Secret Unleashed: Secret McQueen, Book 6 (35 page)

Lucas calling to apologize for his behavior.

Desmond. Desmond. Desmond.

Grandmere.

Desmond.

Mercedes.

Tyler.

Desmond. Desmond.

As I cleared the last of the messages, the phone began to buzz in my hand. I didn’t bother checking the screen before answering. It didn’t matter who was on the other end, I was about to get an earful.

“Hello?”

“Just where in the hell have you been?” Aha! So Sig could get angry.

“I can’t really get into it—”

“Don’t. Don’t start. I will
not
listen to excuses.”

“I wasn’t making excuses.”

“You vanish off the face of the planet, leaving Ingrid in Los Angeles to make excuses for you, while the goddamn Tribunal thinks you’ve made off with some precious artifact. I’ve got Eilidh complaining to me about a window, and she assumes you’ve run off with Holden, while Rebecca would
love
to know what you’re doing with all her offspring.”

I was glad I was already sitting because it was a lot to hear all at once.

“I didn’t
run off
. I went looking for Sutherland like the Tribunal requested. It just took longer to recover him than expected.”

“
Two weeks longer?
And your phone has been off the whole time? I find that hard to—”

“I don’t care,” I snapped. I’d held my composure pretty well over the past several days, all things considered, but I wasn’t about to take a browbeating from Sig because he believed I was shirking my council duties. I would
not
be guilt tripped or talked down to. Not after what I’d been through. “I don’t care what it looks like, Sig. I don’t care what the West Coast council or Ingrid
think
. I have been through
hell
getting my father back, and I refuse to explain myself to them, to you or to anyone else.”

Static filled the line, making me think I’d lost the connection.

“You aren’t going to have a choice. You have to explain it to the West Coast Tribunal, and sooner rather than later.”

“Why?”

“Because this morning Galen Altos issued a warrant for your death.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

I didn’t imagine the first time I’d meet my father would be because I was trying to get us both out of a death sentence.

When I was younger, I’d thought about him a lot, the way I imagined most girls with no parents did. My
grandmere
warned me about my mother to high heaven, so I didn’t have the same fantasies about Mercy as I had with Sutherland.

The man I’d imagined as a child was not the man I met in the lobby of the military hospital. I’d used what limited pull I had with the FBI—and through them Major Logan—to secure my father’s release. It was amazing what people were willing to do when you explained your life was on the line.

I didn’t kid myself that my wellbeing concerned them. Tyler might have cared, but to everyone else I was a resource they’d invested time and money into. If letting a crazy vampire out of a military hospital was what it took to keep me alive, they were apparently okay with signing him over to me.

He emerged from a back office with an armed attendant. Normally I’d have said it was uncalled for, but given what Logan had told me about Sutherland’s mental state, I wasn’t going to question any precautions the humans wanted to take.

The first thing that struck me was how
young
he appeared. He’d been fed and had physically recovered from his wounds—whatever they’d been—and now he looked like a boy. It was hard for me to think of this man as my father.

“Hello,” he said sweetly when he reached us, his voice sticky with a Southern drawl much like the rest of my family’s. He nodded to me and Desmond, then to Holden. “Hello.” The
o
sound was drawn out, and something about the way he spoke was a bit…off.

“Sutherland, do you know who we are?” Holden touched my father’s arm, and seeing them side by side was too bizarre to comprehend. Holden was forever frozen in his early thirties, whereas Sutherland would have to show ID for liquor for the rest of his unnatural lifespan.

“Yes.” Sutherland nodded, his hands clasped in front of him. I followed the bobbing motion of his head but didn’t see any understanding on his face.

If the eyes were the windows to the soul, Sutherland’s were looking in on a vacant suite.

“My name is Holden. This is Desmond. And this…” he nudged me forward so I was close enough to touch, “…this is Secret.”

“Hello.” He didn’t seem to know who we were at all because my name caused no reaction.

“Secret
McQueen
,” Holden added, placing extra emphasis on my last name.

That did it. My father’s eyes widened, and his hazy expression became clear when he focused his attention back on me, this time as if seeing me anew.

“McQueen?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you?” His brown eyes—the same color as mine—narrowed into slits.

“Twenty-three.”

“Where were you born?”

“St. Francisville, Louisiana.”

He chewed on this for a while, looking to Holden and Desmond as if he wanted them to validate his suspicions before he spoke again.

“Who’s your mother?”

“Mercy McQueen.”

His eyes went wider, and now he looked more excited than suspicious. He took a step closer, but I wasn’t expecting it and stepped out of his reach on instinct.

“Who’s your father?” he asked quietly.

“You are.”

Instead of moving closer, he toyed with his hands, fingers nervously tugging at the hem of his shirt. He was forty years old, but still acted like a teenager.

“I knew you were alive,” he said after a long pause. “I knew…knew I hadn’t killed you.”

“No. You didn’t.”

“I wanted to meet you, but…I didn’t know where you were.”

“I know. Vivienne hid me.”

He nodded, seeming to accept this fact without question. He probably assumed she’d been hiding me from him, when in fact she’d been keeping me away from her own children, fearful of what Mercy or my Uncle Callum would do to me.

“You look like her. Like Mercy.” He smiled, obviously thinking he was paying me a compliment.

“I think I look more like you.”

When his smile broadened, I knew I’d said the right thing. “It’s nice to meet you. Secret.”

“It’s nice to meet you too.” I wanted to say
Dad
. Wanted so badly to call him by that title since I’d been missing out on using it for over two decades. But when I was presented with a chance to finally say it to his face, the word froze in my throat and I couldn’t. Instead I said, “I need to ask you about the pendant.”

Ingrid was the first person Holden, Sutherland and I saw when we entered the Council headquarters in L.A. later that same night. Once I’d found out what my father knew about the pendant he’d been carrying, I secured us safe passage back to Los Angeles.

Desmond understood why he couldn’t join us for this leg of the journey and had volunteered to get our belongings from the hotel in San Francisco. I’d never been so grateful to accidentally stay at a Lucas Rain Hotel before. Under normal circumstances our things would probably be long gone, but since my ex-fiancé owned the hotel, Desmond told me our room had been left untouched, the expenses ignored at Lucas’s request.

He’d even arranged to get our towed car out of impound, hopefully with my katana still in the trunk.

As much as I hated Lucas sometimes, he could occasionally do something to remind me why I’d fallen in love with him in the first place. Love wasn’t what I felt now, but perhaps loathing might yield to grudging respect someday.

Sig had called Ingrid on our behalf to make arrangements for a conditional surrender. As long as we were back on council turf before sunrise, we wouldn’t be attacked. In spite of the assurances, I still felt like I was being watched the entire trip from the airfield back to the council headquarters.

Ingrid met us at the front entrance, and I could tell by her expression she was disappointed in me. Whether she was disappointed I had screwed up, or because I didn’t die, I couldn’t be sure.

“It’s a long story.” I still refused to go into detail with anyone.

“It had better be a good one.”

“Actually it’s pretty awful.”

That made her frown, and some of the bluster went out of her sails. “I see you found Sig’s missing kin.”

“I did.”

“And did you find the object Tribunal Leader Eilidh was so…impassioned about?”

The pendant felt heavy in my pocket. If it did what Sutherland claimed it could, there was no small wonder Eilidh wanted it so badly, or why she was willing to sacrifice our lives if it meant no one else would have it. In the wrong hands it would be a powerful weapon.

I just wasn’t sure Eilidh’s hands were the
right
ones.

If I’d been given a choice, I would have brought the pendant to Sig. Unfortunately I didn’t have that option. Part of me wanted to keep it for myself, but even with the power it provided I would have been a fool to believe I’d get away with running.

“I have it,” I confirmed. “Are they ready for us?”

“Yes. They’ve been
patiently
awaiting your return.” Sarcasm sounded funny coming from a seven-hundred-year-old. Yet somehow it managed to endear her to me. Obviously Ingrid hadn’t enjoyed her stay with Galen’s council in my absence.

“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “We’ll be going home soon enough.”

“About damn time.” The elevator arrived, and she selected one of the lower floors but didn’t join us in the lift. “Secret?”

I held the door before it could close. “Yeah?”

“For what it’s worth…I knew you hadn’t run.”

I was too stunned to reply, so I let the door shut instead. Holden and Sutherland were silent the whole trip down, but my father had a goofy smile stuck on his face, the same one he’d had since we got on the plane back to L.A. I’d have asked what he was happy about, but I wasn’t sure he’d know the answer.

Outside the Tribunal chamber two wardens tried to insist I enter alone, but I pulled rank and forced them to let me bring the men along. There was no way in hell I was letting either of them out of my sight, not until this whole mess was resolved. As of right now I had to consider the council enemy territory. When I had assurances we were all safe and the warrants were called off,
then
I’d take alone time into consideration.

Eilidh, Galen and Arturo were seated in the same arrangement they had been the last time I saw them. Tonight Eilidh and Galen were dressed in matching emerald green, while Arturo had opted for a black suit.

“How kind of you to grace us with your presence, Secret.” Eilidh tried to sound bored, but her voice maintained an edge of malice.

“I wasn’t aware there were time restrictions on my mission.” I’d practiced what I would say to them in my mind, going over it a thousand times on the flight south. Now that I was actually standing in front of them, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to remember any of it.

“No, but we weren’t aware you would disappear without a trace.”

“My methods, unconventional though they may be, yield results. You wouldn’t have asked my council for help unless you wanted results, yet now you want to question how they were obtained?”

“Results?” Eilidh sneered. “The window still sits in San Jose. I see no results.”

“I’ve returned your warden.” I indicated Sutherland, who stood in front of Arturo.

“Hello,” he greeted.

“Wonderful. You’ve brought us a mad vampire. What a
delightful
treat.”

“Eilidh…” Galen didn’t threaten her, but his tone implied she should rein herself in. She was behaving like she was in charge here, but she wasn’t. This was his dog-and-pony show, and she obviously got away with speaking out of turn because she was Galen’s sister.

“Don’t
Eilidh
me,” she snapped.

Galen grabbed her wrist and squeezed. Though the expression on his face remained calm and pleasant, he had to be hurting her because she squeaked.

“I believe my sister was trying to ask why it has taken you two weeks to do what another could have accomplished in two days?”

I reached into my pocket and withdrew the crystal pendant, letting it catch the low light of the room, reflecting prisms onto the floor in a wide arc of rainbows.

“Your council was not entirely honest with me. I’d like you to start by admitting as much.” I closed my hand into a fist and returned the pendant to my pocket. “You claimed the window was what interested you, but that wasn’t true, was it?”

“We did want the window,” Galen said. “But I suppose you have uncovered our reasons for wanting it.”

“Maxime thought Eilidh wanted the window because she believed she’d be able to stand in the light it cast. But that wasn’t its power at all. The real power was in
one
of those thirteen crystals.” I patted my pocket. “The one I now have.”