Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Quentin’s brow furrowed, and he shook his head. “You’re not making this better. You’re making it so much worse. I’d like you to leave, Lydia.”

  He turned, walking down the hall towards his office without looking back at her. He unlocked his door and walked in, closing it behind him.

  But he didn’t lock it. He could have locked it, but he didn’t. And he knew why he didn’t lock it—he knew why the moment that Lydia opened the door and walked in, tears streaming down her face.

  It tugged at him, and it shouldn’t have.

  “Please,” Lydia whispered. “I know that you have no reason to believe me. I really do. But he’s missing, and it’s my fault he was even here. He left his phone behind. His clothes. He left pasta boiling on the stove. I was in the shower after our trip and then we were going to eat dinner. I was probably in the bathroom for forty minutes. I spent another half an hour waiting for him to show back up. But he never did. He was gone. I can show you his things. His phone. His clothes. I can show you his ID, Quentin. I’ll answer all your questions. I’ll tell you everything. But you have to help me find him. He has kids. Please—he has a wife and kids.”

  Despite himself, Quentin was getting drawn in. He had seen her fake a disappearance once before, and she was different this time. Her tears were real. Her panic was authentic. Her begging was humble. She wanted help—desperately. Now, that didn’t mean that he believed her that someone was missing. He reserved judgment on that. But there was something different about her this time. She wasn’t the calm, cool, collected person who had come in the first time to report that her sister, who went nowhere and knew no one, was missing.

  This was a story that was very easy to check up on.

  “Sit down,” Quentin said, nodding towards the chair she had occupied the first time that she’d come in. “Did you bring his phone?”

  Lydia sat down, pulling a phone out of her back pocket and handing it to him as he sat behind his desk. “Here,” she said, almost pushing it at him. “But it’s locked. It’s fingerprint locked. I can’t get into it. All I can see is all of his missed notifications. And look—the background. That’s him and his wife Whitney. I have her number in my phone. I’ll call her, and let you hear me talk to her, if you want. But I don’t want her to know yet. I haven’t told her. She went to a movie. I said he’d fallen asleep early and would call her this morning. She’s two hours behind us, so she’s still asleep, but she’ll be expecting to hear from him soon. They never go more than a few hours without talking. She’s already worried, because I said that he was missing last night when I first called her. She calmed me down, but then I panicked again and when she called back, I said that he was asleep. I lied. I’m a liar. I’m a huge liar. Oh, God, this is karma. Jack is gone because I’m a huge liar.”

  “Hey,” Quentin said, putting the phone down and standing up. He rounded his desk and took her shoulders in his hands, seeing that she was on the verge of hyperventilating. Everything that she had just said had come pouring out so fast that he’d only followed half of it, but he thought he had a general understanding, and despite himself, he believed what she was saying. “You have to breathe,” Quentin said, crouching in front of her and keeping her grounded with his hands on either shoulder. “Just take a few breaths. Keep yourself calm. I’m going to help you.”

  He couldn’t believe the words even as they came out of his mouth, but when she collapsed into tears, leaning on him as she cried and cried, he just wrapped his arms around her and patted her back.

  There was no doubt that he still harbored deep reservations about her, and he would take nothing that she said at face value. He wasn’t a complete fool. But he had good instincts, and he trusted them when they told him that, this time, something really had happened. The last time she had come in, he had instinctively known she was hiding something, and that instinct had only grown stronger until it exploded when he had ordered her to leave.

  But he believed her now, and he wasn’t willing to turn his back on her while she was in such a panic.

  “There, there,” Quentin said, patting her back lightly again and starting to ease away. He brushed her hair out of her eyes and offered her a tissue from the far side of his desk. “Here you go. Dry your eyes. Blow your nose. Let me step out and make a phone call.”

  Lydia nodded, crumpling the tissue and swiping at her eyes with it.

  Quentin stepped outside his office, and he started to call Hannah. But as he reached for his phone, he got a brief glimpse in his mind of her driving into the parking lot, and he headed out of the door, knowing that she would be arriving any second.

  She was already there when he got outside, parking her car next to his, and when she got out of the car, he was there to greet her.

  “Well, hello, sunshine,” Hannah said. “Is this the welcoming committee?”

  “Lydia is in my office.”

  Hannah’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh. Well …hello, sunshine, then. What is she doing here?”

  “She says her friend is missing.”

  “No way,” Hannah said, shaking her head. “She didn’t try it again.

  “I think she might be telling the truth this time,” Quentin said. “Actually, I’m sure she is. But I need you to check for me.”

  “How would I check?” Hannah asked, shouldering her bag and starting to walk with him towards the agency. It was a pretty, clear February day with temperatures in the low fifties, and very little wind to stir up the air. Quentin was perfectly comfortable in his short-sleeved T-shirt and jeans as he walked in with her, even though Hannah was wearing an olive-green jacket.

  “Just talk to her,” Quentin said, quietly, as he opened the agency door. “See if you believe her.”

  Hannah nodded. “Okay. I can talk to her. But I think your gut instincts are usually pretty spot on. If you suspected her last time but not this time …that’s solid.”

  “I just need a backup,” Quentin said. “I don’t want to get involved if there is any doubt at all that she’s telling the truth.”

  Shrugging a shoulder, Hannah stopped outside his office and knocked lightly, pushing the door open and walking in. “Hi, Lydia. Remember me? My name is Hannah. I met you last time you were in.”

  Chapter 12

  Lydia

  Lydia had been scribbling down information on the intake forms when Hannah walked in, but when she saw the woman, Lydia stood up immediately, hurrying towards her. “Yes! Yes, of course I remember you. It’s nice to see you again. I—I know that Quentin must have told you everything, and you think that I’m crazy, and I don’t deny that you’re right to think that I’m crazy because I might be, and I know that I did something really weird and unexplainable, but I’m not making it up this time. I swear I’m not. My friend, Jack. He’s my best friend. He came down here to comfort me after everything blew up the other day, and we went to New Orleans and just blew off steam for a while, and then we came back to the apartment—the same apartment I took Quentin too—and I got in the shower, and he was making dinner and then …he was just gone. The pasta was boiling. It was liquefying. And he was gone.” Her voice cracked, and her eyes started to fill with tears. “Please, I can’t find him. He’s been gone all night, and I can’t find him anywhere.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said, gently, holding her arms out to Lydia. “Okay, honey. Come here. Come on. It’s going to be fine.”

  Leaning into Hannah, Lydia let the woman wrap her up in a tight hug. Hannah rubbed her back and patted her, murmuring comforting words as Lydia let all her tears out. Without holding back, Lydia clung to Hannah, releasing all of the tension that had been building up over the long hours of the night. Every hour that had gone by without Jack returning had been miserable and terrifying. She had quickly gotten past the point where she could continue to make excuses for where he was.

  Something had happened to him. There was no doubt in her mind. Jack would never just wander off—he wouldn’t leave her worried and wondering, but even more than tha
t, he wouldn’t leave his phone behind, so that he couldn’t contact Whitney and the kids. He just wouldn’t. Wherever he was, he was stuck and couldn’t come home.

  What if he had gone out and gotten lost and then someone had robbed him and left him dead in an alley or a park somewhere? Things like that happened, and Jack wasn’t used to being in a big city.

  “You have to check and see if the police have found anyone,” Lydia said, pulling back from Hannah’s comforting embrace. “Please—call and see if they’ve found a body. Call the hospitals. God, why didn’t I think to call the hospitals? What if he’s lying in a bed somewhere, hurt, or shot, or mugged?”

  Hannah walked over to Quentin’s desk and picked up the phone. “I’ll call the police now.”

  Lydia stood there with her hands covering her mouth, not thinking, for once, about the fact that she was in a room with two dragon shifters. All she cared about was finding her friend. Quentin walked over to her, offering her more tissues and a glass of water. She took both and used neither, watching as Hannah put the phone to her ear.

  “Sit down,” Quentin murmured, nudging Lydia back into her chair. “We’re going to help you.”

  She fumbled for his hand, grabbing it and holding on tightly. “Thank you. I know—I mean, I get it. Why you wouldn’t want to. But thank you.”

  Quentin nodded, watching her as she stared up at him. “You’re welcome.”

  Together, Lydia and Quentin listened as Hannah asked to speak with a specific person, presumably someone she knew well at the police station. She waited for a moment, then nodded to Lydia. “They’re getting him.”

  Lydia nodded back, and in a moment, Hannah stood up straighter, speaking into the phone.

  “Hey. Yes. Thank you for taking my call. Listen, I need to know if you’ve found any unidentified bodies last night or this morning. Or any identified bodies by the name of Jack …” Hannah trailed off, looking at Hannah.

  “Jack Benton,” Lydia murmured. “His name is Jack Benton.”

  “Jack Benton,” Hannah said into the phone. Then she listened for a long time.

  Lydia bent forward in her chair, putting her head in her hands. Quentin’s hand rested on her back, rubbing in gentle circles, and she appreciated the gesture. But it didn’t ease the ball of tension in her gut. If she had known that this was what it felt like when someone you cared about went missing, then she never would have been so flippant about reporting a missing person. This was the worst feeling she’d ever experienced, and all she could think about was the fact that it was her fault that Jack had been down here and not at home, safely waiting for his wife and children to return from their trip to see her mother.

  All she could think about was Whitney, and how she was going to tell her that Jack was missing.

  “Okay,” Hannah was saying. “Thank you for checking. Yes—this is the Rockwell Agency. You can return a call to this number if anyone meeting the description is found. I’ll get you a picture as soon as possible. Thank you.”

  Hannah hung up the phone and shook her head at Lydia. “No unidentified males found, and no one with his name. That’s not a bad thing, Lydia. If they’d found a body, then that’s case closed, right? That means there are still hundreds of possibilities out there.”

  Nodding, Lydia dabbed at her eyes with the tissue, sucking in a steadying breath. “Right. Right. Yes. What about hospitals?”

  Quentin stood up and took the phone from Hannah. “I’ll handle it from here. Thank you for coming in. I know you’ve got your own cases to work.”

  Hannah nodded back at him, then walked over to Lydia and hugged her again, as she leaned into her. “I’m sorry this is happening to you. I can’t promise it’s going to be okay, but I do promise that Quentin will do everything he can to help you.”

  “I lied to him,” Lydia whispered back. “I wasn’t honest.”

  “No, and that’s a problem for him,” Hannah said, pulling back to look at Lydia, her voice still low. “But he’ll do his job, and I’ll do mine, and you’re going to get answers.”

  Lydia pressed Hannah’s fingers as she stood, releasing her at the last minute. “Thank you.”

  Hannah touched Lydia’s shoulder, then slipped out of the room, leaving Quentin and Lydia alone. She looked at him, and he looked back at her. There was a wariness still on his face, but she saw sympathy, too. What was on her own face, she didn’t know. For the first time with him, she was just being transparent. She needed help, and she needed him, and she didn’t care what else anybody said or did or what she found out, or if she got material for her book. She just wanted him to find Jack.

  He seemed to feel that from her, and he dialed the hospital. They went through three phone calls, calling different hospitals and clinics in the area, but nobody had anyone who could have been Jack.

  When they had checked all of them with no luck, Lydia wasn’t sure how to feel about it. “Is that good or bad?” she asked, clutching her tissues in her hands, as she sat rigidly in her chair. If he’s not in the morgue or the hospital, then he’s alive. Right? I mean, probably—he’s alive.”

  Quentin got up from the desk and rounded it, perching on the edge of it right in front of her. “I don’t know. It’s definitely good that he’s not in the morgue. I think it would have been good if he had been in the hospital because that would explain what had happened, and why he hasn’t gotten in contact with you. I have to be honest with you and say that it’s not a guarantee that he’s alive, just because he’s not in either of those places. He could be dead somewhere that we haven’t discovered yet.”

  Lydia sucked in a sharp breath, stunned by his bluntness. “Oh my God.”

  “I have to be honest with you,” Quentin said, and Lydia wondered if there was a hint of rebuke in his choice of words. “I will be, through this entire process. That means I’m going to have to tell you things that you don’t like sometimes, but that’s better than me sugarcoating things so that you get taken by surprise by something. There is no reason, right now, to think that Jack is dead. But I can’t tell you that it’s not a possibility.”

  Lydia nodded. She understood, but she didn’t want to think about that right now. “What do I tell his wife?”

  “I think you should tell her what you know. He’s missing. And I think you should tell her to come here, from wherever she is.”

  “She has kids. They have kids, I mean. Together. They have children.”

  “Is there someone the children can stay with?”

  “They’re all with her mom right now,” Lydia said, sweeping hair out of her face as several strands tumbled from her messy bun. “I guess she could leave them there. I don’t know how to tell her. How do you tell someone that you lost their husband?”

  Quentin shook his head. “There’s no good way. All you can do is be honest with her—even if it’s something she doesn’t want to hear.”

  “Are you going to keep making references to honesty?” Lydia asked, her frayed nerves sparking angrily as she reached for her phone and tried to figure out what she was going to say to Whitney.

  “It’s the underpinning of my practice here,” Quentin said. “I’ll probably mention it, yes. I tell all my clients that I will always be honest with them.”

  Lydia bit her tongue. She wanted to lash-out at him, mostly because she felt she just needed to lash-out at someone—anyone. Just to expel some of the tension she was feeling and her anxiety over talking to Whitney. But she didn’t let herself say all the things she was thinking. She didn’t let herself point out to him that he was, in a way, lying to every single client because he never told them who he really was. He had a secret—he was a dragon shifter. He guarded that secret fiercely, no doubt. Wouldn’t he lie to protect that? Hadn’t he ever given a client some explanation that wasn’t true to keep them from suspecting how he was capable of doing some of the things that he was capable of doing? Was he really some high and mighty beacon of virtue, or was he just still pissed that she had made up the story about
her sister?

  Was he really ever going to help her without that in the back of his mind? Maybe she should have gone to the police, but she knew what Quentin really was, and she knew that if anyone had the ability to help her, it was him.

  Chapter 13

  Quentin

  Quentin had to keep himself in check. As much as he did believe that Lydia was in real distress over her friend Jack, he still held a natural wariness towards her, and that came out in the way that he did continue to emphasize honesty. He needed to put his personal feelings aside now that he had agreed to accept her as a client again, and he knew it. He would do it, too, because he was a professional.

  But this was the woman that had gotten under his skin and into his head from the first moment he’d seen her, and now she was back, and he was questioning how to think and feel about her, and he didn’t like it. He liked things that were exactly as they seemed, and she wasn’t. He still didn’t know what she was.

  Now they were on their way back to the apartment she had taken him to days ago—the apartment Jack had been in moments before he disappeared. It was déjà vu, and it was making him antsy.

  “Tell me again everything that happened from the time that Jack arrived in town until the moment he disappeared,” Quentin told Lydia, if just to keep her talking and focused on the case.

  Lydia sighed, picking her head up off the window, where it was resting while she stared blankly out at the street. “Jack arrived Monday night. I was at the apartment. I had met with you earlier that day. You remember how that went. I was eating ice cream. I was in sweats. I had talked to Jack and told him what had happened, but I had no idea that he was going to come down to see me. He had already planned to, though, even before I called him on the phone because his wife and the kids were going to visit her mother. I was excited when he was at the door, and he came in. We opened a bottle of wine and talked. We didn’t leave the apartment that night—we stayed in. Went to sleep late.”