Secret Unleashed: Secret McQueen, Book 6

by Sierra Dean

  “Guess the cat’s out of the bag.”

  “How are you an FBI agent? I just saw you in New York less than two weeks ago working at the police station.”

  “That’s my cover now.”

  Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. I couldn’t make sense of this. “Now? So you were a cop first and then a special agent, or a special agent pretending to be a cop?”

  “I used to be just a cop, then after the incident with Gabriel Holbrook, and that…thing pretending to be you? I know you did me a favor by not taking my memory, but I had a hard time accepting the truth. I started doing some searches online. Turns out the FBI don’t just monitor the Internet for assassination threats and bomb recipes.”

  “They came to you?”

  “They came to me and asked what I knew. I left you out of it, but I told them I’d seen vampires, told them what I’d witnessed in the basement of the precinct. Told them about those murdered teenagers at Christmas. Everything. I thought they would think I was insane and lock me up, but they gave me a job instead.”

  “What kind of job?”

  “Primarily informational. We investigate reports of supernatural activity based on web searches similar to mine. Usually the people are crackpots, but sometimes something real comes up.”

  “Why keep your day job?”

  “Because of you.”

  “Me?”

  He sat on the edge of my bed, his hip against the side of my leg, but I didn’t pull back.

  “You saved my life when you could have let that monster take Mercedes and me. I know what you did, telling your vampires I was yours. That’s akin to putting me under your protection. You took a big leap letting me in.”

  “And you went and told the government.”

  “The government already knew, Secret. You think vampires don’t like to dirty their hands in politics? Are you honestly so naïve you think no one knows about vampires and werewolves and all the rest of it?”

  Apparently I had been naïve because I had believed this entire time our secret had been kept. Now I was finding out everyone seemed to know. Military, FBI, whack-job psycho doctors.

  “So why isn’t it public knowledge?”

  “You think the public could handle knowing something like that?” He shook his head without waiting for my answer. “No. I consider myself a levelheaded, educated guy, and even I didn’t take the knowledge well. I don’t know how Mercedes did it for so long without going nuts.”

  “She’s not…”

  “No, she didn’t register a blip. If she’s Googled the word vampire, she must have been looking for Twilight reviews, because she never showed up on the system.”

  Discovering my best friend wasn’t in the mix on this multi-leveled lie relieved me somewhat. “You said you stayed because of me.”

  “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.”

  “Okay?” I wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but if he was about to make a confession of love, I wasn’t sure this was the time or place for him to do it.

  “You are a magnet for trouble.”

  “I… What?”

  “You draw things to you. In the few years I’ve known you, from what you’ve allowed me to remember, you killed a creature who was dismembering teenagers, you beheaded a demon who was able to steal human forms, and you almost died at your own wedding because of a jealous werewolf. Can you think of a better place for me to get field experience? Because I sure can’t.”

  “You stay in New York, working as a police detective, because you like how much trouble I get into?”

  “More or less.”

  “Will things change now that the FBI has a file on me?”

  Emilio announced his return with a polite warning cough and handed Tyler a coffee. “I asked the doc if you were allowed one, but he said no dice.” He gave an apologetic shrug.

  “Thanks for trying.”

  “Secret is asking me about her file,” Tyler said, catching Emilio up on the only pertinent fact he’d missed.

  “Did you get to the good part?”

  “There’s a good part about having the federal government know you’re a super-freak?” I asked.

  “There is,” Tyler assured me. “I’ve convinced my supervisors on the project you’re more useful to the good of humanity if you’re kept on the streets as opposed to…” His voice trailed off, gaze drifting over my broken arm and the choir of machines.

  Studied. The word he couldn’t say was studied.

  “I’m guessing The Doctor’s notes might prove to be more information than they need for the next while,” I said quietly. “Thank goodness for small favors.”

  “It did help,” Tyler admitted. “What he did to you is horrible, and I know nothing I can say or do can help make up for what you’ve been through.”

  “If you did anything to keep it from happening again, you’ve done more than enough. Thank you.”

  “There’s more to it…”

  “My freedom comes with an asterisk?”

  “A small one,” Emilio said. “Teeny tiny.” He held his fingers so close together light could barely pass through the gap.

  “I don’t have a list of spies I can give them or anything.”

  “We’re not the CIA.” Emilio sneered and sipped his coffee with a loud slurp.

  “What’s the catch?”

  “Well…you’re sort of a government asset now.” Tyler stood up as if he was afraid I might slap him, which would have implied he said something bad, only I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about.

  “An asset as in an employee or an informant?” I asked.

  “More like an asset we could stick a label on that says Property of the US Government.”

  I struggled to sit up, because surely even in my condition there had to be a way for me to strangle two smirking government employees to death with my bare hands. “What?”

  “It’s a formality, just a paperwork thing. This way you can be incorporated into the project but you don’t show up in any personnel documentation. Your asset tag is assigned solely to us.” Tyler pointed from himself to Emilio. “We’re your handlers.”

  “I’m not totally sure you heard me the first time, so I’m going to say it again. What?”

  “For all intents and purposes, you now belong to the US Government,” Emilio said, leaving no room for me to second-guess his meaning.

  “But I’m Canadian.”

  “We won’t hold that against you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Before the boys had a chance to tattoo a serial number on me or inject me with any tracking chips, they went through a standard debrief. What should have been a quick question-and-answer turned into an hour and a half of me reliving the last week of my life for them.

  When I was finished, Tyler assured me Dr. Kesteral would be made to pay for what he’d done.

  “No court in the world can punish him the way he deserves to be punished,” I said. My headache was returning with more vigor than before, and the blood bag attached to my elbow had gone dry.

  “He won’t be tried in a public court. He won’t be tried at all. There’s a special panel that will review what he’s done, get whatever information they can from him and then…”

  “Then?”

  “He’ll be disposed of.”

  “If your panel needs any help, I think the government owns a tool that would be mighty useful to them in psycho doctor disposals.” I tried to make a joke of it, but the truth of the matter was if I ever saw The Doctor again, I would shred him until nothing but a fine red mist remained.

  “Do you need anything before we go?” Emilio had left his card with me in case I ever had a request for him when Tyler was unavailable. They both assumed I would continue to trust Tyler as I had before, in spite of the fact he’d been lying to me for over a year.

  I didn’t know how I felt about this new revelation, or how to process the news that the Government of the United States knew about vampires and werewo
lves but suppressed that knowledge from the general public. I shouldn’t have been shocked to learn politicians would lie to the people they represented, but this seemed like an awfully big secret to keep buried.

  “I want to see Holden,” I said.

  “I don’t think—”

  “I want to see Holden.”

  “Emilio, can you maybe go discuss it with the doctor?”

  The shorter agent left. Ten minutes later Tyler disappeared as well, going to see what was holding up the process.

  Twenty minutes went by, and I had all but given up hope of my request being fulfilled, when a wheelchair was pushed through the curtain.

  He was pale, but that was nothing new. His cheekbones had a malnourished look still, but he was moving beyond the concentration-camp gaunt and back towards model thin. My heart leapt into my throat, making my words catch there. The nurse who’d brought the chair in did a perfect impression of a strict Sunday school teacher when she said, “Mr. Chancery is to stay in his chair. Ms. McQueen is to stay in her bed. You’re both healing, please respect the healing process. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  I barely heard a word of what she had said after Mr. Chancery. He looked like shit, but he was alive, and that made him the most beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on.

  Ignoring any warnings he’d received, he stood up, legs still wobbly, and climbed into the bed beside me. In spite of my theory about not wanting hugs, when he wrapped his arms around me, I melted into him like I was butter and he was the pancake.

  “I thought I’d never see you again.” I burrowed my face into the crook of his neck.

  “I know.” He brushed back my hair and placed a kiss on my forehead. “Has he been in to see you yet?”

  “You mean Tyler?”

  “Tyler? The gangly detective? No, why on earth would I mean Tyler?”

  I tilted my chin up, abrading my nose on the stubble covering his jaw. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Holden with stubble. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Desmond.” His confusion got more pronounced when he saw my face. If I looked half as shocked as I felt, my expression must have been a doozy.

  “What?” It was my new favorite question over the last couple of hours, though in fairness people were telling me a lot of things that were hard to process.

  “Desmond is here. They wouldn’t let him in to see you, not sure why, something about protection was all I overheard. I assumed they would have told you though.”

  If I’d known Desmond was anywhere within a hundred-mile radius, I would have kicked off the covers and gone looking for him myself. Since mobility might be an issue, I would have insisted they let him in to see me.

  “Why is he here?”

  “I don’t know, I wasn’t who he was trying to see. I just listened to what I could hear from where they had me. He really hasn’t been in to see you?”

  I shook my head and tried to sit up, but the movement made me dizzy. How long was it going to take before things got back to normal and I started feeling like myself again instead of a half-dead walking skeleton?

  “You’re sure they said Desmond?”

  He sat up beside me, wincing. For the life of me I couldn’t imagine what Desmond would be doing here. I was elated to know he was close, but I couldn’t comprehend his presence. He had no interaction with the council—not the one back home or the one here—so how could he have figured out where to look for me?

  Aside from our brief conversation en route from Los Angeles to San Francisco, I hadn’t spoken to him in days. Almost two weeks if I factored in the time I’d been kept locked up.

  Questions swam around in my brain, bumping against one another to derail my thought process. I would just about have a grasp on one idea when another would push its way to the forefront. Tyler and Emilio had asked all the questions to fill in whatever blanks they had, but it hadn’t occurred to me that between us we would have a complete picture. I should have been more thorough, made them tell me what they knew. Then I might have the slightest hope in hell of understanding the whole story.

  Desmond might have some of the answers I so desperately needed, but more than that I needed him. I had dreamed of him the way a prisoner dreams of freedom, and now I was out and he was so close, but he was still out of my reach.

  I squeezed Holden’s hand, looking back at him. “Did they tell you anything?”

  “Only that you were okay. That was all I needed to know.”

  “Did they…did they tell you about Max?”

  He grimaced and swallowed hard, I think to fight off any display of emotion. His expression became stoic and he said, “I heard.”

  I didn’t ask if he knew all the details. Knowing Maxime had died was bad enough; I didn’t want to burden him with how. Gruesome details of the scene would be burned into my psyche for the rest of my life, and only one of us needed to be haunted by those images. Besides, no words existed to paint a proper picture of what The Doctor had done to him, and maybe that was for the best.

  I fought the urge to escape from the bed and go in search of Desmond. The nurse who’d brought Holden to me had said we’d only have five minutes, and for those five minutes I would stay in his arms. Leaning back into him, I twined the fingers of my good hand into his and settled my head on his shoulder.

  “Holden?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did we really make it out, or is this just some dream you’re giving me to help me let go?”

  His fingers twitched against mine, squeezing harder, almost to the point of pain before he relaxed them. “If I was going to give you one last dream, don’t you think we’d be naked?”

  I laughed even though it hurt. “Maybe you thought that would be too obvious.”

  “No. We made it. We’re out.”

  “I gave up, you know.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “I did. I thought I’d seen you for the last time. I didn’t think I was going to leave that place alive. I gave up.”

  “You don’t know how to give up.” He was stroking my hair, placing delicate kisses along my temple and cheeks. “You don’t have a quitter in you.”

  “When I saw Max…”

  “Secret, shhh.”

  “I gave up,” I whispered, pressing my lips against the cool blue fabric of the gown he wore.

  “If you’d given up, we’d all be dead. You didn’t give up, you just…let go.”

  Calliope had told me once my fatal flaw was my need to be a normal person, to act in a way that I could pretend I was human and not a monster.

  But Holden was right. I hadn’t given up.

  I’d just kissed my humanity goodbye.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Four days later

  Government assets were not supposed to make demands.

  I’d learned that much from the exasperated expressions I continued to receive from Tyler and Emilio whenever I asked for something new.

  That’s what they got for labeling me as property.

  A Dell laptop might not ask for a lot from its government-assigned owner, but if these two thought I was going to politely do their bidding and not ask for anything in return, they needed to be set straight sooner rather than later.

  My first request had been to see Desmond.

  I’d been denied.

  My second through twelfth requests had also been to see Desmond, and each in turn had been shot down. They tried to be polite about it at first, but in the end Emilio and a military doctor had told me to stop asking. Desmond was a civilian, and it turned out architects do not merit military clearance. And certainly not walk-on privileges at a top-secret military hospital.

  From what I gathered he hadn’t liked the news any more than I had, but his reaction had been a bit…stronger. For the four days it took for the doctors to be satisfied with my recovery, Desmond had been kept in the stockade.

  Now that they were sure I was fully mobile and healthy, instead of rewarding me with a visit,
I was being debriefed. Again.

  I’d been left in a small interrogation room in the hospital’s basement. From what I could tell the hospital itself was one part of a much larger complex, but since I hadn’t been taken outside during my stay, I couldn’t figure out how big. Chances were good I’d never be privy to that information. The less I knew the better as far as they were concerned.

  The same theory extended to discovering the wellbeing of others. Aside from five-minute visits with Holden each night, I hadn’t been allowed to see my father. The doctor said he was in no condition to receive visitors, which suggested I’d been wise not to see him while we were in captivity. Anything that would take a vampire more than five days to heal couldn’t be good.

  I’d been ready to get out of bed on my second day, but they’d wanted to be cautious.

  I paced the ugly yellow interrogation room, none too pleased about being locked in a small space after what I’d been through. I’d never enjoyed tight quarters, but now even a twenty-by-twenty room felt cramped to me.

  The door opened, and Tyler entered, along with a man in full military dress. Tyler settled into one of the vacant chairs across the table from me, and the officer removed his cap, tucking it under his arm.

  He was a good-looking man, perhaps forty or a well-preserved fifty, with dark brown hair going gray at the temples and eyes the color of rich espresso. He had crinkly lines around his eyes and mouth suggesting a lifetime spent smiling. Across his left breast lapel were a number of service ribbons, telling me he was an officer of some important rank.

  “Good evening, Ms. McQueen. My name is Major Logan van Buren.” He extended a hand to me, and I considered ignoring it but thought better of it. If I was going to curry any favor with these guys, I would have to play nice.

  I shook his hand, maybe a bit too firmly, and said, “Tribunal Leader Secret McQueen. Queen of the Eastern werewolf pack.” If we wanted to play a game of ranks, I was willing to pull out the only big guns I had. I didn’t like using either of my titles when I was with my own kind, but I figured they might give me some weight to throw around here.

  Van Buren sat next to Tyler and indicated I should take the seat across from them. I obliged him.