Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand

  “Hey, don’t get defensive. I just want to talk to my favorite youngest daughter. Now, your fiancé is missing. I really don’t think you should be alone right now. If you don’t want to have dinner, that’s fine. Your mother and I just want to be sure you’re holding up all right. Just a drink in the hotel bar. Okay?”

  I couldn’t argue. How did he do that? “Okay. I’m in the bar right now. But give me half an hour.”

  “We’ll be right down,” he said.

  “No, half an hour—” but he’d already hung up. Great. This was going to get interesting.

  I sat on a stool and ordered a soda. I hadn’t realized how dry my mouth had gotten. Adrenaline and nerves really sucked it out of you. I had to keep my strength up if I was going to find Ben.

  Playing with the ice, I watched the entrance. I assumed the clandestine convention-within-a-convention was still happening. One of them would pass through here eventually. I’d spot them and pounce. I still felt like I had a target painted on me. I tapped my feet, didn’t even bother trying not to look anxious. Remembered Brenda’s ultimatum: she sees claws, she shoots. And I couldn’t blame her one tiny bit.

  This wasn’t my crowd. I had no idea how to deal with people who would sooner shoot me than look at me. Well, actually, I did. The night I met Cormac, I managed to talk him out of shooting me. I wished Cormac or Ben were here to talk to them. But if they were here, I wouldn’t need to confront Evan and Brenda, would I?

  I had gotten used to the idea of a pack—human, werewolf, all of the above—standing with me, helping me, watching out for me. I didn’t want to go back to being on my own. Wolves belong in packs.

  I kept checking my phone in case I’d missed a message. I hadn’t. I wanted Gladden to call and tell me everything was all right. The woman tending bar leaned over to me at one point and said, “He stand you up or something?”

  Strangely, after processing the question, I wasn’t sure how to answer. “Not yet,” I said finally.

  She shrugged and went about her work, like this wasn’t the weirdest thing that had happened all day.

  When Evan finally appeared, I almost fell off my seat. I stopped myself in time, took a breath, and played it cool. Hoped I was playing cool.

  He was talking with another man, someone I didn’t recognize. They exchanged a few words outside the bar, shook hands, and the other guy walked off. Deal concluded, it looked like. I was afraid Evan was going to walk away as well, forcing me to chase after him. But he didn’t. He came in and headed for a booth in back.

  I stalked after him.

  He looked like he was about to slide into the booth, but he wasn’t, because his body was tensed the wrong way, angled so that he could see over his shoulder, which meant he knew I was following him. Which was fine; I wasn’t trying to be subtle.

  In the same moment, I stopped, and he turned, reaching under his jacket for what was undoubtedly a gun in a shoulder holster. He froze there, staring at me with a cold gaze. His jaw was set.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll admit that you’re not stupid enough to draw and shoot in here, and you admit that I’m not stupid enough to sprout claws.”

  He relaxed incrementally. The hand he drew out from his jacket was empty. But the mask, the easygoing man-about-town I’d seen when I first met him, was gone, and he now wore the stony expression I was used to seeing on Cormac. The hunter had emerged.

  Slowly, the mask returned, and he seemed calm when he finally spoke. “Don’t tell me you’ve been waiting here just for me.”

  I smiled. “Shall we sit? Since you obviously have something you want to talk about.” He gestured to the booth.

  “This your on-site office?” I said.

  “Something like that.”

  I slid in, sitting right on the edge, not taking my eyes off him. He sat opposite me, and we looked at each other across the table. Our stares definitely held a challenge, and neither one of us was going to look away. And they called me an animal. . . did he even realize our body language was the same?

  I thought about being coy, then realized I didn’t have a clue how to be coy about this, so I laid it out. “Ben’s missing.”

  “What do you mean, missing? Like he stood you up or something?” He chuckled, like this amused him.

  Was everyone going to immediately assume Ben had ditched me? Was I that ditchable? I closed my eyes, counted to ten, reminded myself that I could claw this guy’s eyes out under the right circumstances. Then I reminded myself that he carried silver bullets. Best be polite.

  “I mean missing. Gone. Kidnapped, even.”

  He grimaced, confused. “What? I just saw him at lunch—he did exactly what he said he was going to do, won me two hundred bucks in a side game before going to play in that tournament of his. You’re saying someone kidnapped him out of the tournament?”

  “Do you know anything about a petty Vegas crime lord named Faber?” I said.

  His smile faded. Which actually made me feel worse. He said, “He’s a typical lowlife type. Nasty piece of work, but stay out of his way and you’ll be fine. By the look on your face, I take it Ben got in his way.”

  “He tipped the casino off to a cheating ring in the poker room. They got security footage of one of Faber’s goons putting Ben into a car.”

  He lowered his voice. We both leaned over the table for our conference. “Do they know he’s a werewolf?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Because if Faber and his goons know, and don’t ask me how they might know it, they might have gotten someone from here to go after him.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that at all. Mob guys were scary enough, but they probably didn’t use silver bullets, and Ben might have a chance. But if one of Evan’s bounty-hunter crowd was involved—anything could happen.

  “Have you heard anything? Have there been any rumors about Faber?”

  Evan put his hand on his chin and looked thoughtful. “I can find out. I know a couple of local hunters. I’ll talk to them about what Faber’s been up to.”

  When Brenda entered the bar, I recognized her by the rhythm of her heels clicking on the floor and the scent of her leather. She came straight toward us and stood at the table, hand on hip, hip cocked out. Today she wore leather pants that laced up the side and a complicated sleeveless top with more lacing and strategically placed gaps in the fabric.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “I have to say this is the last place I expected to actually find you.”

  “Ben’s missing,” I said. “You have anything to do with that?”

  Her brow furrowed. Like Evan, she didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. “Missing? When did this happen?”

  “This afternoon,” I said. “And why have you been looking for me?”

  “Scoot over.” She shoved into the booth next to Evan. “What happened?”

  I explained it all again. Like Evan, she nodded in recognition at Faber’s name but didn’t seem to know much about him other than his identity.

  “Are you sure he didn’t run off on you?” she asked finally.

  “Don’t start with that, please,” I said. “If this guy did take him, wouldn’t the police have been able to find him by now? They know where all these guys are, where they operate.”

  Impatient, Brenda shook her head. “Listen, Ben’s a good guy and I don’t want anything to happen to him, either. But that’s the least of your worries right now. Boris and Sylvia have been making noise.”

  “What kind of noise?” Evan said.

  “They’re bragging about being able to take you down and get away with it,” Brenda said, nodding at me. “She’s been saying she’s spent the last two days scoping you out.”

  “I know,” I said. “I saw her at the pool this morning.”

  “And you didn’t run?” Evan said. “I’m amazed you’re still alive.”

  Brenda continued. “She’s looking for someone to pay for the hit. But it turns out fame
is pretty good protection and she can’t find a buyer.”

  “That’s good, right?” I said, my eyes wide and shocky.

  “Except this is Sylvia, and she may just do it for laughs.”

  “I wouldn’t be laughing,” I said.

  Brenda leaned back in the booth. “Anyway, I thought you and Ben should know. But now Ben’s missing. Which is kind of worrying. I wonder if those two are involved.”

  Evan set his jaw; it almost looked like a snarl. “Boris and Sylvia. I hate those guys.”

  I stared. “But they’re just like you. Same line of work—” Evan and Brenda were both shaking their heads.

  “They’re nothing like us,” she said. “Okay, so compared to normal people we may all be pretty dodgy. But even we have rules. You don’t poach anyone else’s bounty, and you don’t go after innocents. But those two—it doesn’t matter. When they shoot you in the back, it probably won’t even be for money. They’ll do it to be nasty.”

  I felt queasy. “And do they have anything to do with Faber? Could they be involved with what happened to Ben?”

  Evan and Brenda exchanged a flat, unreadable look. Then Evan gave me a steady, reassuring gaze. “We’ll find out what happened to him.”

  Which was different than finding him alive and in one piece, but I didn’t quibble. “Thank you.”

  “Kitty!” called a familiar, anxious voice from the bar entrance.

  I closed my eyes and braced. I’d almost, almost finished with Evan and Brenda before my parents arrived. Almost wasn’t quite close enough, was it? Horseshoes and hand grenades.

  My life was split between two worlds. I had a normal family, an ordinary upbringing in a typical suburb. My parents weren’t even divorced. This was all a far cry from the other half of my life, where I sat in bars with bounty hunters of supernatural prey, talking about how to rescue my werewolf boyfriend. I worked hard, with moderate success, to keep those worlds separate. How was I going to explain this to my parents?

  Or explain my parents to people like Brenda and Evan?

  Mom and Dad came over to our booth. Like me, they were dressed for a wedding that wasn’t happening: Mom wore a summery silk dress, and she’d even traded out her walking shoes for heels; Dad wore a suit and tie. They looked awesome. It brought tears to my eyes that we weren’t going to have pictures of this. But without Ben here it all paled.

  Mom put her hand on my arm and gushed. “Kitty, oh, my goodness. This is so awful. Are you all right? What can I do to help?” She slid into the booth next to me. Dad hovered over us, eyeing my two companions.

  Everyone was looking at me now. Brenda had her eyebrows raised, like she was saying you’ve got to be kidding. Evan looked like he might start laughing.

  So. Yeah. We could all pretend like this was normal, right?

  “These are my parents, Jim and Gail. Mom, Dad, this is Evan and Brenda. Some friends of Ben’s who happened to be in town. They might be able to help find him.” I smiled tightly. Everything was going to be just fine. I could keep saying that.

  “Oh, good. Are you with the police?” Mom asked them.

  Evan looked like he might have been biting his tongue.

  Her face completely straight, Brenda said, “We have access to resources that could help.”

  “That’s such a relief,” Mom said. “I knew coming to Vegas would be exciting, but this is a little too much.”

  “Mom, Dad?” I said quickly. “We just have a couple more things to talk about. How about I meet you at the bar for drinks in a couple of minutes?”

  Mom squeezed my shoulder one more time, and Dad gave me a fatherly smile before they went to put in drink orders.

  I nearly deflated, slumped over the table with my head in my hands.

  Disbelieving, Evan and Brenda stared after them.

  “A werewolf isn’t supposed to have parents,” Brenda said, grumbling. “They’re not supposed to have mothers. How am I supposed to shoot you now, knowing it’ll upset that really nice woman?”

  “You’re not supposed to shoot me at all!” I glared.

  “Sorry. Figure of speech,” she said, then turned to Evan. “This is why mothers are a bad idea. They muddle everything up.”

  “What about your mother?” I said.

  “Haven’t talked to the woman in ten years. I walked out when I was eighteen and never looked back.”

  I couldn’t even imagine that.

  “We’ve got work to do,” Evan said, nodding at Brenda to encourage her out of the booth. “The sooner we track down those leads, the sooner we’ll find Ben. Then you all can be a big happy family again.”

  “That’s so weird,” Brenda muttered, standing and waiting for Evan to join her. And really, she was one to talk.

  “Thanks again,” I said and gave them my phone number before they left on their mission.

  Mom and Dad must have been keeping an eye on the booth, because they arrived a moment later, carrying a bottle of wine and three glasses. They sat across from me, in the same places Evan and Brenda had sat in before. The supreme discontinuity almost made me crack right there.

  Dad poured the merlot. Mom talked.

  “So you’ve talked to the police? What do they know? Is there anything else we can do?”

  I shrugged. Took a long drink and let the warmth replace some of the tension in my body. Then I stopped drinking, because if I got too relaxed I might start crying.

  “They said they’d call me as soon as they knew anything. All we can do now is wait.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. I know this wasn’t how this weekend was supposed to go at all.” She reached across the table to squeeze my hand. She was so earnest. I wanted to tell them I’d be okay, I could take care of myself. But if I was so sure I could take care of myself, why was I distraught at the thought of losing Ben? I didn’t want to have to take care of myself anymore. I wanted to take care of both of us.

  Mom was earnest and weepy. Dad, on the other hand, seemed withdrawn. His look was serious, frowning. I suddenly felt eight years old again, wondering what I’d done wrong.

  “Now, Kitty,” he said. “I know this is difficult. But has anyone suggested the possibility that maybe Ben. . . I don’t know. Just needed a little time off. That he’s off somewhere thinking things over.”

  I stared. “That he got cold feet, you mean.”

  He gave a half, noncommittal shrug of agreement. That Mom didn’t look shocked or indignant meant they’d had this conversation between them already.

  My own parents. Entertaining the notion that I’d been ditched pre-altar. So if everyone suggested it but me, did that make everyone else right? No—I’d seen the video, and I knew Ben. I took another long swig of wine.

  “No. There’s no way. Ben’s not like that. He wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know, honey,” Dad said, making a calming gesture. God, now they were both honey-ing me. “But you really haven’t known him all that long. A year?”

  “Longer than that,” I muttered.

  “There may still be sides to him you don’t know.”

  Like the side of him that’s a werewolf? They couldn’t know how deep the connection between us ran, even if we had been together for less than a year. “If you don’t like him, just say so.”

  “I like him just fine, Kitty. I’m just worried about you. You know, the cold-feet thing is really common. Some men just need a little time to themselves.”

  I shook my head, defensive to the end. “Ben’s not like that. You don’t know him, this situation—” I narrowed my gaze with a sudden suspicion. I regarded my father, called up a memory of his and Mom’s wedding picture, a young, shining couple standing in an anonymous garden somewhere, bathed in sunlight. I tried to recall the look on Dad’s face in that picture. Was it anything other than blank happiness?

  “Did you get cold feet?” I asked, looking back and forth between my parents.

  He didn’t answer right away, but Mom had her lips pursed, like she was having to restra
in herself. I almost giggled. This was a story I’d never heard. There’d been no hint of this, no sign. The wedding photos were all stereotypically happy and perfect.

  Filled with awe, I said, “He didn’t leave you standing at the altar, did you?”

  “No,” she said. “Thank goodness. I’d better let him tell the story.” She gave him a sly glare. So, he hadn’t quite stood her up at the altar. But whatever he’d done, he hadn’t lived it down after thirty-five years. Wow.

  His shoulders hunched, looking chagrined, he explained. “I left town for the week before the wedding.”

  “Oh my God. What happened? Where’d you go?”

  “I literally drove around for a week. Picked highways at random. Ended up in Texas, of all places. I came back just in time for the rehearsal. Even then, I sat outside in my car for twenty minutes, deciding whether or not to go through with it. I was very late, but I was there, which I thought was something of a victory.”

  Quiet, responsible, solid Dad almost ditched his own wedding? This was enlightening.

  “What did you do?” I asked Mom.

  “Oh, I forgave him. Eventually.”

  “She didn’t even say anything,” he added. “But it was very, very clear how much I owed her for forgiving me. If I hadn’t gone through with it, I’d have been asking ‘what if’ for the rest of my life.”

  Mom patted his arm, and they traded one of those old married, would-do-it-all-over-again glances.

  “And you think Ben is sitting somewhere, thinking about that himself right now,” I said.

  “Maybe. Or maybe he’s been kidnapped.” Infuriatingly, he shrugged again, and I suppressed an impulse to scream. This conversation wasn’t making me feel any better, whatever Dad’s intentions were. I couldn’t keep waiting around for something to happen. I had more leads to follow.

  “What time is it?” I said.

  Dad glanced at his watch. “Almost eight.”

  “Okay. I have some more people to talk to, some other leads that might know something about what happened to Ben. I have to get going.”

  Mom managed to look even more worried. “Are you sure you shouldn’t just wait for the police to call? Let them do their jobs?”