Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “I was out for a walk.”

  “A walk?”

  She nodded. “Around the neighborhood. Yes. I needed to clear my head.”

  Concerned, Barrett looked over at her as he drove. “Victoria, something is bothering you. I know it is. I wish that you would talk to me about what it is. I know that you’ve seen and heard a lot over the past thirty-six hours, and it’s completely normal for you to need to process it all. I’m sure there’s a lot that’s just difficult for you to accept, and I get that. But maybe it’ll help if you talk to me about it.”

  “I don’t think that it will,” Victoria said, looking out the window. “I just need some time, Barrett. And I need to get this situation taken care of.”

  “The body, you mean?”

  She nodded. “It’s not right—that woman lying there in your freezer. I won’t stand for it.”

  It was bothering her more than he’d realized. Barrett felt bad for not being more aware of the fact that her police training would make everything about hiding a dead body opposite to her very core system of beliefs. In his line of work, the way that he investigated things, he not only was in a position to hide bodies with relative frequency—he actually sometimes buried the bodies himself and came up with some explanation for the rest of the world as to how that person had disappeared. It was the nature of investigating the supernatural behind the scenes. He couldn’t have vampire bodies showing up, and he couldn’t explain it away every time that he ended up having to kill a warlock or a spirit host. Those bodies got buried, too.

  But Victoria couldn’t understand that.

  It was going to be a problem for them—he could tell that already. It dampened his spirits, which had been high after winning back the support of his Clan, and it made him wonder if his feelings and his eagerness to take a wife and fully step into his role were clouding his judgment. He believed that he loved Victoria, and that the things they had shared over the past thirty-six hours were enough to show him what kind of person she was. He loved that she was a devoted mother, and a principled police officer, and a beautiful woman with a deeply tender side to her. He loved that she was loyal, and trustworthy, and capable, and intelligent, and hardworking.

  He loved so many things about her. But now he wondered if she could feel the same way about him when it seemed that his line of work clashed so harshly with hers—even though they had the same goals: to protect and help people.

  “I’m sorry,” Barrett said, releasing one hand from the steering wheel and putting his hand over hers. “I’m sorry that Annie’s body has been bothering you so much, and that I haven’t worked harder to make sure that we got it taken care of. You’ve done so much for me, Victoria, and I should have focused on what you needed more.”

  She looked over at him, her eyes narrowing slightly as though she hadn’t expected such a confession as they drove silently down the interstate. But she didn’t pull her hand away from under his.

  “I just need some time to think,” Victoria said. “Maybe we don’t have to talk for a while.”

  Barrett nodded, releasing her hand and placing his own back on the steering wheel. “Of course,” he agreed, though his heart was hurting inside more than he cared to admit. “Take all the time you need.”

  Chapter 33

  Victoria

  Victoria’s insides were twisted into a knot. She was brutally aware of Adele’s presence in the backseat of Barrett’s car. Adele had slipped in when Victoria had opened the door for her while the car was still parked in the driveway, and even though she couldn’t see, or hear, or smell, the woman now, she knew that Adele was still there, watching every move and listening to every word.

  All Victoria could do was hope that she was playing this situation right. That she was, in fact, beating Adele at her own game and not handing her the game wrapped in pretty paper with a bow on top. If she was getting it wrong, she was getting it really, really wrong, and she was keeping Barrett in the dark about the whole thing.

  She hated that she was keeping him in the dark. She hated that she was making him uncertain about her feelings for him or where her loyalty was. It was obvious that he was picking up on her coldness and her distance, and it physically hurt her to have to put him off the way she was doing now. But it was going to get so much worse before it got better, and she was going to have to play her role throughout.

  Or Adele could very well walk away with everything she had come for.

  The ride out to where she was directing Barrett had been a very long hour and twenty minutes, interspersed with little conversation. Victoria thought the less talking they did, the better, with Adele sitting there in the back seat, lurking.

  Finally, though, she directed Barrett to pull off the interstate, and he did so, following her directions, as she took him through winding back streets, out to the middle of nowhere. They were away from the depths of the bayou. Away from Baton Rouge. Away from people. There was forestation here—thick forests with dense coverage. Different from the bayou, but no less characteristic of the Louisiana terrain. She hoped that it would provide a safe space for Barrett to shift, when the moment was right.

  She just wished that she knew what the right moment was going to be. Right now, Adele still held all the cards. She had Cade on Olivia, and she wasn’t going to give him the order to stand down until she was satisfied that she had gotten what she wanted out of Victoria. The only positive thing was that by playing along with Adele, Victoria got to have at least some say in how all of this went down. She was confident that if she played her cards right, Barrett would put a swift end to Adele once Olivia was safe.

  Unless she drove him away successfully before then.

  Victoria got out of the car and opened the back door, leaning against it as she looked around the woods and hoping that she looked natural enough—as natural as she possibly could opening a door for seemingly no reason.

  “So why this spot?” Barrett asked, getting out of the car as well and looking around, taking in the thick forestation and the stream cutting through the woods. “It’s a beautiful spot, actually. I’ve never been here before. But isn’t it kind of far away from …well, from where Annie would normally have been?”

  “We’re not here to talk about Annie,” Victoria said, steeling herself. She didn’t know how she was going to look at his face as she betrayed him, even though she knew she wasn’t really betraying him.

  Barrett turned towards her, uncertainty in his gaze. “I didn’t figure that we were. You’re a very logical woman, Victoria, and nothing since the moment I got home from my meeting today has been logical. So, why don’t you tell me what’s happened?”

  Victoria took a deep breath, thinking of Olivia. Promising herself that she and Barrett would work through what she was about to do. Promising herself that this was the right choice.

  “It’s not what’s happened,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and looking him in the eye, hoping that her gaze was steady and her stance strong. “It’s what’s been happening, Barrett. From the moment we met. From even before that moment—for years.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course, you don’t,” Victoria said, feeling Adele brush up behind her. The only way that Adele could be felt when she was wearing her bracelet was if she touched someone directly, like she’d pinched Victoria when Victoria had suggested going into the house to get her phone. Adele had known she wanted to try to check on Olivia, and she wasn’t going to let that happen. Now she was brushing up against Victoria again in a subtle reminder that she was still in charge and Victoria had better not blow this. It would be up to Adele when she finally revealed herself to Barrett, but for now, she was making sure that Victoria toed the line.

  “Then explain it to me,” Barrett said, starting to sound exasperated. “It’s like you’re a different person all of a sudden. I wanted to come home and tell you that we were successful today—that because of you I had the strength to stand up to my father and take back th
e Rockwell Clan. I wanted to tell you that—.”

  Victoria cut him off by lifting her hand. She didn’t want him to say too much in front of Adele, no matter how badly she was dying to know what the rest of the story was. “Stop talking,” she said, as sharply as she could. “You want explanations—I’ll give them to you. And if you think that you’re the rightful leader of the Rockwell Clan, then you’re even more delusional than I thought you were.”

  It was as though she had slapped him right across the face. Barrett’s face went ashen, and he took a step back, stunned by her words. “Victoria …”

  She had to do this. “You think that you revealed something special to me when you showed me you were a shifter?” Victoria said, injecting a half-laugh into her voice, mocking him. “You think that when we went out to the woods and you revealed yourself to me in all your so-called wonder that I was shocked and amazed by the majesty that is …you?” She gestured limply towards him, almost disdainfully.

  Barrett’s jaw tightened, and his throat worked hard as he swallowed over the hurt and anger that was doubtlessly burning inside of him. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I’ve known about dragon shifters for years,” Victoria scoffed. “Many years. And I’ve been watching you from afar for many years. Reporting.”

  “Reporting?”

  “Oh, yes,” Victoria said, smiling. She forced herself to stay in character—to view this as going undercover to get her perp. The real perp. Adele. “Watching and waiting and plotting. Do you really think that the Baton Rouge police force has always just looked the other way from the absolute chaos that you all cause just out of the goodness of its heart? No. I made that happen so that you could continue to operate until we were ready.”

  Barrett was obviously furious, but he was also confused. He hadn’t put two and two together yet, probably because it was such a far-fetched idea. “What the fuck are you talking about, Victoria?” he shouted, his booming voice carrying past her and echoing off the trees that were just to the back of them. It was unnerving to hear him shout. She had always known that he was a powerful man, but he was also so restrained that nobody, she expected, ever truly knew that power until he started to get angry enough to lose control over his emotions. And he was there now, on the cusp of exploding at her, and his voice was deep and graveled, his fists clenched at his sides, as he prepared to be hit square in the chest with her betrayal.

  But she didn’t have to be the one who hit him with it. Adele suddenly appeared beside her, having pulled off the bracelet that made her invisible. Her presence was suddenly overwhelming, sweeping in from nothing to everything all in an instant. Victoria didn’t look at the woman, but she could imagine the look on Adele’s face.

  Victory. Savagery. Hunger for Barrett’s pain.

  “She’s talking about me,” Adele said, her voice almost amused. “Your sister, Barrett. Your sister and the woman you love …we’ve been working together to take you down from the inside out, and this moment is sweeter than I could have imagined. You really fell for her, didn’t you? I knew that you would. I knew that my Victoria was such a good little actress that she could worm her way right into your foolish heart, get you to reveal all your most previous secrets, get you to make yourself totally vulnerable to her …and then she would bring you to me.”

  Victoria forced herself not to flinch as Adele wrapped her arm around her shoulders. She had to work even harder to force herself to look at Barrett. The look on his face broke her heart into pieces, and she realized in that moment that playing things this way wasn’t worth it. Even though she hoped that at the end of all of this, she would be able to tell him that this had all been a lie and that what was between them was real—even though she truly believed that this was the best way to get Olivia back—she just didn’t know how her heart could handle the look of horror and betrayal on Barrett’s face.

  In that moment, she knew that he really did love her. And she really did love him. It might seem impossible after such a short time, but they had fallen for each other, and what he had given her was precious.

  And she had just thrown it back in his face and broken his heart.

  It felt as though hers was breaking right along with his.

  Chapter 34

  Barrett

  All the wind had been knocked out of Barrett. He felt as though he could easily sink to his knees right there in the dirt and put his head down between his hands and just stay there for hours. For days. For weeks even. He felt so foolish. So completely and utterly stupid.

  The moment that Victoria had shown up at his house the day before, suddenly present and very interested in him just an hour after he’d found Annie’s body, had made him suspicious at the time. And he had actually wondered if she was involved. He had even told Norman that he thought she might be involved. That he didn’t trust her. He’d kept her at arm’s length.

  Until she’d seen the body, and he saw the surprise on her face. He had chosen to believe that was a genuine reaction and not some put-on display. And he had risked everything. He had given her his most precious secrets. He had shared intimacy with her that he had never known with another person. He had kissed her and touched her, and she had come apart in his arms and he had held her while she slept, plotting how he was going to right the whole world for her just so that she would be safe.

  He had declared her as his life partner. As the next joint head of the Rockwell Clan—the Clan that he had just sworn his life to protect and uphold.

  And it had all been a lie. A disgusting, fermented, gangrenous lie.

  It had been a very, very long time since Barrett had worried that he might not be fully in control of his shifting powers. In the early years and into the teenage years, young shifters sometimes struggled to refrain from shifting when they felt an intense emotion—like anger. But practice soon eradicated that worry, and Barrett hadn’t experienced an uncontrollable urge to shift and to use his strength and the violence of his dragon form to tear someone apart in a long time.

  He felt it now. He felt it as he looked at the woman who was his own flesh and blood. His sister. A monster. A woman who had rejected everything that the Rockwell Clan held dear, who had looked out for her own interests, who had doomed a young girl—supposedly her friend—to a lifetime of living unresponsively in a hospital bed, who had stolen her brother away from his parents, who had murdered at least once but probably far more often than that in her quest for power, and who had launched a war against him just because he had dared to step into the role that she had spurned.

  And she had used Victoria to do it.

  Barrett still believed in his heart that Victoria was a good person. He just couldn’t completely let go of that belief that he’d held so completely. Something must have happened. Adele had to have something on her. It had to do with Olivia, or maybe Victoria had something in her past that she couldn’t let come out. Somehow Adele had to be using Victoria.

  It didn’t change the fact that Victoria had betrayed him, and he would never be able to forgive her for that. He would never be able to trust her or maybe any woman ever again. But he didn’t think that this had been her idea. He couldn’t believe that, if left to her own devices, Victoria would want this.

  But he couldn’t even look at Victoria right now, so he didn’t. He focused on holding in his urge to shift, and he focused on his sister’s face. Even lined with age, her face was still pretty. It was a cold sort of beauty, but there was no doubt that at one time she had been a beautiful woman, just like Jordan and Hannah were both beautiful women. Just like Nola was a beautiful woman. Dragon shifters always had a magnetism and a beauty and a power about them. Adele was no different, with her dark brown hair and her dark brown eyes that were flecked with gold. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and her skin looked tired with age.

  But he could see their mother in her. He could see himself in her.

  And he hated her for that.

  Adele was waiting for an answer to he
r revelation. It felt as though an hour had passed since she’d last spoken, but in reality it was only seconds. He had only been struggling to breathe for mere seconds.

  “Adele,” he said, forcing his voice to stay steady. “What a pleasure to finally meet you …sister.”

  “I wish I could say the same,” Adele said, “but I’ve been with you for a while, so I’m not really meeting you for the first time, anyway.” She held up the bracelet in her hand. “It’s good to have friends in the right places. They give you such fun toys.”

  “I don’t think you know the meaning of the word friend,” Barrett said. “Nor am I impressed with your ability to slink around in the dark, doing your evil deeds under its cover. That’s what cowards do, isn’t it?”

  Adele’s eyes flashed with anger. “And what do heroes do? Fall head over heels for an unknown woman—a woman in the enemy camp?”

  “I’m no hero,” Barrett said, his eyes moving to Victoria for the first time since Adele had appeared out of thin air. “But I did do that. I won’t deny that makes me a fool.”

  If he had hoped for some sort of answer in her gaze, he didn’t get it. Victoria looked back at him, and her eyes were cold, her face closed off, and her body stiff with …something. There was no emotion coming from her at all. Like she was a robot. It was so different from the person that he’d known for the past two days that he almost couldn’t reconcile it in his mind.

  This just wasn’t her. Nobody could be so robotic standing there and have been so warm and sweet and vulnerable a few hours before.

  He started to look away from her, finding it too painful to look into her eyes. But as he started to glance away, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He caught her face relaxing ever so slightly and he saw …yes. He really had seen it. He saw sorrow in her gaze.