Secret Unleashed

Chapter Five

Detective Mercedes Castilla had bigger hips than me—and longer legs—but I’d rather borrow her spare jeans instead of a pair of unknown origin from the lost-and-found box.

At least I knew any stains on Cedes’s jeans were from coffee.

Judging by the triumphant sneer on Barbie the Receptionist’s face when I’d been dragged into the police station, she would have liked nothing more than to see me wearing a pair of baggy sweats abandoned by a homeless guy. Barbie had never been my biggest fan.

In spite of the fact the fallen apartment building was in Brooklyn, Holden and I ended up at the seventy-sixth precinct of the NYPD. Just my luck. Luck in this case was equal parts honest luck and being totally screwed.

Lucky because I got to borrow jeans from my human best friend.

Shitty break because of the pair of disapproving eyes and sternly crossed muscular arms seated across the desk from me. Detective Tyler Nowakowski was shaking his handsome, stubbled jaw at me.

“You know…for someone trying to stay under the radar, you’re doing a piss-poor job of it,” he said.

Blessedly, Mercedes and Tyler were both aware of what I was—all of what I was—and happened to be under my protection. In a fun turn of events, they were also both now protecting me. I think Tyler enjoyed being the hero for once. He was the manly sort, and was probably tired of me being the one to save him.

I was pretending to ignore him by looking at the giant hole underneath the pockets on my former pants. “I’m sick of ruining my favorite pants.”

“Secret. Focus.”

I dropped the jeans into my lap and met his gaze. His thick black eyebrows were knit together, and he was showing me his most impressive stern-detective face. “Don’t look at me like that.”

Tyler’s desk was set at the back of the room, giving us the illusion of privacy. Holden had been taken to an interrogation room by Mercedes, and since the other rooms were in use, I was being debriefed by Tyler at his desk.

“You really brought down the house this time, didn’t you?”

“Oh har-frigging-har, Detective Comedy.”

“Mind telling me what happened?”

“Do you want the actual version or the on-the-record version?”

He frowned, his nose wrinkling more than Samantha on Bewitched, and finally he sighed and uncrossed his arms. With his elbows propped on the desk, he waved both hands at me and said, “Tell me the truth first. We’ll deal with what I put in the report later.”

“I was helping Shane hunt a rogue. Rogue had his goons wired up more than the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. Goons went boom.” I mimed an explosion with my hands.

“I take it that was the CliffsNotes version.”

I nodded.

“Do we have to worry about this rogue?” He said rogue like the word was in a foreign language.

“I blew out both his kneecaps. I think the wardens have him under control.”

“You think?”

“Best I can tell you without being able to check with the council.” I folded my ruined jeans and dumped them into the wire trash bin next to his desk. Two hundred dollars into the crapper. No big deal.

“You know I can’t just let you walk out.”

“You know I can post bail.”

“You’re going to have to. You and the pretty-boy vampire are in some serious trouble this time, Secret, and not the kind he can voodoo-eye his way out of.”

“That voodoo he do?” I said with a snicker. “Voodoo-eye? Seriously, Detective Tyler?”

“What do you call it?”

“The thrall. Enthralling.”

“How poetic.”

“You’ve been on the receiving end. It’s effective.” I propped my feet against his desk and tipped my chair back, trying to see if I could get a glimpse into the interrogation rooms. The staff had gotten wise to the view, though, because the small windows were covered.

Tyler whacked my toes with a manila folder. “Could you at least pretend to respect me?”

I dropped my feet, the wooden chair clacking loudly on the tile floor, echoing through the mostly empty room like a gunshot. The few people seated nearby flinched, and one guy gave me a dirty look.

“I do respect you.” I avoided the nasty gaze and held my hands over my heart in mock horror. “Do you want to hear the official version of the story? I thought of it in the cruiser on the way over.”

“I’m sure I’ll be dazzled.”

“Okay…fade in, damaged midtown apartment complex…”

“If you say the word asbestos to me, so help me God, I will kick your tiny ass from here to next month.”

“Uhhhh…”

“You were going to say asbestos, weren’t you?”

I smiled sheepishly. “Maybe.”

“Asbestos won’t make a building collapse.”

“I’m sorry, did I miss the secret structural engineering degree in your past?”

He rolled his eyes. “Is there any danger of them finding the pieces of those vampires? Anything to make it look like there are bodies in the rubble?”

“Once the sun comes up, the parts will be gone. If there’s any blood, that stays, but the body parts will poof. Even if they’re intact when they start moving rubble, it disappears so quickly they won’t find anything.” I fanned my hands out to mimic dust spreading in the wind. “And the blood could be from anything, right? It’s not out of the question for bad things to happen in abandoned buildings in this city. Definitely nothing to build a case on.”

He tapped his pen thoughtfully, and across the floor the interrogation room opened. Mercedes held the door, and a uniformed officer retrieved Holden from inside, taking him down a hall and out of sight.

Cedes shut the folder in her hand and traipsed across the work floor. After pulling up a chair from the desk next to Tyler’s, she plopped down and faced him, pretending I wasn’t there.

“So Chancery claims they were out for a walk when they heard something inside the building. The building was scheduled for demolition tomorrow—”

“No it wasn’t,” Tyler interjected flatly. “There’s no goddamn way that’s true.”

“Whether or not you believe it, there’s paperwork to back it up. I just had this faxed over from a night clerk at city hall who was none too pleased with me for cashing in a favor.”

Cedes handed him what I could only assume was a demolition work order. An order that probably hadn’t existed two hours ago. It helped to have friends in high—or low—places.

“So what, we’re saying that on entering the building they accidentally triggered existing demolition charges?”

Cedes nodded, and Tyler let out an aggravated sigh. “Well…that sounds like a steaming pile of horseshit to me. But it’s a hell of a lot better than what this one was going to suggest.”

Cedes acknowledged my existence at last. “Asbestos?”

“Guilty.”

“Don’t say the g-word in here,” Cedes scolded. “Look, we have to book you guys for trespassing and damaging private property. Nothing too major, but it’s going on your record.”

“Hot damn! I’ve been trying to get something on my record for eons. Apparently the worse the crime, the harder it is to get arrested for it.” I beamed at her. “I assume we’ll need to pay for the damages, and someone will have to post bail?”

“You got it,” Cedes said. “That going to be a problem?”

“Not if you give me my one phone call.”

As luck would have it I had my fair share of multimillionaires and people with deep pockets to call. There was a time I’d have defaulted to calling my ex-boyfriend/werewolf husband Lucas Rain. After all, who was better than a billionaire when you needed cash fast?

But I didn’t want to owe anything to Lucas if I could avoid it. I’d asked my last favor of him when my mother showed up in town, and now that it was done, I didn’t want anything else to do with him. I certainly didn’t want to be in debt to him for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It wasn’t the fear of owing him money, but rather being symbolically shackled to him any more than I already was.

Which meant there was only one man I could reach out to and not come out in the red at the end.

I wish I hadn’t been in a holding cell when Sig came through the front doors of the police station. I’d seen how dazzled Barbie had been by Holden during previous visits, and if Holden was impressive, Sig was a force to be reckoned with.

Barbie wouldn’t have stood a chance. She’d probably been reduced to a foaming puddle of drool in the lobby. Sig just had that effect on women. And a lot of men, too, I was willing to bet. He was six-foot-seven and a towering ode to Scandinavian hotness. Lean, blond, with piercing blue eyes and the power to woo with the smallest gesture, Sig was a hell of a man.

He was also the true Tribunal leader, and held the council’s purse strings, so he would be able to get Holden and me out, and pay for the building too. There was no way to know how much the council had paid in the past to cover up the things vampires had done in the city or around the world.

Keeping a secret like ours wasn’t easy—or cheap—but the council had spent centuries amassing wealth. Everything from stock holdings—getting in on both Microsoft and Apple when they went public had helped—to long-term, high-interest savings accounts and bonds, the council was set. Super set. They hid their wealth under the radar by maintaining accounts in different names and foreign countries, but if it were all added up, the vampires would have the gross income of a midsized country.

With almost none of the debt.

I might have felt guilty asking for the money if it were anyone else, but the vampire council was not anyone else. I sort of felt like they owed it to me now, considering I’d been their bitch for so many years.

The officer monitoring the holding cells let Holden out first, and me next, announcing we’d posted bail. Out in the lobby, Sig was leaning casually on the front desk saying something to Barbie in his smooth accent—one I’d never been able to place because it was so old—and Mercedes stood nearby, pretending she wasn’t enchanted by him.

Everyone who ever met him was enchanted by him, it was part of his gift. Some vampires had extra talents, and Sig’s was putting those around him at ease, human and vampire alike.

That was part of the reason he scared me so much. I felt relaxed when I was next to him, and since I was almost never relaxed, it made me extra nervous about him. Like he might attack me at any moment, but I would be so calm I’d simply roll over and let him maul me.

My blind trust was what made me most wary of him.

“Ah, here they are, my troublemaking friends.” He straightened to his full height and spread his arms wide like he wanted to hug the whole room. Barbie was gawking at him with a starry expression, and even Cedes was having difficulty suppressing a smile. “I do hope they weren’t too difficult for you.”

“Of course not,” Barbie said, as if she’d had anything to do with our brief stay in the slammer.

“We might need to get them frequent visitor badges at this rate, but a stay in the cells was new.” Cedes toyed with her frizzy black curls. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was flirting with the Finnish master vampire.

“Hey, Cedes?” I interrupted. “How’s Owen?”

Her hand dropped from her hair, and she seemed to shake off the hazy glow of Sig’s presence. “Owen. Right. My boyfriend, Owen. Owen is great.” She took a few big steps back from Sig, suddenly realizing the impact he’d had on her wasn’t altogether natural.

Cedes didn’t trust vampires on the best day, and it had taken years for me to get her to treat Holden like a person—sort of—but she still didn’t have fuzzy feelings about vampires en masse. Sig wasn’t helping matters now, even if his mojo was involuntary. To people like Mercedes and Tyler who didn’t get the nuances of vampire power, everything unnatural was an invasion of their psyche.

I wanted her to stay wary, but I didn’t want her to think all vampires were monsters. Some of them might be, but not all, and it wasn’t fair of her to paint every single one of them with the same brush because of the misdeeds of a few.

Maybe it was a side effect of her job too. I was willing to bet Cedes had a hard time seeing the good in humans, considering what she saw in the field on a daily basis. If I could get her to see vampires the same way she did humans, then I might have a chance of showing her there was some good mixed in with the bad.

Problem was some days even I had trouble seeing the good, in vampires and humans both.

“Cedes, this is Sig. He’s my co-chair on the…council.” I avoided the word Tribunal because there was just no way to make it sound like a normal job. Council could be anything, though.

“We were introduced,” she said, her expression serious and her whole posture becoming more rigid. Since I was feeling the soothing impact of Sig’s presence, I knew she must be fighting it hard.

I leaned in close and whispered so Barbie wouldn’t hear, “He’s not doing it intentionally. It’s just…him. Try not to resist.”

I might as well have told a wall not to resist a wrecking ball. She’d yield eventually, but now that I’d told her not to, she was more hell-bent on keeping his powers at bay. If Mercedes Castilla had a superpower, it would be stubbornness.

“You guys are good here?” she asked, though it sounded more like a statement than a question, as though we had no choice but to be okay. Without waiting for our reply, she turned heel and jogged up the steps and back into the upper floor of the precinct.

“Are you two done here?” Sig probed. It was a loaded question, and I knew he was going to unleash hell on me the second we were out of human earshot.

“Definitely,” Holden replied, the first word he’d spoken to me since we’d arrived here. In spite of our holding cells being next to each other, he hadn’t said a thing. Either he didn’t want to risk saying something telling in front of non-vampire company, or he was pissed at me for getting him arrested.

Or for ruining his precious suit.

We left the station together when all the necessary paperwork had been completed. With Sig signing everything, it made me feel as if he’d just bought me.

He already owned my life in so many other ways, what was one more?

Once the three of us were outside in the warm summer night, Sig’s pleasant veneer melted away, and he fixed me with a stern, unimpressed glare. “Do you know what it means to lie low, Secret?”

“I—”

“That was a rhetorical question, as the answer is obviously no. I let you stay in the city because you promised me you could stay under the radar. Keep a low profile. All those silly new expressions you people have for keeping out of trouble. And what do you do? You bring down an entire apartment building.”

“In fairness, that was Grendel…”

“Now is a poor time to make excuses, pet.” He shortened his long strides, giving me and Holden a chance to catch up. Holden didn’t seem to be in much of a rush, trailing a few feet back.

“We saved the girl,” I said. “And didn’t Shane bring Grendel in?”

“He did.”

I sighed inwardly, relieved to know Shane and the wardens had been able to wrangle Grendel into council headquarters before the vampire’s knees healed and he was able to make a run for it.

“I think he knows something about Peyton,” I said, recalling what Grendel had baited me with in the apartment complex. “He might know where he is.”

Sig crossed the street, and I had no choice but to follow him if I wanted the conversation to continue. The yellowish glow of the streetlights gave his white-blond hair a warm, angelic glow. Sometimes, if I glanced at him quickly and saw only the beautiful face and often-shirtless physique, I forgot he was scary. In those moments he was just an alluring man.

This was not one of those moments, in spite of how good he looked in his tight black T-shirt. Considering Sig’s outfit generally consisted of leather pants and nothing else, the all black was a change of pace. The shoes were the most impressive thing for me. He wandered around barefoot ninety-nine percent of the time, and I knew he’d only put the loafers on to appear normal at the police station, but it didn’t make me any less fascinated by the sight.

I was so distracted I didn’t notice him stop in his tracks and ended up walking into his backside.

It was like smacking into a muscular wall.

“The time has come,” he said, as if picking up on a conversation thread, but it wasn’t from any conversation I remembered having with him. Had he been talking this whole time while I was busy staring at his shoes?

Better his shoes than his ass, I suppose.

“For what?” I asked, before I could be distracted by anything else.

Holden was beside me now, and he shook his head at Sig. “That’s drastic. We said we could avoid it.”

“Avoid what?”

“We said we could avoid it if she played by the rules. I was a fool to believe such an option would work. If Peyton has other rogues working with him, there is no safe place here anymore. When a creature like Grendel can be lured in by Alexandre’s promises, we are left with no other choice.”

“But we caught Grendel,” I reminded them, still not sure what we were talking about. I didn’t like where I thought it was going, though. “I’m not afraid of rogues.”

“If you believe this is something you can talk your way out of by professing how unafraid you are, you are sorely mistaken. There will be no further discussion.”

“But—”

“I’m sending you away.” Sig’s tone was as flat as the skyline in my prairie hometown. “Tonight.”