Sucker Bet (Vegas Vampires #4)(3)
Author: Erin McCarthy

"What’s his name?"

"I don’t know his real name."

Nate stared hard at her. Was she a user? Meeting a dealer? That would explain the fact that she looked like a strong wind could blow her over, and her translucent complexion, not to mention her repeated evasiveness. "Look, if you were doing a deal, buying some stuff, I don’t care about that, okay? I’m more concerned with who did this…" He jerked his thumb over to where the photographer was taking shots of the victim, a white male in his twenties, entirely drained of all his body fluids. "I don’t care who sells you your smack. I just want to hear what you know, what you heard, what you saw, the whole truth, do you understand?"

For the first time since he’d been directed to her upon arriving at the scene, she lost her nervous demeanor. "I wasn’t here to buy drugs!"

She sounded downright indignant. Utterly offended.

"Then what were you here for? Is your hook-up guy married?" Maybe she was having an affair or into anonymous sex for kicks. She didn’t look like the type, but Nate had learned they rarely did.

"Oh, I don’t know. Do you think he’s married?" That seemed to flummox her.

Nate tried not to sigh. "I don’t know. Tell me how you know him and why you were meeting him, and maybe we can figure out if that has anything to do with the poor guy wadded up like dirty laundry and crammed behind a ticket machine. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to catch a killer here."

She winced and rubbed her arms absently. "That was rather appalling, wasn’t it? Poor sot. Do you know who he is?"

She had quite the little focus problem and it was starting to bug the hell out of him. "Who were you meeting?" Nate glanced down at the notebook in front of him. Her name was Gwenna according to the uniform who had initially arrived on the scene. Gwenna Carrick. "Look Gwenna, just tell me what you know about the guy you were meeting."

"I just know the user name he goes by. It’s Slash87."

"User name? Online?"

"Yes." Her cheeks got a little pink.

"You were meeting a guy you met on the Internet?"

She nodded.

Christ. Why did everyone suddenly think it was a good idea to hook up online with total strangers and meet them in unsafe locales without knowing jack shit about them other than the fact that they used freakin’ smileys in their damn e-mails? Yeah, Nate was officially out of patience.

"Okay. So you don’t know his real name?"

"No."

"Have you met him in person before?"

"No."

"Where did you meet him online?"

"A special-interest loop. We were supposed to meet here at ten."

"Whose idea was that?"

"Well, meeting in person was mine. To meet here was his idea."

What guy suggests meeting on a monorail platform when there were nine thousand bars, restaurants, and casinos in spitting distance? One up to no freakin’ good, that’s who. The blonde was definitely stereotypically dumb to have agreed to do something so dangerous. "And you didn’t see him when you got off the train?"

"I don’t think so. But really, how would I know? I’ve never seen him before."

Nate let loose with the sigh he’d been stifling. "I mean, did you make contact with him?"

"Oh. No."

"So how do you know Slash87 isn’t the guy posing for his final portrait over there?" Nate jerked his thumb toward the crime tape and the flash from the camera over the body.

She blanched. "Oh, God, I don’t know. I never thought of that. Do you think that’s Slash? How horrible."

Nate studied her expression. The horror looked genuine enough. But something about this woman didn’t add up for him. "Were you here for a date? What were your plans for after you met up tonight?"

"We didn’t exactly have plans. He just said he was going to be in town, and I suggested meeting up to chat. He gave the time and place. I guess I figured we would go grab coffee or something."

Human beings were so damn exhausting. Nate glared at her, hoping she would understand the severity of what she’d done. "Do me a favor. Don’t agree to meet strange men you don’t know from Adam in dark monorail stations by yourself, alright? It’s just a bad idea all around."

"I didn’t think…" She frowned a little. "I mean, I’m really quite good at taking care of myself."

"I can tell." Nate rolled his eyes. "What if you’d been a few minutes early? That might be you behind the ticket machine."

Her chin tilted up and he could tell he’d offended her. "I don’t think so."

"Yeah, whatever, keep telling yourself that. You’re damn lucky, Gwenna Carrick, that you’re standing there curling your lip at me instead of on your way to the morgue." It infuriated him that she was being stubborn, that she’d been so stupid. She looked about as strong as his grandmother, an easy target, and yet was so nonchalant about risking her own safety. Didn’t she get that there was one chance in life? That it could be gone instantly and that one little mistake could waste you?

Selfish, that’s what it was, when people just strolled around acting invincible, taking risks for no reason.

"I’m fine."

He scoffed. "So what is this online special-interest group? Who joined first, you or Slash?"

"Slash. And it’s a paranormal group."

"What the hell does that mean? Like you believe in ghosts and crap?"

"Not exactly. More like…" She glanced away. "Vampires."

"Excuse me?" He’d heard her, he was just hoping he was wrong.

"It’s a group that believes in vampires. And well, likes to pretend they’re vampire slayers."

"Nice. So you and Slash are pretend slayers? Were you meeting to stake someone?" More likely Slash was hoping to impale Gwenna with his personal stake. Any guy who spent all his time online pretending to be Buffy’s male counterpart was probably not getting a whole lot of action.

"We were meeting because the slayers are going to be getting together in Vegas and I wanted to help Slash plan it."

"Oh, like a slayers’ convention? Fun. So you’re on the planning and decorating committee?"

"You don’t have to make fun of me." She rubbed her arms a little and looked over his shoulder. "And if that is Slash over there it’s highly insensitive of you to mock what is a harmless hobby."

"You’re right. I apologize." While it still sounded seriously geeky to him, he had to remember that she wasn’t exposed to violence the way he was. He could compartmentalize, dissociate from the victim, but it would be different for her. That was possibly a guy she’d chatted with, felt some affinity for. "We’ll try to ID him as soon as possible and we’ll let you know what we find. I need you to get me all the info on that Internet group."