Page 58 of Blood Stone

“So…did someone come into the trailer and take the bottle after he was knocked out? Or did they bring him back here and dump him?” Sebastian said, keeping his voice low.

“And who?” Winter added.

“And why?” Patrick asked.

Everyone looked at him. He lifted one broad shoulder in an elegant shrug. “Red Express,” he said. “The guy that moved the body was trying to help. It wasn’t until I – the detective – figured that out that the entire murder unravelled.”

“Roman,” Sebastian said instantly.

Nial shook his head. “He would have come to us for help. If he had found Garrett in that condition, he would have reached out, no matter what ‘side’ he thinks he’s on.”

“He knows about me?” Winter asked uneasily.

Nial shook his head.

Sebastian squeezed her shoulder. “Nial’s the only other vampire around. That’s all.”

Nial’s mouth turned up in an odd smile. Winter filed the reaction away to ask him about it later. Patrick Sauvage was getting far too much information as it was. Sebastian and Nial might feel fine handing it over to him, but after their lecturing and the scare Finka Zupan had given her, Winter was a bit more wary. “For all you know, the bottle rolled under the sofa. Did any of you check?”

Everyone looked at each other.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re all forgetting Occam’s Razor,” she chided them.

“Occam?” Patrick asked.

“Scientific principle,” Sebastian replied. “The simplest theory – or explanation for us – tends to be the truth. In this case, we should assume the bottle rolled under the sofa until we know otherwise.”

“Most of our questions could be answered by Garrett himself,” Winter pointed out.

“And here he is,” Nial murmured.

The trailer door opened slowly. Garrett took the steps down to the dirt one at a time, then moved carefully over to the swing seat and sat just as warily on the cushions. He had all the physical markers of a man with an acute hangover, except that Winter knew the only thing he was suffering was a headache. But for a vampire who had enjoyed good health unmarred by so much as a snivel, allergies, or the petty irritation of a scratch or hangnail for centuries, coping with a headache would be hard enough. Pain was a novel concept he was getting re-acquainted with in a hurry.

Sauvage sat next to him and Garrett winced as the swing set rocked at the movement.

Sebastian and Nial moved closer but Winter hung back. She saw no need to coddle the man for something that was self-inflicted. She had no questions the others weren’t capable of asking.

Garrett propped his head on his hand, his fingers digging into the temple. “What happened?”

“You first,leathcheann.” Sebastian’s tone was unforgiving, which matched calling Garrett an idiot.

Winter smiled. She wasn’t the only one with no patience for self-flagellation, then. Good.

Garrett heard the impatience in Sebastian’s Irish curse and understood it. He had been all sorts of idiot. He still was. “I have no idea where to start,” he confessed.

“What happened that made you try to crawl into a bottle of scotch?” Nial asked. His tone was gentler, but there was underlying plate steel there. He was ready to pounce, too.

“What happened when you went to speak to Kate?” Sebastian added. “Because you were not planning on killing yourself before then.”

“Killing…?” Pat repeated and choked. “It kills you?” he asked, sounding horrified.

“I suppose, yes, it would have,” Garrett said. “I hadn’t considered that at all. I didn’t know what it would do to me. I just knew I had to have a drink or…” He gave a hollow laugh.

“Or die?” Nial finished dryly.

“I wanted to get drunk,” Garrett said. “Blind drunk. I wanted to shut my brain down.”

“Well, you managed that, didn’t you?” Nial’s wife said. She was standing further away, distancing herself from all of them. From him, Garrett realized. Judging him.