Sucker Bet (Vegas Vampires #4)(36)
Author: Erin McCarthy

She walked straight over to him and took both of his hands and kissed his cheek. "How are you holding up?" she murmured.

"I’ve been better," he said truthfully, squeezing her hands. Seeing her helped, though, and he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because her sympathy was legitimate, her own grief so palpable when she had discussed her daughter. Maybe it was also because she’d taken the time and trouble to find out where the wake was, when he hadn’t told her, and she had stopped by even when Nate knew she had a big party at her brother’s casino she had promised to attend.

Maybe it was because he liked Gwenna Carrick in ways he didn’t exactly understand or totally trust. But the bottom line was that when he was with her, he just felt better.

"Who’s your friend, Nathaniel?" his mother said, touching his elbow.

Nate sighed, letting go of one of Gwenna’s hands, but keeping the other, and pulling her into his side. "This is Gwenna Carrick. Gwenna, this is my mother, Sylvia Thomas, and my father, Art Thomas."

"I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas," Gwenna said.

"Thank you. How do you know Nathaniel?"

Not very subtle, but Gwenna didn’t seem to notice. "We met through a mutual friend."

Intriguing way to put their first meeting at a murder scene. Gwenna was quite the diplomat. Knowing his mother would probe mercilessly until she got whatever she was looking for, Nate nudged Gwenna a little. "Can you excuse us, Mom? I need to speak to Gwenna privately."

His mother looked ready to protest, his father saying nothing as usual, his face an expressionless mask, but Nate just walked away, carting Gwenna with him.

"Thanks for coming," he said to her as they moved toward the back of the room.

"You’re welcome. And you know how very sorry I am that you’ve lost your sister."

He did know that. Her eyes spoke it loud and clear. "Thanks. Can you stick around for fifteen minutes? I can leave then, thank God, and I’d like to see you, just for a few minutes. I know you have your party thing to go to, but maybe we could grab some coffee." He just wanted—needed—to be with her.

"Sure. Absolutely. I’ll just take a seat in the back here and you can get me when you’re ready."

Nate kissed her smooth forehead. "Thank you."

Half an hour later Nate was sitting on his back patio with Gwenna, stretching his legs out and yanking off his tie. "I won’t keep you, I promise," he told her. "I know you need to go. I just need a minute to decompress."

"It’s fine," she said, sitting in the chaise lounge next to him and crossing her feet at the ankles. "This party will go on all night long so no one will notice if I’m not there at eight on the dot."

He had nothing to say, really, but neither did he want to be alone. It was comforting to sit beside Gwenna, to let his body relax one tight muscle at a time, and know that she wouldn’t chatter needlessly, wouldn’t question him, wouldn’t say stupid platitudes, or focus selfishly on herself.

The weather was cool but dry, and his backyard was quiet, peaceful, despite his mother’s concerns about crime. It was a nice working-class neighborhood, and he had gotten into his house before real estate had exploded in Vegas.

"You might have noticed that my mother isn’t exactly collapsing in grief," he said after a minute, because he needed to explain.

"Everyone expresses grief differently."

"True. But she doesn’t really feel it. My mother is a piece of work. My father cares, he’s just a workaholic who worships success and the almighty dollar. In his heart, he does care. But my mother… she honestly doesn’t give a damn about Kyra or I. She cares about what people think of her, of her social status, but she is actually incapable of love. And she’s a pathological liar." Nate suspected he sounded a little whiny, but he just needed to explain. Maybe needed someone to believe him, see what he saw so clearly. "She’ll lie about anything to get what she wants. You know how I told you she went to Australia because she thought Kyra was in remission?"

Gwenna nodded.

"Well, I actually think she did it on purpose, knowing Kyra would die. That way she didn’t have to deal with her actual passing, and she had the added bonus of extra sympathy from people that she wasn’t here."

"That’s horrible."

Nate tipped back his beer bottle and took a long swallow. "Yeah, well, she’s not a nice lady, my mom. Sure you don’t want a beer?"

"No, thanks."

"You don’t eat or drink enough," Nate told Gwenna, looking at how thin she was as she stretched out. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her put a bite of food in her mouth.

She gave him a rueful look. "I drank plenty last night."

He gave a soft laugh. "Yeah, you were a little shit-faced. I hope you don’t think I was taking advantage of that fact on the street there."

"You absolutely were taking advantage and you know it."

Now he grinned. "You’re right." But hell, she’d been so eager, and his resistance was seriously down when it came to her.

She reached over and whacked his arm. "Shame on you. But I’m glad you did. I totally wanted you, and it was very sexy."

"I like that you tell the truth, Gwenna. I despise liars… and people who manipulate, tell you one thing and mean another. Just tell the goddamn truth, you know?"

"You’re a very black-and-white kind of man, aren’t you?"

"I guess I am." Nate drained his beer. "It’s easy to start picking each action apart and judging and suggesting that maybe this was wrong or wasn’t wrong because of x, y, or z, but it’s all just justification. There is right and there is wrong, and most of us just lie to ourselves when we do something that’s wrong and try to claim there was a reason it was okay. But wrong is wrong."

"I know what you mean. So what happened last night? Who is the person they found at the concert?" she asked quietly.

There were things he shouldn’t share, reasons he needed to play it straight, but he could give her the basic facts. The media was bound to pick up on it soon, since two murders with the same MO could be spun out in the news as a serial killer. "His name is Johnny Walker. And yes, I got a call about an hour ago that when his computer was recovered from his parents’ house in Sacramento, it showed he was a member of the vampire slayers’ loop as Death Angel, or something like that. I’m sorry, I don’t remember exactly. My brain is fried."

Cracked, fried, and scrambled.

"Oh, this is just awful. I don’t understand what the connection is… I mean why loop members? And if Johnny didn’t live in Vegas, what was he doing here?"