Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Quentin cleared his throat involuntarily.

  Turning towards him, Lydia narrowed her eyes. “Look, Jack and I don’t have that kind of relationship, all right? I know what it sounds like—wine, and sleeping over, and intrigue. Well, it’s not like that. I would never do that to Whitney, and Jack would never do that to Whitney, either. He’s like an older brother to me. We …work together. We have the same hobbies. I love his family, and they love me. He came down to visit me at his wife’s suggestion and with her blessing. Whitney has never and would never suspect of us anything inappropriate, and there would never be cause for her to. Jack and I shared a bottle of wine, yes. We talked, yes. We went to bed, yes. I slept in the bedroom, and he slept on the couch. It wasn’t a discussion—it was assumed. I don’t want there to be this constant undercurrent of suspicion in this investigation, so understand me very clearly right now. Jack and I were not and would never have an affair.”

  Quentin held up a hand in a truce-like gesture. “Understood. I think you understand that the idea will occur to every single person who hears your story, and you have to be prepared for that. But I understand that there can be relationships between men and women that are devoid of romantic or sexual tension. Two of my closest and dearest friends are beautiful women. Hannah and Jordan. I love them with all my heart, and I would never think of them in a romantic or sexual way. They’re family.”

  “Good,” Lydia. “Then we can put that aside.”

  “You and I can,” Quentin said, “but don’t think that it’ll be the last time that you have to explain yourself.”

  “You’re saying I need to do it nicer next time.”

  “No,” Quentin said. “That was an authentic answer. I’m realizing that you’re actually a terrible liar. Because the difference between you today, and the you that I met on Monday? Night and day! Had I known you at all, it would have been even more obvious to me than it was already that your sister had never been missing. You’re an emotional person, Lydia. And this is an emotional thing. So, be emotional. When you are, I can see your honesty.”

  Lydia turned back towards the window, not saying anything for a long moment. Then she continued with her story. “When we got up the next morning, Jack suggested that we just take a few days and have a real vacation. He’d never been to New Orleans, so he wanted to go. He has a friend down there that he went to college with, and he called him up. The guy—his name is Sam—let us stay at his place. We drove down to New Orleans, and we got there in time for lunch. We ate. We walked around. We took a history tour, then signed up for two different ghost tours that night. After the tours, we went out and got some drinks, listened to some live jazz, walked down Bourbon Street just for kicks. You know, New Orleans stuff. Then, yesterday, we got up and did another ghost tour. It was different, though. More of a crime tour. Had some lunch. Walked around a little more, until about 4:00. Got home by about 6:00. I got straight into the shower, and Jack was going to make dinner. When I got out of the shower, the pasta had been boiling for ages, and Jack was gone.”

  “And you think you were in the bathroom for about thirty minutes.”

  “Or forty,” Lydia said. “I took my time. Jack takes his time with his pasta dish. I knew there was no rush.”

  Quentin nodded. He’d heard this whole thing before, but repeating the story allowed him to make sure that she was telling the same story every time—which she was—and to look for new details that he might have missed before. For instance, this was the first time that Lydia had been so specific about what they had done in New Orleans. It interested him that they had gone on multiple ghost tours.

  Most people thought ghost tours were just fun, spooky activities. They had no idea just how prevalent the spirit world was in Louisiana, and particularly in New Orleans. Most people would have been horrified to know that spirits often haunted those tours, and that plenty of people ended up carrying spirits or curses home with them. The spirit world was not such a fan of their deaths being a source of entertainment for the masses, and if someone was disrespectful—or even if they weren’t—they could go home with a curse or a haunting.

  But that was a stretch for the moment. There was no reason to jump to that conclusion, and certainly no reason to suggest such a thing to Lydia, who probably would laugh at him and then take her case elsewhere. He would privately consider it as an option, but they would know more once he had gotten another look at the apartment.

  He pulled into the parking lot he had been in just days ago, and he parked in the same spot. “Are you ready?” Quentin asked, unbuckling his seatbelt and opening the car door.

  Lydia was already getting out of the car. “I’m ready to find him.”

  They walked into the building together, going up the same elevator and walking down the same hall. The feeling of déjà vu continued when Lydia opened the door and stepped back, letting him into the apartment that he had already walked around, looking for a different, missing person.

  This time when Quentin walked in, though, he immediately got a ripple of energy along his skin. It shimmered over him, unseen but strongly felt. He didn’t react to it, not wanting to alarm or alert Lydia, but as he walked into the living room, it was all he was thinking about. The air shivered around him, buzzling along his arms and down his back, and he felt a powerful impulse to shift into his dragon form.

  He was experienced at controlling his shift, so there was no danger that he was going to lose control of his instincts. But he also wasn’t used to feeling a kind of power that he felt now, and it put him on edge, his instincts warring against his self-control.

  When Quentin stooped down to pick up Jack’s carry-on, the jolt that shot through him was so strong that he released the handle immediately, letting the bag slump to the floor again.

  “What is it?” Lydia asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Quentin shook his head, staring at the carry-on as though he could somehow penetrate the fabric with his eyes. As often happened when he was focusing, he got a glimpse of the future, and he saw himself peering into the case and pulling out standard clothing—jeans, spare shirts, plenty of socks.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Quentin said. He reached for the handle again and felt the same jolt move through him. But he was prepared for it this time, and he picked up the case, setting it on the couch and opening it. He did indeed find jeans, and spare shirts, and plenty of socks, all of which he pulled out and placed on the couch in neat piles. He reached his hand into the case, bringing out a bag of toiletries, and then he felt along the lining, his fingers probing for any object that might be hidden there—or that may have fallen there accidentally.

  “What are you looking for?” Lydia asked, crowding behind him. “There’s nothing strange in his bag.”

  “We don’t know that,” he said, continuing to search thoroughly. He pulled his hand out, having found nothing, and searched the front pockets of the carry-on. He found a few papers and a bag that he pulled out. He peered inside and saw a Mardi Gras style mask.

  “For Whitney,” Lydia said, quietly. “And magnets for the kids in there, too.”

  Quentin looked at each magnet, turning it in his hand and searching for the source of the power he was feeling throughout the whole apartment. The jolt he had gotten when he touched the case suggested to him that the source originated from something within it, but as he touched each item, he got no further clues.

  Lydia couldn’t understand why he kept picking everything up and handling it again and again, and she was getting impatient.

  “Quentin—what are you doing? We need security footage, or we need to talk to the neighbors to see if they saw anything. All the things that you wanted to do last time.”

  Normally, he would agree with her. But there was no doubt in his mind now that this was not a case of a man wandering off or getting lost or skipping out. It was not a kidnapping case either. It wasn’t anything typical. Not with the zing of power vibrating through the room.

  Something had happened
here—something that had left its supernatural mark behind, and it was triggering all of Quentin’s senses. He could feel it, and smell it, and hear it buzzing in his ears.

  And when he walked into the kitchen, he could see it, too.

  Chapter 14

  Lydia

  Quentin was acting strangely. He kept looking around the kitchen, circling the center of it, as he paced around and around. His eyes moved from one counter to the next, then back again. Before that, he had kept touching Jack’s clothing, picking things up and putting them down over and over again.

  She was starting to doubt whether he had been the best person to go to. He was wasting time—time that needed to be put to use finding Jack. Was he really that upset about her lies that he was sabotaging the effort to actually find a missing person.

  “Quentin—what are you doing?” Lydia asked, and not for the first time. Her voice was sharper now, the impending duty of calling Whitney weighing on her. “How is this helping us find Jack?”

  Quentin stopped moving and looked over at her, as though just now realizing that she was standing there watching him. “Lydia, go knock on the door that’s across the hall and just to the left. There’s a woman there who is home during the day. Ask her if she saw anything last night—maybe heard Jack leaving. She seems to keep a general eye on things.”

  Lydia could tell when she was being given busywork, but she didn’t know what else to do except follow his instructions. After all, he was supposedly the expert in this situation.

  Leaving him to his silent inspection of the kitchen, Lydia hurried out of the apartment to the door he had specified. She knocked loudly, and she heard a crying child inside almost immediately.

  When the door opened, a harried woman appeared, eyebrows raised expectantly. “Yes?”

  “Hi,” Lydia said, suddenly nervous. “Uh, I live across the hall, and I had a friend staying with me. I can’t find him now—he’s been gone since last night. I was wondering if you might have seen him? He came into the apartment with me, and then he probably left fifteen or twenty minutes later?”

  The woman got a curious look on her face. “What is going on with that apartment? Someone came by a few days ago asking about who was coming in and out of there.”

  “Did you see him?” Lydia asked, not answering the woman’s question. “It’s just really important.”

  “I saw you two come in around dinnertime,” the woman said. “You and a man. I assume that’s who you mean.”

  Lydia nodded, pushing aside her curiosity as to why the woman had been looking out into the hallway. “Yes—yes, that’s him. Did you see him again last night—at any point? At all?”

  The woman nodded as well. “Sure. He came running out not long after you two went in. Looked a little upset. I thought it was sort of strange. But then apparently there are strange things happening over there.”

  “You saw him running out?” Lydia braced her hand against the doorjamb, thrilled to have her first indication of something—anything—that would help lead them to Jack. “When? Where did he go?”

  “Down the stairs,” the woman said, shrugging a shoulder. “I didn’t follow him or anything. But I heard the door open again, and when I hear doors opening, I peek out my little peephole. I saw him run towards the stairs, and that’s all. I’m not sure exactly what time it was, but you hadn’t been in the apartment that long.”

  Lydia backed up from the door, pressing her hands together in front of her. “Thank you,” she said to the woman. “Thank you—really.”

  Hurrying back to her own apartment, she went running into the kitchen, pulling up short when she saw Quentin sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, his eyes closed. “Hey—.” she started to say before stopping abruptly. “What the hell are you doing now?”

  Quentin’s eyes flew open, and he looked at her strangely for a moment, as though he not only had no idea she was standing there, but that he also couldn’t quite remember who she was. The confusion on his face cleared almost immediately, though, and he stood up, moving towards her. “Did you find anything?”

  “This woman just stands and tries to figure out what people are doing in the halls,” Lydia said, her excitement over her lead overcoming the strangeness of finding Quentin sitting on the floor in the kitchen. “But I don’t care about how weird that is because she saw Jack leaving. She said he ran out of the apartment about fifteen or twenty minutes after we arrived back. He left the building, Quentin. We know for sure that he ran out, on his own. That’s good right? That’s got to be good?”

  Quentin nodded. “Anything that we learn is good, because it helps us paint the picture. If he left on his own, then that narrows down the possibilities. Where would he have gone? What kind of things would have made him run out? What about the messages on his phone?”

  “I can’t tell what they say,” Lydia said. “Just that they’ve arrived. I would have to unlock his phone to see more, and it’s locked with his fingerprint.”

  “Right,” Quentin said, nodding. She had already told him that, but he seemed almost disoriented. She wondered at the strange shift in their dynamic. Last time that they had been here, supposedly investigating a missing person, he had been the capable one, and she had been the one not knowing what to say or what to do next. Now she felt as though their roles were almost reversed, and she was the one pressing for action and finding answers while he wandered around the apartment staring into nothing.

  But then he took her by surprise.

  “I think you need to make that call to Whitney now,” Quentin said, rubbing a hand along his jaw. “I don’t think we can wait any longer.”

  Lydia’s stomach flipped with nervousness, and she felt herself start to tense. “Now?” she asked, looking down at her phone in her hand. “It’s only just after seven o’clock in the morning there. It’s a bit early, isn’t it? She’s on vacation. She won’t be awake. One of the kids might be in bed with her—or both of the kids. I wouldn’t want to wake them up as well. I’m sure that she’ll call when she wakes up and can’t get ahold of Jack. Won’t she?”

  Quentin walked over to her and tapped her phone lightly. “If your husband was missing, wouldn’t you want to know as soon as possible? She’s going to have a lot to put in order before she can get down here, so the earlier she starts, the better.”

  He was right, of course. Lydia knew that. But she was dreading the call so much that she felt she might do anything to rationally justify not making it.

  But she couldn’t give in to that instinct. Whitney was her dearest friend, second to Jack, and she owed her a phone call—a phone call made right now.

  Pressing a hand to her stomach, Lydia turned away from Quentin and walked into the bedroom that she had stayed in last night, sleepless and worried. She called Whitney, and she held her breath, as she listened to the phone ring over and over again. Sitting down on the bed, she wondered if perhaps Whitney wouldn’t pick up, and whether she would be relieved or disappointed to have a chance to delay the call.

  But then Whitney’s sleepy voice came over the line. “Hello?”

  “Hey,” Lydia said, clearing her throat. “Whit? Are you awake enough to talk to me for a minute?”

  “Lydia?” Whitney asked, still sounding groggy. But Lydia could hear her shifting around, probably sitting up in bed. “What’s going on? It’s early here.”

  “I know …,” Lydia said. “I’m sorry about that, but this couldn’t wait. Listen—I lied to you last night when you called back, and I said Jack was already sleeping.”

  “You lied to me?”

  Lydia leaned back on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. “Yes. And I’m so sorry. I just didn’t know how to tell you, and I wasn’t sure what was going on. I kept thinking—surely he’ll come back. He’s going to walk in at any moment. We’ll laugh about how lost he got, and everything will be fine.”

  “Lydia, where is Jack?”

  “I don’t know,” Lydia whispered. “I’m so sorry, Whitney.
He left last night while I was in the shower. A neighbor saw him running out of the building, and I haven’t seen him or heard from him since. I did go looking for him. Twice. Once just around the building and parking lot, before I got too worried. Then around the area we’re staying in. I just kept thinking—he’s going to come back. But he hasn’t, and I don’t know where he is, or what he’s doing. He’s not in hospitals, and the police don’t know anything. We’re looking for him, Whit. I have the investigator team I was here to see. I have them on it. We’re working on it right now.”

  The words all came pouring out of her, as she stumbled over her explanation, trying to reassure Whitney and yet at the same time knowing that she should have done more and sooner for Jack.

  There was a long silence when she finally stopped talking, and Lydia held her breath. She didn’t know if Whitney was going to yell at her, or cry, or remain calm. She knew Whitney well, but they had never been through something like this together before, and Jack was Whitney’s whole world—Jack and the children.

  “Lydia,” Whitney said, sounding almost amused. “Honey. You’re worrying over nothing.”

  That was hardly the reaction Lydia was expecting. She was near a dead panic, convinced that Jack would never disappear like this of his own volition and therefore certain that something terrible had happened to him. And Whitney had laughter in her voice? “What do you mean?” Lydia asked, sitting up. “Whitney, Jack has been missing for twelve hours. How is that nothing?”

  Whitney sighed, sounding far more awake now. “Lydia, as well as you know Jack, I know him much better. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Lydia said, the answer obvious, but the reason for the question confusing. “Of course.”

  “I’m telling you that Jack is fine,” Whitney said. “I’m sure of it. He’ll show up with some explanation shortly. He’ll have gotten an impulse to go out, and he’ll have spent the night in a casino or at a bar. He’ll come back. I promise you that.”