Keeping Secret: Secret McQueen, Book 4 (32 page)

“Better than Vegas.”

Kimberly was staring at me. Her fake lashes had come unglued from all the crying she’d been doing and were stuck to her cheeks like spiders in a river of smeared eyeliner.

If I could do this without anyone dying, I would.

“No dice, Keaty. Sorry.”

He didn’t respond one way or the other, but he also didn’t take the shot. I kept my gun up and moved across the platform until my shoes were sticky with Desmond’s blood and I was standing beside him again. I dropped to a crouch, my gaze never drifting from Morgan, and fumbled until my fingers found his throat.

For a full minute I felt nothing but cold flesh and a day’s worth of stubble.

This was it. The dream I’d had in which Lucas demanded to know what I’d done while Desmond lay bloody and dying. I was living it in Technicolor now, right down to my blood-splattered gown. I’d seen it coming all along, but I’d thought it was symbolic. I’d never once dreamed it would become real. Not like this.

My guts bottomed out, and tears I hadn’t been able to cry over Lucas’s betrayal came easily now. Nothing. Nothing. And then…

Faint, and so, so slow I thought I imagined it. But there it was, and once I felt it twice, three, four times, I knew I wasn’t fooling myself.

Desmond was still alive.

A relieved gasp worked its way out of my mouth, and I dragged the back of my free hand under my eyes to wipe off the tears.

“Okay,” I told her. “We go.”

“Secret, no.” This from Tyler.

“As soon as I go, you get him to Rain Hotel. Melvin the desk clerk is a were. He’ll know where to take him. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. You
save
him, do you understand me?” I couldn’t look at him without taking my eyes off Morgan, but I needed to hear him agree. “Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

I jumped off the platform, landing in a crouch. My heels had barely hit the floor before another shot rang out, followed by a second. Morgan hadn’t moved though, and she was as wide-eyed as I was sure to be. For a moment I thought Keaty had taken his shot, but after a long pause it was clear she hadn’t been the target of the bullet.

When a sole female assassin fell to the floor with a gurgling choke, I turned to see who had been standing across from her. Shane slumped into the chair nearest him, his shoulder bleeding profusely but appeared otherwise whole. Had I landed standing, the bullet from the assassin’s gun would have hit me in the head instead of hitting Shane in the shoulder.

He gave me a tense, pained smile.

“Always expect the second shot,” he said.

Then all hell broke loose. All it took was those two shots, and suddenly the tense standstill was broken and everyone was firing at once. The assassins seemed to take their compatriot’s death as open season on my people, and the second they began to fire, my friends returned suit.

I hit the floor since I was right in the middle of the melee and the only person I had an easy shot at was Morgan, who still had Kimberly by the neck. I wormed my way across the floor on my belly—easier said than done in a corset-style wedding dress—and moved through the rows of scattered chairs closer to Morgan, hoping I might be able to get close enough to take her out.

A few of my rich and famous guests remained tucked among the chairs, their heads hidden beneath folded hands, praying to a wide variety of gods. Here’s to hoping any or all of them were listening.

It was a safe bet some of them would be talking about this for years to come.
Entertainment Tonight
loved to gossip about brush-with-death experiences, and they would end up pumping the drama for all it was worth.

But that still meant getting them out alive.

I was within a few rows of Morgan when a gunshot blew out the plaster near where her head had been. An instant later Kimberly hit the floor, but her sobbing and screaming kept me from being too concerned about her wellbeing.

If you can scream, you’re doing okay, relatively speaking.

Three more shots hit the wall, and I raised my eyes over the wailing form of Kimberly in time to see Morgan scurry out the open ballroom door as she narrowly avoided another two shots that pierced the wood.

As quickly as the gunfire had begun, it was silent again, and I took the lack of explosions as an invitation to stand up. Holden had darted out the door the moment the gunfire ceased but returned empty-handed a second later shaking his head.

The assassins were no longer standing, and aside from a few new bullet wounds and an unflattering splash of blood across the front of Mercedes’s yellow dress, everyone looked to be in one piece.

I pointed to Tyler with my unarmed hand. “You
promise
me.”

He jerked his chin up to acknowledge his understanding and crossed the platform in two long-legged strides to stoop next to Desmond, a cell phone already out. Sirens sounded in the distance. Doubtless one of the guests who had made it out had called the police.

It didn’t matter who had called, it only mattered that Desmond would get the help he needed.

I looked at Keaty. “Can you take care of this?”

He nodded, already holstering his weapon. Nolan and Owen had gone to check on their women, both of whom were in one piece. Ben was comforting Eugenia, who looked pale but otherwise fine. The charred row of burnt seats that had once been white told me she’d done her part to protect me. Even Kellen was holding it together better than the last time she’d been involved in a shootout.

Practice makes perfect, I guess.

Shane was gritting his teeth as he wound a makeshift bandage of torn dress shirt around his arm.

“Hey, hotshot,” I called to him, getting his attention. “You in one piece?”

“Stings like a son of a bitch.”

“Can you still hold a gun?”

He raised his shooting arm and held it straight out, gun in hand, to show me he was still rock steady. “Takes more than silver bullets to take me down.”

“And you?” I looked at Holden who was standing beside me.

He nodded.

“Then come the hell on.” I left the ballroom without a glance back to see if they were following me.

Chapter Forty-Five

One thing I’d learned over the last year was to not go alone if you didn’t have to.

I’d put myself at unnecessary risk dozens of times out of foolish pride because I thought I could handle myself and because I didn’t want to put anyone in danger. But Shane was an assassin. He worked for the council, and by extension it was his job to do whatever I asked.

I liked him, but I didn’t feel guilty asking him to risk his life.

I asked him to risk his life every time I gave him a warrant.

Plus, I’d trained him over the last couple of months to be an efficient and meticulous hunter. He was the man I wanted with me tonight if any further shit was going to hit the fan.

As for Holden, well…when I wasn’t sure who else I could trust, I knew I could count on him if it came to life-or-death situations.

We took Shane’s car back to my apartment—I drove—and the entire trip none of us said a damned thing to one another. I hadn’t taken the time to go back to my hotel suite and get my phone. If Tyler needed to get me news on Desmond, there was no way for him to reach me. As I unlocked my apartment and let Shane and Holden in, I asked the vampire to tell someone how to contact us. I don’t know who he called—the conversation was too short to bother listening in on—but he’d done what I’d requested.

I slipped off my heels and directed my attention to Shane. “Get into the bathroom and take your shirt off,” I commanded.

Shane wasn’t like Holden. Had I given the vampire the same instructions he would have obeyed, but he’d have been cheeky about it. Shane did as he was told, scuttling into the bathroom and leaving his bloody jacket and shirt in the hallway.

“There’s peroxide and bandages in the cubby next to the sink,” I told Holden. “Bandage him up while I get the rest of our shit together.”

He must have known I wasn’t in a mood for joking around because he followed my directions without talking back.

Fifteen minutes later I had a duffel bag loaded with weapons next to the front door and I’d swapped my heels for black boots I could more easily run in.

“Do you want to, uh…change?” Shane suggested.

I looked down at my formerly white wedding dress. The hem was soaked with blood and the whole front was stained red from where Desmond had bled out on top of me.

“No,” I replied flatly.

It had taken almost twenty minutes to bind me into the dress, and to be honest, short of cutting it off there was no easy way out. I didn’t want to waste any more time than was necessary. I stepped up onto the façade of the fireplace and grabbed my katana off its wall mount.

Safe. Not sorry.

“Secret, what’s the plan here?” Holden had hoisted the duffel bag onto his shoulder. Next to him Shane was down to a white tank top, his shoulder expertly bound. They both waited for my word.

I stared at the sheathed blade in my hand.

“We find the bitch.”

“And then?”

“And then I kill her.”

I let Holden drive because he was a vampire, and vampires drove like maniacs.

I couldn’t be certain my guess on Morgan’s destination was going to be right until we got there, but I had a gut feeling about where a werewolf would hide if her life was in peril, and I was willing to trust my gut on this.

Besides, I wouldn’t stop hunting her until I found her. If this idea didn’t pan out, we would turn around and go back, and I would start from square one.

I’d keep starting from square one until she was dead.

The highway from New York to Lucas’s upstate mansion was practically abandoned this time of night, yet I found my anxiety was higher than usual for the whole trip, my gaze constantly checking the rearview mirror for signs we were being followed.

Paranoid? Maybe. But once you’ve survived a near-death shootout on a state highway, you tend to be a little wary.

Shane didn’t argue about Holden driving and didn’t ask any questions about why we were taking a two-hour road trip in the middle of a manhunt. I liked him all the more for his willingness to go with it.

I also appreciated that Shane didn’t say a damned thing when I explained why Morgan wanted me dead. I was marrying a werewolf king. I was part werewolf. He’d just nodded. I didn’t love having to tell him the truth, but it would be asking too much not to explain what Morgan was, and telling him the truth meant there were no unanswered questions.

When I’d told Holden where to go, he’d given me a look like he meant to make a stink about it, but he didn’t.

The gate of Lucas’s estate was unlocked and ajar. A scan of the lawn told me my gut had been right. Morgan’s hunter-green Porsche was parked at an odd angle in front of the main steps.

“She’s here,” I said, barely believing it.

“Unreal.” Shane leaned forwards and squinted to see the car through the darkness. “How the hell did you know she’d come here?”

“She’s a wolf,” I said with a shrug. “This is home. Werewolves tend to go back to their pack’s safe place when they panic. I’m betting she didn’t count on me knowing that since she always thought I was such a fucking outsider.”

“You think that’s why she was gunning for you?”

“No.” I climbed over Shane, careful to avoid his injured shoulder, and awkwardly straddling him on my way out of the car. He followed close behind me, and Holden brought up the rear. “I don’t think she ever planned to make such a scene of things. She probably figured once I found out Lucas wasn’t coming, I’d run off somewhere to bury my head in the sand and she’d be able to take me out.

“You can’t blame her for the thought process,” Holden said. “I mean, you do sort of have a history of making a run for it when things get tough.”

Shane must have seen my shoulders tense because he quickly asked, “But how does that benefit her at all?”

I continued. “With me out of the picture, she could be queen. What I don’t get, though, is why she didn’t just tell me in the first place…” Maybe she thought if I’d known ahead of time Lucas wasn’t coming, I’d go to him. I was finding it hard to track the logic of someone who was clearly fucking nuts, though. “I guess when she realized it wasn’t going to go as planned, she decided to finish the job anyway.”

“Women,” Holden huffed. “Push come to shove, it’s always about who gets to wear the tiara.”

I stopped walking and turned back to him. “I didn’t ask for this,” I snapped.

“Maybe not.” He unzipped the duffel bag and tossed me a spare clip for my SIG. “But you didn’t fight against it very hard, either, did you?”

Shane cast a glance from Holden to me and back again. “Are you really pushing her buttons right now, man? She’s carrying a fucking sword.”

“She’s a big girl,” Holden replied, handing Shane a loaded Glock, my old favorite gun. “I’m not telling her anything she hasn’t thought herself.”

“When this is all over, you and I are going to have a very long
chat
,” I snarled.