Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “Someone is going to be murdered.”

  Jordan lowered the piece of pizza, one eyebrow arching. “Someone? Can you be more specific?”

  “No,” Wes said, sounding miserable. “But I heard it, and I can’t just not do anything about it, Jordan. I was in a bar. And there were people I know in there. Some of them are people I know well. And I don’t know if I care if that person might be the target or not, but I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “You’re confusing me,” Jordan said. “Are you drunk right now?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Abram’s Alehouse.”

  Jordan had a vague idea where that was, but after two glasses of wine, she wasn’t in a position to drive either. “You’re about seven miles from my apartment,” she told him. “Get a taxi, or an Uber, or whatever you can find and give them the address I’m about to text you. There’s no way that we’re going to figure this out over the phone.”

  “Okay,” Wes said. “Thank you. I mean, really. Thank you so much.”

  Jordan grunted her answer and hung up the phone, sending him a quick text with her address. She expected she only had about ten minutes before he arrived, so there was little time to make herself more presentable or tidy up. She kept her house pretty tidy anyway, so she wasn’t too concerned about that part. And her yoga pants and t-shirt were unimpressive but passable. What was of more concern was the fact that a mind reader was about to show up at her door, and she had been thinking all night that she would go flying once it got a bit later.

  She called Barrett. “Hey …,” she said when he answered, sounding distracted. “About those transposed thoughts. Any tips? Because my guy is on his way over. He heard something about a murder, and he’s freaked out.”

  “I’m working on a write-up right now,” Barrett said. “I’m almost finished with it. I’ve been researching all night, actually. It’s interesting stuff.”

  “Great,” Jordan said. “Give me the two-minute version of how to keep my thoughts from him.”

  “There’s nothing that’s foolproof,” he warned her. “I can’t promise you that he absolutely won’t hear anything from you. But there are things you can do to help. For instance, you know how we use dried pig’s feet as a blocker for evil spirits?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re not evil-spirit-specific. They’re blockers in general. If you have one on hand, grab it, and put it in your pocket. It would be better to wear it around your neck.”

  Jordan went over to her hall closet, where she kept a stash of things handy. “I have one, but how weird is it going to seem if he sees me wearing a pig’s foot around my neck?”

  “Wear it under your shirt.”

  She looked down at her thin T-shirt and decided that she needed to grab one of her bulky sweatshirts to cover up the dried pig’s foot necklace she was apparently going to be wearing now.

  “What else?”

  “Be conscious of your thoughts. Don’t daydream. Don’t let your guard down. Keep in the forefront of your mind all the time that your thoughts might be transposed to his.”

  “Well, I’m hardly about to forget it,” Jordan said, digging through her closet for her college sweatshirt. It swallowed her whole, swamping her small frame, but it was also incredibly comfortable. It would be perfect for hiding a pig’s foot.

  “Thoughts charged with emotion are more likely to be transposed,” Barrett said, “so try to keep yourself as neutral as possible. Not an easy task for you, I know. Also—keep some background noise on. Music or the Television. It won’t do anything to keep your thoughts to yourself, but it can help, possibly, to keep him from noticing the difference between the words in the background and your thoughts.”

  Jordan scrunched her nose. “That seems like a stretch. I don’t know this guy well, but I think he can distinguish between music and my thoughts.”

  “I’m just telling you what the protocol says,” Barrett said. “Like I told you—nothing will promise you privacy. But these are things that can help. Employ a few of the tactics, and you have a decent shot of preventing him from hearing you. Especially if he’s not listening for you in the first place. But the most important thing is to keep all things dragon shifter as far from your mind as possible.”

  “I’ll give it my best shot,” Jordan said. “And if it doesn’t go well?”

  “I’ll keep my phone beside me.”

  “Thanks,” Jordan said, finding her sweatshirt and pulling it over her head, keeping the phone in one hand the whole time. “I appreciate you doing research. I guess I could have …I’ve been at home drinking wine and watching TV.”

  Barrett laughed, lightly. “No, it’s okay. It was good to have something to keep me busy. Good luck, J. I’ll check in with you in the morning if I don’t hear from you before then. Be good.”

  “I’m always good.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Jordan hung up on him and found a string to tie her dried pig’s foot onto. While she was still tying the makeshift necklace around her neck, there was a knock at the door. Jordan didn’t have time to remind herself of all the tactics that Barrett had given her. She was just going to have to do the best she could.

  Don’t think about dragons, she instructed herself. Then she cursed herself for thinking about not thinking about dragons while Wes was right on the other side of her door.

  She hurried to the front door of her apartment and pulled it open. “Hi!” Wes standing there, looking like he was in shock. “Come in. Sit down. Take off your shoes. Opposite order on those last two.”

  “Huh?”

  “Come in, take off your shoes, and sit down,” Jordan said, stepping back to allow him inside. “You look like shit, by the way.”

  “It’s been a night.” Wes walked in, kicked off his shoes, and made a beeline for her couch, sagging down into it. “You were watching TV. And eating pizza. Shit. I’m sorry.”

  Keeping in mind Barrett’s advice that background noise would help, Jordan didn’t turn off the ridiculous reality show she had been watching. She walked into the kitchen, grabbed the pizza box, and brought it to the coffee table. “Have some. You’re here, so you might as well stop feeling bad about being here. I would have told you to bug off if I wasn’t willing to talk. So, tell me what’s going on.”

  Wes looked up at her. “You would have, wouldn’t you?”

  “No doubt.”

  “That’s actually comforting.”

  “That’s how I see it, too,” Jordan said. “Not everyone else always does.”

  “I was at a bar.”

  “We covered that part.”

  “Listen,” Wes said, “I like you, Jordan. For some reason. I really do. But you’re an interrupter.”

  Jordan almost laughed. Rarely did anyone ever return her bluntness, and she appreciated that Wes did. Granted, he was drunk, and he appeared to be in shock, but both of those things only served to remove his inhibitions, so that he could react more naturally. “Apologies,” she said, holding up both hands and sitting down on the opposite side of the couch, slouching down to get comfortable. “Please—go ahead.”

  “I was at a bar,” Wes said, “and I was hanging out with some people I don’t really know. I knew one of the girls. Her name is Bree. She’s my friend’s cousin, and we just happened to run into each other while we were out. I didn’t know her friends.”

  Jordan didn’t need a lot of this background information, but out of deference to his request that she shut up, she merely nodded along.

  “I was hanging out with them, and I didn’t hear any of their thoughts,” Wes said, “and then, out of nowhere, I heard her.”

  “Bree?”

  “No,” Wes said, his expression suggesting that she should have known that’s not what he meant. “I heard Alana. My ex-girlfriend. The one I just found out cheated on me repeatedly with one of my best friends. I heard her thoughts, as she recognized me.”

  Jordan nodded. “All r
ight. Then what?”

  “I tried to leave without seeing her, but she came right up to me,” Wes said, shaking his head back and forth. “Her thoughts …I could hear them. Just snippets, now and then. But she was being so fake. Outwardly, she acted like it was normal to see me and say hello, but inwardly she was criticizing me. Said I was clingy. Said she had gotten bored with me.”

  Jordan felt a genuine tug of sympathy for the man. The worst part about what he was experiencing was finding out how people really thought about him. All too often people weren’t open about what they were feeling and thinking. Jordan didn’t understand why that was, but she had learned that it was normal for most people to think one thing and portray a completely different thing.

  “I told her off,” Wes said, laughing a bit, though it was a laugh of bemusement rather than amusement. “I told her I knew about her and Jake. She panicked. I shut her down. Then I was leaving, and Bree—she came up to me and she kissed me. She said that she wanted to sleep with me. I saw her thoughts—God. I wish I hadn’t.”

  Jordan cringed. “Awkward.”

  “More than …,” he said. “I turned her down as nicely as I could, and I went out to the parking lot. I realized I couldn’t drive, and I was calling a car when I saw someone lurking. I didn’t see who it was. The person ran away, cutting through traffic. But I swear.” He stopped talking and leaned forward, angling his body towards hers on the couch. “Jordan, I swear I heard the person talk about wanting to murder someone, and he or she or whoever …they were talking about someone in the bar where I had just been. I’m sure of it.”

  Jordan leaned back, her lips pursed in concentration. “There’s a lot of variables in there, Wes. First, what was actually said? Or thought, I suppose. Second, you didn’t see the person. Are you sure that those thoughts belonged to that person? Are you sure that there isn’t any other explanation? Are you sure that the intended victim, if there is one, was actually inside the bar? Before you panic, you need to think through this when you’re sober. Frankly, you’re not a reliable witness right now. I wouldn’t accept your testimony.”

  Frustration flashed over Wes’ handsome face. “I think I know what I heard.”

  “I don’t,” Jordan said, honestly. “Wes, you hear thoughts. I’m not questioning that. But how do you know whose thoughts you heard?”

  “It was the person running.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know,” Wes said, throwing up his hands. “Now, suddenly, you’re questioning me? When I came to see you earlier, you just took my word for it that I can hear thoughts without a hint of skepticism. Now that I’m telling you I heard a specific thought …now you’ve decided to be an investigator?”

  Jordan’s eyebrows climbed higher towards her hairline. “Are you questioning my investigative skills?”

  “I’m just saying, it doesn’t track.”

  “Track,” Jordan said. “It doesn’t track.” She got up, walking over to the Television and switched it off. The background noise might have been helpful, but it was distracting and annoying to her. “Listen, Wes,” she said, turning back towards him, her arms over her chest. “This is what I do for a living, and I’m good at it. I didn’t question you when you came in earlier because I know that what you’re experiencing is a real thing. I have no reason to doubt you. And I’m not saying that you didn’t hear someone threaten murder. But before we launch into a full investigation of a murder, I want a little more to go on than your assurances that, while you were too drunk to drive, you heard the thoughts of a person you can’t identify and that person said something about killing someone. People think about murder all the time. That doesn’t mean that they’re going to go through with it. So, yes, excuse me, but I need something more reliable than your word at the moment.”

  Wes leaned back against the couch, staring up at her with no small amount of irritation. “You’re a very difficult person to talk to.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Most people attempt diplomacy.”

  Jordan shrugged. “Hire most people then.”

  They had a brief stare down, glaring at each other. But Jordan won quickly, as Wes rolled his eyes and looked away. “What do you want me to do to prove what I heard? I can’t tell you who the person was. It’s not like I recorded it. How am I supposed to give you what you want?”

  “You could start by telling me exactly what the person said,” Jordan said, sitting back down again. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve threatened people with death in my head.”

  “Well, that’s unsettling,” Wes said, shaking his head. “But no, it wasn’t like that.”

  “Then what was it like?”

  Chapter 8

  Wes

  He tried to remember exactly what the person had said. “It was a man,” he said, slowly. “I’m confident it was a man. Well, reasonably confident. It was a sort of a …gender-neutral voice. Like a low-speaking woman or a higher-pitched man.”

  “All right,” Jordan said, nodding for him to continue. “What else?”

  “I think he said …he said that he had to stop chickening out,” Wes said. “Which I take to mean that he had been planning to do something tonight.”

  Jordan nodded again. “Okay, but just give me the words, without your analysis.”

  Wes closed his eyes, thinking back. “He said he had to stop chickening out. That he was worthless. That he wanted to just kill the bitch because he was running out of time.”

  “Interesting.”

  Opening his eyes again, Wes saw that he had actually gotten through to Jordan. She was taking him more seriously now.

  “That’s definitely troublesome,” Jordan said. “It’s not just an idle thought that he’d like to kill so and so.”

  “That’s what I told you,” he said. “It was a real threat. This guy, or possibly this woman, is legitimately going to try to kill someone. And that someone had to have been in that bar tonight. Which means that it could be one of a lot of different people. But it could be Alana. It could be Bree. It could be one of Bree’s friends.”

  Jordan reached for a piece of pizza, biting into it, thoughtfully. “But there’s no way for us to know right now. You didn’t follow the person, I suppose.”

  That hadn’t even occurred to him. “No. He ran off through traffic.”

  “And we don’t know who the target is,” Jordan said, chewing slowly. “Which means that it’s impossible to tail and protect all of the potential targets. Honestly, Wes, I’m not sure what we can do about this.”

  Wes blinked at her, shocked. “Seriously? There’s nothing you can do about the fact that someone is going to get murdered?”

  “What are the chances that the intended victim is someone you know?” Jordan asked, sitting up straighter again and really looking at him. Her eyes were so wide and blue, and combined with her pixie cut they made her look almost elfish. Her clothes, which were swallowing her up, emphasized her small frame. She was like a beautiful doll—a beautiful, snarky, biting doll.

  “I don’t know,” Wes said. “I’m not a mathematician. I didn’t run the statistics. But it could be.”

  “How busy was that bar?”

  “Busy enough.”

  “How many people?”

  “Maybe a few hundred?”

  Jordan nodded, pointing her pizza at him. “Exactly. The odds are against you. And, what do you care if Alana is the target? Didn’t she cheat on you?”

  Wes scoffed. “That doesn’t mean I want her dead.”

  “I don’t want her dead either,” Jordan said, “but I have no reason to think, even still, that anyone else does want her dead. We need more for an investigation. That’s just the bottom line. A thought you heard from a person you can’t identify about a person you can’t identify is not something we can follow up on.”

  Frustrated, Wes shook his head. “No. I’m sorry. That’s not good enough. What if it was Bree? Or one of her friends?”

  “Why would
it be? Is Bree the kind of person who is likely to inspire someone to murder her?”

  “No,” Wes said, “but what kind of person is that? It’s not like you look at most murder victims and think …yeah, she definitely had it coming.”

  Jordan smiled, slightly. “You know what? I like that you say what you mean. I don’t know if it’s because you’re drunk, or if you’re always like this, but I like arguing with people, and you hold your own.”

  Wes wasn’t sure if that was a real compliment or not, but he chose to interpret it as one. “Thank you. Now stop complimenting me and just help me.

  Jordan laughed, and it was a nice sound. He didn’t think he had heard it before—at least not like that. It was a free laugh.

  “Wes,” Jordan said, shaking her head. “There really isn’t anything that I can do to help you with what you’ve told me. I agree that someone is plotting to murder someone. If they thought what you say they thought, then yes, they’re giving serious consideration to murder. Whether they go through with it or not—who knows. But I don’t know who that person is, and I don’t know who the intended victim is. Without something more, I can’t do anything. The chance that it is one of the people you’re worried about is very, very slim, unless there is something you haven’t told me. I think the best thing to do is to try to forget about it and focus on getting rid of your transposed thoughts.”

  He thought about it for a minute, and he could see where she was coming from. He didn’t have anything to go on except one whispered thought, and that wasn’t enough. But he still shook his head. “No. No, I don’t want to get rid of them now.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to stop hearing people’s thoughts,” Wes said, firmly. “Not until I get to the bottom of this.”

  Jordan looked exasperated. “Wes! I’ve just told you—there’s nothing to get to the bottom of.”

  “Yes, there is,” he said. “Look, I have a gut feeling, okay? I can’t explain it to you any better than that. And I’m not going to give up this insane ability I have until I get an explanation for what I heard. And I would like you to help me.”