Secret Unleashed: Secret McQueen, Book 6 (31 page)

“So you’ve read his notes.”

“Yes.”

“And you know what I am?”

He looked confused. “Of course.”

“But you’re not…surprised.”

This time he did smile. “Ah. You think because I’m human I should be running from the room in a panic, waving my arms and screaming to the masses about monsters. Is that it?”

The way he phrased it made me feel guilty for thinking it, but… “Yes.”

“Your kind isn’t nearly as clever as you’ve led yourselves to believe. You think after thousands of years coexisting with vampires we haven’t figured it out?” He lifted his hand as if he was going to touch me again, then thought better of it, putting both hands in his pockets. “There will be plenty of time to discuss it, and perhaps the agents might be better able to answer some questions, but I don’t want you talking to them for long. You need rest.”

He started pulling the curtain closed, but a question came to me that couldn’t wait. “Dr. Bernal?”

“Yes?”

“Were there other survivors?”

He stopped tugging on the curtain. “At the time of the infiltration there were twenty-two other captives on-site. We were able to retrieve eighteen. Six wolves, ten vampires and two CUOs.”

“CUOs?”

“Creatures of unknown origin.”

The curtain was almost closed when I asked, “One of the vampires…was his name Holden?”

“Your friend is fine. He’s being a rather distracting pain in the ass and has been asking for you since we brought him in, but aside from some weakness and other symptoms associated with vampire starvation, he’s doing well.”

“Maxime?” My voice was small.

The doctor became quiet. “No. I’m sorry. Now please, try and get some rest.”

He left before I could ask about my father.

I lay still, staring up at the stained ceiling tiles and counting the beats of my own heart as they echoed on the ECG. They were slow, but that was normal for me.

After I’d counted to a hundred, the curtain rattled again. A man in a nondescript black suit came in. He was a little taller than me, and Latino, his black hair short on the sides in a severe buzz cut. He couldn’t have screamed
government employee
any louder unless he had mirrored aviators on and drove a black SUV.

“Good evening, Ms. McQueen. My name is Special Agent LaRoy. Sorry to bother you while you’re recovering, but my partner and I were hoping to ask you a few questions if we could.”

“Is your first name Special Agent?” I asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“Tell me your first name, and I’ll answer your questions. You’ll have to forgive me for not wanting to talk to anyone who uses a title instead of a name, considering The Doctor and all.”

“Of course.” He smiled, and it was a nice smile, one that warmed his face and made his eyes twinkle. As far as G-men went, this guy seemed okay. “My first name is Emilio.”

“Hi, Emilio. My name is Secret.”

“A pleasure, ma’am.” The curtain rattled and was pushed back. “I believe you know my partner? Special Agent Tyler Nowakowski.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

It was nice to know I could still be surprised.

It was also a good thing the collar had been removed. “Jesus fucking Christ, are you fucking shitting me?”

Emilio coughed into his hand to cover his laughter and clapped Tyler once on the back. “I’ll give you two a minute, go get us some coffee before we start the interview, okay?”

He didn’t wait for our response, just vanished into the hospital.

“Tyler?”

“Hi, Secret.” He looked different. I was used to seeing him in dress pants and button-down shirts, but in his FBI suit he appeared less beaten down. The stubble normally coloring his jaw was gone in favor of a clean-shaven face. This was the Tyler I’d gone on a blind date with years ago. This was Tyler the way I’d imagined he’d been before he met me.

“
Special Agent
Tyler?” That was more of a mouthful than
Detective
Tyler. It might take some getting used to.

“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 werewolves 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
.”