Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Chapter 13

  Jordan

  “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” Jordan said, as she ran through the system of back alleys that led away from the bar. She didn’t know where she was going, but she kept taking turn after turn, hoping to lose either or both of the two people who might be following them. Her calf was screaming from the stab wound she had taken, and although her strength was impressive, running on an injured calf with a grown man thrown over her back was far from comfortable.

  But she was still faster than either of the men chasing her. All she had to do was make sure that no one else saw her or tried to stop her, and then she could get somewhere safe where she could figure out what she was supposed to do about the fact that Wes had not only seen her in combat—which she could have probably explained away by saying it was part of her training, given how small the first shooter had been—but he was also now all too aware of the fact that she was running over pavement with his body, three times the size of hers, thrown across her.

  There was no good explanation for that.

  But she knew that with Wes shot and herself stabbed, with two guns on the scene, and two assailants, her best chance of keeping Wes safe was to get out of there as fast as possible.

  Jordan emerged from the web of back alleys onto a more frequented street and stopped to get her bearings. They were nowhere close to her apartment, which was the only place that she was going to be able to take Wes at that point. He would need medical attention, no doubt. But her own healing abilities would have to make do until she could talk to him about what had happened and what they were going to tell the medical professionals who would see to him.

  Her healing abilities. Something else that she had no explanation for.

  She couldn’t risk anyone seeing them, so she lifted Wes off her shoulder and set him down on the ground, leaning him up against a building. When she looked at his face, she saw that he had passed out. She wasn’t surprised. The wound on his shoulder was bleeding profusely, and he was pale and weak with blood loss. She had probably caused him immense pain by running through the streets with him, but it had been necessary.

  Jordan wished he was wearing a shirt. If he had been, then she could have sat beside him against the building and they would have blended into the general Baton Rouge scene, which often included homeless people or intoxicated people who took advantage of a handy building to lean against. Without his shirt, he was far more conspicuous, and not just because of the gory wound at his shoulder. His chest and arms were sculpted, and his skin was bronze from the sun. If he hadn’t been passed out and bloody, he would have been downright tempting.

  He still was, actually.

  Jordan sat down beside him, knowing that they would have to blend in as best as they could. She sat down on his injured side and brought his head over to her shoulder, so that it would look more like he was passed out on her and his head and her shoulder would cover some of the worst of his injury. When she was positioned correctly, she pulled her phone out of the pocket of her jumpsuit and called Quentin.

  He answered on the second ring. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Shit,” she said, by way of greeting. “I just remembered—you’re headed out of town, aren’t you?”

  “Tomorrow,” Quentin said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need a ride, and I’m closest to your place. I have Wes with me, and he’s been shot.”

  “Shot? Holy crap,” Quentin said, as sounds of movement began in the background. “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here. Can you come?”

  “Text me your location.”

  Jordan hung up and sent him a text with her exact coordinates, then leaned her head back against the wall and caught her breath. Her calf was still throbbing, and she brought her leg up towards her, reaching her hand down to wrap around the injury. Her healing abilities seeped into the muscle, beginning to repair it, but she wasn’t capable of instant fixes, and the pain continued to pulse even as she slowly started to heal.

  On her shoulder, Wes’s head remained drooped. She could tell that his breathing was ragged, and his heart was working too hard. She needed space and assistance to work on him, but she took her hand from her own leg and put it on his shoulder, doing what she could for him while they waited for Quentin.

  The ten minutes that it took Quentin to get to her seemed like hours, and she was never more grateful to see anyone than she was when he finally showed up with his car.

  “Help me get him in the back,” Jordan said, standing up carefully and hauling Wes to his feet with Quentin’s help. They loaded Wes up, and Jordan sat in the back with him, keeping Wes’s head on her lap as Quentin drove towards her apartment. Her hand remained on his shoulder, offering him what healing power she could.

  “So,” Quentin said, glancing back as he drove. “What exactly happened? I thought this guy was hearing thoughts. How did that escalate to getting shot?”

  “I have no idea,” Jordan said. “He was obsessed with finding this murderer. We were in the bar where he heard the person the first time, and he heard something again. He went to look for it, sticking me with his insane ex-girlfriend, by the way. She kept talking to me, and it was hard to listen for what he was doing. Then I couldn’t hear him at all, and I got worried. When I found him, he was in the back alley, at gunpoint. I took that person down, but as soon as I did, another one came up behind us. That second person shot Wes, and I couldn’t take on both of them, each with a gun, and make sure that Wes got out alive. So, I picked him up, and we ran.”

  Quentin shook his head. “Shit. Any idea who the two guys were?”

  “I’m pretty sure that one was a woman,” Jordan said. “And no. I have no idea. Wes is sure that they’re after Alana. They might be—she’s horrible. But that’s all I know. And now I know their faces. I’ll recognize their faces anywhere.”

  “Sounds like you’re going to have a lot of explaining to do when Wes wakes up.”

  That was quite an understatement. Jordan didn’t respond, thinking about how she was going to figure out a way out of that one. That occupied her until Quentin pulled up to her apartment and put the car in park. “How exactly are you going to get him up there?” Quentin asked.

  “Pull around the back,” she said. “There’s a fire escape, and I’m only on the second floor.”

  Quentin pulled to the backside of the apartment complex. It was dark out, and there was no movement around. She lived in a building where most people kept to themselves, their window shades drawn, and their minds shut to whatever was happening outside of their own little set of rooms.

  Jordan got out of the car, her leg vastly improved, although not perfect. She wished briefly that she could shift and fly Wes up, but that would be reckless and irresponsible so close to so many people. She put him over her shoulder again and walked him to the fire escape. Quentin followed her up, helping to alleviate some of Wes’s weight, and together they broke the lock on the sliding glass door that led to her small porch.

  She walked inside her apartment, and Quentin followed her, grabbing towels to spread out on the floor without being asked.

  Gratefully, Jordan laid Wes down and stepped back, staring down at the man whose eyes were beginning to flutter as he came to.

  “Thank you,” Jordan said to Quentin. “You’re a lifesaver. But I don’t want you here when he wakes up. I have too much to explain as it is, and I’m hoping his memory of what happened isn’t great.”

  Quentin nodded, pressing her arm. “Call me if you need me.”

  Then he was out the sliding glass door, down the fire escape, back in his car, and driving away. It shouldn’t be this way, but events like this were relatively normal in their line of work. There were innumerable times that one of the five Rockwell investigators called on another in the middle of the night to do something that was semi-illegal, and perhaps unwise.

  Jordan knelt down beside Wes, examining his shoulder more closely under the full light of h
er living room. The bullet had lodged into the fleshy part of his shoulder, and it was still there. The flesh around the hole was torn, and he had lost a lot of blood. But it wasn’t a fatal shot.

  “Jordan?” Wes’ voice was raspy as he said her name.

  She looked over at him, noting that his eyes were still cloudy but that he seemed aware of his surroundings. “Hey you,” she said, opting to keep things light. “You’re a real mess.” Light—but always honest.

  “What happened?” Wes asked. “God—I was shot.”

  “You were,” Jordan said, pulling one of the towels from beneath him and pressing it as gently as she could to his shoulder. “And I was just about to treat you.”

  “I need to go to the hospital.”

  She shook her head, standing up to fetch the necessary supplies from her bathroom. “No, I’m afraid that won’t work. Not yet anyway.”

  “You carried me.”

  “That’s why that won’t work,” Jordan muttered, gathering rubbing alcohol, antiseptic, and plenty of bandages. She carried her supplies back to Wes and sat down beside him. “I’m not going to remove the bullet.” She watched his face carefully. “I know it might seem like I should, but it would actually be dangerous. The bullet could be pressing against an artery and actually stemming some of your blood loss. Not to mention, digging a bullet out is an extremely painful process—probably more painful than the gunshot itself. There’s no harm in leaving it in for now, so all I’m going to do is clean your wound, get the bleeding under control, and bandage you. Do you understand everything I just said?”

  Wes nodded, staring up at her with an unreadable expression.

  Jordan began to work, cleaning the blood from his shoulder with one hand while keeping pressure on the bullet wound with the other.

  “You carried me?” Wes asked. “Over your shoulder? Like I weighed nothing … And you fought off the first person with the gun. You’re so tiny. I don’t understand how that’s possible. I’m three times your size.”

  This was the conversation that she knew they would have to have, but she still had no idea how to actually have it with him. He wasn’t going to believe that she had trained and worked out enough that she could carry a man who probably weighed more than two-hundred pounds through a maze of back alleys. So, she gave him a half truth.

  “You know how you can hear people’s thoughts?” she asked. “That’s an ability you have—one that most people would think is abnormal. One that most people wouldn’t understand.”

  As she spoke, she was preparing a cotton ball with rubbing alcohol, and Wes’s eyes were locked on it, clearly anticipating the pain he was about to experience. But he nodded in answer to her question. “Yeah.”

  “I have an ability, too,” Jordan said. “I’m abnormally strong and abnormally fast. It’s not something I like most people to know, just like you shouldn’t want most people to know that you can hear other people’s thoughts.”

  She prevented him from responding right away by pressing the rubbing alcohol to his wound. He arched up, his face twisting with pain, and he barely contained his growl of protest.

  “Dammit to hell,” he said, breathing hard as he kept his eyes squeezed shut. “Being shot is not nearly as glamorous as it looks in the movies. Holy hell. Goddamn.”

  Jordan smiled, slightly, not at his pain but because in spite of it, he was trying to be light. “You were very heroic.”

  “Like hell I was,” he said, still half holding his breath to ward off the pain from her cleaning. “I was useless. You fought off the first person trying to shoot me and pinned her to the ground, and then I almost got shot again and you bodily carried me away from the danger, while I tried to bleed to death and then passed out. I was not heroic.”

  Jordan patted his chest, gently. “Yes, you were. You tried to warn me to run away. You were willing to put your life in danger to keep me out of danger. That’s heroic. You don’t have to be a trained fighter to be heroic.”

  His hand lifted and covered hers as it rested on his chest. She looked up to meet his eyes, and she was surprised at the way her breath caught slightly.

  “Thank you,” Wes said, quietly. “Thank you for saving my life. I’m sorry that I dragged us both into this by insisting on going back to that bar. I hate that I put you in danger.”

  Jordan set down her cleaning supplies and put her hand on top of his. “Don’t worry. What would life be without a little danger? You were right, apparently. There’s a very serious case to investigate here.”

  She pulled her hands from his and got back to work. As she cleaned, she kept using her healing power to ease his pain and help repair the worst of the damage. She couldn’t heal him entirely, but there was a lot she could do to make him more comfortable.

  “I heard your thoughts.”

  Jordan glanced up at Wes as she worked. “Did you?”

  He nodded. “I tried to. I was trying to push my thoughts to you. To tell you to run.”

  Carefully, Jordan began to bandage his shoulder, using gauze and medical tape. “What did you hear?”

  “I heard you planning to attack,” Wes said, wincing as she jostled his shoulder. “That’s all. But I wanted you to know, because I did try to hear you. I told you I wouldn’t. So, I’m sorry.”

  Jordan looked up at him again, wondering at the strange impulse she had to just tell him everything about herself so that there were no secrets worthy of keeping him locked out. She wasn’t the type who liked to share her personal life with those she wasn’t close to. And, as a general rule, she didn’t get close to people. But every time she spent time with Wes, she liked him a little more than she had the previous time.

  “Given the circumstances, no apology necessary,” she said.

  His good hand rested on her arm, holding onto her, and Jordan felt her heart thump. She didn’t dare look up to meet his eye in case he saw the effect that just a touch had on her. And if it had an effect on him, too, then she didn’t want to see that either.

  “There,” Jordan said, finishing her bandaging job. “That’s as good as you’re going to get for now. We’ll go to the doctor when we have a good cover story.”

  “What’s wrong with telling them what happened?” Wes asked. “Minus the thoughts and the super strength.”

  Jordan raised an eyebrow at him. “Okay, give me an explanation without including those things.”

  “Well,” Wes said. “We were at a bar, and someone put a gun to my side and forced me outside with them. She tried to shoot me, and you came out to find me. Then someone else appeared and did shoot me, but we ran from the scene.”

  “Okay,” Jordan said. “What do you think the person’s motive was for holding you at gunpoint and taking you outside?”

  Wes frowned. “Well …”

  “Is there a motive if you take out the fact that you can hear other people’s thoughts?”

  “No.”

  “And how did I know to find you?”

  Wes was quiet.

  “And how did I get you away from the scene?”

  Again, Wes was quiet.

  “And why were we there? How did we get involved? Surely someone didn’t just randomly target you, Mr. Moretti. We need you to tell us everything you know, so that we can apprehend these people.”

  Wes frowned at her, shifting uncomfortably on the towel. “I’m in too much pain to think of a story right now. These aren’t fair questions.”

  “They’re questions the police will ask,” Jordan said, “and the hospital is required to report gun wounds to the police. The moment we step foot in to a hospital, we’ll invite all kinds of questions that we don’t have good answers to. And …the case gets taken out of our hands.”

  Wes started to speak, but then he stopped, thinking. “So, you’re saying the case is in our hands?”

  “Well, we don’t have much of a choice now, do we?” Jordan asked, standing up and starting to gather her things. “You were right. There’s a potential murderer on the loose.
And we should stop them. Even if the intended victim is Alana, and the world would not be that much worse off if she died.”

  Wes cracked a smile. “What, you didn’t like her?”

  “She’s appalling,” Jordan said, honestly, carting her used supplies to the kitchen trash and returning with a bottle of very strong pain medication. “I want you to take two of these,” she said, kneeling back down beside Wes. “I also have some healing powers, and I’ve taken away a lot of the pain. But you’re going to need more help than I can give.”

  With his good hand, Wes accepted the pills she handed him, but his eyes were on her face. “You have a lot of special skills.”

  Jordan was very careful to keep all thoughts about dragon shifters hidden away. She didn’t think he would go searching, but the dried pig’s foot that was in her pocket only protected her so much. Maybe it was all right to share what she already had with him, but telling him that she shifted into a royal blue dragon and flew above the city was a bit much.

  “Luckily for both of us, that’s true,” Jordan said, lightly, getting up again. “You’ll spend the night here. You can have my bed.”

  “No,” Wes said. “I don’t want to kick you out.”

  “You’re not,” Jordan said. “I’ll be up for several more hours. I want to write out what happened tonight before it fades from my memory. I also need to track down Alana, whom you haven’t asked about, by the way.”

  Wes blinked up at her. “Oh, yes. What happened to her?”

  It was more gratifying than it should have been to see that his concern for his ex-girlfriend was minimal.

  “She got angry and left,” Jordan said. “When I cut off her rambling to go and find you, she said she didn’t need either of us and stormed out ahead of me. I saw her get in her car and drive away. You’re sure she’s the intended victim, right?”

  Wes’s blink was slower and heavier this time—the shock, the pain, and the medication all working together to drag him under. “Pretty sure, yeah. I never heard her name, though.”