Dark Hollow Road (Taryn's Camera Book 3) by Rebecca Patrick-Howard Page B

of disrobing of her outer layers. She let her scarf, jacket, and gloves land on her jacket in the floor while she studied him. Most women probably wouldn’t find him classically attractive. He was too thin, too angular. His longish black hair fell in a curtain around his bright green eyes, hiding them for the most part. A pity, too, since she found his eyes to be his best feature. Despite having both Italian and Native American in his lineage he was pale, even in the summertime. His jaw was angular but his mouth was full. At six-foot-two he towered over her, but had a tendency to hunch his shoulders when he walked, making him appear much smaller. He was a terrible dresser, wearing things that went out of style years ago or were much too young for him (a favorite outfit of his was black jeans with a T-shirt boasting a bunch of dancing frogs).
    Still, there were times when she looked at him and thought he might be the most beautiful person she’d ever seen. Like now.
    “How’d the visit go?” Taryn knew he hated being interrupted when he was working on something, his OCD mind liked to finish one thing before starting another, but he always made the effort to squeeze Taryn’s needs in.
    She wasn’t ready to talk about the day, though. Instead, she walked over to Matt without a word, cleared the papers from his lap, and sat down on it. Like a little child she curled herself into his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist. He bent forward so his head rested on hers, that silky hair now falling down into her face and covering her own eyes. And, for the longest time, they didn’t move.
     

     
     
    T he sound was far away, off in the distance, and might have been part of her dream. Taryn was aware she was asleep only because her body felt incredibly relaxed and lucid–a feeling foreign to her when she was awake. She thought she was too young for arthritis but for the past few years she’d experienced such periods of stiffness and pain it felt as though her bones were breaking.
    But the noise… it was nothing more than a “ping” really–a small, tinny sound that barely registered on her mental plane. Lovely images of a dark, starry sky floated behind her eyes like scenes from a vintage movie and made her smile in her sleep but the sound was out-of-place, a disruption that disturbed her.
    She stretched her leg out and in her sleep was aware of the rough fabric of the couch beneath her. While she didn’t awaken, her heartrate quickened, and her breathing became more jagged, frenzied. Something wasn’t right and, as the cold beads of sweat begin forming at her temples and sliding down her cheeks in little balls, she struggled to understand what was going on and why she was so suddenly afraid. Then, there it was, that “ping” again–what should’ve been an innocuous sound but, instead, filled her with dread.
    “Taryn.” The voice was beside her, in front of her, behind her, all around her. It was warm, but commanding, and Taryn had no trouble recognizing it as her grandmother. Although she’d been dead for many years, that whiskey-soaked voiced, turned hard by years of chain-smoking, was unmistakably Nora Jean Magill’s.
    Blinking, Taryn pushed herself up, the afghan sliding to the floor. She moved as if in a daze, half expecting to look down and see her still-sleeping body below her. Her movements were fluid, unlike her normally clumsy nature, and in the cool darkness of night her limbs felt as though they were traveling in slow motion.
    She wasn’t alone.
    While the outline of her grandmother’s body might have been gauzy and not quite as solid as Nora had been in real life (Nora’s presence had always been solid) she was as real as anything else in the room and standing just a few feet from where Taryn now sat on the cabin’s sofa. She wore not the lavender burial dress Taryn had last seen her in but a simple striped polyester shift that hung smartly to her knees and hard-soled brown loafers. Her