Rockwell Agency
D E E B RI D G N O R TH
Copyright © 2019
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
PART I
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
PART II
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
PART III
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
PART IV
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
PART V
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
PART I
Prologue
Her eyes opened in the pitch-black darkness during the deepest hours of the night. She stared up at the ceiling, unseeing, her heart pounding in her chest. Her palms were pressed flat against the cotton sheet, covering her mattress, and every muscle in her body was tense. She had woken from her sleep that way—one moment totally relaxed and the next ready to spring into action.
Because she’d heard it—the noise that she had dreaded every night for months. The noise that was inevitable. The noise that might be one of the last she’d ever heard.
The click of a door handle. The slight squeak of the knob turning. The light scrape of the bottom of the door against the wooden floor of her entryway.
The first footstep inside her home.
Leanna sat straight up after the second footstep, her body instinctively going into action. Her hand closed around the gun that she kept under the pillow on the empty side of her bed. The side of her bed that used to be filled by the person now slowly walking down her hallway.
Gun in hand, she fumbled for her phone, but her fingers felt thick and clumsy. She sent the device crashing to the hardwood floor, making a thudding noise far louder than any of the sounds that had alerted her to the intruder.
Leanna bit back a curse, squeezing her eyes shut. He would know, now, that she knew, and he would know that she knew that he knew.
His footsteps got faster and louder. He wasn’t being careful now—he was rushing toward her. She had no choice. Nothing would stop him from killing her, unless she killed him first. It was self-defense. Self-defense was justified. She knew that for sure because she’d spent a lot of time reading about the legal implications of self-defense killing. She’d known he was going to come for her, and when he did, she wanted to be ready.
But it was hard to be ready to kill someone you had once loved as desperately as she had loved him. It was hard to be ready to kill anyone, presumably. Except he seemed ready. Any moment he was going to rush through her door, and he was going to shoot her, unless she shot him first.
Her hand
trembled around the gun, her grip on it so tight that her whole body was trembling with the effort, as she sat on the edge of her bed, using both hands to aim the gun at her bedroom door. There was no point in calling out to him. No point in begging him to reconsider. He had told her what he meant to do to her, and he was a man of his word.
Except when it came to loving her forever.
Leanna’s breath caught in her throat, as she watched the doorknob on her bedroom twist as if in slow motion. Then the door slid open, and she saw him standing there in the doorway. He looked just as he always had—sweet and handsome. It was a lie, though, because his heart was dark and twisted. He looked like the hero written into every book, but he was the villain at the end of the day, bent on ruining the heroine’s life.
“Leanna,” he said, his voice quiet and calm. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
“Get out of my house,” she said, her voice trembling, but forceful nonetheless “Get out, or I’ll shoot you.”
“It’s my house, Leanna.”
“We’ll see what the courts have to say about that,” she said. Where was his gun? His hands were at his sides, and the look on his face was calm. He was there to shoot her—she knew he was. He had told her time and time again that he would kill her, and she believed that he would. So where was his gun?
“Last chance,” he said, stepping towards her. “Put the gun down, and we can handle this like adults. We can still do that, right?”
She could hear the threat in his voice. He was taunting her. He was trying to make her feel safe and secure, all because she had a gun pointed at him at the moment. What about all those other moments when there was no weapon in her hand? What about when she was just a helpless woman, in love, trying to build the life she had always wanted with the man who meant more to her than anything? Why couldn’t he have been calm and reassuring then? Why was it only now—when he had broken into her house in the middle of the night—that he wanted to be rational?
“You didn’t just come in here to talk to me,” Leanna said, jabbing the gun at him. “It must be 3:00 in the morning. Nobody comes into someone else’s house at 3:00 in the morning for a calm conversation.”
“It’s not ‘3:00 in the morning,’” he said, sounding exasperated. “Why do you always have to exaggerate?”
“I don’t care what time it is!” Leanna said. “It’s the middle of the night—you’ve broken into my house. You’ve told me over and over and over again that you’re going to kill me. Did you think I was just going to lie here and let you do it?”
The man shook his head slowly. “You are something else. You really are. Why did I put up with this for so damn long?”
“Oh, shut up,” Leanna said, jabbing her gun towards him. “You were the problem in our relationship, not me. And you know that. Don’t even try to turn this back on me.”
“You’re the one holding the gun.”
Leanna jabbed at him again. “And don’t you forget it. This is self-defense. I’m helpless and alone, and you broke in here to kill me in my sleep, you bastard. Nobody would blame me for this.”
“Doesn’t mean you won’t be blameworthy.”
The look on his face made her blood boil. He was always like this—always so manipulative. She knew what he was, at his core, and she knew the hell he had put her through for years, but whenever she called him on it, he took on this condescending tone, shook his head at her, and made her feel like a fool. He wanted her to think that it was all in her head, so that she would wonder if she really was the crazy one.
But she wasn’t. It was him. She knew it was him. She had the scars to prove it, and she had that voicemail—the only piece of evidence she would ever need to show everyone just how dangerous her husband was. All anyone had to do to know that all of this was his fault was listen to the hate in his voice when he had threatened her.
“Put the gun down, Leanna,” he said, moving toward her again. “Put it down now, and we can work through this.”
“You always say that,” she said. Whenever I have a little bit of power, you always talk your way out of it and leave me helpless again. I won’t do it anymore! I won’t! You can’t take this from me this time, because it’s all I have left, and I won’t let you.”
“Leanna …”
“No!” She stood up, both hands pointing the gun straight at him. “Get out of my house, or I’ll shoot you dead.”
“It’s not your house.”
“Get out of my house, or I’ll shoot. Now!” She tightened her finger on the trigger. “You don’t scare me anymore, and you can’t fool me, either. If I hadn’t been sitting here, ready, with a gun in my hand, I would already be dead. We both know it. I’m counting to three, and you’d better be out of my sight.”
He took one step backward. “Leanna, please …”
“Shut up,” she said. “One.”
“Leanna…”
“Two!”
He stepped back, making his way towards the door, and Leanna followed him, taking a step forward for every step he took backward.
“Keep moving,” she said, waving the gun at him when he seemed to hesitate. “Go.”
“Fine,” he said, his broad shoulders slumping in defeat. “I’ll go. But it didn’t have to be this way, you know. There was a time when …we could never have imagined this.”
Leanna lifted her chin up in the air, not backing down. “That time is gone.”
He turned to head down the hall, glancing at her over his shoulder. She felt powerful. She felt in control. She felt like she had just accomplished something that she should never have been able to do. The adrenaline was rushing through her veins, giving her a high that she didn’t even know she was craving. She had won! She had really won.
Leanna followed him towards the door, brimming with emotions, but just as he reached the front door and lifted his hand to the doorknob, he turned, bearing down on her without warning. She gasped, taking a step backward to avoid the immediate collision, and he grabbed her around the waist, wrestling her down to the ground in her cotton shorts and tank top.
She screamed, fighting back against him with what little strength she had in her slight body. She tried to pound the gun against his chest, but he had his fingers wrapped around her wrist so tightly that she could barely move her hand. His other hand had her pinned at the hip, keeping her on the floor with no effort on his part. He had always been so much stronger than her.
“You’re hurting me,” Leanna cried out, still struggling against him as hard as she could. She got her hand loose, and he grabbed for it again, both of them scrambling around the floor. He hit her from behind, and she dropped the gun, sending it sliding across the hardwood floor.
They both lunged after it, grabbing it almost simultaneously, and a gunshot rang out, echoing around the huge living room where they had both once lived together.
One shot, and one heartbeat stopped.
Chapter 1
Ryan
Ready?
Ryan Minton cut his eyes over at the royal-blue dragon to his left, his own jet-black wings sweeping powerfully through the night sky. His tail moved back and forth behind him—its powerful movements keeping him steady in the air, as he used his enormous, sharp teeth to hold a basketball in his mouth.
Oh, I’m ready.
He heard the words echo in his head in Jordan’s voice, and he grinned at the dragon, thrusting his tail downward and lifting himself even higher and higher. It was the middle of the night in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Ryan was about as content as he could get. He was in his dragon form, high above the ground, engaging in a game of competitive air ball with the friends he had spent his whole life with. For Ryan, life didn’t get better than that.
Jordan was right behind him, keeping up with the speed he’d put on easily, even though he was an enormous dragon, and she was only medium-sized. Jordan came in a small package, but she also packed a powerful punch, and she was faster and more agile than any of them. So, it w
as no surprise when she put on a burst of speed and swept up to his left, turning at the last minute to use her powerful tail to knock the basketball right out of Ryan’s mouth.
The ball plummeted towards the ground, but another black dragon, Hannah, swept beneath it. She caught the ball on her back, flicking herself upward so that it bounded up into the air again. She turned on her back, floating beneath the ball with an open mouth, catching it neatly between her teeth and giving a little shimmy of victory to taunt Ryan.
He narrowed his yellow eyes to slits, playfully glaring at her, as he swept downward, determined to win back the ball. His teammate, Quentin, came sweeping in from the side, and together, they flanked Hannah, as she raced towards the goal. Jordan flew below her, ready to catch the ball if she had to drop it, so all four dragons—one royal blue, two black, and Quentin with his maroon-red scales—hurtled towards the end-zone where Barrett Rockwell waited, green scales gleaming, as he flew back and forth between the two trees, ready to stop anything that came his way.
The game they were playing had rules that they often made up on the fly—and rules that had to accommodate having five people that did not divide equally into two teams. That often left Barrett, their fearless leader, to be the goalkeeper whose job it was to block anyone who came at him with the ball. Barrett was often a one-man team, and he frequently walked away the winner, having stopped every single goal shot towards him.
Barrett was a fierce fighter, and he had been preparing since his first shift at six years old to take over from his father as leader of the Rockwell Clan. It was a job he took seriously—but then, Barrett took everything seriously.
All was fair in love, war, and air ball, so Ryan was already anticipating the cloud of fire that came roaring from Barrett when they began to get close to him. All four dragons scattered, dodging the flames that would leave them unharmed yet disqualify them from the game. Hannah still had the ball, and she dipped lower, trying to sneak past Barrett from beneath him.
Barrett was already there, and he knocked her back with one wing. The ball flew from her mouth, and Ryan swooped down, diving towards the ground as fast as he could in order to fly beneath the ball and catch it on his back. He bounced it to Quentin, who caught it in his teeth, and then they were racing towards Barrett again. Quentin whipped his head back to throw the ball at lightning speed past Barrett, but Barrett circled around and used his tail to knock the ball straight back towards Quentin. The ball went flying past Quentin’s head, and then smacked up against a particularly tall bayou tree, exploding on impact.
Rockwell Agency: Boxset Page 1
