Deep Dark Secret
Outside, I called my number-two speed dial. It rang twice and a groggy male voice answered.
“Keaty, something weird is happ—”
“Huh? Secret, you called my cell, not Keats.”
I couldn’t place the voice, but he obviously knew me. Something in my chest tightened. Should I know this man? I must, but my brain wasn’t giving me a mental image to match with the words in my ear. A frustrated growl escaped my throat, and I hung up.
On the next attempt I dialed Mercedes’s number by memory, not trusting my speed dial.
“What’s wrong?”
I hadn’t said a word yet. “I…uhh. Cedes?”
“Who else? You called me. At one. What’s wrong?” In the background a masculine voice mumbled something and she replied, “It’s fine, go back to sleep.”
“Cedes, this is going to sound a little strange…”
“Like that’s a shocker.”
“Have you seen me today?”
She didn’t answer me for such a long time I said her name again. At last she said, “What do you mean?”
“It wasn’t a trick question. I need to know if you’ve seen me today.”
“No, I worked the day shift today. But we talked on the phone earlier. Tyler said you put on quite a show at the station tonight, though.”
“Tyler?” Was that a name to pair with the voice on the phone? It didn’t sound right for some reason, but at the moment now nothing was right.
“Tyler Nowakowski.”
I shook my head. Although she couldn’t see me, my silence was enough of an answer. When she spoke again her pitch was a little higher, and she sounded worried. “What’s your name?”
“Secret,” I replied with a snort. “As if I could possibly forget that.”
“Where do you live?”
“West 52nd Street.” When she didn’t respond, I added, “New York, New York.”
“Who are you dating?”
“No one.” Like she could ask me that. Gabriel had just left me. I wasn’t too keen to leap headfirst into the dating pool at this point. Or, you know, ever. But who the hell had I called by accident? It definitely hadn’t been Gabe’s voice. Or Keaty’s. “No one?” I said again, only this time it was a question.
“I don’t think Lucas Rain would like to be called a no one.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t, but I’ve never met him so I don’t know if I really care what… Wait. You’re not saying?” Laughter pealed out of me. “Nice try. I’ll believe I’m dating a billionaire when pigs sprout wings.”
“The bacon’s been flying for about a year now, sweetie. Where are you?” The serious tone of her words made my laughter fade immediately.
“I’m just leaving Columbia.”
“The hotel?”
“No, the school.”
“At one in the morning?”
“Long story.” I could only assume that was true.
“I have no doubt. I want you to hail a cab and meet me at the station. Have you talked to Keats?”
“I tried to call him, but some strange guy answered.” A cab drew near, and I raised my arm. The air inside was about a zillion degrees too hot. The driver smelled of paprika and cigars, and combined with the warmth it made the cab feel about as cozy as a harem in Hell.
Mercedes was speaking to the male voice. They were discussing something in hushed tones. I could have made out the words if I tried, but I was too preoccupied with my own thoughts at the moment.
“Cedes,” I whispered.
“Yeah.”
“There’s something wrong with me, isn’t there?”
“Yeah.”
The 76th Precinct station looked as tired and worn down as I felt. Old gray concrete walls were streaked with iron stains from snow melting off the old metal roof, and the steps were cracked and stooping.
Inside, a bitchy-looking blonde shot me a glare I wasn’t certain I deserved and didn’t ask me why I was there. She resumed typing the minute I was through the front doors. Unannounced I made my way to the main work floor and scanned the desks for the dark halo of Cedes’s hair. If she was coming from the West Village and I’d woken her with my call, I had probably beaten her here.
A good-looking brunet with strong shoulders and a toned chest that filled out his white dress shirt in a delightful way caught my eye from across the room. His thick black brows knit together, and he cocked his head to the side like a German shepherd who didn’t understand a verbal command.
He stood and started crossing the sea of desks to meet me.
Shit.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, not angry just mystified.
“I, uh… Detective Castilla wanted me to—”
The man ignored me and continued. “Did you find something out about Holbrook?”
“I’m here for…Gabriel Holbrook?”
“Am I holding a different Holbrook on murder charges? Get with the program, McQueen.”
Oh, Jesus, this guy knew me. I hadn’t the faintest clue who he was, and he was talking to me like we’d known each other for a million years. Or at least long enough for him to think it was okay to talk to me like I was a retard.
Which, given the circumstances, was sort of warranted.
But the other part of his sentence was significantly more important right then. They were holding my ex on murder charges. Was I supposed to know this? The sexy detective seemed to think I was part of the investigation.
I should wait for Mercedes, but this was too much to ignore.
“Can I see him?”
“You gonna do a little more of that voodoo you do?”
“What?”
“The thing where you like…I don’t know exactly. You touched him, and suddenly he was spilling his guts. It was fucked up. I’ve never seen anything like it. But damned if it didn’t work.”
I didn’t have a single fucking clue what this guy was talking about. “Can I see him?” I asked again.
Detective Sexypants shrugged. “I guess so.”
He led me to the basement where a grouchy bald guy made me sign a sheet and relinquish my weapons, including a knife I’d never seen before. Tonight kept getting more and more messed up as the hours progressed. Or at least I figured that was the case. I couldn’t remember anything before waking up in the classroom, so maybe this was the eye of the storm.
The detective showed me into a room with four cells and then left me, saying, “If you need anything, I’ll be out here.” He still looked perplexed. I probably wasn’t acting like he expected me to, but I had no idea how I was supposed to act. Without my memories, I was floating alone with a whole ocean of uncertainty threatening to swallow me whole.
Gabriel was in the last cell, curled up on his side with a shoddy gray blanket half kicked off him and his arm slung over his eyes to block out the lights. It was pretty cruel to leave lights on overnight, but prisoner comfort never seemed to be a huge priority to the cops, for obvious reasons.
“Gabriel?” I approached the cell cautiously, afraid to touch the bars.
He grumbled, lifting his arm, and peered at me through eyelids gluey with sleep. His normally tidy hair was sticking up at a thousand different angles. It looked like he hadn’t washed it in a few days.
Seeing him wrenched my heart, because it was the final confirmation of how far removed from my own reality I was. It felt like only weeks ago he’d walked out of my life, and the heartbreak lingered fresh in my memory. But this Gabriel, the one staring at me from a police-station cot, was at least two or three years older than the man I remembered. He’d lost the pleasant roundness in his face and was all lean muscle and cruel angles.
“Temple?”
I wanted to cry. My bottom lip trembled, and I had to look away from him. This was the icing on the cake. Up until this point I’d been able to coast by on pretending this was weird, but there had to be a simple explanation. A spell gone wrong, something that could be easily corrected and my life would magically snap back to normal.
But my ex-boyfriend was in a cage, apparently for killing someone, and people I couldn’t remember meeting were talking to me like they knew me. It was too much. I was a simple creature, problems were meant to be killed, and there was nothing here I could shoot at since some fat, bald cop had taken my gun away.
Gabriel had risen and was standing by the cell door. He looked worried, but there was a peculiar twist to his expression. He wasn’t looking at me like I was crazy. Instead his concern appeared to be born of the fear family.
“What happened?”
My head shook without me telling it to, and I shrugged like an idiot. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
Gabriel’s face went white. Not just pale, but true ashy-white. Dead white. “What. Happened?”
“I don’t know,” I screamed, my voice bouncing off the walls and making me sound more commanding than I meant to. “I woke up at Columbia, and—”
“Come here.” He was reaching through the cell bars, and his voice was forceful.
I moved closer but stayed out of range of his hands. His eyes were a little too wild for me to trust him. Not to mention he was locked up for being a murderer. Didn’t really bolster trust.
“You know something.” It wasn’t a question. Gabriel’s reactions spoke louder than words, and he’d always been a terrible liar when he had to look me in the eyes.
“Did you talk to Mayhew?”
“Who’s Mayhew?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No.”
Gabriel slammed his palms against the cell, making the metal door rattle. “Fucking goddamn.”
“What?”
“Did he touch you?”
I wanted to reply with some tart, indignant comment about how I think I’d remember if someone touched me, but I couldn’t. I didn’t remember anything. “I don’t know. Gabriel, tell me what’s going on.”