Keeping Secret

Mercedes said aloud what my brain was thinking. “What the fuck?”

Desmond and the girls all looked up, but it was the werewolf lieutenant who responded fastest. Morgan pulled the trigger, and Desmond threw himself on top of me. Mercedes was hollering at Owen for her purse, and the remaining guests were screaming. Some ran for the exit while others hit the floor.

The weight of Desmond’s body pinned me to the wooden floor, so my interpretation of what was happening was based entirely on what I could hear. I tried to reach the hem of my dress, instinct telling me I needed to get the gun I’d strapped to my thigh.

Leary had thought I was nuts for wanting to wear a gun under my wedding dress. Turned out it really was always better to be safe rather than sorry.

“Desmond, get up. I need to get my gun.” Funny how the sound of one bullet being fired could snap me back to my senses. This wasn’t the time to be a sad, wilting girly girl. Right now I couldn’t be the jilted bride.

Right now I needed to be the killer I’d been before love had gone and fucked me up.

Desmond didn’t move.

His weight felt heavier than it should. Limper.

“Desmond?”

The front of me felt warm. Warmer than I would expect from just the heat of his body. I snaked my arm around him, my fingers sliding over the pebbled roughness of the leather jacket until they met something wet, warm and sticky.

I didn’t need to see it to know what it was. I was very familiar with blood.

“Oh, God. Desmond.” I shook him. “Desmond? Desmond.”

Someone lifted him off me, and he went too easily, none of his limbs resisting. I tried to hold on to him, but soon he was lying on the floor beside me, unmoving, his eyes closed and his skin much, much too pale.

I didn’t notice myself being pulled away until Tyler had me halfway across the platform. I shook him off and stumbled, crawling across the stage to where Desmond was lying stock-still. “I can’t leave him.”

Tyler grabbed the laces of my dress and yanked me backwards, hard and almost violent. “He took that shot to save you. You’re not doing anyone any good if you die. Especially not him.”

I was stronger than Tyler and I debated knocking him out, but now that I was on my feet I could see what had unfolded while I was under Desmond’s body.

Morgan was no longer on the chair. She had Kimberly in a chokehold and was using her as a shield while she kept her back to the wall and her gun aimed at me. Mercedes had gotten her purse from Owen and was training her gun steady on Morgan, waiting for a clear shot.

She wasn’t the only one.

Tyler had pushed me behind him, and he, Keaty and Shane all had their weapons drawn and leveled on the werewolf. Even Eugenia was preparing herself, muttering words in La Sorcière’s strange French, her right hand glowing bright red.

But Morgan wasn’t stupid—she hadn’t come alone, either. Three men and a woman were spread through the ballroom with their own weapons drawn and aimed at my friends.

I’d never been in a Mexican stand-off before.

Holden was tucked into a corner near the entrance, but I knew better than to think he was hiding. He was unarmed, but his focus never left Morgan.

I kept behind Tyler and hiked up my skirt, releasing my gun from the holster and arming it.

“Morgan, let her go.” Tyler probably intended for me to stay behind him, but I couldn’t do it. Not only did it make him an unnecessary target, but I’d promised to protect him in front of a dozen wardens. If he died when I could have done something, it would look as if I couldn’t protect my people, and Mercedes, Nolan and Brigit would be in more danger than they were now.

I stepped out from behind the detective, my weapon raised and ready. Morgan’s was leveled on me. I’d never seen her shoot, but I was confident I was a better marksman. At least I would tell myself that as long as I needed to in order to get me and my people out of here alive.

My gaze cut to Desmond’s form lying in an ever-growing pool of blood.

The assassins looked uncertain. Their job, of course, was to kill me. But they were all otherwise occupied by my gun-toting wedding guests.

“It didn’t have to happen like this,” Morgan said. “I wanted to get you alone, but the fucking lieutenant had to screw it all up to play the hero.”

I couldn’t think about Desmond right then or I risked losing it entirely. “You came for me. Let her go.”

“Put your gun down.”

I laughed then, short but loud. “You must think I’m an idiot. No, this isn’t going to be that kind of debate, Morgan. You let her go, then we talk. Just us girls.”

Morgan glanced from me to all the extra weapons she hadn’t been anticipating.

“If I let her go, they’ll shoot. We walk out of here alone, and then I’ll let her go.”

“Secret,” Keaty said, his tone calm and level. “I can get a shot.”

“Odds?”

“Sixty-forty.”

I coughed. Sixty percent odds he’d take Morgan out without hitting Kimberly. And that depended on the wedding planner holding still and Morgan not moving her once the shot was fired.

“Not the best odds.”

“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.