Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Lydia could hardly believe her ears. Whitney was describing a version of Jack that Lydia didn’t know at all. The Jack that Lydia knew was the ultimate family man. Responsible. Caring. Affectionate. Doting. He lived for his family. He wasn’t the kind of person who would just run off and disappear with pasta boiling on the stove. Jack was grounded. Solid. Firm.

  “Whitney,” Lydia said, struggling with what to say to convince the woman who, by all accounts, really should know Jack better than her. “He left pasta boiling on the stove. We had plans to eat and go over the plan for the next day. He wasn’t familiar with the area—we hadn’t even been in Baton Rouge for most of his visit. We were in New Orleans. He wouldn’t have known where he was going. He didn’t take his phone with him.”

  “Right,” Whitney said. “He wouldn’t have taken his phone. That way he can explain why he couldn’t be reached. He’ll say he lost track of time. I’m sorry that he’s got you so worried, but I promise you—there’s nothing to concern yourself over. Jack does this sometimes.”

  Stunned, Lydia just sat there on the bed, not sure if she should feel comforted or even more worried than before. “I …don’t know what to say,” she said. “I—are you sure? He does this?”

  “He does this,” Whitney said. “Remember that the side of Jack that you see is only one side of him. I love my husband, but he is not a perfect man. I’m sorry that you’ve spent all night so worried, but I don’t worry anymore.”

  Lydia looked over to the door of the bedroom, seeing Quentin standing there. She shook her head at him slowly, her mind still spinning. “Okay,” she managed to say to Whitney. “I’ll just—I don’t know. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

  “Have Jack call me when he gets back,” Whitney said. “I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job of warning you last night. When we first talked, and you were worried, I didn’t want to worry you more by telling you. I had hoped he really was just lost and wandering around. But I should have given you a heads-up.”

  “That’s okay,” Lydia said, her own voice sounding far away to her. “I’ll call you when he gets back.”

  She hung up the phone and looked at Quentin, not knowing what to say. How did she tell him that she had given him another story about a missing person who wasn’t missing? Did she really even believe that Jack wasn’t missing? Did she think that he would really just go out all night on his own? Whitney seemed so confident that he was fine, and this was normal. Did she really dare question the man’s wife, who clearly had experienced this before?

  “What’s going on?” Quentin asked.

  Lydia just shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Chapter 15

  Quentin

  Of course, Quentin had heard every word that the two women had exchanged on the phone, but he couldn’t tell Lydia that. In fact, the number of things that Quentin couldn’t tell Lydia was growing by the minute. The power that was vibrating through this apartment was almost overwhelming, still zapping along his skin, as he stood there in the doorway of the bedroom. But that was nothing compared to what he had seen in the kitchen. A shimmering curtain hung there in the air. It was transparent. He could walk through it. He could sit down beneath it. It was there, but it wasn’t. It had no feel to it—nothing solid. It was just there, and he had no idea why.

  Now Jack’s wife’s reaction to the news that he was missing only added a layer of additional complication to the puzzle that Quentin was beginning to see before him.

  Lydia told him all about the phone call he’d already heard, expressing her own astonishment. She shook her head, throwing up her hands. “I just don’t believe it. I mean, I do. But I don’t. Whitney has no reason to make that up, and she knows Jack best, but I know him, too, Quentin. I know that he’s not the kind of person who would just skip out like that—for hours! And there was pasta boiling! If he had taken the pasta off the stove and turned the burner off, then I would believe Whitney more easily. I would have no reason not to, because she’s his wife. But who leaves water boiling before getting an impulse to go out all night long?”

  There were stranger things, but Quentin nodded in agreement. The pasta on the stove did seem like a significant point. “What do you want to do?” he asked Lydia. He knew he was going to investigate what was happening in this apartment whether she wanted to investigate Jack’s disappearance or not, but he couldn’t tell her that. He didn’t trust her with the information that something supernatural was happening.

  “I want to eat.”

  Quentin’s eyebrows knit. “What?”

  “I never ate dinner, and I haven’t eaten breakfast, either,” Lydia said, standing up off the bed. “I need food, and I need to think. I don’t know what to do. I’ll feel silly if I pursue the case and find out that Jack is just irresponsible and thoughtless. And I’ll feel awful if I drop the case based on Whitney’s explanation, and something terrible has happened to him.” Lydia swept her hair back as it once again tried to tumble from her bun. “I want to get ready, and I want to go out to eat at the café that’s right around the corner. We can walk there. And when we get there, I want you to tell me what you would do.”

  Quentin encouraged this idea—not because he wanted to eat or because he had any intention of telling Lydia what decision she should make. He encouraged it so that she would disappear to get ready, and he would be able to document and investigate what he was feeling and seeing all around him. “Good,” he said, nodding at her. “That’s fine. We’ll regroup.”

  Lydia sent him a strange look, but then she walked into the bathroom and closed the door, and Quentin walked back out of the room and into the kitchen. He could see the shimmering curtain, but Lydia clearly could not. She’d made no mention of it and had no reaction to it. He pulled out his camera, taking a picture of the phenomenon, but it didn’t show up in the picture. All he could see was a slight wave in the air where the curtain was. He was going to have to remember it exactly in his mind, so that he could explain it to his friends and research it later.

  Quentin circled the curtain, observing the shimmering gold hue and the transparency. It stretched from floor to ceiling. There was no break in the curtain anywhere, and it had ripples in it that mimicked the folds in fabric as it hung from a window. He put his hand through it again, seeing his hand as clear as day on the other side. There was a faint zap along his wrist, where the curtain fell, but nothing else happened. Nothing else changed.

  He shook his head, amazed by something he had never seen before. It was like he had felt it the moment that he’d walked into the apartment, and he felt it still. There was some kind of power pulsing here, and it was strong. It had everything to do with Jack’s disappearance—he was sure of it. The fact that the neighbor had seen Jack running out of the apartment was confusing, because Quentin would have been more likely to assume that the curtain had somehow swallowed Jack up. But it had sent him running instead—if the neighbor was to be believed.

  Had Jack been able to see the curtain? Had it appeared out of nowhere and startled him, and now he was too scared to come back?

  That didn’t seem right. If he and Lydia were such good friends, would he really have left her to fend for herself against something that had scared him?

  Lydia’s footsteps were headed towards him, and Quentin quickly stopped his study of the curtain. He didn’t want her to find him entranced by it again, as she had when she had come back from the neighbor. The last thing that he needed was for her to catch on to the fact that there was something that he wasn’t telling her. She had no business knowing about the curtain, and he would keep it that way.

  She did look freshened up though. She walked into the kitchen, wearing tight, gray leggings and an oversized lemon-yellow sweater. Her hair, which had been up in a messy bun, now hung down her back in waves, with just the top of it swept back from her face. It looked like she’d washed her face and dusted on a bit of powder for color. Her eyes, so wide as they stared back at him, were still faintly rimmed with red after
her hard night, but she looked far more like herself. And she looked effortlessly beautiful.

  “Back in here,” Lydia said, scanning the kitchen as though trying to figure out what kept Quentin so fascinated there.

  “Just waiting for you,” Quentin said, heading towards the front door. “Let’s go. You need to eat before you pass out.”

  They left the building together in silence, both lost in their own thoughts. Quentin followed Lydia to the café she had in mind, and they both went inside and ordered. Quentin, who had already had his breakfast, just ordered a cup of coffee, as black as it could get. Lydia, on the other hand, ordered a full breakfast of two eggs, bacon, sausage, a bowl of fruit, and a side of biscuits and jelly. She also asked for a cappuccino. Amused, Quentin pulled out his card and handed it to the cashier.

  “No, you don’t have to get this,” Lydia said, shaking her head, her own card in hand. “Really—please don’t. You only got a coffee, and I got food for four.”

  Quentin brushed her off, nodding to the cashier. “Use my card.”

  The cashier swiped Quentin’s card, then smiled at Lydia. “Be glad you have a chivalrous man. Not everyone does.”

  Lydia flushed, and Quentin hid his smile, taking the number that the cashier handed them and making his way towards a table at the far end of the room—one where not many people would be sitting near them.

  Following, Lydia sat down with a slight huff. “Thank you for breakfast.”

  “You sound very grateful.”

  “Well, I am grateful, but it wasn’t necessary,” Lydia said.

  It was obvious that they were still not at ease with each other, and Quentin supposed that couldn’t be helped, given the history of their interactions so far. They certainly had gotten on well at first, until he had found out that she had been lying to him. Now, this morning, it had been a whirlwind of skepticism, suspicion, and confusion as they tried to figure out if they actually had a missing person this time. And as he tried to figure out exactly what kind of case he was dealing with. It was no longer a run-of-the-mill anything, that was for sure.

  Lydia didn’t know what to do next, or whether to trust Whitney or not. Quentin decided to try to take her mind off the question and give her brain some time to process it all in the background. He found that answers usually came to people much more easily when they thought about something else for a while.

  “Tell me about yourself,” Quentin said, as they got situated at the table. “We don’t really know each other at all. You go first, and then I will.”

  Lydia seemed skeptical again, but she complied. “There’s not much to tell. I grew up in Idaho with my parents and my sister. My parents have moved overseas now—they did that about four years ago. My dad retired early, and they wanted to live in Lucca, Italy. So that’s where they are now. My sister is in Oregon.”

  “I know,” Quentin said. “I looked her up. You did, after all, give me her real name.”

  Lydia winced, slightly. “Anyway. She lives there with her family. I was telling the truth about most things, you know. I’m a waitress. Or I was, before I quit my job.”

  “Why did you quit your job?”

  “Would you want to be a waitress?” Lydia asked the question, just as one of the restaurant staffers came over with their hot drinks. The woman looked slightly offended, but set the drinks down and walked away without commenting. Lydia winced again. “God … I can’t seem to get it right these days. I’m not complaining, though. I brought it on myself, and I’m not Jack, at least. Wherever he is. Whatever he’s doing. It’s not good either way, you know? If what Whitney says is true, and he has this habit of running off—that’s not good. Not good for their marriage. Not good for Jack’s stability. I mean, what does he do when he runs off? She mentioned casinos and bars. If that’s true, is he even the person I think I know so well? And if it’s not true—where is he? Am I sitting here eating breakfast while he’s out there bleeding, or hurt, or trapped somewhere?”

  Quentin let her talk, mostly to herself, as she processed through the whole thing. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that, under most circumstances, men who disappeared were not kidnapped or held captive. It happened, of course, but it was not as common as it was for a woman to be kidnapped or held captive. If Jack was missing, he was either too hurt to find help on his own, or he was dead, or he didn’t want to be found.

  Or he was under the influence of the supernatural power emanating from the kitchen of that apartment. Quentin was fascinated by it. The power of it still shimmered along his skin, faintly now. He needed to know what it was, but he had to deal with Lydia first. She couldn’t know, and he couldn’t just tell her to go away and let him handle the case himself. This was always the struggle of investigating a supernatural case when the client couldn’t know the true nature of the case. Were it someone else—almost anyone else—Quentin would have been more honest and up-front with her about what he had seen, even if he couldn’t tell her everything. But he didn’t know Lydia, and he didn’t trust her. Not until he knew why she had come to him and sold him such a false story.

  Then again, for all he knew, she was the cause of the force in the apartment, and she didn’t know that he knew it was there—that he had seen it. Perhaps she was the one who had hurt Jack. After all, he had only her word that the neighbor had seen him run out of the building. He might never have left the apartment. He might be trapped in the force that Lydia had created there.

  He had been relaxed enough, drinking his coffee, but now he was on edge again, looking at Lydia, warily. She wasn’t looking at him, lost deep in her own thoughts about whether or not to believe Whitney’s explanation of Jack’s behavior.

  It was true that Quentin had heard Whitney speak on the phone herself. But how did he know that was actually a woman named Whitney, or that Whitney was married to Jack? He only had Lydia’s word. What if all of this was some sort of attempt to get close to him? What if she had sought him out to draw him into a case, and when it hadn’t worked, she’d stepped up her game? When he’d felt that force in the apartment, it had made him want to shift. He’d had to fight hard against it, and although he’d been able to resist the urge easily enough, the urge had stayed with him the whole time he was in the apartment.

  “I don’t trust you,” Quentin said, the words blurting out of him, just as they had days ago when he’d reached the end of his rope with her in his office.

  Lydia turned towards him, taken aback by his blunt statement. She didn’t seem to know what to say at first, but her brow knit, and her lips turned almost comically beneath her tipped up nose. “What do you expect me to say about that?”

  “I expect you to give me some explanation for why you came to me on Monday with a false story,” Quentin said. “If you can’t give me that, then I don’t think that I’m the person who should be working on your case after all.”

  “Then maybe you’re not the person who should be working on my case,” Lydia said, dropping the fork that she had been using to stir the bacon around her plate while she thought.

  “You have no explanation, then?”

  “I don’t think I have one that I want to give.”

  Quentin put down his cup of coffee and placed his hands on the table. “Lydia, when a client and investigator work together, there has to be a level of trust. The only reason I can think of to explain why you came to see me on Monday is to trick or trap me into something. And now, I still don’t know what kind of case we have. Is your friend missing this time? Well, maybe not. Maybe you just got better at acting. Maybe you’re behind all of it. I don’t know, and the point is, as I sit here thinking about the whole thing, too many things don’t add up.”

  Lydia put her fork down. She seemed to struggle with herself over something. Her jaw twitched, and she shook her head, as though having a conversation with someone in her head. Her fingertips tapped against the table with a rapid rhythm.

  He gave her a few minutes, but when Lydia still offered him no explan
ation, Quentin sat straight in his chair and pressed his hands on the table, as he started to get up. He wasn’t walking away from what he had seen in the kitchen; he planned to investigate that on his own. And Lydia—well, she was not his client anymore. She was someone that he suspected might be behind the disappearance of Jack and who knew what else.

  Quentin started to walk away, not saying any goodbyes to the beautiful, fascinating woman, but before he got far, she cried out.

  “Jack!”

  Quentin turned instinctively, looking at Lydia, as she stood up from her chair, staring out the window of the café, her hand over her mouth.

  “Jack!” Lydia’s hand went up, waving wildly. “Jack!”

  Quentin followed her gaze, seeing the man she was staring at. He was good-looking with sandy-brown hair, tanned skin, and plenty of height. He was standing far across the street, and there was traffic, and pedestrians, and a glass window between them, but Jack turned his head and looked towards Lydia.

  She started to wave in earnest, tripping over her chair in her attempt to run around the table and towards the door of the coffee shop. Quentin watched curiously, and as he did, Jack fixed his wide eyes on Lydia, and then he turned and ran in the opposite direction, dashing as fast as he could around the pedestrians who stopped and stared at him.

  Chapter 16

  Lydia

  Lydia couldn’t believe it when Quentin started to walk away from her, even though she knew as well as he did that there was no trust between them at this point. But all of that was forgotten when she saw Jack walking down the street, just outside the café. Her heart jumped, and she became immediately frantic to get his attention. But it was even more shocking when Jack turned and made eye contact with her for the briefest of moments, then turned in the opposite direction and ran as fast as he could.

  She didn’t stop to think. Lydia just ran after him, pushing her way out of the café and darting across the road, dodging in between cars whose drivers honked loudly at her in protest. None of that mattered, nor did the many people who shouted at her to be careful for herself and the people around her. Lydia didn’t know where she was going. She had no mental map of the city of Baton Rouge, but she could see Jack, just ahead of her, and it didn’t matter where she was going if she still had him in her sight. She would keep running through the streets until she caught up to him, and when she caught up to him, she was going to demand answers from the man who had, at one moment, been a reliable friend, and at the next moment become something entirely different and unknown.