Secret Unleashed: Secret McQueen, Book 6 (34 page)

“I thought you’d bolted.”

Ah, yes. It wasn’t the most absurd thought he’d ever had because I
had
run from my problems in the past. “I told you I’d never leave without telling you. I
promised
you,” I reminded him. In the supernatural community a promise meant a lot more than your word. It usually represented a solemn oath. I was a bit offended he believed I’d go back on mine so easily.

“I know, and I’m sorry for thinking it. But after he told me what he’d done, and you weren’t answering…”

“You thought I ran off
with
Holden, didn’t you?”

He nodded, not pretending otherwise. “You’re a PI, Secret, tell me what you would have assumed given the evidence?”

He was right. Even a rookie detective would have jumped to the same conclusion. But the fact Desmond was here and I’d been rescued from hell made me believe he hadn’t planned on letting me go without a fight.

“I wanted to be sure. You
had
promised me, and I believed you intended to keep your promise. It didn’t make sense to me that you’d up and leave. So I called Vivienne.”

“You called
Grandmere
?”

“I did. I assumed if there was anyone on Earth you would feel you
had
to tell where you were going, it would be her. She hadn’t heard from you either, which is when I started to
really
worry. I called everyone.
Everyone
. I spoke to Callum and Eugenia and half the Southern pack, hoping you might have made contact. I knew you’d gotten close to your sister, and I thought she might have spoken with you, but she hadn’t. She
was
able to tell me you hadn’t been active on Skype for over a day, which she explained was a sure sign your phone was either turned off or the battery was dead.”

Smart girl. I had no idea how to change my status on the video chat program, so it was always on. And anyone who knew me also knew I wasn’t in the habit of turning off my phone.

“Since your bloody phone is always on, that meant it had to be dead. Your voicemail was full, which meant you weren’t retrieving your messages, and I have my texts set to tell me when the recipient reads them. You hadn’t seen a single one I’d sent. I
knew
something was wrong.”

“I’m so sorry.” I hated that he’d been worried, but at the same time I wanted to hug him for not giving up. “What happened next?”

“I went to Mercedes.”

Clever. When he exhausted his supernatural resources, he’d gone for a more conventional one. The last time I’d run off, I told Mercedes where I was. Since Lucas had approached her then, I was betting he’d told Desmond about his failed attempt to coerce information from her. I felt a sudden pang of guilt.
Oh God, Cedes needs to know I’m alive.

Seeing my flustered expression, he grabbed one of my hands. “Tyler had someone call her. He couldn’t do it himself because she doesn’t know about him. From what I’ve been told, and the thirteen nondisclosure agreements I’ve been forced to sign, none of us are supposed to know about Tyler.”

“How do
you
know then?” Would Tyler have been stupid enough to let Desmond see him? That seemed like an awfully big risk unless there was more to it than I’d heard so far.

“Tyler was with Mercedes when I went to speak with her. I’ve got to say, he’s got the innocent vibe down pat because he toed the company line the entire time I was there. I even filed a missing persons report to make it official. But Mercedes told me she hadn’t heard from you either. She said she’d make some calls to the SFPD, but I’m betting there won’t be much of a record. Not if Tyler got to it first.”

I couldn’t handle the chair anymore, so I got to my feet and started pacing again, this time in small circles near Desmond.

He went on. “Tyler came to see me that night. He asked me if there were any details I’d left out, then told me he knew what you were. He said you’d
claimed
him?”

“I’ve marked him as being mine. It’s a vampire thing. It means he’s under my protection.” As his brows knit together I added, “Before you start thinking it
means
anything, I’d like to point out I’ve also
claimed
you. And Cedes.
Aaand
Nolan, Shane, Keaty and a few others.” I smiled at him and shrugged. “I’m a property whore, what can I say? Point is, it keeps you guys safe from other vampires when I’m not around. At least vampires who obey council laws.”

“I told Tyler about Peyton,” Desmond said when I finished. “And about your mother. He said he had the resources to help. I didn’t know what he meant, but I was willing to do anything. So I told him.”

I stopped pacing. “Did he find them?” If Alexandre Peyton and Mercy McQueen were somewhere in this complex and no one had told me, I was going to lose my shit in short order.

Desmond shook his head, letting some of the steam out of my rage teakettle. I wouldn’t put it past the government to lie to me. Or lie by omission, anyway. After all, they were keeping a
huge
secret buried from the general public, so what was one little secret kept from me?

“As far as I know the search never involved them. It was focused on you and Holden. I mean, it’s possible other things happened, but to the best of my knowledge you were the main target of the investigation.”

Because Tyler wanted to keep using me. Because I was his
asset
. It made sense, in a twisted way, that he’d be dedicated to finding me. You don’t put that much time and effort into something just to let it vanish without a trace. I was his pet project, so he’d fought for me.

Tyler Nowakowski was demented. In a sweet way.

“But if the FBI was responsible for finding me, why are you
here
? Not that I’m not thrilled.” I sat down again, squeezing both his hands. “But why did they involve you? And why did they throw you in lockup?”

He blushed. “The stockade thing was my own fault. When they brought you back here, they wouldn’t let me in. I’d come with the FBI escort, and I’d assumed I’d be given access, but I was suddenly declared
civilian
, which in military terms means
persona non grata
. When they told me hell would freeze over before I was ever allowed into the hospital, I sort of…lost it.”

Desmond was the calm one. He was the cool, level head and voice of reason in my otherwise chaotic life. “Lost it
how
?”

“I might have turned over a Humvee and destroyed all the furniture in the hospital lobby. That was as far as I got before they tasered me.” He shrugged as if to say,
Shit happens
. “I can’t be mad. I sort of had it coming. Woke up in a cell, and I’ve been there until today.”

“How were you involved, though?” I still couldn’t understand why they would bring him this far only to shut him out in the end. What part had he played to make it pivotal for him to come across the country?

“I found you.”

“You…what?”

“I told them you were my mate. I explained how the mate-bond functioned.”

So much for my keeping his wolfy nature a secret.

“But we’re not mate-bonded. You didn’t mark me, I would have known.” And more importantly, he knew better than to do it without my permission, which was how Lucas had completed the bond.

“They didn’t know that. I made them believe the only hope in hell they had of finding you was bringing me along for the ride. Turns out I was right.”

“So how did
you
find me?”

“Well, getting to you was a joint effort, but it helped to have FBI resources on my side. We knew you’d planned on going to the Winchester Mystery House the night you vanished. Tyler confiscated all the park tapes. There aren’t any
inside
the house, so we didn’t see you being abducted, but we were able to see which of the tour guests were missing when it was all over. You, Holden, the boy you were with—”

“Maxime.”

“Yes. And one other.”

That didn’t take a genius to figure out, since I knew who’d taken me. “The Doctor.”

“Dr. Friedrich Kesteral, yes.”

When I’d first woken in my cell, I had wondered how The Doctor was able to take three vampires by force so easily when he was human. After hearing him tell me about all the experiments he’d run, I hadn’t wondered anymore. Thirty years of research was a long time. Long enough to know vampire weaknesses, and certainly long enough to develop a way to incapacitate them.

No wonder the government was so keen to go through The Doctor’s research. Soon enough they’d know every weakness a vampire had, plus a half dozen we probably didn’t yet know existed.

“I take it the FBI was able to figure out who he was.”

“Apparently face recognition software is real. Dr. Kesteral didn’t have a criminal record, but he was considered a person of interest for quite some time, I gather. I didn’t get a lot of the finer details, but they were able to find an empty parcel of land he owned near Palo Alto. Then they decided to use me.”

I sucked air in through my nostrils. “You were their bloodhound, weren’t you?”

He nodded. “The place looked deserted enough, but I was able to pick up your scent. I knew you were there. It took them nearly fourteen hours to find the entrance.”

During which time my arm had been broken and I’d almost gotten away with murder.

“But they found me.”

“They found you.”

“The FBI assumes Kesteral had help removing you, Holden and Maxime from the house, likely through a workers’ entrance. Unfortunately there weren’t any cameras back there to help us find out who.”

“He had plenty of people to choose from. The guy had a bloody
staff
.” All of whom were probably in an FBI prison somewhere, having their identities erased from public record.

I’d wanted them all to burn, but I’d take what I could get.

“
You
found me,” I corrected.

Desmond nodded. “I’d go to hell and back to find you.”

I squeezed his hands, worried if I let go, he might vanish. Part of me was still terrified this was all a dream.

“You did.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“Secret McQueen. Two SIG P226 9mm handguns. Seven ammunition clips, silver. One silver knife. One leather holster. One pair leather boots. One leather jacket. One Kate Spade purse…leather. One Samsung cellular phone.”

“Something that
isn’t
leather,” I said, having picked up some attitude from the woman handing me my belongings.

Holden sat next to me, a stony expression on his face.

The woman continued, unimpressed with my interruption. “Holden Chancery. One iPhone. One pair Armani shoes. Leather.”

“That’s it?” I asked when she passed him a plastic bag with his brown shoes and phone enclosed.

“It was all I wanted back.”

I hugged my jacket close to me and handed my bag of belongings to Desmond for safekeeping.

“I want Maxime’s things too,” I insisted.

“The vampire had nothing of value on his person.” She sneered when she said
person
.

“And Sutherland Halliston?”

“Why on earth would I give you his belongings?”

“Because he’s my father. And because something in there might save his damned immortal life. Now
give me his stuff
.”

She frowned but didn’t offer further argument. I was betting someone had told her I had the right to claim on Sutherland’s behalf—Logan or Tyler probably—otherwise she might have argued longer or called a supervisor for permission. Instead she returned with a small baggy.

“Sutherland Halliston. One wallet, leather. One Nokia cellular phone. One pendant, crystal.”

When she said
crystal
, my pulse jumped. He really did have it, the one thing that might save his life with the Tribunal. I hadn’t known what I was looking for, but when the clerk said
crystal
, I knew.
I knew
what he had without a sliver of doubt in my mind.

That stupid broken window I’d found in the closet before the Doctor grabbed me. He’d somehow managed to swap them. Sutherland might be crazy, but it looked like resourcefulness ran in the family.

“Thank you.” All of the surliness vanished from my tone, replaced with genuine appreciation. “
Thank you
.”

“Desmond Alvarez,” she continued, ignoring me, though I saw her lip twitch into a momentary smile. “One BlackBerry. One wallet, leather.” Since Desmond hadn’t been stripped on arrival like Holden and I had, it made sense he would have the least to collect when we left.

“Sign here,” the clerk said, passing us a clipboard. “
You
sign twice.” She tapped the line by Sutherland’s name. I obliged her.

“One more thing,” I said, which seemed to surprise her. “Do you have a cellphone charger?”

Seven hundred and forty-one new texts.

One hundred and eighty-seven missed calls.

Ten voicemails, which was the maximum number my phone could accommodate.

I didn’t know where to begin.

I cleared the missed-call log immediately. I knew who I would have missed calls from, and I’d get back to each of them in turn. I skipped the texts for the time being because, well, there were too many for me to go through without an afternoon of free time. I jumped into the voicemails.