Sierra Dean - Secret Unleashed

Holden was waiting on the opposite side, prying the door open wider and hauling me out with rough hands under my armpits. He had me down the front steps by the time the third explosion went off. This one was larger than the others, or perhaps the structure had been so compromised a hard sneeze could have taken the place down.

We were knocked down by the force of the blast. I fell flat onto Holden, and he rolled me over, bracing his arms on either side of my head and burying his face beside my neck. Huge boulders of concrete pummeled the ground around us. Judging by the way Holden’s body moved and the tense grit of his jaw against my cheek, some of the pieces must have been landing on him.

When the sky stopped falling, Holden sat back on his heels and helped me to my feet. I was still wobbly from being tossed around like a rag doll, and my jeans were torn in both knees. Probably elsewhere, too, because my backside was experiencing a new breezy sensation.

Shane and Grendel were nowhere in sight, and I was hoping it meant Shane had gotten some vampire assistance. If the wardens—as they often were—had been trailing me from a distance and monitoring my app activity when I’d called Holden, they wouldn’t have been far away when things went down. With their speed and training, they could have easily met Shane outside and helped cart off Grendel before I’d had a chance to escape.

I had to hope that because police sirens screamed closer, and red-and-blue lights ricocheted against the tall brick walls. As cops spilled into the alley, the last thing I wanted to do was explain why we had a seven-foot-tall monstrosity of a man with his knees blown off held captive.

I raised my hands above my head, favoring a sore ankle by standing tilted away from Holden. He lifted his own hands, the sleeve of his blazer ripping loose as he muttered, “This was a thirteen-hundred-dollar suit.”

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.