always energetic friend had already lost one night’s sleep when she had met my plane from Honolulu in the middle of the night two days ago — now she was losing another one. But she showed no fatigue. Just her usual, all-consuming curiosity.
    I hadn’t been back in Cheyenne for an hour before she and Tara had arrived together on my doorstep sporting a shopping bag filled with microwave popcorn, a bag of chips, a giant tub of French onion dip, and a half gallon of black-cherry ice cream… my favorite.
    “Mandatory sleepover,” Tara had announced without humor. “Pack a bag and get in the car.”
    The hours since ran together in my mind. It was late now. So late, it was probably morning. But when I had called my best friends in a total panic, asking them to help me find a guy I couldn’t possibly have ever met, they had not done the sensible thing and dismissed me as delusional — they had jumped into action. Tara the bloodhound had gone online and tracked down Zane’s location with almost nothing to go on, and Kylee had made sure I got there in time. The least I owed them now was an explanation. And that’s what I’d been giving them. All night long.
    “That was the last time I saw him,” I said in answer to Kylee’s question, the latest of about a hundred. “I was going to go back a couple hours later, after he had some time to rest. But before I could get there I got a call from Craig Woods, the lawyer from California. He’d flown out to Nebraska and was with Zane there in his room. He said that Zane asked him to call me and explain that his medical transport had been all arranged and that they would be leaving soon. Craig said that Zane would have called himself, but his throat was in bad shape and the doctor wouldn’t let him talk for a while. Zane wanted to tell me that he would see me in Oahu.”
    My friends were silent for a moment. “So…” Tara began finally, then stopped. Her large blue eyes were bloodshot; her voice tense. She hadn’t said much since I’d told them both about the shadows. I had kept my freakishness a secret from them the same as everyone else, but there was no way to explain about Zane now without telling them the whole truth. And besides, for some strange reason, I kind of wanted to. I had always shared everything else with them; if I was going to finally be honest with my parents, it seemed only right that they should know, too.
    Kylee, predictably, took all the creepy stuff in stride and moved right on to wanting to know anything and everything about my relationship with Zane. But Tara’s reaction — which was no reaction — concerned me. Kylee lived half her life in a fantasy world anyway, but Tara was the daughter of two no-nonsense cops. She liked her world to be logical, orderly, and free of weirdball crap like ghosts and shadows. “So, you didn’t even try to see him again?” Kylee finished.
    “How could I?” I answered, the disappointment of that moment still smarting. “He pretty much told me not to come back.”
    “That sucks,” Kylee sympathized. “You sure the lawyer was telling the truth?”
    I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t he?” Zane wanted to go with him; I know that. I just wish he hadn’t been in such a hurry.”
    “You can’t blame him for wanting out of a nursing home full of old people,” Tara said reasonably, pulling the band off her long blond ponytail, then putting it back in again. “He took charge and found a quick solution — you’ve got to respect that.”
    “That’s true,” I agreed, studying her. Tara never, ever wore her hair down. Readjusting the band was a nervous habit. She’d been doing it every five minutes all night.
    “Tar?” I asked tentatively. “You haven’t said much about… you know. My seeing the shadows.”
    Her troubled eyes met mine only briefly.