Authors: Sierra Dean
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know.” This time the anger he’d been unable to mask before when shouting at me was more subdued, but I didn’t miss it. “Have you…? Has she talked to you at all?”
I took a brief mental inventory of when I’d last spoken to Kellen. She and my vampire protégée Brigit had been practically glued to my side for the week following Lucas’s…mistake. I’d seen more of Kellen than I had of my own half-sister Eugenia in that time. Not that I blamed Genie. She had responsibilities of her own to deal with in Louisiana, and Kellen’s only responsibilities were what parties she was meant to attend on any given night.
But after a week of heavy girl-bonding, I’d needed to be alone. I’d spoken to her on the phone, but not for several days.
“I’m not sure, maybe Sunday?” It was now Wednesday.
Lucas began to pace the small open area at the foot of the bed. I noticed for the first time how disheveled he looked. His normally tidy blond hair was a mess, and he had a good two days’ worth of stubble on his jaw. The clothes he wore were designer, but considering he was a billionaire, that was a default rather than a fashion-conscious decision. His shirt was wrinkled and buttoned improperly, and there was a coffee stain on the upper thigh of his jeans.
This wasn’t the Lucas I knew.
My Lucas was strong, levelheaded and hardly ever showed a sign of weakness. The man in front of me was frantic and letting it show. I wanted to stage a
Moonstruck
-style intervention and smack him across the face, hollering, “Snap out of it!” But he looked too far gone for that to help.
He was more than worried. He thought she was already dead.
“How long has it been since someone talked to her?” I asked.
If he heard me, he made no sign of acknowledging it. He continued to pace the floor until Holden finally chimed in. “Hey, Fido. The lady asked you a question.”
Normally Holden’s dog jokes rankled Lucas in the worst way. Tonight he merely stopped his caged-animal back-and-forthing and stared at us both as if he’d forgotten where he was. “What?”
“How long has it been since someone spoke to Kellen?” I repeated.
“Jackson was with her last, and that was Monday. None of her friends have talked to her since then. No one in the pack has heard from her either.” This wasn’t entirely surprising since Kellen was not a werewolf, but it was interesting she hadn’t talked to her human friends either.
I immediately shifted gears from worried-friend mode to PI mode. “Where was she when Jackson saw her?”
“He dropped her off in Chinatown on Monday night. He was supposed to pick her up later that night, but she texted to say she wouldn’t be needing him. That was it.”
Chinatown? What was Kellen doing in Chinatown? I could understand her blowing off Jackson, one of Lucas’s young werewolf lackeys, especially if she thought another plan would be more fun. Kellen was constantly in search of the better party. I was no stranger to getting a text-message blow off from her at the last minute. But text messages were also easy to fake. And if someone knew her habits, they’d know a text wouldn’t be questioned by anyone familiar with Kellen’s
laissez-faire
attitude when it came to polite behavior.
I pursed my lips together, mulling over what little information he’d given me.
“You could have called me to ask this.”
“Maybe I would have if you’d answer my goddamn calls,” he retorted. There was the bristling anger I was more familiar with from him. Good, I needed him angry. Just like Holden couldn’t handle me being a simpering wussy, Lucas was useless to me—and more importantly to his pack—as an unstable, worried brother.
“It’s probably nothing.” Once again I ignored his rage. Point two for me. Aside from the huge coolness deduction I’d lost when I kicked him, I was definitely looking like the more emotionally stable of the two of us. Perish the thought.
“She has never,
never
ignored my calls, Secret. Not since…not since our parents died.”
So even the media-darling wild child still had a responsible side when it came to family. I loved Kellen and thought of her like a sister—before I’d known I had one of my own—but I never stopped learning things about her that surprised me. I assumed she’d be flighty and unreliable, especially with Lucas. This new tidbit was making my
It’s cool, don’t worry
argument harder to stand behind.
“There are a dozen reasons she might not have called. You know how Kellen is.” It didn’t take any wild stretches of imagination to come up with a plausible story to explain her absence. “She could have gone on a last-minute vacation, probably to Cozumel or something. Her phone got wet, she hasn’t realized she’s missed any calls, so she doesn’t even know you’re worried. It’s only been forty-eight hours. It’s hardly time to send out the National Guard.” I held my hands open in front of me and raised both eyebrows, trying to convey a certainty that said,
See, see how easy this is to believe?
“I don’t know.” Hearing him say those words so often in such a short span of time was making me both nervous and annoyed. My desire to slap some sense into him made my fingers burn.
“We both know her,” I reminded him. “She is a sweet, well-meaning girl, Lucas, but she isn’t always the most…considerate of how her actions impact others.”
He nodded, and I could see I was getting somewhere. Which was good, because the sooner he accepted the wisdom of my words, the sooner I could get him the hell out of Holden’s apartment.
“I’m worried,” he said. “I have so many enemies. And if they can’t get to me or to you… I’m worried someone might have done something to her. Something bad.”
The stupid part of me that once loved him wanted to go to him. I wanted to hold him and tell him everything would be okay.
Instead I internally
Moonstruck
-ed myself.
“Would it make you feel better if I looked into it? Keaty and I have contacts. I can ask around, make sure nothing bad has happened to her. I’ll get Mercedes to run the usual checks, and we’ll put your mind at ease.” My friend Mercedes was an NYPD detective, and one of these days she was going to get sick of doing under-the-table favors for me. I wouldn’t blame her, either, considering how many times her life had been put in danger because of her friendship with me. But for now, at least, I knew running some checks wouldn’t kick me out of her good books just yet.
Another bonus of being the jilted bride was people were willing to be
extra
nice to you.
Being a woman scorned and almost killed at a wedding covered by the international press meant I also got a lot of cool free designer stuff mailed to me. But that was beside the point. My new Hermes bag wasn’t going to make Lucas feel better about his maybe-but-probably-not missing sister.
“You’d do that for me?”
Holden huffed out a disgusted grunt but said nothing.
“No. I’d do it for Kellen. For you I’m going to say go take a shower and shave. Don’t let any of your pack, or God forbid my uncle’s pack, see you looking like a homeless grad student. You’re a king, for fuck’s sake. Start acting like one.”
He bristled visibly. “What did you just say to me?”
“I said suck it up, buttercup. You can’t be worried about a human if your pack is in such a
fragile
state that you can’t show up to your own wedding. You have bigger fish to fry.”
“Secret…” Ah, the familiar, impatient, warning sound. He’d loved to scold me like I was a naughty child, and not in a kinky way. But he didn’t get to talk down to me anymore.
“You said we’re married, right? That I’m your wife?”
He didn’t speak, but I could tell from the way his eyes narrowed he knew he wouldn’t like what I had to say next.
“Then that makes me Queen of the Eastern pack. It makes all your problems my problems. And you looking like a lost, pathetic puppy is putting every single wolf in your pack at risk. Go home. Brush your hair. Put on a suit. I’ll take care of this like I always take care of the stuff you don’t know how to deal with.”
I looked at Holden beside me, and his brown eyes were wide. I couldn’t tell if he was impressed with me or appalled. Admittedly, I was a bit of both. Lucas had told me he was fearful for someone he loved, and I’d basically told him not to get his royal panties in a twist.
I’d also called myself the wolf queen, so really I was on a roll as far as talking out my ass went.
Looking down at his rumpled shirt, then back to me, Lucas remained silent for a long time before he said, “Okay.”
When he walked out of the room, I stared with open amazement at the dark space he’d occupied a second earlier.
Holden, not wanting to let the moment go unacknowledged, said, “All hail Secret, Queen of the Bitches.”
Chapter Four
My apartment didn’t feel like home without Desmond in it.
It was also an ever-increasing disaster area since he wasn’t there to pick things up or guilt me into not being a slob. When I’d lived alone, the mess had never bothered me, but since living with him I saw everything through a Desmond Alvarez-hued filter.
When I stepped through my apartment door after walking home from Holden’s place, it wasn’t
exactly
like stepping into the streets of Beirut, but my living room would have served as an excellent
before
in juxtaposition to Holden’s sleek, spotless
after
, if a magazine wanted to showcase New York apartments.
I didn’t eat, so there were no dirty plates or food wrappers anywhere in sight. What was littered over every piece of furniture, however, was clothing. When I’m unhappy, I don’t like the way anything looks. When I’m depressed, as it turns out, it is an absolute requirement that I try on—and hate—every single item of clothing I own.
I’d been in a three-week cycle of repeating this process. It had gotten to the point where there wasn’t any clothing left in my closet. Everything was scattered throughout the apartment, waiting for the next time I would hunt it down, put it on, then hurl it somewhere else in disgust.
Desmond would have had it hung, folded and sorted by color in the span of twenty minutes. He was an architect and had a natural flair for order, whereas my only natural skill was destruction.
Rio, a wiry snake of fur and attitude, stretched out on top of the rumpled pile of T-shirts she’d been sleeping on and padded across the living room floor, plunking her bony feline ass down in front of me and casting her lime-green gaze upwards.
“
Brreeeeow
?” she asked.
“Nope, sorry, kitten, just me. Always just me.”
She butted her furry head against my shin and purred. “
Mrow
.”
“Ugh, fine.” I plucked her off the floor, and the purring reached epic proportions as she bashed her tiny skull into my chin. I could pretend to hate her as much as I wanted. The damned cat knew better.
Sidestepping a tangled pair of jeans that still held the shape of my legs, I carried Rio back to my small yellow loveseat and curled up with the cat in my arms, petting her absentmindedly as I stared at the black television screen.
And Desmond’s stupid Xbox.
In three weeks the desire to play
Halo
had not proven stronger than his aversion to seeing me. I felt like I was keeping the damned thing hostage, waiting for him to yield and come back to the apartment because he really needed to indulge in a first-person shooter.
I didn’t want to admit a grown man with a six-figure income might go out and buy himself a new game console instead of facing the woman who’d almost gotten him killed.
Rio nipped at my finger when I stopped petting her. I gave her a scolding tap on the nose then continued to indulge her whims. At least one female in this apartment might as well be happy. I couldn’t even get laid by a vampire I had a one-night-stand pact with. Secret McQueen, spinster for life.
This was why I’d tried to be happy being single.
Men screwed everything up. And the more men I added to the equation, the messier things got. Menage-a-trois romance novels lied. There was no way to have a happily ever after with more than one partner. I’d tried to juggle too many balls—no pun intended—and I’d ended up empty-handed.
So now began the Crazy Cat Lady chapter of my life.
Fine.
I could at least be a Crazy Cat Lady who could track down wayward socialites. Kellen couldn’t have gotten far, but she could have gotten into a lot of trouble. I might have told Lucas she was fine, but I wasn’t entirely sure I believed it myself. I didn’t think she was kidnapped or dead. Unfortunately, her being arrested or turned into an accidental drug mule still wasn’t out of the question.
I dialed my cell.
“Well, well, well,” came a cheerful, teasing male voice. “I hear
you’re
the Big Bad Wolf now?”
Dominick Alvarez, Desmond’s younger brother and Lucas’s live-in bodyguard, was possibly the kindest, funniest, most charming man I’d ever met. If he wasn’t also the only gay werewolf I knew, I’d probably marry him, save myself a mountain of drama and live in a white-picket-fence neighborhood in suburbia.
Since he was an Alvarez, he’d probably make me clean up after myself too, though.
“He made it back okay, then?”