Sucker Bet (17 page)

That made him grin, especially given that she was drunk and still sitting on his cock.

"One moment, please." She handed him the phone. "A Jim Connors wishes to speak to you."

Nate took the phone and disengaged himself from her, pulling her dress back down over her thighs. With the phone against his shirt, he gave her a soft kiss. "It's work. It will just take a second."

"I understand." She tucked him back into his pants and snuggled up against his chest.

Wrapping his free arm around her, Nate lifted the phone to his ear. "Yeah? What's up?"

"Where the fuck are you?"

"I'm on the boulevard, about a block from Caesar's." Behind a scaffolding tarp, but Jim didn't need to know that. Nate watched the black nylon flap in the breeze and tried to focus.

"You're supposed to be at that concert looking for Gwenna Carrick and her little online buddy."

"I'm actually with Gwenna Carrick at the moment."

"But you're not at the club."

"No." What the hell was Jim getting at? "Is there some kind of problem?"

"You bet your horny ass there is." The phone rustled as Jim shifted. "Get back to that club. The manager just found a dead body backstage. Victim is a white male, twenties, folded up like an origami crane in a storage closet. Scene team and the coroner on their way."

"Shit." Nate shoved off the wall. "You're kidding me."

"No, sir. Makes you wonder about your cutsie little blonde, doesn't it? What do you think she was up to tonight before you got in her pants?"

While it pissed Nate off, he knew he'd be thinking the same thing in Jim's shoes.

"I'll be there in five." He hung up and looked down at Gwenna. She had been with her friends all night. She was drunk. She was too sweet. There was no way she could be a coldblooded killer. He'd stake his life on it.

But the facts told him that he couldn't rule Gwenna out as a suspect, no matter what his gut said. She was involved on the loop. She was at the scene both times. She could be faking her intoxication. And in a crowded concert, she could have slipped backstage and killed someone. There was no report yet on how Andrew had died, or how his blood had all been drained.

Nate knew Gwenna couldn't have done that. He could look into her eyes and know that she was a loving, compassionate person.

But he also suspected she had secrets she didn't share with him, and that she knew more than she was telling him about the slayers' loop.

"What's the matter?" she asked him now, her face showing concern, her hand reaching for his.

"We've got another body."

"Oh, no." Her face went white. "Where?"

"Backstage at The Impalers concert."

Alexis felt like a groupie. She couldn't believe she'd let Kelsey talk her into going backstage at The Impalers concert.

"Hey, Davey!" Kelsey was saying, throwing herself into the arms of the dark-haired bass player. "Long time no see."

"What's up, Summer? You're looking good." He gave her a big friendly grin.

Summer? Lord, Alexis had forgotten that Kelsey had changed her name in the sixties from Nancy to Summer. In the eighties she'd made the switch to Kelsey.

"It's Kelsey now, remember?"

"Yeah, I know, but I can't get used to it… and I heard some crazy shit about you getting married, too. What's up with that?"

Kelsey made a face. "That was a mistake."

Alexis stood there feeling slightly impatient while Kelsey and Davey the bass player plopped down on a couch and played catchup. Kelsey was pouting and trembling and he was patting her knee in reassurance. At least Kelsey hadn't exaggerated when she'd said they were friends, which was usually par for the course with Kelsey. She thought everyone was her best chum, right before they stabbed her in the back or ignored her. But Davey seemed to be actually glad to see her.

Glancing around the room, which was nothing to get excited over, just a couch and a few chairs done in fake leather, Alexis tried not to cough as the other guitar player's cigarette smoke drifted by. A couple of the guys were standing around talking, throwing darts at a board on the wall, and the one she thought was the drummer was sitting in a chair with a woman on his lap wearing black tights with tiny silver bats on them. The band had all introduced themselves, but she had promptly forgotten every single one of their names. Nor was she particularly interested in flirting with any of them, as Kelsey had suggested with a giggle when they had made their way backstage. Wow, she had become a boring old married woman. How weird was that?

"So this is going to sound like a line, but haven't I seen you somewhere?" the guy to her left asked. He was the one with the vast majority of his head shaved except for a long ponytail right at the crown, and some aggressive silver studs sticking out of his lip.

He was also tall, which irritated her on principle, given that she was size of an average American ten-year-old, and she had to tip her head half back to meet his eye. But he had great eyes, a light blue, and they were friendly, not the least bit smarmy.

"I think I would remember meeting you," she said with a wry smile. "But I do have to go to a lot of political parties, so maybe I bumped into you somewhere."

He stuck out his hand. "Drake."

"Alexis Baldizzi-Carrick." She shook his hand firmly.

Recognition crossed his face. "Oh, shit, I know who you are now. You're President Carrick's wife. No wonder you looked familiar. We played a fund-raising dinner for the president before you were married, but I'm almost positive you were there."

"If you saw a short blonde looking bored, then yeah, that was probably me."

He laughed. "Not digging being a political wife? Politics isn't for everyone."

"Oh, I like politics. I love politics. I like the strategizing and the planning and the execution of policies. I'm having an absolute blast overhauling the judicial system in the Nation, but being
just
a political wife at these functions? That I don't like."

"I don't think I would like being a political wife either."

Alexis laughed. "You could probably really rock a cocktail dress, though."

"Only if it's black." He grinned. "Hey, do you want a drink or anything? We travel with our own special bar."

"Sure." She could use a little blood. All this worrying about Gwenna and Kelsey was exhausting. "And hey, sorry my friends got up onstage with you. That's what I get for ditching out on my Secret Service guards." She hated that she had to spend every minute of her life with bodyguards—sometimes a vampire just needed privacy—so she left them behind whenever she could, much to Ethan's frustration. But it had become a rather amusing game to see how many ways she could trick the guards.

"No big deal." He just shrugged. "We have women doing that all the time. The bouncers usually take care of them. And I knew David knows Kelsey, so it was cool. Who was the other chick, though?"

"That's my sister-in-law."

Drake called over to the stage manager. "Hey, Pete, what did we do with that cooler full of drinks?"

"I stuck it in a closet. I'll go find it."

"Thanks, man." He turned back to Alexis. "Your sister-in-law? Like your brother's sister, or the president's sister?"

"The president's sister." Whoops. It hadn't occurred to her when Gwenna had rushed the stage that Ethan would be none too happy with Alexis or Gwenna for her little stunt. That wild party behavior from his sister and wife would reflect badly on him on the eve of his Inauguration. Shit. She was really a lousy political wife.

"Alexis!" Kelsey called from the couch. "I had the coolest idea and Davey agrees with me."

Uh-oh. "What idea is that?"

"You know how I need a job and stuff now that I'm divorcing Ringo because he's a total asshole?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm going to join the band! I can play tambourine and sing back up."

Alexis almost laughed. "Wow, that's an… interesting idea."

Given the appalled looks on the other guys' faces, it wasn't one they were really digging.

"We don't need a backup singer," Drake said, shooting David a pointed look.

But David just shrugged and made "let it go" faces at Drake behind Kelsey's head. "We can at least try it in a rehearsal or something."

Kelsey squealed and gave him a big kiss on the cheek, Davey's arms wrapping around her. Another second and their lips were locked in a kiss that was about two tongues beyond "we're just friends." Davey did a thumbs-up toward the guys as Kelsey's leg entwined with his.

Yeah, someone wanted to get laid.

Drake just snorted. "No shame. He has absolutely no shame."

Alexis was about to suggest that Kelsey fell in the same category, when the stage manager returned, sans a cooler of blood.

"What's the matter?" Drake asked.

The stage manager looked like he was going to pass out, his skin pasty and beads of sweat on his upper lip. "Dude, in the closet."

"What?"

"There's a dead guy, man."

Donatelli waited impatiently for Williams to say something. "So? What did you see tonight? Where the hell was Gwenna?" He shuffled a deck of cards forcefully on the dining table in his suite. "She went to a concert with Alexis Carrick and Kelsey Columbia."

"Really?" It was odd that Alexis was hanging around Kelsey again. Carrick couldn't be thrilled about that. Donatelli didn't think he was all that enamored with Gwenna in Kelsey's company either. That girl was a loose cannon, and notorious for partying. Not a good influence on a woman like Gwenna, who was a lady in the truest sense of the word. "What concert?"

"The Impalers."

"Who the hell are they?" He expected Williams to say Celine Dion, Elton John, or a symphony, not someone he'd never heard of.

"They're a rock group—all the members are vampires and they pretend to be vampires onstage as a gimmick. Mortals love it."

"A rock group?" That didn't sound like Gwenna. She must not have realized what Kelsey was dragging her into. "Poor Gwenna. What did she do the whole time? She must have been bored."

"Well… she talked to a lot of people actually."

"What people?" Donatelli forgot his cards and glanced up sharply at Williams.

His bodyguard shifted uncomfortably. "Men. She talked to a lot of men. She was, uh, wearing this really pretty dress, and she well, looked good, and guys seemed to want to talk to her."

"Of course she looked good. She always looks good. But that doesn't mean she should have to tolerate men accosting her. I hope she told them all to go to hell."

"Sometimes. But sometimes, I think actually she was the one who started the conversation. Like the four guys who whipped out their…" Williams gestured to his crotch. "I'm pretty sure she and Kelsey went up to them first."

Donatelli felt the blood drain from his face. "Strange men showed my wife their cocks? In a public place? Why didn't you stop them?"

"You told me to watch her and tell you everything she did. So that's what I did. And she was really slinging back the martinis and running all over the place. I had a hard time keeping up with her. Then she jumped up onstage with the band."

Crumpling the card in his hand, Donatelli focused on not losing his temper. Gwenna didn't drink. None of this made sense. And never in a million years would his wife deign to crawl up onstage at a rock concert and express interest in some longhaired musician. "You can't be serious."

Williams swallowed audibly. "Yes, sir, I'm sorry to say I am. She went onstage and pretended to be a backup singer until the bouncers hauled her off. Then a mortal guy she seemed to know left with her."

"Where did they go?"

"Well. He put her in a cab, which took her straight back to the Ava. She went in and up to her room."

"Okay, then." That sounded more like Gwenna.

"But…" Williams looked like he was in pain.

"But what?"

"Before he put her in the cab, they, um, you know…" His hands came together, went apart, came together.

"What the fuck are you trying to say?" Like he was going to sit there and play charades. This wasn't a damn undead dinner party.

"They got, you know, they, well… had sex." Williams's face was bright red and he was sweating profusely.

The entire world went black in front of Donatelli's eyes as rage swelled up and consumed him. "How do you know that? Where exactly did this allegedly occur?"

"I saw them, sir." Williams dropped his head down and rubbed his upper lip. "It was on the street, beyond some construction scaffolding. I was following them, making sure I didn't lose them, wondering why they were going back there and I saw…" His hands came together again. "Against the wall. Then I just went on the other side of the tarp and waited for them to finish because I knew you wouldn't want me to watch."

He didn't want it to happen at all, let alone anyone to watch. Donatelli spoke very, very carefully. "So, you're telling me my wife had sex with a strange man standing up outside, against a wall?"

"Yes, sir."

Donatelli stood up slowly. Then flipped his dining table over onto its side with a burst of fury. "Kill him."