Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “I’m ready,” she said. “There’s no point in waiting.”

  Ryan shook his head. “No—not now. I have everything taken care of here for you. There is a change of clothes sitting there.” He motioned towards the desk chair, where a stack of clothing sat, neatly folded. “They should fit well enough. I want you to take them into the bathroom, which is just down the hall and to the right. Have a nice, long, hot shower. Clear your head. Deal with what you need to deal with. Then get dressed and come out to the kitchen. Just follow the scent of breakfast. We’ll get some food in you and make sure you’re feeling clean, comfortable, and yourself again. Then we’ll talk. There’s no rush.”

  Angela shook her head slowly, not sure what to think about this man. “Do you always show your clients such personal attention? This is your house, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” he said, “and I show my clients whatever it is they need.” He patted her hand gently. “This is what you need. I’m going to go out to the kitchen, and you can join me when you’re ready.”

  Angela nodded, deciding to let him take the reins for now. A shower did sound lovely. “All right.

  He stood up, towering over her with his natural presence. “Anything you can’t or won’t eat?”

  “I’m not picky,” she said. “Just …nothing with eyes or heads this time?”

  Ryan smiled at her, and there was something in his face that she couldn’t quite discern. “Nothing with heads or eyes …” Then he walked out of the room, leaving Angela sitting by herself.

  She shakily put her feet on the ground, but when she stood, she found that she was reasonably in control of her own movements. It was a strange experience, retaking control of your body again, and she half-expected one or more of her limbs to just take on a life of its own, thwarting her intentions.

  But she was able to take the clothes left for her and make her way down to the bathroom. She closed and locked the door, then turned on the shower. It was a showerhead that hung from above, so when she undressed and stepped under its spray it was like standing under delicious, warm rain. The water slid over her, and she closed her eyes, just letting it surround her for a moment.

  The world did feel a little bit better as she stood there, but the relief of the water was temporary. It was only seconds before her mind began searching for answers to the millions of questions she had. She first focused on remembering the last moment she was aware of, and she knew she had been on the dance floor with Ryan. She had been having a nice time. The party was loud, but fun, and the food had been surprisingly good. Would she have lost time, though, if she had been quietly at home? Was there some kind of trigger she wasn’t aware of? She had no idea what time it was currently, but Ryan had mentioned breakfast, and she had woken up in bed with the light coming in. Surely it was only the next morning—Sunday morning. That would mean she had lost more than twelve hours—time that was just a black blank for her. She had no inkling of what she might have done. No instincts to go off. There wasn’t a whisper of anything in her mind that could help her start to piece together the situation.

  That would have to come from Ryan, who, presumably, had been with her the whole time.

  She was both fascinated and horrified at the thought of what he might tell her about the night before, and she found herself washing quickly, using the soap that was in the shower. When she had washed her hair and her body, she stepped out from under the warm rain shower and grabbed a towel, wrapping it around her body.

  Drying quickly, she pulled on the jeans, which did fit reasonably well, and the peach-colored blouse. She wondered where Ryan had found clothes, especially ones that were so close to her size, but the wondering was brief as other thoughts crowded back in on her. Briefly toweling off her hair, she let it hang wet and opened the bathroom door.

  The scent of eggs and bacon drifted toward her, and her stomach rumbled with hunger. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. Following the scent, she made her way through the quaint little house to the kitchen, and she gasped at what she saw there. One wall of the kitchen was almost entirely glass, creating an enormous window through which she could see the bayou. Ryan stood at the stove, cooking, and behind him was the blue-green water of the bayou, lined with tall trees and swampy land rising from it.

  “Amazing,” Angela said, walking over to the window and staring out. “You really meant it when you said you live in the bayou.”

  “I did,” Ryan said, grabbing a plate and beginning to load it with fried potatoes, bacon, eggs, and a croissant. “Here you go.”

  “Oh, that’s too much food,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t eat all of that.”

  “You can and you will,” he said with a smile, placing the dish in her hands without her even realizing she was accepting it. “Have a seat and go ahead and start eating. I’m just waiting on this last egg.”

  Angela sat down at the table, watching the bayou pass by outside. Her stomach rumbled again, and she broke off a piece of the croissant, letting the delicate pastry melt in her mouth. One taste, and she realized she wasn’t just hungry—she was ravenous. She picked up the knife and fork beside her plate and began to eat in earnest.

  Ryan chuckled as he sat down across from her. “Told you.”

  “Why am I so hungry?” Angela asked, picking up a piece of bacon and taking a generous bite of it. “I rarely eat any breakfast at all.”

  “Maybe that’s why,” Ryan said, lightly. “Maybe you’ve been depriving your body of food in the mornings for so long that now it’s demanding all of the food while it can.”

  Angela smiled slightly. “Maybe. You look tired.”

  “Thank you …”

  “Is it Sunday?”

  “It is, indeed.”

  “Did you get any sleep?”

  “Eat your eggs,” he said, pointing to her plate. “Fried eggs are no good cold.”

  Angela put down her knife and fork, despite the fact that she was still quite hungry. “Ryan, please. I appreciate everything you’re doing, but I can’t sit here and have a pretend conversation when we both know what happened last night. Or rather, you know what happened, and I’m a victim of my vivid imagination.”

  “I like your accent,” Ryan said, getting up and going to the fridge. He pulled out a pitcher of orange juice and poured them both a glass. “It fits you perfectly.”

  “My accent?” she asked. “It’s just a British accent.”

  “But it’s you,” Ryan said, walking over to her and setting a glass down in front of her before taking his seat again. “And you lost it last night. It was a different voice coming out of you. It didn’t sound like you at all.”

  Angela leaned back in her chair, holding her breath. “I lost my accent?”

  Ryan nodded. “Keep eating. And as long as you keep eating, I’ll keep talking. Deal?”

  She said nothing, instead picking up her fork and stabbing a fried potato. She placed the bite in her mouth, chewing as she watched him, waiting for him to follow through on his end of the bargain.

  He sighed and leaned back in his own chair. “I wish I had more answers for you, Angela. I really do.”

  Chapter 9

  Ryan

  It had been one of the longest nights of his life, and now he had to sit across from Angela and try to explain to her what had happened when he wasn’t even sure he knew himself. When she had woken up twenty minutes ago and looked at him, he had known immediately that she was back, and the relief that had washed over him was like nothing he had ever felt before. She had been so completely gone for so many hours, and the thing that looked like her had taken over so completely, that Ryan wasn’t sure that Angela was ever going to return to him.

  But she was sitting here now, speaking in her beautiful British accent, looking at him with her wide eyes, and putting away more food than she realized while she waited for an explanation that he didn’t know how to give.

  “Just tell me what you can,” Angela said. “I don’t expect you to have a wr
itten solution, Ryan. I just—I need to know what happened.”

  Ryan nodded, dragging a hand through his hair and taking a sip of his orange juice before he began. “We were dancing at the party when you left. It happened in an instant, Angela. One minute you were you, smiling up at me, and the next minute you were gone. There was no sign, no flash, no anything. Your eyes were just different. And when you spoke, it was with a Southern accent.”

  Angela’s hand went up to her throat, as though protecting her vocal chords. “I spoke with a different accent?”

  “Entirely different,” Ryan said. “Not exactly like mine, but similar. You spoke like you were from around this area. You became …wild. You danced on a table.”

  “Oh God.”

  “I carried you down from it,” Ryan said, quickly. “I know it sounds humiliating, but given the context of the party, it was hardly unexpected. Someone was going to get up on that table and dance, and you were very good.”

  “Then it definitely wasn’t me,” Angela said. “I couldn’t dance on a table if my life depended on it.”

  “Well, you could last night,” Ryan said. “I carried you off, making some excuse that you’d had too much to drink, and that I was going to take you home. But as I carried you out of the backyard, you threatened me.”

  Angela’s eyes widened. “Threatened you …physically?”

  “You threatened to scream and accuse me of systemic abuse and battery if I didn’t put you down,” Ryan said, dryly. “I called your bluff and said scream away. You didn’t.”

  Dropping her head into her hands, Angela groaned. “This is humiliating.”

  He didn’t know how to tell her that it got so much worse. “I got you into the car. The thing that took you over—whatever it is—has a very strong personality. I had to hold my own and show that I wasn’t afraid or concerned about what it might do. I tried to get it to talk to me—to tell me a little about who it was and what it wanted. So it jumped out of the back of the car at a red light and started to run down the street at a speed that, honestly, was pretty impressive.”

  Angela wasn’t eating, like she had agreed to do, but he didn’t press it. The ashen-white color of her face told Ryan all he needed to know about how well she was receiving the explanation.

  “I pulled into a parking lot, left the car, and ran after it,” Ryan said. He was very careful not to refer to the thing as Angela herself, because he wanted her to keep it very clear in her mind that this thing that was causing so much chaos in her life was not her. It was something that was happening to her. “I run very fast,” he told her. “It didn’t take me long to catch up to it, even though it had a good two- or three-minute head start.”

  Angela nodded, swallowing hard. “And when you did?”

  “I was just in time to see it get into a cab.”

  “Oh God.”

  “I followed the cab.”

  “In your own cab?”

  Ryan shook his head. “No. I run very fast, Angela.” He didn’t want to get caught up on that fact, partially because it was hardly significant in the greater context and partially because, even in Angela’s state of shock, she would easily realize that it was superhuman to be able to follow a cab on foot for any length of time.

  He continued without giving her time to think about it further. “It was getting dark—really dark. The cab pulled into a neighborhood and stopped in front of a house. I wrote down the address. It’s in my wallet.”

  Angela nodded again. “What did I do there?”

  “Nothing,” Ryan said, firmly. “You were not present. The fact that your body was there has nothing to do with you.”

  “That’s not really how that works,” Angela said, tightly. “I appreciate you making the distinction, but the fact of the matter is—my DNA, my fingerprints, my face, my physical presence. Whatever I did there, it lands on me.”

  Ryan wasn’t going to let her think about it that way, even though he understood where she was coming from. “Listen, in my job, it’s important to know what constitutes a crime and what doesn’t. So I know a little bit about how society thinks about this kind of thing. There are two components to a crime—the physical act and the mental state. Both have to be there for there to be a crime, with a few unimportant exceptions.”

  Angela frowned at him, shaking her head. “What are you talking about?”

  “Take murder for example,” Ryan said, immediately regretting the example when her face went even whiter.

  “Oh God,” Angela said. “What did I do?”

  Ryan held up his hands. “No—that’s not what I’m saying. You didn’t murder anyone, okay? I’m just using it as an example. Keep eating.”

  Angela stabbed another potato and put it in her mouth, so Ryan continued.

  “To be convicted of a murder, you have to have actually murdered someone—that’s the physical act. The murder. But you also have to have intended to kill someone or acted with gross recklessness with a disregard for the value of human life. That’s the mental state. And if someone kills another person but did not intend to or acted with gross recklessness, then they didn’t commit murder—even though they killed someone.”

  She was staring at him, her brow knitted together and her full, luscious lips downturned. “But you can still go to jail.”

  “You might be convicted of manslaughter,” Ryan said. “But that’s not really the point I’m making. What I’m trying to tell you is that our criminal justice system understands that you might have done something, physically, but if you were not aware, or not acting with that intention, or if you were unconscious, then you can’t be convicted of the crime.”

  “That’s a strange criminal justice system.”

  Ryan shrugged and picked up his orange juice, taking a sip. “I’m pretty sure it’s based on yours, darlin’.”

  Angela stabbed another potato. “We’ve gotten a little off track, no?”

  “Yes,” Ryan said, “but for an important reason. When I tell you what happened next, I need you to understand that it was not you who committed that crime.”

  “Oh God,” Angela said, closing her eyes. “Please just tell me.”

  “You set fire to a house.”

  “That’s not amusing, Ryan.”

  “It isn’t meant to be.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “I burned down a house?” Angela’s voice was desperate, her chest rising and falling so quickly that he worried she might have a panic attack. “Are you telling me that I burned down a house?”

  “I’m telling you that you tried to,” Ryan said, keeping his own face and tone calm to encourage her to breathe slowly. “Do you really think I would have let that happen?”

  “You stopped it?” Angela asked, pressing her hand to her chest. “Did you keep me from doing it?”

  “Oh, the thing set the fire,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “But it set it in the back of the house. I got there just as the fire sparked. The flames had barely begun and did no significant damage—just some light charring in a small area at the back of the house. No smoke detectors went off. It’s possible the family might not even realize what happened.”

  Angela slumped back against his chair. “No one got hurt?”

  “No one.” Ryan hesitated slightly. “Well—almost no one.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Ryan lifted up his shirt to expose his side, where there was a large, blooming bruise that stretched down the left side of his rib cage and abdomen. “The thing controlling you was unhappy with me.”

  Angela got up, rounding the table. She crouched beside him, and her fingertips skimmed over his skin. “God, that looks awful.”

  “It’s fine,” he said, but he made no move to put his shirt down or encourage her to step back. The light touch of her fingers on his skin was pleasant, and having her so close wasn’t bad either. “I won. That’s all that matters.”

  Angela looked down at herself. “I didn�
��t notice any marks on me.”

  “I didn’t put any marks on you,” Ryan said. “I never would—no matter what.”

  “But I was attacking you.”

  “The thing controlling you was attacking me,” he said, determined to make the differentiation sink in. “And I know how to defend myself without harming the other person, if need be. I restrained it, and I knocked it out. Then I called one of my friends, and she came and picked us up. I know you don’t love that part, probably, but I couldn’t be seen carrying a lifeless body through the streets of Baton Rouge—particularly one that might wake up and act unpredictably.”

  Angela nodded. “I understand. Was it a friend from the agency?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Her name is Hannah. You’re wearing her clothes. She’s very discreet, and she’s the sweetest person in the entire universe. She almost cried over you, and she wants to come by later and see how you are.”

  Smiling slightly, Angela stood back up. “She sounds nice.”

  “She’s a doll,” Ryan said, studying Angela’s face for some hint as to what she was thinking now. “How are you?”

  “I don’t even know,” Angela said. “I have a thing that takes over me and makes me do horrible things. Like set fire to a house. It meant to kill those people in the house—whoever they are. Ryan, if this keeps on, I’m going to hurt someone. I’m going to do something terrible.”

  He stood up, taking her arms in his hands and looking down into her face. “I will not let that happen.”

  “But you can’t be with me every moment.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “Ryan—” Angela said, closing her eyes and pulling away from him. “That’s not practical, and you know it. I can’t just live here with you. I have to be at school tomorrow—I have work in the afternoon, after my classes. I have to live my life. I’m over here for nine months, and if I get kicked out of school for missing classes, or I don’t know, burning down a house, then I’ll have to leave Louisiana and go back to Bristol, and then what will I do there?”

  Ryan moved towards her again, taking her arms once more. “Angela, you have to trust me,” he said, gently. “I will not let any of that happen, and if it does, then I’ll go to Bristol with you, and we’ll figure this out there.”