Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “But you don’t travel.”

  “Trust me,” Ryan said, squeezing her shoulders ever so slightly. “I know it’s hard, and I know you’re scared … I know that I’ve only presented you with an even bigger problem than you thought you had, and I haven’t given you any answers yet. But I will give you answers. And I will stick to you like glue until I fix this.”

  Angela dropped her gaze. “It’s a bigger problem than I thought.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Angela shook her head and pulled back from him. “Where is my phone? Do I still have it?”

  He nodded, confused. “It’s in the bedroom. It was in your pocket.”

  “Wait here,” Angela said, holding her hand out to keep him where he was. “There’s something I should already have shown you.”

  Chapter 10

  Angela

  Her phone was on the nightstand in Ryan’s bedroom, and she picked it up with some trepidation. Angela knew that she should have shown Ryan the video from the beginning, so that he had a better idea of what he was getting into, but she hadn’t been able to face anyone seeing it—even herself. She refused to let herself even be aware of the fact that the video was, perhaps, somewhere online. Angela didn’t search for it, didn’t ask after it, and if she kept her head buried in the sand thoroughly enough, she hoped to never have to know how many people had seen the video.

  When she walked back out of the bedroom, Ryan was sitting on his couch, one arm draped over the back and his legs splayed with comfortable masculinity. Angela sat down on the far end of the couch, her phone gripped tightly in her hands. “I know that it may seem ridiculous, given that you’ve just told me that I tried to burn down a house, but I’m extremely nervous to show you this. I don’t know if it’s because I know it’s in digital form, out in the world somewhere, or what. But I would rather deal with almost burning down a house than deal with what’s on this video.”

  Ryan nodded, watching her but not pushing her to move faster than she wanted to. “Okay. You’re not going to shock me, and I’m not going to think differently of you. Whenever you’re ready.”

  He really was a calming presence, and she closed her eyes, thinking again about what he had tried to tell her about not having the required mental state needed to do things she was doing. He didn’t believe this was really her, acting out this way. She had to hold onto that.

  Swiping her phone open, she pulled up the video, which she had watched over and over, in private horror, under her covers. She pressed play and handed him the phone so that she couldn’t change her mind. “Here,” she said, getting up and walking over to a window, staring out at the bayou.

  As she watched the water flow by the house gently, she heard the familiar sound of her own voice playing from the phone.

  What women do not realize is the power of their sexuality. We have the one thing that so many men want—and we carry it around with us every day, right between our legs. They’ll kill each other for it. Start wars. Commit crimes. Beg. Plead. Wear what we tell them to, eat what we tell them to, pay for what we tell them to. They’re like drooling beasts—desperate and hungry for something only we can give. So why—why—are we walking around this world letting any man take advantage of us? You have to want to be a victim if you’re letting any man tell you what to do when all you have to do is swivel your hips and toss your hair in his direction for him to become a drooling mess.

  Angela closed her eyes against the world, letting her head hang down as she knew what was coming.

  Look at this! I’ll show you what I mean.

  There were sounds of giggling and gasps on the video, along with the sound of her movement through the crowd that had gathered to watch her rant.

  And then she heard Ryan’s intake of breath. He tried to mask it, coughing slightly afterward, as though she might think that the two sounds were one. But she knew he had gasped, and she didn’t blame him for it. She opened her eyes and turned back towards him, meeting his gaze and hugging her arms across her chest. “Well, you just saw me sexually assault a man in public.”

  Ryan put the phone down and got up, walking towards her. But she held her hand out, stopping him from coming too close. “Angela …,” he said, gently. “Unzipping a college man’s pants and trying to …do whatever you were trying to do …is not sexual assault.”

  “Of course it is,” Angela said, giving him a pointed look. “What if the genders were reversed? What if I was a man and that guy had been a girl, and I had pulled up her skirt?”

  A flash of uncertainty passed over Ryan’s face, but then he sighed and nodded. “Okay, you’ve got me there. It’s not different. You’re right. But—.”

  “There is no but.”

  “Yes,” Ryan said, firmly, walking towards her anyway and taking her shoulders in his hands and forcing her to look up at him. “There is a but. There are a lot of buts, actually. First of all, that guy whose pants you tried to take off was laughing, and he did not try to stop you. If he had tried to stop you, then you would never have gotten as far as you did.”

  “We don’t know what happened,” Angela said, pulling away from his grasp. “He motioned for the person to stop recording. The video ends. What happened afterward?”

  Ryan dragged a hand over his hair. “Well, who gave you the video? Did that person tell you anything?”

  “A girl in my student housing gave me the video,” Angela said, walking back over to the couch and sitting down. “She didn’t really say much—just that it didn’t seem like something I would do. She said she left soon afterward. I guess I …stopped when the guy pushed my hands away. Maybe. I don’t know. There’s no telling what I did after that. Or with who. Do you realize that I could have had sex that night, and I wouldn’t even know? I could have gone around putting my hand down other guys’ pants. I don’t know what I did after that, Ryan. And I know that burning down a house is way, way worse. Way worse. But the thought of what I did, and what I might have done that night has been haunting me, and I feel like I might explode.”

  Her voice cracked slightly as she finished her sentence, and Ryan reached out, taking her arm and pulling her to him, wrapping his arms around her. He felt so warm and safe as he held her close to him, and she let herself press her face against his shoulder and close her eyes, shutting out the world for a minute.

  Ryan rubbed her back gently. He didn’t say anything, and neither did she. He just held her and offered his quiet support until she eventually eased back. Then he released her, looking down into her face as he looked up at him.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I’ll figure it out. This is my job, Angela. I figure things out—and this won’t be different.”

  His unwavering confidence gave her some amount of reassurance, and she nodded, sitting back down on the couch. “Thank you …for not running the other way.”

  “I’ve seen stranger things,” he said, sitting down beside her, but with a reasonable distance between them. He was nothing if not the consummate professional.

  “How is that possible?” she asked, shaking her head in disbelief. “What could be stranger than this?”

  “Plenty of things,” he said. “Let’s talk about some possible answers. The first thing that probably came to your mind was some sort of psychological issue.”

  Angela nodded. “Yes. Multiple personality disorder, or whatever it is called now. But I don’t have any sort of childhood trauma. And I’m not just saying that—I mean I really don’t. I have great parents, and I had a great childhood. There’s nothing that could have brought something like that on.”

  “I don’t think it’s that either,” Ryan said. He was speaking very carefully, as though weighing each word. “For a lot of reasons, really. But there’s one big one. Did you notice your voice in that video?”

  “What about it?” Angela asked, thinking back to the video she had watched hundreds of times. “It was just my voice.”

  Ryan nodded. “Exactly. It was your voice. Las
t night—that wasn’t your voice.”

  “Oh,” Angela said, remembering that he had told her that her accent had disappeared. “That’s true. What does that mean?”

  “It could mean a number of things,” Ryan said. “It doesn’t completely rule out multiple personalities, since there could have been two different personalities that came out. But the person in the video and the person I saw last night are so similar—sexually confident, sure of her ability to control men, and attention-seeking. It would be strange for two separate personalities to be so similar but to have different accents. Also, it would be almost impossible that one of the personalities would have a Louisiana accent when you’ve never been to Louisiana until a few months ago. If it was something that was born in childhood …or any time before three months ago, then no personality would have a Louisiana accent.”

  “That’s true,” Angela said, chewing her bottom lip as she thought. “Okay. Yes. That’s true.”

  “And nothing—I mean nothing—traumatic has happened to you here? You’re sure?”

  “Does the heat count?” Angela asked, smiling faintly at her attempt at a joke before shaking her head. “No. Nothing. Nothing that I can remember.”

  “It would be unusual for this to develop in three months anyway,” Ryan said. “I think that I’m willing to rule out multiple personality disorder—or at least put it on the backburner. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re the expert,” Angela said.

  Ryan held up a hand. “Well, hold on. I’m not a psychology expert—not at all. So you need to be sure that you feel I’m making the right call there before we go further.”

  Angela drew her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging herself. “Ryan, I’m not sure of anything anymore. But my mind is the one thing that I’ve always been able to rely on, and I don’t want to think that it’s betraying me now. If you have other theories, those are the ones I want to focus on.”

  “Okay,” Ryan said. “I do have other theories. But I have to ask you for a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  “I need you to let me talk to my colleagues first,” Ryan said. “I know I promised you discretion, and I’m still promising you that. But this is sensitive enough that I need to get some feedback before I tell you my two most prominent theories. I trust them with my life, and this is their job, too. They all exercise ultimate discretion every day. What do you think about that?”

  Just a day earlier, Angela probably would have panicked at the thought of anyone knowing about what she had been going through, much less several people she had never met. But in a very short time, she had come to trust Ryan. He didn’t think she was strange, or sick, or evil. He just wanted to figure out how to help her, and she needed to let him do that however he needed to.

  “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Sure. Fine.”

  Ryan smiled at her. “Good. Let me get ready to go, and then we’ll drive in to the agency. They’ll meet us there. I don’t want you in on the initial meeting, but you can stay in my office. I don’t think that we should leave you on your own.”

  Angela winced and shook her head. “God, no. Please do not leave me on my own.”

  “Give me ten minutes,” Ryan said, standing up and heading back towards his bedroom. “You need anything, you call me. I’ll hear you.”

  She smiled faintly at him, giving a brief wave as he disappeared. He looked amazing from behind as he walked away, his broad shoulders straining the fabric of his T-shirt, and his jeans hugging his tight backside and toned thighs. He walked with such a confident, sure swagger—an effortless walk, really, but one full of so much self-possession. Briefly, she wished they could have met under different circumstances—circumstances under which she was not half a step away from insane. Maybe they could have been friends. Maybe they could have been more. She thought that she had caught him looking at her a time or two, and maybe even looking at her appreciatively.

  But that fantasy was just that—a fantasy. No man like him would be interested in a woman with a penchant for blacking out and committing various crimes. Even if they fixed that somehow, she was only here for another six months.

  Better, then, that she not entertain such thoughts. He was kind, and he was good at his job, and he had saved her from certain disaster last night. If he hadn’t been there, she could actually have killed people.

  That thought alone was sobering enough to shove aside any entertainment of romantic fantasies. She wasn’t here to ogle Ryan’s backside; however worthy it might be. She was here to try to get her life back under control, and he was going to help her. End of story.

  Chapter 11

  Ryan

  “Sorry to call everyone in on the weekend,” Ryan said, kicking off the impromptu meeting he’d called.

  Barrett, Hannah, Jordan, and Quentin were sitting around the conference table in their meeting room, all looking up at him, waiting to hear what they had been brought in to offer counsel on. Ryan had never called one of these meetings before, although others had over the time they had all been working together. He was looking out at the faces of his closest friends, all of whom had been willing to drop everything they were doing and come to work just to help him out with a case that was quickly becoming personal for him. “But thank you for coming,” he added. “I’ve got a sensitive case, and before I tell Angela what I think is going on, I need to just hear that I’m on the right track. Or the wrong track.”

  “You’re on the wrong track,” Jordan said with a smile. “Meeting closed.”

  Ryan rolled his eyes at the petite firecracker. “Hilarious. Look, if I’m right, then this is definitely a supernatural case. But this woman didn’t come to me thinking supernaturally. She was given the name of our agency by an acquaintance who said that we solve unusual problems. But Angela has said nothing that indicates that she is seeking help for a supernatural issue. That means that beyond the problem itself, she’s going to also have to deal with the shock of dealing with the supernatural world. She’s an academic. You know how they are about things that affect their view of reality.”

  Quentin leaned far back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Academics can be more open sometimes. Especially if presented with evidence.”

  “Yeah well, all I have is a hunch,” Ryan said. “So, Hannah, you know a little bit about this already, and Barrett, I talked to you yesterday. But the long and short of the situation is that Angela is losing long stretches of time, and the things that she does during those stretches of time are humiliating and sometimes criminal. Last night I stopped her from burning down a house.”

  “Oh my God,” Jordan said, suddenly far more serious. She sat up in her chair, leaning her elbows against the table. “So what’s happening during these blackouts? You were with her?”

  Ryan nodded. “Yes. It was like an instant change came over her. Angela was gone and someone else was there. Someone with a Louisiana accent. Angela is British.”

  “Damn,” Quentin said. “So it’s a possession.”

  Ryan pointed at Quentin. “See? That’s my instinct, too. Because—and this was the clincher—there’s a video of her during an earlier blackout. She showed it to me this morning. And in that video, she still has her accent.”

  “So the possession is getting stronger,” Barrett inferred.

  “Yes,” Ryan agreed, energized by the fact that his friends were so clearly on the same wavelength as him. “See, she was losing small amounts of time. Then longer and longer amounts. Then, last night, the accent changed. Or maybe it changed before last night—I don’t know. But at some point, she was blacking out and speaking in her own accent. Now she’s speaking in another accent. The spirit that has control of her is gaining more and more control.”

  “It makes sense to me,” Hannah said. “That would be my first theory. But, out of curiosity, are there other theories?”

  Ryan made a noncommittal gesture with his hand. “Not really. Sort of. Obvious
ly we talked about psychological theories, but that just doesn’t feel right to me. And there’s a possibility that there’s some kind of spell over her, I guess. But that seems far-fetched. This is the one that feels right, and the fact that you guys independently went there, pretty quickly, too, makes me feel like I’m on the right track.”

  “Well, I think you are,” Jordan said, “and I would tell you if I didn’t. You know that.”

  “We all know that,” Barrett said. “Trust yourself, Ryan. We work off evidence, but we also work off instinct. You’re a dragon shifter. You have an extra sense for these things.”

  Ryan nodded. “I do. I just—this girl. She’s in a bad way. I don’t want to do anything that will make it worse. This has really rattled her. She’s far from home, she has no one here, and she’s scared. Now I’m about to go tell her that she’s possessed.”

  “She’ll make it through,” Quentin said, getting to his feet. “Possessions are ugly, but all you have to do is figure out what spirit is possessing her, what about that spirit’s life caused it to remain between worlds, and what you have to do to rid her of the spirit before the spirit takes over permanently. Easy-peasy.”

  Ryan gave Quentin a droll look as Quentin slapped Ryan’s shoulder on his way towards the door. “Thanks, friend. That’s encouraging.”

  Quentin chuckled and opened the conference room door. “Sorry to run. I’m on a case of my own at the moment.”

  “Thank you for coming in,” Ryan said, sincerely. “Meeting adjourned, everyone. Go back to Sunday brunches or whatever it is you people waste time on.”

  Jordan and Hannah got up to go, chatting to each other on their way out, but Barrett remained behind. Ryan smiled at his friend, waiting to see what Barrett was going to say. Clearly there was something on the man’s mind. “What’s up?”