Secret Unleashed

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.

“That’s a mouthful of names you’ve got, Ms. McQueen.”

I considered requesting he address me by my appropriate titles, but decided if he was going to be casual, so would I. I might be a government pawn now, but I wasn’t under his command. “It certainly is, Mr. van Buren.”

“Let’s dispose with formalities, shall we?” He was on to my game and seemed willing to play. “You can call me Logan. Can I call you Secret?”

“You can call me the Whore of Babylon if you’ll let me see Desmond Alvarez.”

Tyler, who had a stack of folders in his hand, placed one in front of the major. Logan opened it, and I saw Desmond’s photo affixed to the top left corner.

“Mr. Alvarez…” Logan flipped through the documents quickly, but from what I could read upside down they had a pretty complete history of Desmond and his family in there. I wondered how thorough it was. If they knew what I was, did they also know what he was? “It seems Mr. Alvarez went to a great deal of trouble to find you.”

“He did?”

No one had told me anything about Desmond’s part in this whole thing, so I still didn’t know where or how he factored in.

“Very brave. Very foolish.” Logan closed the file and slid it back to Tyler. “We normally have a way of dealing with this kind of civilian interference, but with respect to you we’ve held off with Mr. Alvarez.”

“What, do you guys have a vampire on retainer who can come in and enthrall humans so they don’t remember anything?” I snorted. When the men exchanged a loaded glance, my mouth fell open. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Our practices are not the concern here, Secret. Not at the moment. I understand you may find our methods questionable, but tell me this…would you prefer we employ a vampire to augment human memories, or would you rather we make those humans…disappear?” Logan folded his hands on the table and met my eyes boldly.

He had a point.

“I want to see Desmond.”

“In due time.”

“I’ve waited days. People keep dodging me. Can you just tell me if you have any intention whatsoever of letting me see my boyfriend?”

“I thought the vampire was your boyfriend,” Tyler said.

“I would assume the werewolf king would be your husband given your title of queen.”

Smarmy bastards.