Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  And then, without warning, the sensation was gone, and Liam sank to his knees, coughing and gagging as he raggedly dragged oxygen into his lungs again.

  He didn’t know why Winnifred had stopped—until he heard Agnew’s voice.

  “Hello, Grandmother.”

  Chapter 23

  Hannah

  Hannah’s first instinct when Liam had started choking was to tackle Winnifred, but Agnew had put his hand on her arm and shook his head. “Let me,” he’d said, before walking forward.

  He’d greeted his grandmother, and Hannah had watched curiously as Winnifred immediately released Liam from the hold of her latest curse. As soon as Liam slumped in relief, Hannah rushed towards him, slipping her arm around him to prop him up.

  “Agnew, what on earth are you doing here?”

  “The better question is what are you doing here?” Agnew asked. “Is this where you should be days after Trinity’s death?”

  Winnifred’s eyes narrowed, darkly. “You presume to tell me how to cope with the loss of Trinity? If you had cared anything for her, you would have stayed here and supported her. You would have learned from her how to be a true Calhoun. That’s something you’ve never understood.”

  “I’m not here to discuss my qualifications as a Calhoun,” Agnew said. “I’m here to tell you that this man didn’t kill Trinity.”

  Winnifred scoffed. “Little do you know, down in your …” She trailed off, glancing back over at Liam. “Yes, of course. I should have known that when I found you in New Orleans you were reaching out to my neglectful and worthless grandson for help. How ingenious of you.”

  Hannah answered before Liam could. “Actually, I was reaching out to Agnew. Liam hired me to help him figure out who murdered Trinity. Because he didn’t. And since you keep trying to kill him for revenge, he has a vested interest in finding out who did.”

  For the first time, a flicker of doubt passed over Winnifred’s face. “This is all some elaborate plan to distract me,” she said. “You did kill Trinity. Of course, you did. She was terrified of you.”

  Hannah looked over at Liam, but he shook his head in confusion. “I don’t know why you would think that,” he rasped, his voice still raw from being choked. “I don’t know why she would be afraid of me. I hadn’t talked to her in months. Not since last fall. We don’t have the same friends. I haven’t even thought about her. She had no cause to be afraid of me.”

  Winnifred pulled her phone out of a pocket hidden away in her skirt. She swiped it open with surprising dexterity and then showed them a picture after picture. Hannah leaned forward, her high-powered vision easily scanning each page of text captured in the photos. It was Trinity’s journal. Several different entries. And in all of those entries, Trinity had written about how much Liam terrified her. How she couldn’t sleep at night, wondering if he was going to come after her. How he had stolen from her, and how he would steal from her again if he had the chance. How it was even possible that one day he would kill her. And there was nothing she could do about it.

  Stunned, Hannah leaned back, looking at Liam.

  “I—I don’t know what that is,” Liam said. He would have seen less of it than Hannah had, but clearly he had gotten the gist of what was contained in those pages. “That’s irrational. I never, ever gave Trinity a reason to be afraid of me. She wasn’t …I don’t know how to say this without sounding rude. She wasn’t important to me. Once we stopped seeing each other, I almost never thought of her again. When we were seeing each other, it was casual. She was dating other people. So was I. I didn’t—I swear. I didn’t have any reason to make her feel afraid!”

  Hannah was admittedly disconcerted, and that was likely written all over her face. She had one of those faces that was hard to control. But she also wasn’t willing to just take the journal entries at face value. She knew Liam, and she thought that, despite not having known him long, she knew him well. And there was nothing in his character or his personality that made her think that he was in the habit of terrifying women.

  And there was nothing about the pictures that proved to her that they were authentic. Winnifred could easily have made them up herself, although Hannah wasn’t sure why the woman would do such a thing.

  There had to be an answer, and that answer couldn’t simply be that Liam was lying to her, and that this whole time he had, in fact, murdered Trinity or given her reason to think that he would and could murder her if given the opportunity. Hannah just couldn’t believe it. But she could very much understand, now, why Winnifred was so set against Liam.

  She looked over at Agnew, trying to get a read on him. “Those are not real,” Hannah said, firmly. “Or, perhaps they are, but there’s another explanation. Another Liam. Or it’s a code name. A poorly chosen code name that she didn’t even connect to Liam O’Malley because they were so insignificant in each other’s lives.”

  Agnew didn’t respond at first, his eyes darting warily back and forth between Winnifred and Liam. “I’m not certain what to make of this. Grandmother, you found these pages in Trinity’s room?”

  “Of course, I did,” Winnifred snapped. She was still glaring at Liam, clearly unconvinced herself that he was innocent. “It’s all written right there in the text. Plain as the nose on your face.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Liam said, firmly. “I don’t know what else to say to you. It wasn’t me. I didn’t make her afraid. We parted on friendly terms. I didn’t steal from her. I didn’t kill her. I want to help you find who did.”

  Hannah placed her hand on Liam’s arm to settle him down. “There’s no sense in going around and around about this. Winnifred remains convinced that Liam is the killer, and Liam will continue to swear that he is not. I wouldn’t expect anything less, under the circumstances. What matters, though, is the truth. I would like to see the journal from the pictures.”

  Winnifred snorted with disdain. “Absolutely not. No. It’s destroyed. These are the only copies.”

  “That’s not true,” Agnew said, speaking directly to Hannah. “She never would have gotten rid of it. She’s craftier than she seems. And don’t be fooled by this wheelchair either, by the way. She’s strong as a horse, despite her age, and I’d be willing to bet she knows how to do far more with that phone than just take pictures.”

  Hannah had already suspected as much. “Winnifred, I’m going to keep thwarting your attempts to kill Liam. I have the power to do it, you know. You should understand that, given that he’s still alive after two of your death curses. So, all you’re doing is wasting time and energy, and frankly you probably don’t have much of either to spare. Or—you could work with me to help find your granddaughter’s true killer. I give you my word, here and now. If it’s Liam, I’ll help you kill him myself.”

  Liam gasped, as the words came out of Hannah’s mouth, and she didn’t look at him, not wanting to ruin the effect she was going for with Winnifred. Surely he had to know that she would never do such a thing, and so she wouldn’t have made the promise unless she was confident that Liam wasn’t the killer.

  With her mouth twisting into a wicked smirk, Winnifred darted her eyes between the two. “Interesting. That’s not a proposition I had expected.”

  “That makes two of us,” Liam said. “What the hell, Hannah?”

  Hannah still didn’t look at him. “All I’m asking is that, for right now, we take a little break from the death curses. What do you say? Can we focus instead on proving whether or not it was Liam?”

  “I like you,” Winnifred said, pointing her finger at Hannah. “You have a vicious streak. Don’t think I don’t know what’s between the two of you.” She gestured back and forth between them. “I can smell it festering in the air. All that pent-up …feeling. All that untapped desire. It’s sickening. And the fact that you would be willing to offer me his life all the same—yes, I like you very much, my dear. I’ll work with you.”

  Hannah refused to let any emotion show on her face. She simply nodded once. “Good. Then I
’m taking you as a woman of your word. No curses on Liam until we have definitive proof, and until I say that we’re ready to kill him. And if it’s not Liam, then we’ll go after whoever it really was. Together.”

  “Hannah, I’m not sure you know what you’re getting into,” Agnew said. “This is like signing a deal with the devil.”

  Winnifred’s wrinkled face wreathed in a smile. “Oh, she knows. And she’s doing it anyway. Deal, young woman. Yes, yes. You have a deal.”

  Chapter 24

  Liam

  Liam managed to wait until he and Hannah were alone in her car, waiting while Agnew got his grandmother taken care of in the community center, before he burst out with the full force of his anger. “What the fucking hell, Hannah?” he demanded, spluttering the words, as he turned in the passenger seat to stare at her. “Are you really that sleep-deprived? Or do I just mean that little to you? Goddamn—that was cold!”

  Hannah looked briefly shocked, but then her brow furrowed, and she reached a hand over to touch his arm. “Liam, no. You’ve misunderstood.”

  “Misunderstood?” he asked, not letting her continue. “I think I understood all of that to mean that you and Winnifred are teammates now, investigating me together, and on the off-chance that it’s not me, then instead of killing me, you’ll help her kill someone else. But if it is me, then you’ll kill me for her. Point out to me where I went wrong in that, and while you’re at it, explain to me how, all this time, you’ve accused me of being the one who could never learn to love, or commit, or settle down happily with someone, when it’s actually you who, at the first sign of trouble, cuts all ties with me, joins the enemy, and makes it very clear that whatever was between us was purely physical, and you got your fill of it last night.”

  The whole time he was going off on his tirade, Hannah sat perfectly still. She had withdrawn her hand from his arm as soon as he’d started, and now it rested on her own lap, pressing into her leg. The whiteness of her knuckles was all that betrayed how upset she was. “Are you finished?” Hannah asked, quietly, when he finally paused for a breath.

  “Oh, I’m more than finished,” Liam said. “In fact, I don’t even know why I got in this car with you. You can sit here and wait for Winnifred to be checked out on your own. From here on out, you and I are not working together, we don’t know each other, and I don’t want anything to do with you.”

  He yanked the car door open and got out, stepping out into the mild morning sun, and realizing that he didn’t even know what part of town he was in. And he didn’t have a car. Or any idea of what to do now.

  But he started walking anyway, determined to put as much distance between himself and Hannah as he possibly could. He had never felt betrayal this strong before, and he didn’t know what to do with the emotions that were welling up inside of him. He didn’t know how to process the fact that he had genuinely believed that Hannah cared about him, and that she was a good person. To believe that as much as he had, and then hear her throw him under the bus was more painful than he could have imagined. And when he finally got far enough away that he was ready to hail a cab, he gave the driver the address of his favorite bar. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t going to be open. Misti would be there, getting things ready for the day, and she would let him in and give him drinks until he felt better about his life.

  Although, there might not be enough alcohol for that anywhere.

  It was a short enough ride to his bar, and Liam ignored the cab driver who asked if he was sure this was where he wanted to be at 10:30 in the morning. He threw a twenty from his wallet at the man and made his way to the side entrance, banging loudly on the door. “Misti? Hey—it’s me. Let me in!”

  There was a long pause, and Liam leaned his forehead against the door, his fists clenched at his side. Then the door opened, and he almost pitched forward, catching his hand on the doorjamb at the last moment, so that he was able to straighten himself. “Hey.” Misti stood there, dressed in cut-off denim shorts and a tight-fitting t-shirt, her flame-red hair pulled into a messy bun, and freckles dotting along her cheeks and nose. “I need a drink.”

  “Well, I hate to break it to you, big guy, but we’re not open,” Misti said, still blocking the doorway. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you have any booze at home?”

  “Don’t want to go home,” Liam said, thinking about almost bleeding out on the floor of his bathroom. He shuddered, and it started to become real to him just how close he had come to dying over and over again the past few days. And how he might still die, because now Hannah wasn’t even working with him. She was working with a woman who had hard evidence that couldn’t be real that Trinity had been terrified of him, and had thought that he would kill her. It was too much. “Please, Misti …” He looked down at her face. “Let me in and give me a drink. Give me twenty drinks. I’ll pay you double.”

  Misti frowned, stepping aside to let him in. “I’m worried about you, O’Malley. You look like shit.”

  “I feel like shit,” Liam said, walking over towards the bar and sinking down onto a stool, his head in his hands. “Whiskey. Straight up. No rocks. No anything.”

  Misti rounded the bar, fetching a bottle from one of the back shelves. She poured him a drink and slid it towards him. “Wanna talk?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  He raised his glass towards her before knocking back the liquid in one gulp. “Is that not obvious?”

  “It’s obvious you want to get rip-roaring drunk, yes,” Misti said, “but it’d be easier and cheaper to do that at home unless you’re looking for something else as well.”

  He leered at her suggestively, waggling his eyebrows. “You offering, doll?”

  “Don’t do that,” Misti said, shaking her head. “That’s not how we do things, Liam, and you know it. Yeah, you can flirt with me, and I’ll flirt back. That’s all in good fun. But don’t be a sleaze ball with me because that’s not you, and I get enough of it from my patrons every night.”

  “That’s because you’re so fucking beautiful,” Liam said, shoving his glass at her and motioning for more. “If you weren’t so goddamn beautiful, men wouldn’t say those things to you.”

  “Oh, so it’s my fault,” Misti said, pouring him another and sliding the glass back. “Genetically I was given pleasant-looking features, and so now it’s my fault that men say sleazy things to me.”

  Liam knocked back the second drink and asked for a third. “No …” He watched as she poured more amber liquid. “It’s not your fault. It’s their fault if they’re sleazy. But it’s your fault that every man who looks at you wants you.”

  Misti shook her head, handing him back his drink, refilled. “No, it’s not. And this is your last one.”

  He swallowed the whole thing in two gulps this time before handing her the glass again. “Don’t be like that.”

  “I absolutely will be like that, Liam. Now, tell me what’s bothering you, or I’m calling you a cab and kicking you out.”

  Liam grinned. “Calling me a cab? Why would you call me a cab? I’m not a cab!”

  “No, you’re a fool.”

  He got off his stool, weaving slightly on his feet. He had a very high tolerance, even for whiskey, but he hadn’t had anything to eat, and he’d knocked three full glasses back in quick succession. The alcohol had gone to his head fast and powerfully, and as he rounded the bar to walk to Misti, watching her watch him skeptically, the room spun around him.

  “Be careful, Liam,” Misti said.

  “Listen,” Liam said, holding his hand out to her. “I was reminded today why I don’t get involved with anyone. Ever. Why I like to have fun but don’t need … all the other stuff. It’s because people will always let you down. Always. Every. Single. Time. It’s just not worth it. All the feelings. All the attachment. All the …tenderness you feel. It isn’t worth it.”

  Misti took his hand and anchored it on the bar, so he could steady himself. “I’m sorry so
meone hurt you, Liam. That’s worth a couple or three drinks, for sure.”

  “I had it right before,” Liam said, staring down at her, her face swimming in front of him. “Keep to myself. Don’t get involved. Just …have fun …” Liam leaned down to kiss Misti, reaching out to bring her closer to him.

  When he hit the floor, he had no idea how he had gotten there.

  Chapter 25

  Hannah

  Hannah sat stunned in her car for a long moment after Liam stormed away from her. She was completely blown away by his reaction, and she didn’t understand how they had gotten things so wrong. Of course, she had no intention of helping Winnifred kill Liam. It had never occurred to her that he would think that. Why would he consider her statement anything more than a vote of confidence from her that she knew there was no way he was the killer?

  And had he actually accused her of being the cold and unavailable one? They both knew that was him. She had told him over and over again how susceptible her heart was, and how she couldn’t keep her emotions out of her relationships. Did he really think that, after the night they had shared, she didn’t have deep feelings for him? He was the one who didn’t want to get involved with deep feelings! He had told her over and over again that he wasn’t that kind of guy, yet now he was accusing her of being the one who couldn’t let her guard down.

  Her hands tightened on the steering wheel as she saw Agnew and his grandmother walking towards the car. She couldn’t deal with Winnifred right now. With Liam beside her, yes. Then Winnifred was manageable. But feeling this way and having no idea where Liam had gone? She wasn’t up for that.