Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Jordan nodded, finally setting her pen down and beginning to jot down a few notes on the open document she had up on her laptop. “All right, and why are you coming to me now with this problem? What happened that made you decide that you needed help?”

  “I heard one of my best friends thinking about how he had slept with my long-term girlfriend.”

  Jordan stopped typing, looking over at him. “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s unfortunate. Not unexpected, but unfortunate.”

  Wes looked confused. “Not unexpected?”

  “Well, yes,” Jordan said, going back to typing but also continuing to talk. “You said she was a long-term girlfriend. How long-term was she?”

  “Three years.”

  Jordan nodded. “Yes. People start to get bored in relationships. That’s about the right amount of time, I would say.”

  “The right amount of time for someone to cheat on you,” Wes said, sounding incredulous. “There’s a timetable?”

  “Not an official one,” Jordan said, finishing jotting down the important details of the case and setting her laptop aside. “I assume you’ve broken up with the girlfriend?”

  “We were already broken up,” Wes said. “Alana and I had decided that it wasn’t meant to be. I didn’t find out about her and Jake until afterward.”

  Jordan pursed her lips together. “So, you had already broken up with her, and you knew it was the right decision, but when you found out about her and Jake, you were still upset?”

  “Obviously.”

  “That’s not obvious,” Jordan said, “but all right—that’s how you felt. And that’s what prompted you to come in.”

  “Yes,” Wes said, looking disconcerted. “That happened a couple of days ago. I just …I don’t want to keep hearing what people are thinking. It’s weird, and it’s inconvenient, and now I’ve learned something that, honestly, I wish I didn’t know. I could have gone my whole life not knowing that Jake had slept with Alana on numerous occasions. I work with this guy. I’ve been friends with him for years. I think …no, I know I would rather have not known. So, I need this to stop, so that I don’t learn any other terrible secrets.” He gestured helplessly again. “Plus, what kind of person hears other people’s thoughts? That’s not normal, is it?”

  Jordan shook her head. “Of course, it’s not normal. It’s not altogether strange either, though. It happens more than you might think. You see, human thoughts are all on the same plane. On the same wavelength. They’re bound to get jumbled around. There are plenty of things that can trigger that.”

  Wes frowned at her. “Seriously? This happens to people?”

  “It can,” Jordan said, “and, if you want, I can make it unhappen to you.”

  “It’s that simple?”

  “I didn’t say it was simple,” Jordan said, shaking her head. “I just said I could do it.”

  Chapter 4

  Wes

  Jordan Grey was a very odd little woman, Wes decided. He had heard her voice before he had seen her, and he had expected someone who was tall and perhaps foreboding. Seeing the petite woman, who couldn’t be more than five feet tall, with her maroon pixie cut and sparkling blue eyes that dominated her face, had been a surprise. She had a beautiful face, and the pixie cut suited it well, giving her a spunky, edgy look. She had on a tank top and denim shorts that hugged her slender but curvy figure nicely and showed off tanned skin and sculpted arms.

  Yes, she was definitely very attractive. But he found himself constantly surprised at what came out of her mouth. She didn’t seem to put any time or thought into the social softening that most people engaged in instinctively. Her thoughts simply came out of her lips the way that they formed in her head. It was both refreshing and confusing.

  She had put no thought into attempting to comfort him about the problem that he had been admittedly nervous to tell anyone about. In fact, she almost seemed dismissive. And yet, he wasn’t really offended. He was more curious than anything. And for the first time, he found that he wanted to hear her thoughts, even if just to see if she was editing them at all before they came out of her mouth.

  “You’re staring at me,” Jordan said.

  Wes cleared his throat, realizing that he had been. “I’m sorry. I’m thinking. I don’t know what I’m thinking, actually. I guess I thought that I would come in here and tell you that I’m hearing other people’s thoughts, and you would laugh at me, and not believe me, and send me away.”

  “Then why did you come in here?” Jordan asked. “That seems like a waste of an afternoon. You could have stayed at work.”

  “I’m a landscaper,” he said. “I work from 6:00 in the morning until 2:00 in the afternoon.”

  Jordan pursed her lips together, thoughtfully. “Interesting. That explains the muscle.”

  Wes almost laughed, but he held it back, unsure whether she would appreciate it. “Thanks. Look, Ms. Grey—.”

  “Jordan.”

  “Jordan,” he said, “I do want help. I don’t want to keep walking around, not knowing when other people’s thoughts are going to come into my head. I just …I don’t know. I sort of expected this to be a bigger deal. I don’t know what to think.”

  “I’m not sure how to make it a bigger deal for you,” Jordan said, pushing back from her desk and standing up. She walked over to one of her bookshelves, hunting through the books there, and Wes had a good opportunity to continue to size her up.

  Her clothes were simple. Her rose-colored tank top was tucked into a pair of denim shorts that were frayed at the bottom. Her legs were long and slender, especially for her height. Most of the height that she did have seemed to be in her legs. Her sleek running shoes were well broken in, and the muscles in her calves indicated that she worked out hard and often.

  She pulled a book from her shelf and walked it over to him, handing it over. “Here. Look at this.”

  He took the book from her hands and read the title. “Transposed Thought.”

  “It’s a whole book on what you’re experiencing,” Jordan said. “I know it’s foreign to you, because most people walk around without any idea about half the things that happen in the world. But there are people who study this. They study what triggers it, and they study the impact of it, and they study how to cure it, if the person experiencing transposed thoughts wants a cure.”

  “Some people don’t?”

  Jordan shook her head. “No, of course some people don’t. Think about it on a bigger scale. How much power would you have if you could hear other people’s inner thoughts?”

  He hadn’t actually ever thought of it that way. This had never been anything more than a strange and frustrating nuisance to him. It had scared him at first, actually, and he had thought that there might be something wrong with his mind. It had never occurred to him to use this to his advantage. Although now that he did think of it that way, he realized that it should have occurred to him long ago.

  “So, there are other people out there in the world who can hear the thoughts of others?” Wes asked. “This is just a normal thing.”

  “No, of course it’s not normal,” Jordan said, perching on the edge of her desk and making herself comfortable. “It’s never normal. And there are not a lot of people who can do it. But, yes, there are enough. Enough that there are more people who can hear other’s thoughts than there are people who die of snakebites every year.”

  Wes made a mental note to look up how many people died of snakebites each year. “Okay,” he said, shaking his head, as he tried to take all of this in. “Well, I don’t want that particular power. I’ve got enough to deal with just hearing my own thoughts, thank you very much.”

  Jordan walked back around her desk and rifled around in a file, pulling out some paperwork. “All right, then we’ll get you signed up. I’ll take your case. It won’t be a long or complicated process. We need to figure out what happened that triggered the transposed thoughts, and then we’ll cure it. It’ll be
a very simple process. Not easy, of course. But simple.”

  Wes took the paperwork from Jordan and glanced down at it. There was quite a bit to fill out, and he looked over at her pen, which was sitting on the desk.

  “Oh no,” Jordan said, not offering him the pen. “It would be better if you could fill that out and bring it back in tomorrow. This isn’t the kind of case that is particularly urgent, so we’ll get started on it in the morning.”

  “In the morning,” Wes said. “So, it’s really of no immediate concern that I’m …hearing people’s thoughts.”

  “Has it been immediately concerning over the past few months?” Jordan asked. “If there’s something that requires urgent attention, please let me know now.”

  Wes felt as though hearing other people’s thoughts was a relatively urgent matter, but on the other hand, he had waited months to come in, as she had just not-so-subtly hinted at. He didn’t really have a good reason why it had to be dealt with tonight as opposed to tomorrow, so he decided not to press the issue. “No, tomorrow is fine. Except, I can’t do mornings. I work. I can come in at the same time tomorrow?”

  “Good, yes—that’s fine,” Jordan said, nodding and taking a seat at her desk again. “Thank you for coming in, Wes. I’ve got you scheduled for tomorrow at 3:00.”

  It felt as though he had gone to see a doctor, explained his symptoms, received a prescription, and he was now being rushed out so that she could see the next person. He supposed that he shouldn’t be quite as surprised as he was, but he did expect his story to have some sort of impact.

  Somewhat flabbergasted, Wes got up and left Jordan’s office, the paperwork she wanted him to fill out clutched in his hands. He walked all the way down the hall and out into the main reception area. The girl who had first greeted him, Anna, was sitting there, and she smiled and nodded to him as he made his way to the front door.

  “Thanks for coming in,” she called.

  What on earth is happening? Wes wondered, stepping out the door and walking across the parking lot to his car. Is this really so commonplace? I might as well have walked in there and said I had a common cold.

  He got into his car and sat there for a minute, wondering what to do with the rest of his day. He had cleared his schedule, expecting that it would take hours to convince the person he spoke to that he was hearing voices and then hours more to figure out what to do next. He had even planned to demonstrate by trying to hear the investigator’s thoughts, to prove that he really was telling the truth. But none of Jordan’s thoughts had come through to him, and she had seemed uninterested in proof anyway.

  Wes shook his head. He should probably go straight home, spend a night alone, not hearing anyone’s thoughts. The problem was, when he was alone, his own thoughts became unbearably loud. Better to go out and keep busy. Apparently tomorrow was going to be a big day for him.

  Or maybe it wouldn’t be. Maybe Jordan was going to give him a pill, tell him to rest for a few days, and pronounce him good as new.

  It’s not normal to hear other people’s thoughts, Wes emphasized to himself as he drove away from the Rockwell Agency. I know it’s not.

  He would see what Jordan had to say to him tomorrow, and if she continued to be as uninterested as she had been today, he was going to get a second opinion. Who from, he didn’t know. But he would find someone.

  Chapter 5

  Jordan

  As soon as Wes left the building, Jordan picked up her cell phone and called Barrett. The phone rang four times, and she had almost decided to hang up, when he suddenly answered.

  “Hey, I’m almost at the agency. What’s going on?”

  Jordan looked out her window towards the intersection, and she could see Barrett’s car sitting there, waiting for the light to turn green. “Good. Come by my office, okay?”

  “Everything all right?”

  “In the grand scheme of things?” Jordan asked. “Yes. But I do have a problem.”

  “Okay, I’ll be there in just a second.”

  Jordan put down her phone and brought her computer towards her, reviewing the notes she had taken on Wes’s case. She did some elaborating and wrote down some additional observations, and by the time she was done, she could hear Barrett walking towards her office.

  “Okay,” he said, appearing in the doorway for a moment before walking in and sitting down. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve got a transposed thoughts case.”

  Barrett winced. “Shit.”

  “Right,” Jordan said. “I hurried him out of here as quickly as possible, and I kept my thoughts under control, but the fact of the matter is—if I’m going to be working closely with him, and he can hear my thoughts, he’s going to eventually hear something he shouldn’t. So, what’s the protocol? I can’t promise that I’m just never going to let being a dragon shifter into my thoughts.”

  “I know,” Barrett said, nodding. “This will be the first transposed thoughts case since I’ve taken over. I need to look through my files and see what notes we have on what’s been done before. If you want, I can take the case from you, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

  “No,” Jordan said. The speed with which she declined Barrett’s offer surprised her, and she wondered what her motivation was.

  The guy is gorgeous—that’s your motivation. Clearly you need to have some of your tension released. You’re thinking with the wrong parts of you.

  But Barrett didn’t question her, shrugging a shoulder. “Okay, well. How long do you think we have before you have to see him again?”

  “About twenty-four hours.”

  Barrett nodded. “Okay, well, let me get settled in my office and finish up with what I was working on. I’ve been in a meeting.”

  “What kind of meeting?”

  “Just your standard meeting.”

  Frowning, Jordan pinned him with a look. “There are no standard meetings, Barrett. That’s bull. If it’s private, and you can’t say, then just tell me—say it’s private.”

  Barrett rubbed his forehead with two strong fingers. “It’s private, and I can’t say.”

  “Well that’s bull too,” Jordan said. “I thought we had an open policy of communication around here.”

  He looked like he was somewhere between frustration and amusement. “You just told me to say that!”

  “Yeah, because that’s truer than giving me some standardized meeting line,” Jordan said. “Not because I intend to accept the answer.”

  “What do you want me to say, Jordan?”

  Jordan leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. “I want you to tell me if we’re in trouble. I heard some of your phone call the other night. Something about leaking information about a client. I know there has been stuff that’s gone missing. Some questions about money. And I know that this isn’t like you, Barrett. So, what’s going on?”

  Leaning forward in his chair, Barrett continued rubbing his forehead as his elbow rested against his knee. “Honestly? I don’t know, J. That’s the truth. Things keep going wrong or getting lost, and I have no explanation. The meeting I was just in? With my father and my grandfather? They want to come back in and retrain me.”

  “Oh God …,” Jordan said, knowing how much of a blow that would be to Barrett. It wasn’t that either his father or his grandfather was mean or overbearing. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Norman Rockwell was one of the kindest men she knew, and he spent his days of retirement wandering around, helping people here and there without being asked. He always seemed to know who was in need and how to help them. Gideon, Norman’s son and Barrett’s father, was also a deeply kind man. He was more reserved than Norman, and he took a more serious approach to things, but he had been a good leader and was a kindhearted human. Neither of the men wanted to hurt or embarrass Barrett, but by trying to help him this way, they were going to do both.

  “It makes no sense to me,” Barrett said, talking more to himself than her. “I check, and recheck, and triple
check everything now. Every time I file something. Every time I make a deposit. Everything I say about a client. I’m constantly checking up on myself. And it’s always done right. Except …then it’s not. And there’s another phone call about another mistake.”

  Jordan didn’t know what to say to him. She wasn’t great at sympathy, but she loved Barrett like a brother, and she didn’t want him to be frustrated or upset.

  “What about Colette?” she asked, following up on the idea she’d had a few days earlier. “She’s free in the afternoons, and she loves this agency. She’s always talking about how she wants to work here one day. I’m sure she’d come in and help keep the files tidy and do some of the other work that Anna doesn’t want to do.”

  Anna was part of the Rockwell Clan, of course, because having someone who didn’t understand what they were really doing here at the agency working at the front door just didn’t make sense. But Anna was an anomaly. Every now and then, two dragon-shifter parents would have a child who was not a dragon shifter. Anna was such a child, and she lived in a house with two parents who were shifters and three siblings who were shifters. Anna was well loved by the Rockwell Clan, and her parents were wonderful about making sure that she never felt different or slighted. But, of course, Anna was different from everyone else, and as the only non-shifter member of the Rockwell Clan at the moment, she often felt left out. That was why Barrett had asked her to be the receptionist at the agency—to show her that she was valued and important. And Anna liked to do many of the tasks that fell to her, but she resisted being involved in the actual meat of the cases. For some reason, it was too sensitive for her, and none of them had ever pressed her as to why.

  Colette, however, would have no problem going through the files and working side by side with Barrett to make sure there was a second pair of eyes on everything.

  “She’s welcome to come in anytime,” Barrett said, standing up. “It’s always nice to have Colette around. But I’m afraid that figuring out what’s going on with me or with …something…I don’t know. I think it’s going to take something bigger than just having someone check up on me.”