Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  It annoyed her, being reminded of all the nights she’d had to watch Jack and Lydia get along so well, engaging in their ridiculous pursuit of all things supernatural without ever knowing that the most powerful supernatural creature they could imagine was in the same house, putting on the act of loving wife and doting mother.

  Suddenly it occurred to Whitney that she could engage in a little psychological warfare, and her annoyance dissipated, a light gleaming in her eyes.

  “You know, I never loved Jack,” Whitney said, inspecting another nail and watching Lydia out of the corner of her eye. “And I’ve always despised you. Haunting our house like a little leech, always wanting something. To stay for dinner, or play with the kids, or show Jack some new find, or your latest blog.”

  Lydia winced, looking away as her reality crumbled away.

  “Jack never knew,” Whitney said. “I’m very good at what I do. He was oblivious while I wooed him, oblivious while I got him to marry me …oblivious to it all.”

  “Why did you pursue him then?” Lydia asked, her voice sounding hollow. “Why not just leave him alone?”

  Whitney gave her a bland look. “Oh, you’re so foolish. You think that this world’s version of Jack is the real one. Please. Don’t be ridiculous. This Jack, the one that you know, only exists because of me. He belongs to me. He is my plaything to do with as I please. The other Jack—the one who hates me—that’s the man who was born to his mother and father, and was raised a normal child with no idea that someday he would meet me and his life would change forever. Your version of Jack only has manufactured memories until twenty-five years old. Because that’s when he was created and sent into this world, taking part of me with him. If I didn’t woo him, then how was I to control him conveniently?”

  “So, you just lie to him all the time?”

  “I lie to everyone all the time,” Whitney said, getting up and walking around the room. “It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done. It’s what I’m best at. You believed that you and I were good friends, didn’t you? You believed me when I told you that Jack disappeared all the time. You’d probably have believed anything I told you because you trusted me, you foolish thing.”

  Lydia shook her head. “I didn’t believe you about that. I didn’t know why you said it.”

  Whitney bent down over Lydia, shoving her back on the bed as rage filled Whitney with no warning. It happened to her a lot—this overwhelming anger that made her feel as though she had to tear someone apart, or she might die herself. “You didn’t believe me?” Whitney snarled at Lydia, the idea that Lydia would dare to think that she—a worthless waste of space with no power—could know better than Whitney, got under her skin like nothing else. It made hate rip through her veins and flush in her cheeks. It made her heart pound and her hands clench. “You didn’t exactly go running after him, did you?” Whitney snapped, wanting Lydia to feel lower than the lowest creature.

  Lydia turned her head. She was pale and shaking slightly, but she wasn’t crying anymore.

  That pushed Whitney even further, and she slapped Lydia again, hitting her across the face as hard as she could.

  “You’re an idiot,” she said, shoving Lydia as she stood up, no longer hovering over her. “God, I should just kill you. It would be a favor to the world. I’m going to kill you as soon as I get Jack back. You’re not worth the oxygen you breathe.”

  Lydia didn’t respond, and she still wasn’t crying, even after being slapped. That fueled Whitney’s rage, and she spun on Lydia, shouting at her.

  “Do you hear me?” she asked. “You’re dead! You’re going to die in this room, you stupid little fool. That’s what happens to people who dare to question me—that’s what I do to the person foolish enough to cross me. Maybe you don’t believe me about that either,” Whitney said, her voice turning icy. “But you will. You absolutely will.”

  Chapter 29

  Lydia

  Lydia knew that she had to keep her head about her. She wanted to curl up on the bed and cry, grieving the loss of the woman she had thought was one of her closest friends, but she couldn’t. That would have to be for later. Right now, she had to figure out how to outsmart her, and then get away from a woman who had the power to lock down her body’s functions without so much as lifting a finger. There was no way that Lydia was going to be able to get away from Whitney by overcoming her physically. She would have to outsmart her.

  Luckily, Whitney seemed to be controlled by her rage and her impulses, and a clear head might then be the perfect weapon for Lydia. If Whitney could become that enraged just by a statement that Lydia hadn’t believed her lie about Jack, then how else could Lydia push her buttons, and would pushing her buttons cause Whitney to make a mistake that would allow Lydia her freedom?

  Possibly. But it also might cause Whitney to kill her. Except that Whitney needed Jack. Lydia wasn’t exactly clear on why Whitney needed Jack so much, because it certainly wasn’t affection or love. But Whitney needed Jack, which meant that Whitney needed Lydia for the trade—not that Lydia would ever agree to such a trade if she had her choice.

  Whitney was pacing the room, muttering to herself, her hands balled into fists at her sides.

  “Why did you tell me that story about Jack?” Lydia asked, forcing her voice to sound normal. “Why did you say that he ran away all the time?”

  “Because I knew the portal had activated,” Whitney said. “Do you think I let him just go off on his own without watching him? Of course, I watch him. He’s a valuable commodity.”

  Lydia felt a creepy shiver move over her, realizing that whenever she and Jack had spent time together, Whitney had always been watching them. There was nothing to hide, but now that she knew who Whitney truly was, it felt like a violation—knowing that this horrible woman had been spying on her.

  “I sent the canister in his bag. He wasn’t supposed to find it. Fool. As long as he has it with him, then I can see him. But he found it, and he opened it, activating the portal. I knew the minute that it had happened. But I didn’t know what the consequences would be. I didn’t think he’d be stupid enough to just walk through a shimmering curtain that appeared out of nowhere. But I underestimated just how stupid he is.”

  “Jack’s not stupid,” Lydia said, “but maybe I am, for trusting you.”

  “Spare me the victim speech,” Whitney said, still getting control of her anger again. “I had to keep you in the dark, of course. Until I knew more. You think I went to sleep last night peacefully. I haven’t slept for thirty-six hours. Too much research to do. I’ve never lost anyone in another world before, for God’s sake. I didn’t want you poking around. You’re always poking around. If you had just let me handle it instead of getting dragon shifters involved then I probably wouldn’t have to kill you at all.”

  “Terribly sorry to inconvenience you.”

  “It is an inconvenience,” Whitney said. “Do you realize how much of my power is sapped by killing someone? I could just kill you the human way, but then that’s such a mess to clean up.”

  Whitney really seemed to be wrestling with how best to kill Lydia, and she almost appeared to want sympathy and help in figuring it out. It was in that moment that Lydia realized that Whitney truly wasn’t rational. Whatever role she had been playing all these years was very effective and very convincing, but when she wasn’t in that role, she clearly could not be expected to act in any sort of predictable or reasonable way. Even as Lydia looked at the woman, it was as though she could see past all of the glamour and the fashion for the first time, and Whitney appeared almost hunched and tired, with her lips pressed in a thin, mean line and her eyes perpetually narrowed with deep crow’s feet that had never been there before.

  Her façade was gone, and this was what was left of her.

  Whitney kept pacing, muttering to herself in little whispers. Sometimes she would shake her fists and grit her teeth, almost stamping her feet as she thought about some new injustice. Then she would breathe deeply
and try to calm herself before resuming her pacing. But it would only be seconds before the anger started to rise in Whitney again, and her face started to turn beet red.

  Lydia glanced towards the door, then towards the phone. “I need to use the restroom. How long am I going to be here? I thought you wanted to trade me for Jack.”

  “You’re not moving a muscle,” Whitney said. “You can pee on the bed for all I care. Don’t ask questions. You’re as good as dead. Dead people don’t ask questions.”

  Lydia glanced towards the telephone again. She couldn’t just sit there. She had to try to do something—anything—that would help her situation. Waiting for Whitney to mutter to herself long enough to get it all figured out was torturous.

  Carefully, she tried shifting to her right on the bed. She was sitting on the edge of the left-hand side of the bed, near the corner. Her legs were facing the second bed, and her back was to the hotel room door. The phone sitting on the nightstand between the two beds was just to her right. She shifted carefully, sliding a few inches over and then holding still.

  Whitney didn’t notice.

  Lydia wasn’t sure exactly what she would do if she did get to the phone. She didn’t know Quentin’s number by heart. She could call the police, but she didn’t know if that would be any help. What could the Baton Rouge police force do to stop an unhinged sorcerer? She could call the front desk. But what could they do?

  She didn’t know. But moving towards the phone gave her some sense of purpose.

  Whitney’s head snapped up just as Lydia was moving a few more inches. Whitney strode towards her, and Lydia braced herself for another slap—or worse. But instead, Whitney snatched up the phone herself. She snapped her head towards Lydia, still apparently not noticing that Lydia was now much closer to the phone herself. “Give me Quentin’s number.”

  “I don’t know it,” Lydia said. “It’s in my phone, but I don’t have it memorized.”

  “Look it up.”

  Lydia held up her hands. “I don’t have my phone with me. It’s back at the agency.”

  Whitney glared at her, and Lydia felt a tightening around her neck, pain radiating up and down the sensitive muscles. Whitney was choking her somehow, and Lydia felt her lungs struggling to pull in air. She held her breath, trying to keep her body from struggling against Whitney’s power, hoping that it would help her conserve what breath she did have. She could feel her veins starting to throb and her lungs burning. She could feel her body’s demand for oxygen, as her head started to spin. The whole time, Whitney stared down at Lydia with a hateful look on her face, her eyes almost maniacal with joy at the knowledge that she was hurting her.

  Just when Lydia thought that she was going to pass out, Whitney released her, and Lydia fell back against the bed, gasping for air and clutching her aching throat.

  “You’re useless,” Whitney said, putting the phone down and stalking back over to her purse. She pulled her own cell phone out of it and looked up the agency’s number. “You’d better hope that someone answers, and that you’re as valuable to Quentin as you think you are, because if you can’t help me get Jack back then you’re no good to me.”

  Lydia rubbed her neck, watching Whitney, as she picked up the hotel phone again and dialed the agency’s number. She couldn’t believe that Whitney was actually going to call the agency. She couldn’t understand the woman’s plan, and she wondered if Whitney even had one or if she was just so used to getting whatever she wanted because she was more powerful than everyone else that she was now acting unhinged, after realizing that things were falling apart.

  Didn’t Whitney know that if Quentin found them, he would destroy her? Did she really think that she could take on five dragon shifters?

  Lydia glanced towards the door again as Whitney held the phone up to her ear, listening to it ring. She bit her lip, looking around the room to see if there was anything that she could use as a weapon if she could get her hands on it. Surely Whitney was as susceptible as anyone to a blow to the back of the head, and she was so cocky that she wasn’t being careful about monitoring Lydia’s movements. There was a small luggage rack. Could Lydia lift it?

  She was seriously considering it when Whitney spoke.

  “Put Quentin on the line. Now.”

  Lydia jerked her head back around, focused on Whitney again. She was holding her breath, despite the fact that her lungs were still burning from Whitney choking her.

  “Never mind who it is,” Whitney said. “I want to speak to him now. I have something important of his.”

  Lydia desperately wished that she could hear who was on the other side of the phone call, but she couldn’t. She didn’t even know whether she hoped that Whitney got through to Quentin or not. She wanted free of Whitney, but not at Jack’s expense. Would Quentin know that? Would he know that she wouldn’t want him to agree to trade Jack for Lydia?

  “Then I suggest you find him,” Whitney said, responding to some statement Lydia didn’t hear. “And I suggest you do it before I kill her.”

  Chapter 30

  Quentin

  Quentin was driving with both hands on the wheel, his fingers gripping so hard that his knuckles were white. Jack was silent beside him, knowing better than to talk to Quentin at a time like this. They had been in the car for thirty minutes, first driving around the area surrounding the agency, then making their way towards the apartment. Quentin had realized that Whitney would have needed a ride, so he’d called the cab company and asked for information on anyone picked up near the agency in the last hour. There had been a few pickups, but only one held any real possibility in his mind. The one that had gone way out of town, to the outskirts. A hotel address. He couldn’t imagine that Whitney would choose a hotel to act out whatever sort of horrific scenario she had in mind for Lydia, but it was his only lead. He had the others out searching as well, in addition to calling the police, and he’d had Jordan call in a favor with a very old, very unpredictable acquaintance who boasted psychic powers. There was nothing he wasn’t willing to try to find Lydia, and it was infuriating to him that he could do little more than drive around, wait, and try to outthink Whitney.

  His mind was conjuring up such horrible scenarios that he could hardly bear the silence in the car, and he wondered if Lydia was already dead. Or if she had been divided with a schism and sent into another world, her life span dividing in half. He would murder Whitney with his own hands when he found her, and God help her if she killed Lydia. He would destroy her.

  The intensity of his feeling shocked even him, but when he tested himself, he knew why he felt that way. Lydia was good. She just was. Yes, she had gone to him under false pretenses, and he hadn’t trusted her, but even then, before he knew what was really going on, he had wanted to trust her, and to like her. He had ignored so many red flags during the first day they’d spent together because he had just wanted to believe her. And after being with her in the bayou and showing her who he really was, after seeing her deep love for her friends, after seeing her want to do what was right …after seeing her laugh and listening to her work through things by spilling out all of her words. After making love to her and knowing what it felt like to be with someone who he felt so connected to.

  She meant something to him. Deep down, beyond his control—she meant something.

  The phone rang, and Quentin snatched it up in a second, glaring at Jack when the man looked sideways at him. “What? Tell me you have a lead.” It was the agency calling. Jordan was there, manning the office, and doing what she could from there.

  “I’m patching Whitney through,” Jordan said.

  In true Jordan fashion, she gave him no opener, and she gave him no time to process what she’d said. The phone clicked in his ear, and Whitney’s voice came over the line, sending chills down his spine.

  “Do you know where I am, and what I want?”

  “You’re in a hotel room,” he said, realizing that Whitney hadn’t concerned herself with truly hiding. She had just
needed a place far enough away to buy herself some time.

  “Very good,” Whitney said. “Your investigative instincts aren’t as dismal as I thought. I have your girlfriend, and she’s annoying the hell out of me. You have one of my commodities, and I want him back.”

  Jack tensed, but Quentin knew that he would trade the man in a minute. He would then fight to get him back because that would matter to Lydia. But his first priority was to get Lydia back safely.

  “I have him,” Quentin said. “I’ll agree to a trade. Tell me what your terms are.”

  In the background, Quentin heard Lydia’s voice, and his heart jumped in his chest. “Quentin, no! She’s going to kill me anyway!”

  There was a scuffling sound, then Whitney letting out a string of curses. Quentin could hear Lydia scream and his whole body tensed, but that was nothing compared to how terrible it was to hear her screams grow silent.

  Whitney returned to the phone. “Give me what I want, and you’ll get her back. That’s my deal. No negotiations. No stipulations. No demands. I want what I want.”

  “Don’t hurt her,” Quentin said, his voice a threatening growl. “If I even think that you’ve hurt her again, I’ll kill Jack right here and now. Jack—tell Whitney I’m serious. He’s right here with me.”

  Jack looked at Quentin with wide eyes, and Quentin glared at him, ordering him silently to comply.

  “He’ll kill me,” Jack said, his voice wavering enough that he sounded genuinely convinced. “I really think he will.”

  “If you kill him, I’ll kill her,” Whitney said, seething. “I’ll do it.”

  It horrified Quentin how much he believed her. “I want her returned to me. Safe. Unharmed. Whole. Anything less than that, and he’s dead. Now—tell me your terms. Where are you?”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “I’m changing plans. I’ll call you back.”