Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Olivia’s eyes widened. “Oh. What kind of case?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that,” Victoria said, “but we’re running operations here. You can’t talk to anyone about it, okay? You know the drill. Never talk to your friends about my work.”

  “I know, I know,” Olivia said, looking up at Barrett, as he stepped into her line of sight. “Whoa. Mom.”

  Victoria glanced back at him, and Barrett took the opportunity to step forward and offer the young girl his hand. “Hello, Olivia. It’s nice to meet you. My name is Barrett Rockwell.”

  “Wait, like the Barrett Rockwell?” Olivia asked, grabbing his hand and shaking it firmly. “Whoa.”

  “I’m the only one I know of,” he said, lightly, knowing that Victoria would want things downplayed as much as possible.

  “Mom, you must be working on an off-the-books case,” Olivia said, then quickly held up her hands. “I know, I know—no questions. Is there a bathroom here?”

  Barrett pointed down the hall. “To the left, first door.”

  “Thanks.”

  Olivia disappeared into the bathroom, and Barrett looked down at Victoria with a slight smile. “She’s great. Looks just like you. And very observant.”

  “Too observant,” Victoria said with a slightly wry smile. “But, yes, she’s incredible. She has always been my rock. It’s rare that she complains at all about the somewhat …disjointed life we live.”

  “You clearly go out of your way to make time and stay connected to her,” Barrett said, feeling strangely drawn to Victoria, as she softened, thinking about her daughter.

  “There’s nothing more important,” Victoria said simply, lifting one shoulder. “And there never will be. Olivia changed my life in every way, and all of them were for the better. Sometimes I’m too hard on her, I’m sure, because my parents were never hard enough on me and well… I ended up seventeen and pregnant. I’ve always demanded a lot out of her, but I hope I’ve also given her a strong foundation of love, and trust, and support.”

  Barrett listened to Victoria as she talked, realizing that she wasn’t so much talking to him specifically as just talking about her daughter. When she stopped talking, she flushed slightly at how open she had been about her feelings, and then she looked away, clearing her throat. “Anyway.”

  Barrett reached a hand out and touched her arm. “I shared the most important thing in my life with you earlier today,” he said, quietly. “I think that you’ve just reciprocated. I’m glad that you did, and I’m glad that you’re on my side, and that your daughter has a parent like you.”

  Victoria looked up at him, surprised, and their eyes met and held for a long moment, interrupted only by the light knock at the door seconds before Hannah walked in with Liam right behind her.

  “Hey,” Hannah said, hugging Barrett. “How are you?” She saw Victoria over Barrett’s shoulder and pulled back. “Oh, hello.”

  Victoria nodded to her. “Hello.”

  Ryan and Angela followed quickly behind, carrying several bags of takeout, and then Jordan arrived with Wes in tow, while Quentin showed up last with Lydia. At some point Olivia came out of the bathroom and there were introductions all around and plenty of chatting as people settled in, and got plates, and began to eat.

  Everyone knew to keep things light around Olivia, and they did a good job of it, asking her questions about school and getting to know Victoria as well, as they all ate. Barrett listened with half of his attention, as the other half was perpetually focused on the task that lay ahead of them, and the countdown that Victoria had provided. There was a woman in his garage, and she needed answers. He needed them, too, or else this happy family atmosphere that they were all lingering in for Olivia’s sake was going to disappear very quickly.

  What he had here was worth fighting for, and he intended to win the battle and the war this time.

  Chapter 14

  Victoria

  Victoria said goodbye to Olivia outside on the porch, hugging her daughter tightly and giving her a list of instructions about staying at her friend’s house, keeping up with her schoolwork, checking in regularly, and making responsible choices. She always hated having to spend multiple days away from Olivia, but it was necessary sometimes in her line of work. And Victoria knew that it was going to be worth it this time, but she still hated to send Olivia away.

  Her daughter, on the other hand, was a confident, independent girl and she headed out to her car without a care in the world, happy enough to spend a few days with her second family, as she often called them.

  Victoria made sure that Olivia got safely on her way, then she went back into the house where Barrett and his friends were all waiting for her. When she walked into the room, everyone turned to look at her, and the chatter died down. It was time, clearly, to address what they had all been ignoring for the last hour—why she was here, and what she was going to do.

  Clearing her throat, Victoria crossed her arms over her chest and looked at each one of them, taking control of the situation. “I’ve been fully briefed. I know everything. About Barrett. About you guys. About what kind of operation you’re really running.”

  Jordan put her hand up. “When you say everything …”

  “I mean everything,” Victoria said, letting her eyes move towards the painting of the green dragon for a brief moment before they returned to Jordan.

  “I see,” Jordan said. “Well that rounds us out then. Everyone in here knows. A year ago, this was a well-kept secret.”

  “It still is and will be,” Barrett said. “Victoria isn’t going to tell anyone.”

  “As I was saying,” Victoria said, making sure that the focus remained on her, so that everyone in the room understood that she had made this decision herself. “I have been fully briefed. I’ve seen the body. I understand that Barrett feels as though someone is trying to set him up or sabotage him in some way. And I’ve agreed to delay reporting any of this to the police for forty-eight hours …starting from now. We’ll investigate independently, and if Barrett is right that someone is setting him up, we’ll turn that over to the proper channels.”

  Again, Jordan raised her hand, and Victoria got the impression that the tiny woman was quite the spitfire.

  “Yeah, so the proper channels don’t always work that well for us,” Jordan said. “Usually when we have a case, it’s the kind of stuff that doesn’t fit into the proper channels. If someone is setting Barrett up, they’re not doing it because he’s an ordinary Baton Rouge kind of guy. They’re doing it because he’s a shifter.”

  “We can worry about that when we figure out what’s going on,” Barrett said. “The important thing right now is that Victoria is helping us.”

  The man named Quentin put up a finger. “Sorry—this is going to sound rude. I don’t actually mean it to, but it seems inevitable. Why do we need Victoria’s help? We’re private investigators and dragon shifters.”

  “Because we’re not in the habit of imprisoning people,” Barrett said, dryly. “I haven’t filled all of you in on this part yet, but when Victoria stopped by earlier, the garage door opened of its own accord. And so did the freezer door. She saw the body.”

  Hannah’s eyes widened. “What? Really?”

  “Okay, if that’s not proof that there is someone setting Barrett up, I don’t know what would prove it,” Ryan said. “If Barrett was orchestrating all of this, then why would he reveal himself to Victoria?”

  Victoria nodded. “I’ve thought about the same thing. Trust me. It was one of the things that convinced me to actually agree to something that violates the principles I hold pretty dear—upholding the law, and the position I hold with the city of Baton Rouge.” She looked around at each one of them. “The point is—I’m here. You’re here. We have a puzzle to solve. We don’t need to be wasting time figuring out who to trust and why—not now. It’s well-established that the more time that goes by after a crime like a murder is committed, the less likely you are to figure out what’s be
en going on. So, let’s get started.”

  “I agree with that,” Barrett said. “But first—guys, what happened at the agency today?”

  Jordan grimaced. “Lots of interference from the elders. Lots of questions asked about why we were all coming and going. They wanted to know what we were doing, if we were in contact with you, and what was going on.”

  “We didn’t tell them a thing,” Ryan said. “Obviously. Your dad—he’s just trying to stay out of the way, I think. He’s in a tough spot.”

  “Norman came in,” Quentin said. “Gave everyone quite the dressing down—all the elders, I mean.”

  Victoria was lost, and she looked at Barrett.

  “They removed me from my position because they suspect me of being corrupt, inept, or both,” he reminded her. “Whoever put that body here has been after me for some time.”

  “And clearly they’re invisible,” Hannah said, “or they have the ability to become invisible. Because they’ve never shown up on a camera, and it must have been them today who opened the garage door and the freezer lid, right?”

  Victoria blinked at the sweet-looking, pretty brunette. “Invisible? Really?”

  “You have to get used to the fact that there are a lot of things about our world that you don’t understand,” Barrett said, walking over to stand beside her. Around them, a few of the non-shifter partners like Lydia and Wes started to clear up dishes, moving quietly, so that they didn’t interrupt. “We have to consider things like …invisibility, and magic, and all manner of things. I think Hannah’s hypothesis is very possible. Whoever is doing this clearly has a way to go undetected.”

  “Who doesn’t like you?” Victoria asked, putting the investigation back into an arena she was more comfortable with. She didn’t know how to process looking for someone who was invisible, but she knew how to look for someone who was holding a grudge. “Do you have a list of people who would consider you an enemy?”

  Barrett looked around at his friends. “You guys might know that better than me. Very few people would be willing to come after me directly, but people might have said something that you would have heard about.”

  “Everyone has a lot of respect for Barrett,” Hannah said. “Ever since he was a kid, everyone knew that he would grow up and take over the agency. He’s an only child, see, so there was no one other than him to do it. It’s his …destiny.”

  Ryan nodded. “Yeah, I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about him, personally. Until now, obviously, when the eldership is calling him corrupt and inept. But, to be fair, they took a long time to decide that they had to act.”

  “This eldership,” Victoria said. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s the oldest generation of dragon shifters,” Hannah said. “See, the way it works is, first you’re in the agency stage. You want to be one of the five people who are working at the agency. Not everyone can be, obviously, but that’s the goal. Then, you get a bit of a break from leadership for a while, while you’re middle-aged. Once it’s not your kids but, rather, your grandkids involved in the agency, you join the eldership—the oldest generation. Then you help to oversee the agency and the younger generations.”

  Victoria shook her head. “Okay, I guess I follow that. How many …shifters are there exactly?”

  “We don’t tend to produce a lot of children,” Barrett said. “It would be really hard to hide ourselves if families were having three and four kids apiece. So, most of us are only children—or we might have one sibling. That’s generally how it works. So …there are seven families in the Rockwell Clan. The two who don’t have a place at the agency …their children have moved off. It often happens that way. Altogether there aren’t more than twenty of us in the city.”

  “That’s a lot of dragon shifters for one city,” Victoria said, astounded that she had lived her whole life not knowing what was going on right underneath her own nose. “Does that mean that your grandparents …” she gestured at Barrett’s friends who were sitting around on various pieces of furniture. “Your grandparents are the ones who have taken over and kicked Barrett out?”

  Quentin nodded. “Yeah. But the thing is …those of us who are part of the agency, we sort of reprioritize our family ties. We become a family, in and of ourselves, and that sort of …takes precedence to our biological family ties.”

  “Okay,” Victoria said, “and …when you have kids, they’ll be in the agency, and they’ll be their own family.”

  “More or less,” Barrett said, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “Although, we’re the first generation where everyone who has partnered has partnered with a non-shifter. It’ll be interesting to see what comes next. But that’s a problem for a different day. The point is that if I don’t figure out who’s after me, our entire system gets wrecked, and I can’t let that happen.”

  Victoria nodded, refocusing on the immediate issue. “I was trying to figure out if there might be anyone within your …Clan that would have it out for you. That seems most logical, right?”

  Barrett looked around at his friends. “I don’t want to think that it’s possible, but I can’t say that it’s not.”

  Everyone looked at each other a bit uncomfortably, shifting around.

  “Obviously it’s one of the Clan,” Jordan said, reaffirming Victoria’s assessment that she was the one who liked to speak openly. “I mean, who else would know about what’s really going on at the agency? Who else would be able to be invisible? Who else would know the dynamics of the situation well enough to understand how to push the right buttons? It’s got to be one of us.”

  “So …can you go invisible?” Victoria asked, flickering her eyes over at Barrett.

  “No,” he said, sounding grim in the wake of Jordan’s analysis. “We can’t. But invisibility is easily achieved through a spell or an artifact. Jordan is right. One of us would know how to get someone to create an object or a cloak that would create invisibility.”

  Victoria nodded. “okay. Then …the question becomes, who do you not trust? Don’t think. Just answer.”

  The five shifters looked around the room at each other, none of them offering a name.

  “We’re a tight-knit group,” Barrett said. “Not just the agency people, but all of us. I can’t think of anyone who I would say I didn’t trust.”

  Victoria didn’t believe that for a second, but she also knew that Barrett might need some help identifying who he had a gut feeling about, and he might not be able to do it very successfully in front of his friends. Years of interrogation and witness prep practice had taught her that it was important to get a person alone in a room and gently ease them into a space where they could come to the right conclusion for themselves.

  She needed to talk to Barrett alone. Having his friends here was slowing down her process and making things more cumbersome.

  “I think that we should disband for the evening,” Victoria said, taking everyone by surprise.

  “We just started,” Jordan said, “and you’re the one with the time limit, right? Plus, the woman in the freezer is sort of …time sensitive.”

  “It’s getting late,” Victoria said.

  Quentin glanced at his phone. “It’s not even 8:00.”

  Barrett was looking at her quizzically, and she looked back at him, hoping that he would decide to trust her instincts the way that she had decided to trust him.

  And it seemed that he did, even though he didn’t understand. “Guys—maybe it would be better if Victoria and I tackle this tonight, and we come back when we have more to tell you. It’s going to be a long night, and you all have an agency to run in the morning. Not to mention your own cases and …” he gestured around at the partners who were sitting, quietly watching. “People to spend time with.”

  It was Wes who stood up, putting his hand on Jordan’s shoulder. “Babe, that’s the signal for us to go. Having everyone here in the same place all talking is slowing things down.”

  Jordan stood up with him. “Yeah, okay. Guys, dis
band.” She waved her hands at everyone. “Barrett—we’ll keep working on our assignments and keep our phones handy. Call us if you need us.”

  There was a good bit of chatter and chaos, as everyone moved towards the door, and Victoria stepped back out of the way, letting the group of friends, the Clan, all say their goodbyes and give their well wishes and make their promises of talking soon.

  When the door finally closed behind the last person, Barrett turned to look at her. “I hope you’re not suspicious of any of them. Obviously you wanted them gone. Is that because you think one of them is behind this? Because they’re not.”

  “I don’t think they’re behind it,” Victoria said, “but I do think that it’s harder for you to focus with all of them here. And maybe hard for you to admit who you do suspect.”

  Something flickered over his face, and Victoria knew that she had struck some sort of chord.

  “Am I right?” she asked.

  Barrett sighed and walked over to the couch, sitting down and flopping back against the cushions, his big, muscled legs sprawled out in front of him. “I don’t want to admit who the first person who comes to mind is.”

  Chapter 15

  Barrett

  The moment that Victoria had asked him who he would first suspect, Barrett had seen a face in his mind. And that face had shocked him—shocked him so much that he’d thought that it couldn’t possibly be right. He must have just thought of this person because that person was so familiar to him. Like a presence, constantly with him.

  Except …they weren’t that close, so that didn’t make any sense at all, and he couldn’t come up with any rational reason for why this person’s face had flashed into his mind other than the fact that he did actually subconsciously suspect him of involvement.

  And Barrett didn’t know how to deal with that.