“Hello, handsome.”
Angela’s words surprised Barrett, and he cut a glance in her direction. Without realizing it, he had come to the conclusion that Ryan and Angela were more to each other than client and investigator. There seemed to be a connection between them that suggested that they had feelings for each other—or at the very least, a mutual attraction. So her flirtatious tone and flattering words were unexpected. Even if he had read the relationship between her and Ryan wrong, Ryan was still lying there unconscious, and she had been quite upset about that fact when she’d called him half an hour ago.
“Uh, hi,” Barrett said, crouching beside Ryan and reaching out to press his fingers to his friend’s throat, taking his pulse. “Tell me again what happened here.”
“Tell me again what happened here,” Angela responded, mimicking Barrett’s tone, then laughing. “You’re all business, aren’t you?”
It hit him all at once. Distracted by Ryan’s condition, he had let Angela’s possession slip completely from his mind. She was looking at him like she wanted to eat him alive, and she was talking with a Louisiana accent. Angela was from England, which meant that whoever was talking to him right now was the spirit of a dead woman.
But she didn’t need to know that he knew that.
“Oh I’m all business,” he said, playing her little game to buy himself time to figure out what he was going to do. Ryan’s pulse was faint, but it was there, and his chest was rising and falling slightly. He was still in there, but to reach him, Barrett was going to have to reform the connection to the spirit world, and that was going to be difficult if Angela’s ghost was the one in control.
“I see that,” Angela said, getting up and moving closer to him. She ran a hand down his arm, feeling his big, strong bicep. “Oh my. This is the kind of business I like very much.”
Barrett restrained himself from shuddering at her touch, but he also pulled away from her, sending her a warning look. “Angela, that’s not appropriate right now. We need to help Ryan, remember?”
“Oh, he’s fine,” she said, pressing her hands against Barrett’s chest and starting to back him up towards the wall. “You and I could spend our time together wisely, couldn’t we?”
Barrett could have broken the woman in half like a twig with hardly lifting a finger, but he again restrained himself, despite his anger. “What’s your name?” he asked, deciding that he might as well drop the pretense that he thought that this was Angela. “Clearly we haven’t met yet.”
Angela smiled seductively. “I’m Leanna. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Barrett Rockwell. I think it’s so fascinating that you’re a dragon shifter. Suddenly I want to know everything there is to know about a man who can shift into a dragon. Why don’t you show me?”
Stunned by her casual revelation that she knew who and what he was, Barrett hesitated for a moment. But only for a moment. He grabbed Angela’s arm, being careful not to hurt the body that Angela wasn’t occupying right now but also forceful enough that Leanna—whoever she was—had to pay attention to him. “How do you know that?”
“I know lots of things,” Leanna said, pressing into his touch so that her body leaned against his. “And I know what I want right now. Do you know what I want right now?”
“I don’t give a fuck what you want right now,” Barrett said. “You’re not getting it, and if you don’t get off me, I’m going to have to hurt you. Don’t make me.”
Leanna’s eyes darkened. “Are you turning me down?”
“Do you see my mouth moving?” Barrett asked, purposely making her feel as small as possible. “Do you hear the words coming from my mouth? Get off me. I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“You’re going to regret saying that,” Leanna said, her voice laced with anger and her eyes stormy. She backed away from him, her fingers curling into fists at her side. “You’re really, really going to regret that.”
Barrett brushed her off, making his way back to Ryan’s body and starting to prop him up. Ryan’s body was limp, just deadweight, but Barrett lifted him easily, returning him to the circle that he had created. When he looked up again, Leanna was gone. He knew that he should go after her, to protect Angela, but his priority was Ryan. There was only so much time that Ryan could linger in this state, and he would need Ryan to adequately help Angela anyway.
He knew that Ryan would want him to go after Angela, but Barrett was making an executive decision. He needed to bring Ryan back first. Then they could worry about Angela.
Chapter 24
Leanna
Leanna was in control.
She loved those moments when she got to control Angela who was otherwise quite prudish and boring for her taste. So often, Leanna was forced to linger in the background, watching from afar as Angela missed opportunity after opportunity. Angela’s thoughts about that gorgeous investigator, Ryan, were thoughts she should be acting on instead of dancing around them like a helpless girl.
When Leanna had taken over, while Angela lay there mourning Ryan’s lifeless state, so she knew it was going to be a good night. She would have liked to have started it off with the handsome man who came to rescue Ryan and Angela, but he clearly had not been able to see how valuable her offer was.
That was his loss. It irked her more than she would like to admit, but she was going to let it go. The night was young, and there was plenty for her to do. She was getting stronger all the time, and she was able to take Angela over with greater ease and frequency. Each time she possessed Angela, she gained a little bit of life back. It was exhilarating.
And living in the form of another person was liberating. All of the things she had never been able to say out loud or do before, she could now do and there were no consequences.
She was a bringer of justice—that’s what she was. A truth teller. A hero. She was a damn hero.
Leanna ran through the bayou, wishing that Angela would dress more practically. The denim shorts and T-shirt were doing nothing to protect her arms and legs from the branches that swiped at her, and her bare feet protested sharply each time she stepped on a rock or a twig or plunged into a marshy area.
But she ran until she made her way out of the bayou, coming out onto a small road. The chances of hitching a ride here were slim, so she kept going, jogging at a slow but steady pace. Sheer determination propelled her forward, because it was clear that Angela was not in the habit of running. Her lungs strained for air, but Leanna ignored the painful sensation, pushing forward anyway.
When she broke out onto a larger highway, well away from Ryan’s house, she stopped to catch her breath, bending over with her hands resting against her knees and her chest heaving. She waited and waited for a car to come by. Even though she was now on a main road, she was still out in the middle of nowhere and cars didn’t frequent this area at this time of night. But she finally did see a car coming in the distance, and she stuck her thumb out, striking her most appealing pose.
The car slowed when the driver saw her, then pulled over.
Leanna narrowed her eyes, honing in on the person driving the car. It was a man, which was no shocker. He probably wanted one thing and one thing alone—to get her into bed. Or into the back seat of the car. Men were all the same, using women as chattel or for sex. Her ex-husband had been that way. She had been his victim for too many years, and after he had killed her that night in her own home, she had moved onto the next life without letting go of any of the bitterness that had developed during the years she had lived. The bitterness had only grown, but she now had a better outlet to release it.
“Hey, gorgeous. Need a ride?”
Leanna smiled, Angela’s features responding to the instructions Leanna gave them. “That’s right,” she said, sauntering up to the car. “Are you offering?”
“Oh I’m offering,” the man said, grinning back at her. There were several open beer cans in the front of the car, and he smelled of alcohol and something stronger.
Leanna leaned down, resting he
r elbows on the window and meeting his eyes with hers. “I promise I’m fun to ride with.”
The man chortled lecherously, waggling his thick eyebrows at her. “Well, come get in here, sugar. You are a sweet treat from what I can tell. Mmmhmm.” He looked her up and down, nearly salivating.
The one thing that burned Leanna about being in Angela’s body was the niggle at the back of her mind that always liked to remind her that when she had been in her own body, rather than Angela’s body, she hadn’t gotten quite the same reaction from men. Angela was drop-dead gorgeous. Leanna had been pretty enough, but not the sort of pretty that made men stop on the side of the road, ready to go without hardly a hello.
It nagged at her, feeling the different advantage that a beautiful woman had.
But she wasn’t going to let it go to waste. All men could be persuaded by a willing woman. Angela’s face just made that a little easier and less time-consuming.
Leanna got in the car with the man, buckling up and smirking at him. “How about you take me into town?”
“I was planning on taking you right here,” the man said, reaching over to put his hand on her leg. He squeezed her bare thigh, his fingers tickling at her skin.
Leanna reached forward and opened the glove compartment. There was a gun there, just as she had known there would be. This was Louisiana, after all, and this man fit every stereotype about a Louisiana man. She pulled the gun out before he could stop her, switched off the safety, and pointed it at him. “I said take me into town,” she repeated, “or I’ll kill you.”
The man stared at her blankly, as though unable to fathom how letting a woman he didn’t know into his car with access to his highly unprotected gun could have turned out so badly for him. Leanna smiled at him, cocking her head.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Didn’t think a sweet little girl was capable of such things? I’m going to give you an address, and you’re going to take me there. If you don’t, I’ll shoot you. Don’t think I won’t follow through. Any questions?”
The man shook his head, swallowing hard. “N-no.”
“Good,” Leanna said, settling into her seat and putting on her seat belt, holding the gun on him all the while. “Drive.” She gave him the address of her ex-husband’s new house and got herself nice and situated. “So, what’s your name?”
The man darted his eyes at her as she drove, his hands clenched around the steering wheel. “Uh, Brandon.”
Leanna jerked the gun towards the back seat, firing a shot through the rear window and shattering the glass. The man screamed, and the car swerved on the road as he panicked.
“I asked you your name,” she said, calmly, pointing the gun at him again. “Don’t lie to me this time.”
“Eli,” he said quickly, his voice trembling. “Eli Laxton.”
“That’s better,” Leanna told him. “Very good. My name is Angela Winston. Can you remember that?”
Eli nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“Good,” Leanna said. “If anyone asks you what happened here tonight, it was Angela Winston.”
“What’s going to happen here tonight?”
“I’m going to get my revenge,” Leanna said, already smiling at the thought. “My ex-husband is a horrible man. He’s got a new young girlfriend, you see. Men only want one thing. Like you.”
Eli clenched his hands around the steering wheel, staring fervently out the windshield. “I don’t want anything.”
“Of course you do,” Leanna snapped before continuing with her musings. “You know, when he first took the children from me, I thought that I was going to die of heartbreak. I couldn’t believe what he’d done. I didn’t know how to live without him or them. But then I realized …I had two boys. Boys who would grow up to be just like their father. Boys who would only want one thing. Once I realized that, they became dead to me. I prefer to imagine that they died, young and unsullied by carnal desires.”
Eli didn’t seem to know what to say, but Leanna didn’t need him to talk.
“I should have known from the beginning,” Leanna said, glad to have a captive audience with whom to regale her story. “He always acted like I was the crazy one, you see. Always blamed me for his own unhappiness. Said I was unhinged. Demanding. Needy. Clingy. He said I was a bad mother. But I saw through him. I knew that he was the one making me this way. I knew that it was all of his emotional abuse that he constantly spewed out at me. I knew it was the way he used me for my body, not caring if I got any pleasure out of it.”
“He sounds terrible,” Eli said tentatively. “A beautiful woman like you deserves better …”
His reference to Angela’s beauty only annoyed Leanna, and she tightened her finger on the trigger. “Drive, Eli. I’ll do the talking. He killed me, you know.” She forgot herself in her eagerness to talk. “He walked into my home in the middle of the night—the one we had lived in together at one time, before he decided that he would be happier without me even though I was the one person who did everything for him. He tried to turn everything on me. I had a gun—I admit it. But it was for self-defense. Then he rushed me. He rushed me, and he turned my own gun on me, and he killed me.”
Eli glanced over at her. “He …killed you?”
“Yes,” Leanna said, realizing her error but knowing that there was no going back now. She had revealed too much, and Eli would have to die after he got her where she was going. There was no choice. She had never killed anyone outright before, and she was interested to see how it would feel. Would it bring her power, taking someone else’s life force? Would it feel like a rush or a high, or would it bother her, watching the blood ooze out of his head?
In a way, she almost couldn’t wait to find out.
“Drive faster,” she said, ignoring his questioning looks when she didn’t elaborate on her one-word answer to his question. “I want to get to his house. I have lots to do before I have to give the body up again.”
“Listen, lady, if you let me go, you can have the car,” Eli said. “I won’t tell a soul—I swear.”
Leanna tilted her head again, considering that. “You make a very interesting point. I don’t really need you, do I?”
Eli shook his head fervently. “No, you don’t. You can make it without me. Honestly, I’m just in the way.”
“You’re so right,” Leanna said, nodding, her decision made. “Pull over.”
Eli quickly did so, reaching for his buckle so he could get out of the seat. His hand never managed to close around the buckle. Leanna put a bullet in his forehead, watching him slump forward as blood began to pour down his face.
“Interesting,” she said. “Nothing at all, really. That’s unexpected.” She got out of her side of the car and rounded to his, opening the door and, with great effort, pulling his body out. She tossed it to the side and dusted off her hands before getting into the car and fishing around until she found some wet wipes behind one of the seats. She tidily cleaned off her hands, face, and the rest of her skin, leaving blood only on her clothing. “I’m so glad he pointed out that I don’t need him,” Leanna said, laughing to herself as she drove the car away from the man she had just killed. “He was right—this is much better.”
Chapter 25
Ryan
The floating sensation was back, edging in on the dark blankness that surrounded him. Ryan pushed the feeling away. He knew what it meant. Floating meant going back into that connection with the spirit world, and he wanted no part of it. Not after what he had seen waiting there for him.
It had been James. In all the times that Ryan had conducted a séance, he had never, ever seen his childhood best friend who had died in the bayou when they were just nine and ten years old. He had worried about it the first few times that he had conducted a séance, because he knew it was possible that James would appear. But he hadn’t, and Ryan had assumed that James had moved on from the in-between spirit world where ghosts lingered, and that he was enjoying peace on the other side. It gave Ryan a measure of peace to be
lieve that.
But then tonight James had walked out of that line of trees and spoken to him, and Ryan wasn’t going to risk seeing that again. He couldn’t face it. Not after what had happened—what he had let happen.
The floating sensation retreated, but it didn’t disappear. The darkness around him began to show cracks of light, and he knew that someone was reaching for him. It was the first time since he had retreated from James’ presence that he remembered the real world and what was waiting for him there. He had shut all of that out of his mind, his thoughts completely captivated by young James’ face and the haunting memories of the night that James had been lost forever.
But if someone was trying to reestablish the connection …it had to be Angela. Her memory came flooding back through the fear and the guilt that he felt, and he remembered her with such a rush that it almost choked him. God—he had left her behind. Where was she? If she was reaching for him, then she was trying to connect with the spirit world, and he couldn’t let her do that. She didn’t know what she was doing, and she already had a spirit dwelling inside of her.
God, anything could happen to her.
Ryan stopped resisting the floating and the light. In fact, he threw himself toward them. Even if it meant facing James again, he would have to do it to make sure that Angela didn’t get trapped within this connection or attract an unwanted spirit. There were few things for which he would be willing to face James’ memory head-on—few things that would be worth risking hearing from James’ own mouth that it had been Ryan’s fault that he died. But Angela was one of those things.
He went hurtling back into the connection, the light growing bright around him. The tree line reappeared, and Ryan steeled himself for James’ presence. But he didn’t see James, and he didn’t see Angela. The scene began to fade again, and his living room began to replace it.
He blinked once, then twice, and he opened his eyes to see his ceiling above him, as though he had never been anywhere at all. For a split second, he caught his breath, but then he pushed himself upward, into a sitting position, looking around frantically. “Angela?”
Rockwell Agency: Boxset Page 15
