Secret Unleashed

or not, I will be the one to kill him.”

Logan looked afraid of me for the first time since he’d walked into the room. Then he extended his hand and said, “Deal.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

It took Logan seven hours to ask me everything he wanted to know. In those seven hours I told him what I’d seen of the way the compound worked, how many different employees I’d interacted with, and repeated every conversation I’d had with The Doctor.

I still couldn’t think of him as Friedrich. The name was too normal and too soft for the man it was attached to. I’d thought giving him a human name would help me feel better about things, help me humanize him and think of him as something other than the boogeyman in my nightmares, but it didn’t do any good.

He was still The Doctor. He would always be The Doctor.

The only way I was going to exorcise my demons would be when I eradicated him from the face of the earth. I needed to be the one who killed him because otherwise I’d never believe he was gone. Until my skin was stained with his blood and I saw the light go out in his eyes, I wouldn’t be free from the power he had over me.

Nine days was all it had taken for him to beat me down, and now he owned me.

It didn’t matter that he was in captivity or I was supposedly free, because in my mind I was still wearing the collar. I was still shackled to him and would be as long as he stayed alive.

Once the major was done asking his questions—some of which were new, most a repeat of the same old story—he got to his feet and shook my hand. Tyler followed suit, giving me a firm handshake and a supportive smile.

“I’m looking forward to working with you in the future, Secret. I think this team can do great things.” Logan nodded from me to Tyler. “Of course, I don’t need to remind you your affiliation with us would best be kept quiet. I understand your vampire council likes to believe they’ve got everyone fooled. Let’s let them keep thinking that.”

“That might not be as easy as it sounds.”

“You’re their leader, aren’t you?”

“I’m one third of the leadership of one of the councils. But even there I’m outranked by one.”

“You think you’re going to have any difficulty lying to one vampire?” Logan asked.

“If you’d ever met Sig, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

“Come a time you feel you’re no longer safe, you make the call and we’ll extract you.”

I laughed, my first real non-crazed laugh since I’d been free, and the sound was so unfamiliar to me I almost jumped. “Logan, with all due respect to you, I’m not a double agent. You need me for intel on all the things that go bump in the night, fine, I’ll help you. But I’m not giving anyone up, and I’m not telling you anything I don’t feel comfortable sharing. I appreciate what the FBI did for me, and whatever part the military played, I’m grateful to you too, but you don’t understand the first damned thing about vampires. So here’s my first bit of insider information for you.”

“What’s that?”

“The moment I no longer feel protected by my own council, I’m already dead. Because that’s the only way I get out of there. Understand?”

“Yes, Ms. McQueen. I believe I do.”

“Good. Now bring me Desmond Alvarez.”

They left, Tyler offering me a brotherly pat on the shoulder before taking his exit, and I resumed pacing the room. Logan had told me Desmond was in a room next door, yet the time between their exit and his arrival felt interminable.

When the door reopened, I froze in my tracks, staring at the entry like a frightened deer stares at an oncoming car, knowing what was inevitable but unable to move out of its way.

He wore a similarly shocked expression, like he hadn’t believed he’d get to see me when they brought him into the room.

“Secret?”

I’d missed him. I thought I’d understood the depth to which I could long for someone, but seeing him in front of me told me I had no idea. My hands trembled to touch him, and a hideous-sounding sob wrested free of my throat.

I’d been drowning, and he was the oxygen I hadn’t known I needed.

“Des—”

He didn’t give me an opportunity to finish saying his name. In one moment he was filling the doorway with his body, and in the next I was in his arms. He lifted me full off the floor and supported my weight easily with a hand on either thigh, latching me to him.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, clinging to him like he was the last refuge on an angry sea. When he kissed me, I felt years of my life being restored. His kiss and its sweet-and-sour limey tang was the last piece of the puzzle falling into place.

His lips tasted salty, and when I pulled my face back, tears were streaming down his cheeks. I kissed each one, reveling in the joy that brought rather than the horrible anguish that had been causing mine.

“I thought…” He drifted off when he began placing soft kisses on my cheeks and nose before finding my mouth and seizing it in a way that left me clinging to him and gasping for air. His kiss was ferocious and claiming, burdened with need. I knew what he’d thought because I’d seen the look on his face once before when he believed I was dying.

He’d thought the same thing I had about Holden.

Desmond had believed he was never going to see me alive again.

I touched his face, letting my fingers memorize every line and groove, savoring the rough tug of his short beard on my palms. When I’d left he’d had a bit of stubble, but it had evidently been quite some time since he had bothered with a razor.

“I like your beard,” I mumbled, scratching it with my fingernails.

He laughed lightly and pressed his forehead against my sternum, where his laughter vanished into tears. When he righted himself and put me on the floor, his cheeks were stained from crying, but I didn’t think I could recall ever seeing him so damned happy.

“They wouldn’t tell me anything. I wasn’t allowed to see you, and no one would explain what had happened to you. What happened?”

The idea of telling my story again so soon after the major’s rigorous debriefing was more than I could bear. I shook my head and placed a hand on his chest over his heart. “Not now.”

“Tell me something.”

“How much do you know?”

“The last time I spoke to you was two weeks ago when you were flying to San Francisco.” He guided me to the chair Logan had previously been sitting in, then took Tyler’s former seat for himself. “I waited about two days since I knew you were on council business and I didn’t want to interrupt anything at the wrong time, but when you hadn’t called me in over forty-eight hours, I started to worry. I tried calling you, and I tried calling Holden since I knew he was with you, but neither of you were answering. So I called Lucas.”

I’d almost forgotten seeing Lucas at the hotel. It felt like a different lifetime now, him kissing me in the hall while his famous girlfriend waited inside the restaurant. I longed for a time when dealing with my messy love life was the worst of my problems.

Desmond continued, “He told me a bit of what happened, but I gather he was leaving some details out. He did say you were upset when you left him.”

“Me? Upset with Lucas Rain? Never.” I smiled and pulled my legs up under me. I’d