Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand

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 restrain 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?”

“Can’t do that. Sorry.” I stood and went to her side to give her a big hug. “Don’t worry, guys. It’ll all work out. I just know it.”

I could feel them watching me with worried gazes as I left the bar. Outside, I retrieved my phone from my bag and called the number Dom gave me in case I needed help.

Chapter 14