Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  But Vincent kept talking. “After all, think of how many people have been exposed to our secret—the secret that Barrett says he’s protecting for us. Look at his friends. He allows them to tell their boyfriends and their girlfriends about their true identities, completely contradicting the founding principle that we keep our identities secret.”

  “The founding principle of the Rockwell Clan is that we don’t advertise our identities,” Barrett said, “but more importantly—that we don’t advertise our identities in the course of protecting the people of Baton Rouge, so that we can effectively protect the people of Baton Rouge. My agents have not been careless with that responsibility. In fact, they risk their lives regularly in order to investigate supernatural occurrences and protect our clients. They do their jobs, and they do them well, and I will not stand here and let you question them. Question me all you want—but you leave them out of it.”

  Jordan, standing in the crowd, spoke up. “Don’t blame Barrett for decisions we’ve made. If we’ve told our partners the Rockwell secret, it’s on us—not on him.”

  Barrett held his hand up to tell Jordan that her defense of him was not necessary. “I’m the head of the agency. I’ll answer for everything that happens there, including but not limited to, my agents’ right to take life partners and to reveal the Rockwell secret to that trusted life partner. They’re hardly the first to do so.”

  “But all four of your agents …,” Vincent said, “and you now. We know that you’ve brought a police officer into our circle. That you’ve revealed yourself to her.”

  Barrett winced inwardly as a gasp rippled through the crowd. That was not going to go down well. Although the Rockwell Agency had always made sure to preserve friendly relationships with the Baton Rouge police, the two entities were almost inherently at odds with each other. Everyone knew and accepted that it was imperative to keep the police from knowing too much about what exactly the Rockwell Clan agents did.

  “Victoria Crenshaw is my life partner,” Barrett said. The words just came right out of him, unplanned and unprecedented. But they felt right. It was jumping the gun. In fact, it was jumping five or six guns. Ten guns. It was way, way ahead of anywhere that he and Victoria were, and he knew that. If she had been standing here with him, she probably would have objected, or panicked, or run away from him.

  But she wasn’t standing here, and he needed to declare himself to the people who followed him. He needed to keep his promise to be open with them, and he was going to right here and now.

  “Victoria is a police officer,” he said, looking around at the people again. “And I did reveal myself to her. She is trustworthy, and she cares about justice, and she cares about making sure that the Rockwell Clan pulls through this moment of chaos. And she cares about me. And I care about her.”

  “She’s not his life partner,” Gideon said, his voice still filled with so much rage that it almost shook. “He barely knows her.”

  “I know her,” Barrett said. “I know her better than I know you, Dad. I trust her more than I trust you. You have let your own interests cloud your judgment for years, and you have put keeping the Rockwell family in power and in prestige above doing what is best for the Rockwell Clan. I revealed myself to Victoria—yes. I admit that. I’ll answer for that. But you can be damn sure that I’ll make sure you answer for lying, and hiding, and manipulating in order to stay in power.”

  Barrett turned back to the crowd one more time. “What would you rather have? A leader who isn’t perfect but admits it, or a leader who forces you all into silence to hide his own imperfections? Those are your choices, and I’ll go by what you decide.”

  Chapter 29

  Victoria

  Victoria gave herself a few minutes to obsess over how foolish she had been to let her guard down for even a minute. She was angry with herself for not considering that Olivia could be in danger. She was angry with herself for taking the risk of going outside, even though she had known from the first moment that Adele appeared, that there was something not right. She was furious with herself for thinking that she would be able to take the woman on, if necessary. But she knew that when she’d submitted to Adele’s orders and gotten in the trunk, she hadn’t had a choice.

  Adele was like Barrett. She was a dragon shifter. She had incredible strength and speed, and Victoria would be no match for her. With no way to overpower and immobilize the woman, she couldn’t take the risk that Adele really would follow through on her promise to use Olivia as a weapon. If it was going to be either her or Olivia in Adele’s clutches, then it was going to be Victoria.

  But just because she’d gotten into the trunk without a fight didn’t mean that she was just going to let Adele do whatever she wanted to. Victoria was already racking her brain for strategies that would allow her to escape Adele without putting Olivia in danger. At the same time, she was trying to keep some sense of direction, counting the turns of the car in her mind and attempting to gauge the distance between them. She knew that there was no way that her estimations were going to be accurate, but if she could at least figure out the approximate distance that Adele was driving, it might help her once she got to wherever they were going—and escaped.

  Victoria was just starting to zero in on her distance calculations, when the car began to slow. And then it stopped. She thought they must be at another stoplight—they’d hit a couple already—but the engine shut off, and the door opened. Footsteps rounded the car, heading towards Victoria, and she realized with a start that they were already at the place that Adele was taking her.

  They weren’t far from Barrett’s house at all. Had it even been fifteen minutes? She didn’t think so. Did that mean that they were still well within Baton Rouge? That there were neighbors nearby? If she was loud enough, would they hear her and then help? If she managed to get away when Adele opened the trunk, would there be a witness there to help her?

  Was Olivia far enough away from them that Victoria could count on getting to her first, before Adele did?

  It was that last question that haunted her mind, and she knew that she couldn’t risk running the moment that Adele opened the trunk. She would have to slip away at some point. She would have to wait until Adele wouldn’t notice she was gone for long enough for Victoria to get to Olivia.

  When the trunk opened, light came pouring in, and Victoria winced. She started to move, but realized that fifteen minutes was long enough to get stiff and sweaty when you’re curled over on yourself in the trunk of a car.

  “Get out,” Adele said. “Carefully and quickly. Smooth movements. Don’t draw attention to yourself.”

  Victoria looked up at the woman. She wasn’t going to run away, but she also didn’t want to appear to be a pushover. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because my brother is watching Olivia right now. She’s wearing a green tank top and denim shorts, and she’s at school. This is her lunch period. She has early lunch, and she’s sitting with her friends. Talking. Eating an apple. He has his instructions. Stay with her, on the sidelines, and if I give the order, kill her. And if he doesn’t hear from me by the time she gets out of school …follow her. And kill her.”

  Victoria’s blood ran cold as this murderous woman described her daughter to her. She knew that Adele could be telling the truth and that Cade, Adele’s lackey, could be watching Olivia right at this moment, waiting on the order to take her out.

  Victoria got out of the car, carefully and quickly, just like Adele said to. But she was shaking with anger and fear. “Don’t you touch her. You leave my daughter out of this, and you deal with me. Directly. Woman to woman. If you don’t, you’re a coward.”

  “I’m not a coward. I’m a pragmatist,” Adele said with a cold smile. “And if it’s in my best interest to kill your daughter, I will. So, you should be pragmatic too, and you should do what I say. Now—get inside.”

  For the first time, Victoria looked around to see where she was. The threat against Olivia had distracted her initially
, and she hadn’t noticed that they were standing in a parking lot littered with cars. A tall apartment building loomed above them. It was made out of brick and dotted with windows, and under other circumstances it might have been charming. Right now, though, it symbolized a prison.

  Albeit, a very well-populated prison.

  Victoria began to walk towards the building, Adele striding casually beside her as though they were old friends stopping by her place for brunch and a chat.

  “You won’t get away with this,” Victoria muttered to Adele under her breath. “There are people in there, you know. They’re going to hear whatever you do. They’re going to see me.”

  “That won’t matter.”

  That was an ominous statement, but Victoria couldn’t respond to it. They had reached the door, and a father with three small kids was making his way out of it, crowding the space and creating all sorts of havoc and noise as Victoria and Adele waited to get in. Adele seemed unfazed by the encounter, but it put Victoria’s nerves even more on edge. She was a cop, and yet she was walking with a murderer past a group of small, innocent children, and she was saying nothing. She was doing nothing to protect anyone.

  Protect your daughter first, her mind said to her. That’s your job right now. Protect Olivia.

  Eventually the family passed, and Victoria was able to walk into the building, Adele close behind her. It was a standard building, with both stairs and elevators that reached the top floor—the eighth floor. There was wallpaper on the walls and the carpet was thick and a nondescript beige. There was a faint smell in the building, though Victoria didn’t know what to attribute it to. All in all, it was a decent place, if a little shabby and worn.

  Adele wasn’t interested in allowing Victoria any further assessment of the space. “Get in the elevator. Eighth floor.”

  Victoria’s heart sank. She had been hoping that they would be in the middle of the building, with plenty of opportunities for other people to hear her. But going to the very top of the building surely meant that they were going to be more isolated.

  Nonetheless, she pressed the button for the eighth floor, and she stood by Adele as the doors closed and the elevator began to crawl its way up.

  Almost conversationally, Adele turned to Victoria and spoke. “How old do you think I am?”

  The question took Victoria by surprise, but she made a reasonable guess, based on all that Norman and Barrett had told her. “Late forties,” she said, scanning the woman’s face. Adele was not unattractive, although it was hard for Victoria to even admit something as remotely positive as that about the woman who was threatening her daughter and who had taken her captive. She did look like she could be related to Barrett now that Victoria took a closer look, although the resemblance was not so striking that it had occurred to her from the beginning. They both had dark hair and dark eyes, and there was a similarity in their mouths. Adele somehow had some of Barrett’s mannerisms, like the little eyebrow twitch that happened whenever she was really focused.

  “It would have been in your better interest to flatter me,” Adele said, “but you’re right, of course. Because you know far too much about me, don’t you, Victoria Crenshaw?”

  “I could say the same about you,” Victoria about you. “Apparently you know where my daughter is.”

  “That’s only the beginning of what I know about you,” Adele said as the elevator doors dinged open, and she stepped out of them, snapping her fingers for Victoria to follow her. “Come on—we don’t have all day. We’re only stopping here to wait for Cade. I don’t trust him to find our new location on his own, so he’s going to meet us here, where he’s familiar.” Adele turned to look over her shoulder at Victoria, raising a finger. “Don’t be comforted by that now. Cade is excellent at following concrete instructions—like kill the girl you’re watching. He’s just not as adept at things like …navigation.”

  Victoria’s jaw clenched at the mention of her daughter’s potential death. “Somehow, that’s not comforting at all.”

  Adele ushered Victoria into the apartment, which was scantily furnished and largely barren. It lacked any semblance of personality, and the only word that could be adequately used to describe the space was …messy.

  “Why did you ask me how old I think you are?” Victoria asked, stepping over a pair of pants on the living room floor and turning back towards Adele. “What difference does that make?”

  “Oh, yes,” Adele said, striding into the kitchen, which opened directly into the family room, with no division between the two rooms. She began to pour herself a glass of red wine from the bottle that sat on the counter. “Thank you for reminding me. You’re right that I’m almost fifty years old. You’re a smart woman. What does that tell you about me, and why I’m here?”

  Victoria was used to making inferences based on very little information, and she knew where Adele was going. “It means you’ve been waiting a long time for this, and you’re determined.”

  “Excellent,” Adele said, taking a sip of her red wine, despite the fact that it was not yet noon. “You’re correct again. I have been waiting for this moment for a long time, and I have been very much enjoying myself, toying with my so-called family without them even knowing that I’m here. But one can’t play forever, of course, and it’s more than time to put an end to all of this. Run Barrett out of town, drag my family’s name through the mud, and of course …do what I set out to do thirty years ago and expose dragon shifters to the world. I’m ready, but unfortunately Barrett isn’t quite cooperating, is he?”

  “Why does he matter so much?” Victoria asked, ignoring the question. “Barrett wasn’t even alive when you were run out of town.”

  Adele’s eyes narrowed. “You know the answer to that question.”

  “Because he represents everything you hate about the Rockwell Clan,” Victoria said, thinking out loud. “And he is everything that your parents wanted you to be, but that you couldn’t be. Destroying him is the same thing as destroying what they tried to force on you.”

  Adele took another long sip of wine, half the glass gone already. “What an astute little police officer you are. Right again.”

  Victoria looked around her, calculating eyes taking in every detail of the apartment. Adele had closed and locked the door behind them, but she was standing in the kitchen now, staring out of the window and continuing to sip her wine. She appeared to have forgotten Victoria in an instant, as though the moment that Victoria had stopped talking she had ceased to exist altogether.

  But Victoria not only still existed, she was getting very close to being done with doing everything Adele’s way.

  “Call your brother off my daughter,” Victoria said. “We didn’t come here for you to drink wine and stare aimlessly. We came here, apparently, because your idiot brother is incapable of finding any other location in Baton Rouge. So, call him. Tell him that I’ve cooperated, and that I’m here, and that he needs to leave Olivia alone—forget she ever existed.”

  Adele glanced at her. “In good time.”

  “No,” Victoria said. “Now. Or I’ll stop cooperating.”

  Adele laughed, a tinkling sound that filled the room. “The time to resist me was on the street, where I had to worry about causing a scene. If you resist me in here, I’ll just end you.”

  “You can’t,” Victoria said, calling the woman’s bluff even as her heart rate picked up. “If you didn’t need me for something, then we wouldn’t be here. You went to all this trouble to manipulate me into coming with you, and now I’m here. You’re not going to kill me.”

  Clearly, Adele didn’t like the suggestion that she needed anyone or anything. The tall woman stalked towards Victoria, and Adele’s hand reached out and grabbed Victoria’s chin, jerking her face up so that their eyes met. It was an odd, yet aggressive motion, despite the fact that Adele was barely touching her.

  “Do not overestimate your worth for one second,” Adele said, her voice low and biting. “Taking you alive is one way to accom
plish my plan—but you’re not the only way. I want Barrett out, and I want him shamed. I want him to lose everything that he values, like I did. And now it’s clear that he values you. I prefer to taunt him with you. Now that he knows I exist, I want him to know—really know, beyond a shadow of a doubt—that I’m the one ruining his life. But if you become difficult, I can rip you from him by killing you just as easily. If you think I won’t, then remember the woman in the freezer who you were so concerned about. She’s the reason you stayed back from Barrett’s ridiculous little meeting in the bayou today. So, you could find justice for her. There is no justice, though. Not for her or anyone. Not unless you make justice for yourself. I’m making my own justice, and I’ll kill your daughter, and I’ll kill you, in fact, I’d burn down this whole city to get it.”

  Adele let go and stepped back, sneering at Victoria.

  “Don’t test me,” she said, walking back to her glass and topping it off. “When I’m ready to call Cade, I’ll call him. Until then, sit down and shut your mouth. I’m done telling you anything.”

  Victoria felt her first true thrill of fear since Adele had taken her. She’d been angry. She’d been indignant. She’d been concerned. But she’d been primarily worried about Olivia, and then about how this was going to affect Barrett.

  But when Adele spoke, she heard the truth in her voice, and she knew that Adele considered her expendable. She knew that she was only alive right now because Adele was still enjoying, to some extent, her game that she had been playing with Barrett for months.

  As soon as that game was over, Adele would wipe them all out if she could, and she would start with Victoria. And then Olivia would be, essentially, an orphan, and Barrett—well, she didn’t want to think about what would happen to Barrett. All she knew was that she couldn’t bear to think of him coming out of this anything less than entirely successful. She needed him to be okay.

  And if she wanted to help make sure that he and Olivia were both okay, she was going to have to play Adele’s game with her. She was going to have to beat her at it.