Secret Unleashed

Page 23

“Just Secret,” I reminded him.
“Secret would like me to inform you she must get out of bed.”
“Max, when did you lose your sense of humor?” Holden asked.
“On the contrary, I find this exceptionally humorous. However I am bound to do as the lady asks.”
“Be careful with that one. When she asks you to jump, it’s usually off a bridge.”
I elbowed him in the ribs.
Maxime had been busy while Holden and I were in bed. He’d spoken to the hotel concierge about Sutherland, and learned my father had asked about rental spaces in the city. Maxime didn’t know if he’d meant rental property, or storage space, but a bellhop brought us the same list of phone numbers they’d given my father.
Eight pages double-sided of potential properties. Not exactly the most fruitful start to our hunt. Since Holden couldn’t use the thrall over the phone, we couldn’t ask for a list of the numbers Sutherland had called, but we’d be able to get it later when we left for the evening. It might help us narrow down which of the spaces he’d contacted.
Unless he’d used a cellphone, in which case the trail would have gone dry before we’d even started following it.
After a quick shower I rifled through the weekend bag Holden had packed for me. Plenty of outfits that would have been appropriate for a meeting with the council, but not for going out investigating.
“Did you pack me any jeans?” I shouted.
“I’m sorry, are we going to a farm? No, I didn’t pack you any jeans.” I could hear his scorn even though I was in the bathroom and a closed door blocked the space between us.
“Did you pack me anything jean-like?”
The bathroom door jerked open, and instead of replying he sneered at me. “What is wrong with you?”
“So many things. Mainly, I chose to fall in love with a snobby, fashion-police vampire who refuses to pack me comfortable clothing.” I smacked him in the chest with a leather bustier—one I’d bought to impress Desmond—and prodded him with one finger. “What kind of investigating am I going to do in that?”
“I can think of a few things you could investigate in it. But need I remind you, you were perfectly capable of wielding a sword while wearing it, so don’t try telling me you can’t make do with the things I put in there for you.”
“I’m going to look like a dominatrix.” I scowled into the bag. “Everything in here is black. And leather. Do I own this much leather?”
“Since you started working with the Tribunal? Yes, you own that much leather.”
I lifted a skimpy lace thong from the bottom of the bag and held it up with my forefinger. “And this? You packed this because of how authoritative it would make me look?”
“No, I packed it because you have a sexy ass, and I thought that would be a nice way to display it.”
“Ugh.” Digging farther in, I found something that felt like cotton instead of leather or lace and jerked it out.
Desmond’s New York Yankees T-shirt. The one I’d commandeered months earlier that was so well-worn it should have been see through in places. I raised my gaze from the shirt and looked at Holden with both my eyebrows up as high as they dared go.
“Don’t give me your shocked look,” he said. “You like the shirt, so I packed the shirt. Don’t read so much into it.”
I hugged the shirt to my chest, knowing he was perfectly aware of who it belonged to and why it meant so much to me. “Thank you,” I whispered, sniffing the blue-and-white tee. These days it smelled mostly like me, but Desmond’s scent still lingered.
I suspected now he might sometimes put it on to refresh his mark on it, knowing I liked to wear it. It was the only way to explain how the smell never completely faded.
“But you are not wearing that.”
“Oh come on.”
“No. Absolutely not.” He reached into the bag and handed me a small fistful of items, then snatched the Yankees shirt away from me.
He’d chosen a low-cut tank top with panels of sheer black material down the waist and back, with leather accents creating small capped sleeves. The other item was a leather pencil skirt, but since I actually liked being able to move I put it back in my bag and returned to the leather pants I’d worn the day before.
Still a lot of leather, but at least I could run in this ensemble.
In his wisest decision all evening—aside from the shirt—Holden didn’t scold me about opting for pants. He gave me a look that said he wanted to say something but was wise enough to keep his opinions to himself.
At the front desk, Holden was able to coerce the on-duty clerk into printing off Sutherland’s call list. I wasn’t sure he’d needed to use the thrall on her. She took one look at his brown eyes and cheekbones and she was a goner. His ability to compel her didn’t hurt, but I honestly wondered if it had been necessary.
Cross-referencing the list we’d been delivered to the calls from Sutherland’s room narrowed our search down. He’d made three calls to the same number over two nights, and when I compared the number to the rentals list, it matched with a warehouse in the Tenderloin district.
“What the hell would he be doing looking for a warehouse rental when the council had one available for him to use?” I asked.
“If he was trying to hide something from the Tribunal, it stands to reason he wouldn’t want to use council property to do it,” Holden answered, though I’d come to the same conclusion myself.
“The council monitors the main warehouse carefully. It was outfitted with a state-of-the-art video surveillance system when they started renting it out. Sutherland would know he was being watched there. It wouldn’t matter if he had nothing to hide, but if he was up to something, he’d avoid that space like the plague,” Maxime explained.
As of right now, all signs were pointing to my dad being a council-cheating rogue. Awesome, I had two scumbag parents. I was batting a thousand in the positive role-model department.
Seeming to read my disappointed expression, Holden said, “We don’t know anything for certain yet. Maybe he had a reason to fear going back to the council warehouse. It’s been used by them for decades, so if he was worried about being followed, he might not go back there.”
“True. But we still don’t know what he found, and we can’t check out the Winchester house until tomorrow.”
“You want to go look for him in the Tenderloin, don’t you?”
“That is easily the worst name for a neighborhood I’ve ever heard.”
“Says the woman who lives in Hell’s Kitchen. In a city with a Meatpacking District.” Holden winked at me.
“Don’t be cheeky. It doesn’t suit you.” But my smirk gave me away. My stupid mouth was always ruining things in one way or another. “Yes, I want to go find out if he rented a space. He might have left something there that could tell us where he went. I’m willing to take any clues right now.”
“What if they tell you something you don’t want to know?” Holden asked.
“Like my dad being a traitor? You’ve met my mother, do you honestly think finding out my father is a rogue would be the worst thing to ever happen to me?”
Unless he decided to stick a bullet between my ribs with his bare hands, my dad was going to be Father of the Fucking Year compared to my mother.
Chapter Twenty
“Are you sure this is the right address?” I squinted at the crumbling edifice of the U-Save Studio Rentals building.
The apartment complex that had fallen on me days earlier had looked sturdier than this place. I was worried a powerful sneeze might knock the entire structure down.
But it had survived near-daily earthquakes over the last several decades, meaning it had to be made of stronger stuff than I was giving it credit for.
“Yes. I’m a hundred percent sure. Just like I was the last three times you asked.” Holden stuffed the paper with the address back into his coat pocket and followed my dubious gaze upwards.
“It’s a shit-hole,” I said.
“A very apt description, yes.”
“Why would someone who has the financial backing of the council need to rent a shit-hole?”
“We aren’t paid in cash,” Maxime explained. “We all have credit cards that draw from a central pool. Any purchases Sutherland made would be accessible by the council. He’d have used his own money for this, and I doubt he has much. Most of the young ones haven’t learned to build outside savings. This was probably all he could afford.”
Cans rattled near the side of the warehouse, and a man emerged, pushing a shopping cart full of garbage. He wore a heavy overcoat—which I was learning was a summer necessity in San Francisco—and had long hair matted into gray-brown dreadlocks. Having seen the people of this city, I couldn’t tell if he’d been homeless so long his hair had come to look that way over time, or if he was just a hipster from the Mission with terrible style.
He grunted at us and opened the lid of a nearby garbage bin, rummaging inside for cans and bottles to add to his collection. He kept right on muttering as he worked, completely unconcerned by our arrival. I wondered what things he must see on a daily basis to make the three of us look right at home here.
As we approached the building, a group of five people in their early twenties stumbled out from inside. Two girls—whose hair looked strikingly similar to that of the homeless man—and three young men all came to a halt in front of us. They reeked of cheap beer and pot.
“Heeeyyyy,” one of the girls said, her tone loopy. “Watch where you’re going, ’kay?”
I couldn’t tell if it had been a threat or a concerned gesture. Was she telling us to watch our step inside, or berating us for getting in their way? With her high and saccharine voice it was impossible to know.
They all began giggling like maniacs and mimicking her ’kay over and over until she was blushing furiously, her cheeks a bright pink that made her look young and far too sweet to be out here at night.