Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “Baby,” Alana said, reaching her hand out to touch his arm. “You don’t mean that.”

  I swear to God, if he humiliates me, I’m going to destroy him.

  Her unspoken threat only made him more determined to put an end to her intentions, once and for all. “Alana, I don’t know how to make this any clearer to you,” he said, making his voice ice-cold.

  But then he stopped.

  There was a different voice in his mind now. It wasn’t Alana’s. It was the one that he had heard the night before. He was sure of it.

  Dirty, rotten, good-for-nothing bitch. Look at you. You think you’re better than me. You think that you can just waltz around in your heels and your short skirt and show off to everyone and everything, like there are never any consequences. Wait until I have you alone. Just wait.

  Wes glanced down, seeing Alana’s heels. He let his eyes move further upward, taking in her short skirt. There was no doubt that she could easily be described as thinking she was better than someone.

  “Oh my God,” Wes said, looking at Jordan. “It’s happening.”

  “What’s happening?” Jordan asked, shaking her head at him as if to ask what in the world he was doing.

  “The thing that we’re here for—it’s happening now. Right now.”

  Jordan’s eyes widened. “Right now?”

  “Yes,” he said, looking around. Alana faded into the background for him, and he was scanning each face of each person, trying to find the one that would click with the voice in his head or the memory of the brief glance he had gotten the night before.

  “Excuse me,” Alana said, unhappy not to be the center of attention. “Wes—I’d like to speak with you.”

  “Shut up,” Wes said to Alana. “I’m trying to save your life.”

  “Is it her?” Jordan asked. “She’s the intended …”

  Jordan let the word trail off, but Wes knew what she meant. He nodded to her. Yes—Alana was the intended victim. He was sure of it. The coincidences were too pronounced. He had seen Alana randomly here the night before, and he had heard the voice the night before. Then both the person with the voice and Alana were back here in this bar a second night in a row? Every time he saw her, he heard the voice, and every time he heard the voice, she was present.

  It had to be her. She was the intended victim. He was hearing Alana’s potential murderer.

  Honestly, he didn’t blame whoever it was for wanting to kill her. How had he gone so many years without realizing how absolutely vapid she was?

  “Alana,” Wes said, taking her arm in his hand. “This is Jordan. She’s a very good friend of mine. I want you to stay with her. Do not irritate her, insult her, or otherwise be yourself. Do not give her any trouble whatsoever. I will be back in a minute.”

  “Wes!” Jordan said, reaching out to grab his arm, as he started to walk away.

  He grasped her hand instead and pressed it, looking back at her pretty face intently. “I need to circle the bar. I’ll be back.”

  “Be careful,” Jordan said, her hand lingering in his.

  He briefly glanced down at their joined hands, enjoying the way that her small fingers felt, clasped in his own. But then he let her go and hurried off, determined to identify who the potential killer was. He or she—the voice was still oddly gender-neutral—was in this room right now. As he walked around the bar, it was easy to cross people off his list. Not the guys in the corner, laughing it up over whatever one of them was playing on his tablet. Not the two girls in the corner who were sharing chips and salsa and gossiping about work. Not the old man and his wife slow dancing on the dance floor. Not the young couple making out at the table by the window.

  His eyes drifted towards the bar, looking for people sitting alone. There were plenty of them, but he couldn’t imagine any of them sitting there secretly planning a murder. None of them appeared to be watching Alana or doing anything other than drinking and eating. One woman was sitting alone at the bar, reading a book and chewing on ice. Surely, she wasn’t also thinking murderous thoughts.

  Wes continued to look around, and eventually his gaze zeroed in on one person. He never would have expected it, but he was drawn to the person instinctively. He felt as though he could hear the voice in his head coming from that person’s lips. He reached out with his mind, searching for the person’s thoughts. He still didn’t know how he knew how to do that, but it was instinctive.

  I’m probably the only person in this entire room who has nobody who would come and pick me up if I had too much to drink.

  Wes felt a sadness wash over him as he looked at the young girl. She must be just twenty-one. She had a beer in front of her, but it was largely untouched, and she looked much, much younger than the legal age.

  A server was passing by, and Wes stopped her. “Excuse me,” he said to the server, nodding to the girl. “Did you card her?”

  “Of course, I did,” the server said, offended by the question. “We always card everyone.”

  “You didn’t card me.”

  She frowned deeper, then looked him up and down. “No disrespect, but there wasn’t a question in my mind about you.”

  Wes ignored the implication that he looked old. It wasn’t really an insult since, at over thirty years old, he hardly expected to look under twenty-one. “So, you carded her, and she showed you an ID that said she was twenty-one.”

  “Yes,” the waitress said, her eyes narrowed. “What are you, a cop or something?”

  “No, I’m not a cop,” Wes said, not knowing how to explain. He didn’t even know why it concerned him, except for the fact that the girl looked so sad sitting there, and her thoughts were deeply forlorn.

  Why had he been drawn to her? Surely, she couldn’t be the one who, moments ago, had been threatening Alana with murder. The voices weren’t the same, so it couldn’t be her.

  But there was something about her nonetheless.

  He started to walk towards the woman, when he stopped in his tracks. There was another whisper in his mind, and it made his blood run cold.

  Tonight. When she leaves. Tonight is the night. You can do this. The drug is in your pocket. All you have to do is put it in her drink and she’ll walk out of here with you on her own. No one will think anything of it. She’s a slut. She probably leaves with a different man every night.

  Wes wanted to go to the young woman who was so sad, but he couldn’t miss his chance to find this person who was stalking Alana. Just because he had lost all respect, affection, and love for Alana didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to do everything possible to stop her killer. At one point in their relationship, there must have been genuine love. He wanted to believe that. And even if there hadn’t been, saving her was the right thing to do.

  He turned around, scanning the room again. This time his eyes immediately landed on a slight figure in a hooded jacket. The figure’s face was hidden by the hood, and their frame hidden by the bulky fabric. Whoever the person was, they were sitting at a table by themselves, a drink, which appeared untouched, in front of them.

  Wes’ thoughts turned dark as he stalked toward the person, and he thought of all the things he wanted to say. But as he walked towards him, the person looked up and their eyes met. The face was still in the shadows, but Wes could make out some of the features. He was distracted from them, though, by the look of hatred in their eyes.

  It was as though the person sitting there knew what Wes had been thinking every bit as much as Wes knew what the person had been thinking. They locked eyes for a long moment, and then the person stood and stalked towards him, not stopping until they were standing right beside Wes.

  He felt something hard pressed against his side.

  “Walk out of the bar now,” the person said, the voice the same one that he had heard in his head. “Walk out now, or I’ll shoot the whole place up.”

  Wes didn’t think the person would do such a thing given that they had been planning a murder for some time and, based on their thoughts, co
uldn’t get up the courage to go through with it. But it wasn’t a risk that he could take.

  He followed the person out of the bar, making a mental note of every defining feature that he could. The person came up to his shoulder, which meant they were about five feet eight inches tall. The build was slight, as he had noted before, but now he could tell that the legs were almost spindly. They were wearing skater-style jeans that hugged thin legs. The jeans were distressed and had holes in a few spots. They were frayed at the bottom, resting against brightly-colored sneakers. The hoodie was black with no writing or images anywhere on it. And the hand holding the gun had a ring on it.

  The kind of ring that a woman would wear.

  “Move quicker,” the voice said. It was still low—lower than Alana’s, lower than Jordan’s, and lower than any other female he had ever heard. But it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that the voice did belong to a woman. It surprised him though, and he realized that even though he had told Jordan that he wasn’t sure if it was a man or a woman, inwardly he had been confident that it was a man.

  “What do you want from me?” Wes asked. He didn’t know how this person had known that Wes was crossing the room to talk to them. He didn’t know why the person had taken an immediately aggressive stance towards him. In fact, he felt as though there was a great deal that he didn’t know, including where Jordan was, and if she knew that he was being walked out of the bar at gunpoint.

  “Don’t talk,” the person said, shoving open the door and nudging Wes out into the parking lot. They took a left, entering the alley that ran to the side of the bar, then rounded to the back of the bar, so they were shut away from sight. The whole time, the gun remained pressed to Wes’ side, and he was acutely aware of it and his own mortality.

  When they were hidden away, the person looked all around them, then stepped back from Wes. But the gun remained pointed at him, even though it was no longer at his side.

  “Who are you?” the person asked, the hood of the sweatshirt still hiding their face. “I heard you talk, but you were nowhere near me. Who are you, and how do you know my plan?”

  Wes was stunned for a minute, but he quickly realized that his assailant must have somehow heard the thoughts that Wes was having as he walked over. Now not only was he hearing other people’s thoughts but his own could be heard by others? Jordan hadn’t mentioned anything about that being a possibility, but then again, he hadn’t really let her tell him much about this condition that she seemed so familiar with.

  He stalled for time. Out loud, he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What plan?”

  Inwardly, he searched for the person’s thoughts, trying to open his mind to let them flood into him.

  He’s lying. I know what I heard. It was his voice. He knows all about me. How does he know all about me? I’ve screwed up now. I’ve waited too long. But how did this California surfer boy find out any of my plans? I haven’t told anyone!

  Wes decided not to focus on the California surfer boy insult, given the fact that there was a gun pointed at him. It seemed that his assailant was as confused about why they were standing out in the back alley as Wes was. And it definitely seemed as though his assailant had heard every word he had been thinking.

  “You do know what I’m talking about,” his assailant said, jabbing the gun at him. “I know you do. I heard you. How did you talk to me when you were so far away? What are you—some kind of sorcerer?”

  Honestly, Wes didn’t know what he was. He just knew that he needed to get out of this situation without getting shot, and preferably with his assailant apprehended.

  “Maybe I am,” Wes said, because there was no reason not to. “How else would I have known the things that I know? And do you really want to tangle with a sorcerer?”

  “Sorcerers die from gunshots, too.”

  Wes felt a flush of panic, and he tried to keep his wits about him. “But I happen to know that you’re too chicken to kill anyone. Otherwise you would have done it last night, or all the other times you’ve tried to kill her.”

  “Shut up.”

  “It’s Alana, isn’t it?” Wes said, floundering to get any kind of confirmation from the person. “She’s who you want to kill. I know that much. But why do you want to kill her?”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  Is it possible that he really doesn’t know as much as I thought he did? Shit—now I’ve got to kill him anyway.

  Wes stepped back instinctively, hearing the imminent threat in the person’s mind. He was calculating his chances of bowling the slight person over and making a run for it, when he saw Jordan step around the corner of the alley, behind the person.

  His eyes locked with hers, and Jordan put her finger to her lips. Wes averted his eyes from her, not wanting to alert his assailant to her presence, but at the same time, he was worried that now Jordan was in danger as well. He didn’t want her to end up hurt or dead just because she’d come out to save him.

  “Turn around,” his assailant said. “Turn around, and get on your knees. Put your hands behind your head and don’t move.”

  Wes didn’t look at Jordan, but he did search for her thoughts. He had promised her, but the circumstances were different now. He needed to know what she was planning to do, and if it was possible to send his thoughts back to her, there was never a better time than now.

  He searched and searched for her thoughts as he moved according to his assailant’s instructions, and just when he was about to give up hope of finding them, he heard her in his head.

  Hold, hold, hold. Not yet. Wait for it. On the count of three. One … two …

  Wes tried to shout to her in his head, telling her to run while she still could. But his own thoughts were jumbled with panic as he got down onto his knees and wondered if these were the last seconds of his life. What was his plan? If he was honest, he didn’t have one. He had no idea what he was going to do once he was in the requested position, but he knew he had to try something. He couldn’t just go quietly to his own death. And he couldn’t endanger Jordan either.

  He felt helpless, but as he put his hands behind his head, so he settled on the only plan that he could think of. He tuned into the assailant’s thoughts, and he waited to hear the moment that he was going to strike, and he prayed that his reflexes were fast enough.

  Here we go. Time to prove yourself. Pull the trigger, Taylor. Pull the fucking trigger.

  So many things happened at once. He heard Taylor draw in a breath, and he pitched himself forward so that the bullet would pass over his head. At the same time, he heard the sound of Jordan running towards them. There was a thud of body against body and a grunt. A string of curses followed, and Wes spun around from his prone position, ready to help Jordan take down the person who had just tried to kill him.

  He expected to find her struggling against the figure in the hoodie, so what he saw shocked him.

  Jordan was standing up, her foot on the assailant’s throat and the hood fallen back so that the person’s whole face was exposed. She had kicked the gun out of reach, and all of her five feet zero inches was towering over the assailant.

  Jordan looked at him, and he looked back at her, and while they stared at each other, the assailant grabbed Jordan’s leg and jerked as hard as they could.

  Wes jumped up, thinking that Jordan was going to fall and the assailant would get the gun again, but Jordan bent down and grabbed the assailant’s arm, jerking it back and pinning them to the ground again. The assailant kicked out at her, and Jordan again pinned them. As Wes watched, Jordan, who was as petite and delicate as anyone he had ever seen, and she completely dominated the person who had just tried to shoot him, and all he could do was stand there and look at her, astonished.

  When Jordan had the person fully pinned, she gestured to Wes. “Get the gun. Don’t touch it with your hand. Take off your shirt and put it over your hand, then pick up the gun.”

  Wes hurried to do what she had said, yanking his t
-shirt over his head and draping it over his right hand. He was bending down to pick up the gun when all of a sudden Jordan screamed in pain. He whirled around, dropping the gun from his hand, and he saw Jordan clutching her calf. Blood was seeping through her jumpsuit, and her face was twisted with pain and anger. She reached down and yanked the assailant to their feet and shoved them up against the wall, breathing hard as she looked right into the person’s face.

  “This is over for you,” Jordan said, the words gritting out from between her teeth. “I hope you know that.”

  All he could feel as he watched her was awe, but a movement out of the corner of his eye distracted Wes. He looked over to his left and the person that was standing there was neither slight, nor hooded, nor anything other than an enormous bald man with a gun that was, for the second time that night, pointed directly at Wes.

  He didn’t have time to search for the man’s thoughts or call to Jordan. This man, whoever he was, wasn’t wasting any time, and he wasn’t nervous about pulling the trigger. He shot, and the bullet flew towards Wes at top speed. He tried to dodge to his right, but the bullet still caught in his shoulder, sending a pain like none he had ever experienced radiating through his entire body, all from that one focal point at his shoulder.

  Wes staggered backward, clutching his shoulder and arm as blood began to pour. He still tried to call out to Jordan, to warn her, but all that came out of his mouth was the gurgled sound of pain as he stumbled back against the far side of the alley.

  He became dizzy, and there was blood pouring over his fingers. He struggled to keep his eyes open, and when he did manage to pry them open, Jordan’s face filled his gaze. She was there, leaning over him, shouting something that didn’t make it through the shock that had swept over him. Her hands grabbed him, and to his continued amazement, lifted him up.

  Jordan tossed him over her shoulder, her arms around his legs and his body draped over her back. And then she ran.