Sucker Bet (14 page)
"You don't have any exciting clothes at all." Kelsey stood in front of Gwenna's closet, giving every appearance of being in mourning for slut outfits.
Gwenna hated to break it to her, but she wasn't an exciting woman. It was highly unlikely she would have a secret snappy or stylish dress hiding somewhere. "Sorry. I haven't needed a lot of going-out clothes living in an old castle by myself."
"But you're in Vegas now." Kelsey pointed out the obvious as she abandoned searching through Gwenna's many T-shirts, twin sets, and khaki slacks. "And I brought a few outfits in case we found ourselves in this very situation."
Alexis snorted, lying straight across Gwenna's bed on her side. "I can't wait to see this."
Gwenna wasn't nearly as enthusiastic. "Kelsey, what's wrong with me just wearing a pair of jeans? It's just a rock concert, right? Don't people wear jeans to concerts?" They always did in Disney movies. Gwenna liked the Disney channel because every problem was perfectly wrapped up in under two hours, all while the laugh track went off for every canned and trite joke. It made her happy. Being dressed in Kelsey's clothes did not make her happy, since Kelsey was five foot ten, weighed ninety pounds, and was notorious for exposing two thirds of her body at any given moment. She liked to tell herself it was because Kelsey had no reflection and couldn't see exactly what she looked like, but that was probably false hope.
"Sure, it's a rock concert, but you want to be pimped out a little. You don't want to look like you're headed to Wal-Mart. And these guys are vampires, remember, so they're going to notice us immediately."
She didn't know they were vampires because no one had bothered to explain that little factoid to her earlier. "No, I actually had no clue they were vampires. Are you telling me the entire band is undead? Is the whole audience full of vampires?"
"No." Kelsey looked at her like that was an idiotic suggestion. "Why would the audience be vampires? They're a vampire band pretending to be vampires so no one knows they're really vampires. But since we're vampires, we know they're vampires, of course."
Right. She should have guessed that. Gwenna sat down on her bed next to Alexis. "Maybe I should just stay home." She could call Nate and see if he was still available…
"No!" Kelsey shook her finger at her. "You're cheering me up, so you have to go."
Shit. When put like that, there was no way out of it. Gwenna was very good at feeling guilty. "Okay, fine."
"Thank you!" Kelsey beamed. "Now let me go get my bag. I left it in the other room. I have the cutest blue dress I brought for you to wear."
"Fine. But while you're getting that, I have an e-mail to send." She turned to her laptop, which she'd brought into the bedroom with her so she wouldn't forget to send the spreadsheet to Nate. Clicking on her mail, she was surprised to see another e-mail from Slash.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Tonight
Hey Queenie,
Everyone is going to The Impalers concert tonight. If you can get a ticket, meet me there. I'll find you in the crowd.
Now that was rather an odd coincidence. Yet another one. Slash and "everyone" were going to be at the concert that Kelsey had talked her into attending. And the band members were all vampires.
Plus if Slash was confident he could find her in the crowd, then he knew what she looked like. Which meant he had been at the train station and had seen her, because she'd only previously given him a very generic "short and blond" description of herself. He'd never be able to pick her out of a crowd based on that. She shivered. What if Slash was the killer of poor Buzzdrew? She couldn't even imagine what the motivation had been for that.
But Andrew had been mortal and vulnerable as such. Gwenna wasn't. And she was bound and determined to figure out what the hell was going on—especially if true slayers were planning an actual attack. Given the large number of vampires in Vegas for the Inauguration, it would be perfect timing for that sort of large-scale attack, and she had no intention of allowing such a thing to occur.
She clicked Reply.
I should be able to get a ticket. See you there. And don't stand me up this time.
Queenie
Might as well let him know she hadn't appreciated his not showing the night before. Then she pulled Nate's e-mail address out of her pocket and entered it in her address book. She clicked to send him an e-mail, attaching the slayers' loop spreadsheet. Then she typed quickly.
Hi Nate,
Here's the info attached as discussed. I also heard from Slash again… we are meeting at a concert tonight, The Impalers. They pretend to be vampires as part of their act. Will give you a description of Slash after I meet him. See you Sunday.
Best,
Gwenna
She was absolutely certain her e-mail sounded boring and ridiculous, but she wasn't sure what else to say. And it was Nate's work e-mail, so it wasn't like she could talk dirty to him even if she were so inclined to do so, which she wasn't. Well, she found the idea sort of intriguing actually, but wasn't exactly sure she'd know how to go about it.
"What are you doing?" Alexis asked.
Gwenna jumped, as if she had actually written a dirty e-mail to Nate and Alexis had seen it. Lord, she needed to get a grip on herself. "Just dashing off this thing to Nate." Alexis and Ethan still didn't know about the murder and she had no intention of telling them.
"You're really digging this guy, aren't you?" Alexis sounded downright gleeful about that.
Gwenna closed her e-mail and prepared to face her sister-in-law, and an endless round of teasing. Only to find herself being confronted by Kelsey with a fistful of blue fabric that wouldn't cover a Chihuahua, let alone a full-grown woman. "Whatever that is, I'm not wearing it."
Kelsey smiled. "Yes, you are. Please? It will make me feel so much better to see you looking hot."
Damn it. Gwenna sighed and took the dress—if that's what it was. It looked more like an odd pair of panties. "If it looks appalling, you have to be honest with me."
"Of course," Kelsey nodded.
"Scout's honor," Alexis said from the bed.
She didn't believe them, but she was also very impatient to get to the concert and find Slash, so she stomped off to the bathroom to try and interpret what constituted "hot" in Kelsey Columbia's world.
Donatelli hated Ethan Carrick. He'd spent a lifetime poisoning Gwenna against him, and Roberto had never been able to figure out why. He loved Gwenna, always had. He wanted nothing but happiness for her. So why in the world was Carrick always so determined to keep Gwenna from him?
He had wanted to smack the satisfaction off Carrick's face when he had mentioned that Gwenna had a mortal boyfriend, but he had restrained himself. There was a much more rational way to deal the situation.
"Williams." He snapped his fingers for his bodyguard, and tossed back a glass of blood. There was an excellent view of the Vegas Strip from his room at the Venetian, but he stared at it without appreciating it. The very idea of another man's hands on his wife had him in a foul mood, even though he knew it was a ridiculous attempt on Carrick's part to irritate him. Gwenna didn't date. She never had. In the three hundred years since their divorce, Donatelli couldn't even count the number of women he had bedded. But he was conversely positive that Gwenna had never let another man inside her body.
Because she still loved him and they belonged together.
"Follow Gwenna and tell me if you see her with a man. I want you to watch her and tell me everything she's doing for the next forty-eight hours."
Williams nodded and left.
Donatelli sighed. It was so highly inconvenient that Gwenna had developed such a stubborn streak. It was clearly a Carrick trait. One he despised.
And one he would break her of if it took all of eternity.
Nate allowed himself a two-hour nap before heading back to the station to see if the autopsy report on Andrew's body had arrived yet. It hadn't, but he did have the e-mail from Gwenna as promised providing him with half the list members' real names matched to their e-mail addresses.
"Hot damn." It was a lucky break, and a huge time saver. Now they could zip through the list and eliminate any names of those out of town with clear alibis. There was someone on the list who was the killer, Nate was convinced of it. He just needed to methodically determine who it
couldn't
be to figure out who it actually was.
His good humor disappeared when he actually read the body of Gwenna's e-mail. She was going to meet Slash. Who very possibly was a murderer. At a concert with fake vampires.
"Jesus Christ." The woman had absolutely no sense of self-preservation.
"What's up?" Jim Connors, the other detective on the case, glanced over at him from his paper-laden cubicle.
Nate explained the situation. "What makes sense to her about doing this? I swear, she'd walk in front of a fucking bus and never even notice it until it ran her over." It was that naivety, that innocence, about Gwenna that appealed to him, while at the same time it frustrated him to no end.
"Yet given the looks of this spreadsheet, she's not stupid." Jim gestured to his computer screen, looking at the data Nate had just forwarded to him.
"No. But this still means I'm going to have to show up at this damn concert and see what the hell's going on." His temples throbbed. "Fake vampires. What is the matter with people? Can't people try a little reality once in a while?"
"Reality's no fun, Nate, my man." Jim leaned back in his wheeled chair, making the seat squeak from his ample weight. "People need a little escape. It's good, clean fun. You want me to go check out the concert? I'm about to head out of here anyway."
The rational thing to do would be to take Jim up on his offer. But Nate wasn't feeling anything close to rational. He was running on little sleep, his emotions were threatening to suck him under, and he had an intense, burning need to keep Gwenna Carrick safe all by himself. It wasn't the department checking up on her, it was him, the man, Nate Thomas.
"Nah, that's okay. I can handle it."
He thought he sounded casual as hell, but Jim barked out a laugh. "So that's the way the wind blows, huh? She was a pretty little thing, I'll give you that. A little too delicate for my taste, though." Jim patted his substantial gut. "I'd crush her. I like a woman I can really grab on to."
Now there was an image he didn't need. "She'd never go for you anyway," Nate drawled as he turned his computer off.
"Hey, thanks." Jim threw a pen at him.
Nate caught it and tossed it onto his desk. "I'm just telling you like it is. She's hot for me, and you wouldn't stand a chance."
He was bragging to throw Jim off the truth, but then he remembered the way Gwenna had responded to his fingers moving inside her, and he knew the truth was that Gwenna was hot for him. And he was hot as hell for her. It wasn't logical, but it was there, and it was intense.
Which might explain why he was heading to a concert by a fake vampire band with every intention of hauling her delicate ass out of there and kissing some sense into her.