Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Chapter 27

  Wes

  He’d never been in such a fancy hotel before. They had a full suite to themselves, complete with a sitting room that doubled as a work area and a separate bedroom with an ensuite bathroom. There was a stocked minibar and a jacuzzi tub in the bedroom, and in the work space there were two ornate desks with plenty of room for spreading out their supplies.

  Both desks were currently covered in papers and laptops, and Jordan kept pacing back and forth between the desks, biting down on a fingernail as she picked up one piece of paper and studied it, then went to one of the laptops, scrolled through the information there and then began to pace again. She muttered to herself from time to time, but he didn’t need to try to decipher her words. Now that they were so connected, her thoughts flowed into his thoughts, and he could hear everything she was working through to try to figure out what they had stumbled into when he had walked out in the parking lot just a few days ago and heard the first whisper about the would-be murderer.

  “That’s something to think about,” Wes said, walking over to her. “Remember?”

  “You’re picking up in the middle of a conversation,” Jordan said, stopping her pacing to look at him. “I don’t know what thought you just responded to.”

  Wes shook his head. “I was responding to my own thoughts. Remember when I first heard the thoughts of the murderer? She was trying to gear herself up to murder Alana. To talk herself into it. She had gone another night without killing her. How could that be someone sent by a murderous gem theft organization to kill off one of their weak links who thinks that way? Who would hire a gun-shy assassin?”

  Jordan considered that, pursing her lips as she stared at both desks and their contents. “That’s a good question.”

  “I know it is,” Wes said. “It might be the key to the whole thing, and the answer isn’t on an encrypted hard drive.” He tapped the computer piece that had yielded them very little information thus far. “I think we’re spending too much time hoping that all of the answers that we need are going to be on this thing.”

  Jordan walked over to him, glaring down at the technology that she had been warring with for hours. “It came out of his computer. It has to be good for something.”

  “It’s encrypted,” Wes said. “We are two people who do not know how to unencrypt anything.”

  “I know that,” Jordan said, sitting back down at the desk where her primary laptop sat, connected to the hard drive she had stolen. “But there has to be a way. It has all the answers—it has to.”

  “So does this,” Wes said, tapping her temple. “You have proven to me a hundred times over that you’re the most amazing human on the planet. If you are, in fact, human. I guess you are. I don’t know. Anyway—if anyone can think through this, it’s you, and I’m betting that will yield answers faster than a hard drive we can’t read and a phone we can’t access.”

  Jordan’s eyes darted towards the phone that sat nearby, still locked. Clearly Sal had been the kind of man who took extreme precautions when it came to record-keeping, and he had locked everything down so tightly that it would take an army of technicians to access it. They only had the two of them.

  “I’m not the most amazing human on the planet,” Jordan said, still glaring down at the desks. “I told you—I’m the same as the other Rockwell Clan agents. And even the Rockwell Clan members who aren’t agents—they can still shift into dragons. I’m hardly special. I’m only special if you’re just now learning that there is such a thing as a dragon shifter.”

  “Well, I am just learning,” Wes said, sitting down on one of the chairs and kicking his feet up in front of him. “And I’m betting that if Sal had seen you shift into that blue dragon and fly around, breathing fire, he’d just tell you whatever you wanted to know. But since he can’t, we have to figure it out for ourselves. So, tell me—why would a gem theft ring that seems to have as efficient as an operation as this one does hire a killer who can’t kill? That makes no sense, does it?”

  Jordan shook her head, once again agreeing with him. “Of course it makes no sense. Which means that they didn’t. Sal did not hire the woman in the hoodie. I’m confident of it.”

  “So, who did then?” Wes asked, not nearly so confident himself. “Who else would want Alana dead?”

  He didn’t like to say those words, because they reminded him that Alana might very well be dead right now. While he had been making love to Jordan in the woods, Alana might have met her fate, and no matter what an obnoxious person she was, she didn’t deserve that. But when they had gotten a new car from one of Jordan’s friends and driven back by the office building, there had been no sign of life at all. Everyone had gone, and they didn’t know where to find Sal or Alana or anyone else connected to them. That’s why they had to figure this out on their own.

  Jordan shook her head. “No, that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about how this all went down. Yes, Sal wanted Alana dead for some reason. That’s why he blew her off today and tried to send her back out on her own, telling her that if she stayed quiet, she’d be fine. He knew his hit man would get her at some point. I think Sal hired the man who ended up shooting you. I don’t think he hired the slight woman.”

  “Then how did she get involved?” Wes asked, trying to connect all the dots. “Surely the hit man, if that’s what he was, didn’t think he needed help.”

  “Surely not,” Jordan said, tapping a finger against her chin. “Maybe that’s the key that we need, then. If we figure out who that woman was and how she became involved, we could unravel the whole thing.”

  Her phone rang, and Jordan picked it up, answering it on speakerphone. “Barrett?”

  “You guys still okay?”

  Jordan nodded, even though Barrett couldn’t see her. “Yeah, we’re still in the hotel room you set up. No sign of funny business. We’re just brainstorming. Are you just calling to check in?”

  “Yeah,” Barrett said. “I’m here in the agency with Colette. We’re working on some things.”

  Wes gave Jordan a questioning look, not remembering anyone named Colette.

  “My sister,” Jordan said. “Hi, Coco.”

  “Hey!” a peppy female voice replied. “I hear that you’ve had an exciting day. I see how it is—paperwork for me and guns for you. Don’t you have all the luck?”

  Jordan rolled her eyes in amusement. “Yeah, it’s been fun and games over here. It’s okay. You got all the height.”

  “And the brains!” Colette called. “And the looks! And the charm!”

  “Hey now,” Wes said, good-naturedly. “No offense, Colette, since I’ve never met you, but I’m guessing that is not entirely true. Though I may be biased.”

  “Oh, you’re biased,” Colette said, sounding intrigued. “How interesting.”

  “We have a case to work on,” Jordan said, kicking her foot out at Wes and making contact lightly.

  Barrett chimed back in. “I just wanted to make sure that you hadn’t seen any signs that anyone was watching you. We’re going to be on call all night, okay? Send me an emergency text if you need help, and I’ll be there. We’re not far away.”

  “Thanks,” Jordan said. “We will.”

  She hung up the phone and looked at Wes. He stared back at her, still a little amazed at all he had learned about her and experienced today. In a perfect world, they would have all night to keep exploring each other, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

  But there would be plenty of time for that later.

  “I have some theories,” he said, leaning forward in the chair he was sitting in and resting his elbows on his knees. “Some better than others.”

  “Okay,” she said, putting her feet up on the desk. “Let’s hear them.”

  “Assuming that Sal did put out this hit on Alana, for whatever reason …,” Wes said, “Assuming that, and assuming that he wouldn’t have knowingly hired someone so bad at it as the woman I had heard …I think there are only three possibilities. Fi
rst, it was a mistake on his part, and he didn’t know he was hiring someone so inefficient. Second, he hired someone he did think was efficient, and that person has an operation of her own—perhaps with a new assassin? Perhaps with someone who is going through something personal that is interfering with a job she would usually be able to do easily. Or …” he said, knowing that it was a stretch. “Two different people are trying to kill Alana. One—the nervous woman who couldn’t get it done. Two—the big brute of a guy who shot me.”

  Jordan was nodding along with him until he got to the last possibility. “So, the nervous woman was acting on her own, trying to figure out what you were doing and how much you knew. And the other assassin hired to kill Alana figured it out, came back there, and shot you?”

  “It’s farfetched,” Wes said, “and I’m not saying that it’s most likely or even possible. But we’re only assuming the two were working in concert because they both showed up at the same place and shot at me. We didn’t see or hear them talk to each other. We don’t know what happened after we left. Did they fight amongst themselves? Did they talk? What did they do? Was he her trainer? Was he supervising her first assassination?” Wes threw his hands up. “I have no idea. I don’t know how assassinations work. I’m a landscaper. I can build you a manmade pond and stock it with exotic fish and surround it with the perfect combination of bushes and flowers. Everything that has happened over the last few days is completely out of my wheelhouse.”

  Jordan got up and sat down on the arm of his chair, rubbing his good shoulder gently. “Hey,” she said, sending some of her healing power into him, so that he felt the ache in his shoulder ease. “Don’t get upset.”

  “I’m not upset,” he said, leaning into her and resting his head against her side. “I just have no idea what comes next, and I feel like we’re no closer to finding Alana. I feel responsible for leaving her behind, even though I never want to be with her again or even see her face again if I don’t have to. I still need to know what they’re doing with her and how to help her.”

  Jordan pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “We will. I think you make a good point that we shouldn’t assume that the two assassins were working in concert. Perhaps we shouldn’t even assume that they were both there with the same agenda. We know that the nervous woman wanted to kill Alana. We have no idea what the man was there for, except that he came back and shot at you.”

  “And why would he do that?” Wes asked, getting up and walking over to the minibar. He pulled out a beer and opened it with the silver bottle opener that lay nearby.

  “Be careful,” Jordan said, nodding to him. “You are still on some pretty strong medication.”

  He looked down at his beer with some regret, then walked it over to her and handed it to her, smiling. “Got you a drink.”

  Jordan took it, smiling back at him. “Thanks. It’s getting late. Are you hungry?”

  Wes nodded, walking back over to the minibar and pulling out a soda instead. “I am, actually.”

  “We can order room service,” Jordan said, turning back to her computer and starting to make some notes. “Call and order whatever you want. That’s the perks of hiding out in a fancy hotel.”

  Taking a drink of his soda, Wes picked up the room service menu and scanned it, looking through the options without really focusing on them. He had almost decided on the Greek chicken when Jordan suddenly made a sound behind him.

  He turned, worried at first, but found her standing on her feet, her arms up in the air.

  “I got it! I got into it! I got into it!”

  “What?” Wes asked, dropping the menu and walking over to her. “You got what?”

  “The program that I’ve had working on the security for the hard drive? I fiddled with some of the settings, and I’m in. I don’t know how I am. Don’t congratulate me because it was a total accident, but I’m into the hard drive. Oh my God!”

  Wes couldn’t believe it. They had been working on it for hours, and he had all but given up hope that any of the items she had stolen from Sal were going to be helpful to them. The cell phone hadn’t even rung once since they’d had it. “I can’t believe it,” he said, pulling a chair over and sitting down in front of the computer. “What is all of this stuff?”

  “I have no idea,” Jordan said, pulling her own chair closer and sitting again. “But there has to be something that we can use in here, right?” She started scanning through files, clicking on folders and opening them. But everything was coded with a number system that made no sense to either of them. The documents themselves, when they opened them, were also written in some sort of code that wouldn’t give them any information they could understand, even though it was written in plain English.

  “This is a serious organization,” Wes said. “I mean, look at the lengths they’ve gone to just with this here. What does any of this even mean?”

  If Jordan had an answer for him, he didn’t get to hear it. As he asked his question, Sal’s cell phone, which had been sitting silent and dark on the desk, lit up, the ringtone sounding through the room like a series of ominous bells.

  Chapter 28

  Jordan

  Jordan grabbed the phone from the desk, staring down at the lit screen. “Otis,” she said, reading the name. “That’s all it says.”

  “Answer it,” Wes urged, leaning forward in his seat. “Right? We have to answer it.”

  Jordan pushed the phone towards him. “You do it. You have a male voice. Maybe the guy will talk to you for a minute before he realizes anything’s wrong.”

  Wes only hesitated for a moment, then reached for the phone, swiping it open and holding it up to his ear. “Yeah?”

  Jordan listened carefully to the voice on the other end of the line, her own phone out and ready to record. She motioned for Wes to put the phone on speaker, and he did.

  “You were supposed to call. What did I say about meeting deadlines? When you’re working for me, that’s what we do.”

  Wes looked at her, and Jordan looked back at him, signaling with her free hand for him to keep talking.

  Make up something—anything, she told him in her thoughts. Just keep him talking.

  Wes floundered briefly, but then replied, mimicking Sal’s voice as much as possible. “Sorry. We had something unexpected here today. I was going to call.” He wished he could read thoughts through the phone, but nothing was coming to him.

  “What do you mean unexpected?” Otis asked. “I don’t care if your wife and child die in a fire. You’re sending a shipment to me, so you call and let me know when it’s on its way. I assume it’s on its way.”

  Jordan held her breath, leaning closer and bringing her phone right against Sal’s.

  Make him say what kind of shipment it is, she thought at Wes.

  “Listen,” Wes said. “About the shipment. It’s just—we don’t have the reserves right now. Not for the full thing.”

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “We will,” Wes said. “Soon. It’s just …look could you get by with a little less for right now? It would really help me out.”

  “What kind of joke of a business are you running here, Sal?” Otis asked. “This is nonsense—accept less. Accept less, what? We had a deal. There is no accept less. What kind of bullshit are you trying to pull on me?”

  Wes dragged a hand through his hair, betraying his nerves, but he kept his voice steady. “I’ve had a personnel issue to deal with.”

  “The woman?”

  Jordan jerked her eyes up from the phone, looking at Wes. He stared back at her, and she nodded, urging him on.

  “Right.”

  “I thought you were handling that. You didn’t hire Natalie. Tell me you didn’t.”

  Tell him you did! Tell him you did!

  “I did,” Wes said, still keeping his voice low and calm, like Sal. “I had to.”

  “No, you don’t ever have to hire your fucking daughter for jobs like that, Sal. Goddamn. You said I could trust you. You said
that you weren’t going to fuck up. Well, you’ve fucked up. You have twenty-four hours to text me that the shipment is on its way. If I get it, I’ll let you live, but our business is over. If I don’t get it—God help you.”

  The phone call ended abruptly, and Wes put the phone down, slumping back in his chair and letting out a breath. “I just talked to a drug lord or something.”

  Jordan shook her head. “No. You talked to someone moving gems. A lot of them, apparently. And you found out who that assassin was. Natalie Amar, Sal Amar’s daughter.”

  Wes nodded. “It explains almost everything. She wants to be a killer, maybe to please her dad, or who knows why. He gives her a chance, but she doesn’t have it in her. But he lets her keep trying because it’s his daughter. The only thing it doesn’t explain is who the guy was who showed up to do the job for her.”

  “No,” Jordan said, offering another alternative. “Otis, the guy on the phone, knew about Natalie. I’m thinking it’s more along the lines of a situation where she has done this kind of thing before. Maybe she’s been in charge of taking people out for a while, but something happened and she lost her mojo, as it were. Now she’s trying to get back into the swing of things, but she can’t, and daddy dearest knows that, so he has someone following her around.”

  “Shit,” Wes said, nodding. “You’re right. That’s the answer. So, the guy who shot me in the shoulder is Natalie’s backup.”

  Jordan nodded, energized by the progress they were making. She stood up, walking over to the room service menu and picking it up. “All this adrenaline has made me realize I’m starving. What do you want?”

  He told her what he had picked, and she placed an order for both of them, requesting enough food to feed at least ten people. They needed their energy.