Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand (Kitty Norville 5)

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?”