Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  God, Angela was never going to get over this. He would tell her a million times that it hadn’t been her—it had been Leanna. But it wouldn’t matter. Angela would always have to know that her body, her face, her hand had murdered someone.

  That alone was bad enough. But if the Baton Rouge police came for her, he didn’t know how he was going to help her. Jordan was right. It was Angela’s DNA and Angela’s prints, waiting to be found. There was nothing he could do to change that.

  He needed to know what had happened last night, but only Leanna knew, and Leanna was never going to cooperate with him willingly. He was going to have to force her to cooperate, and that meant risking facing James again. It meant risking a lot more than that because he was going to have go deep into the connection between the spirit world and the natural world.

  People got lost if they went too deep.

  Ryan stood up, pulling on clothes that he barely looked at. His towel dropped to the floor as he fastened his jeans around his waist and pulled on a black t-shirt. He was halfway out of his bedroom door while the T-shirt was still caught around his head. When he finally pulled it down, he had to stop short, realizing that he’d almost run right into Angela.

  “Shit!” he said, steadying both of them. “Sorry.”

  “What’s wrong?” Angela asked, looking clean, fresh, and unsuspecting. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  He winced. “Let’s not be flippant about ghosts.” Taking her arm, he guided her to the couch, sitting down beside her. Ryan took her hand in his. “We have very little time to deal with what I’m about to tell you. It’s going to shock and upset you, and I need you to just shove all of that in a box and deal with it later, okay? We will deal with all of that. But right now I need us to act fast, so we can’t afford feelings or fear or anything. Do you understand?”

  The freshness had already faded from Angela’s face. She knew that he was about to tell her something devastating. They had both known, in the back of their minds, that it was coming, but they hadn’t wanted to deal with it. But now time was up.

  Angela nodded tightly. “I understand.”

  “Leanna killed someone last night,” Ryan said, keeping a tight grip on her hands to keep her grounded and watching her face intently. “About two miles from here. The body has been found, the police are investigating, and it’s going to be your DNA and your fingerprints that they find.”

  For a long, horrible moment, Angela just stared at him, her throat working hard and her eyes widening so far that he thought her eyeballs might pop out.

  She could have panicked—it wouldn’t be the first time, and it wouldn’t be unwarranted. But as he watched her, she forcibly brought herself under control. The only sign of her inner panic was the wideness of her eyes and the slightly higher pitch of her voice when she spoke.

  “What do we do?”

  He didn’t have to answer her right away. Jordan walked right into the house, not bothering to knock or call to them. Her tiny frame made her look like a pixie that appeared out of thin air.

  “It’s a madhouse near the east road,” she told them, dropping her purse on the side table and walking over, surveying Angela openly. “Are you yourself?”

  “Pardon me?”

  Jordan pointed at her. “British accent. That’s good. Okay, so what’s the plan? I texted everyone and let them know that you two had finally resurfaced. Barrett is at the police station, keeping a low profile. His story is that he’s got another case he’s looking into, but really he’s our eyes and ears, waiting to see how much evidence they have against Angela. Quentin and Hannah are standing by, waiting for orders. I was on an operation to find you two. What’s next?”

  Under other circumstances, Ryan would have found Angela’s reaction to Jordan amusing. Angela was staring at the woman, who was about seven inches shorter than her, the expression on her face openly revealing her shock that there was so much energy and punch in Jordan’s tiny frame.

  It was a common reaction to Jordan, and Jordan herself rarely even noticed it any more. There was hardly a more secure woman in the world, so Jordan spent no time worrying about whether people took her seriously. Any person who made the mistake of not taking her seriously only did it once.

  “Let Barrett continue monitoring the police,” Ryan said, answering Jordan’s question. “We need a heads-up the moment they say Angela’s name. It might buy us some time that she’s a UK citizen. Meanwhile, I want Quentin and Hannah working on putting together an airtight alibi.”

  Jordan arched an eyebrow. “An airtight alibi is useless if they have her DNA all over the crime scene. Was her spirit conscientious enough to wear gloves?”

  “It’ll still create a delay,” Ryan said. “We need to buy time. We can’t have them take her into custody—especially before we get rid of Leanna. That’s what the three of us are going to work on. Jordan, I need you to help us do another séance. The last one didn’t go well. This one has to. We need to figure out what Leanna is trying to accomplish, how she attached herself to Jordan, and the location where she attached herself to Jordan. Then we’re going to have to extricate her. We only have a few hours to do all of that, and it’s not going to be easy. Leanna has a strong hold on her. The extrication …it’s going to be touchy.”

  “You can say that again,” Jordan said. “I’m assuming Angela wouldn’t ever consider murdering anyone, so the fact that Leanna could override her that much—yeah. That’s a strong hold on her.”

  “Pardon me,” Angela said, clearing her throat pointedly. “Would it be too much to ask you both not to speak about me like I’m not standing right here? I’m not an imbecile or a child. I need to know what’s happening, too, and I need to have some say in it. I’m about to be imprisoned in a foreign country, and if I’m being very honest, buying time doesn’t sound like the most ideal strategy.”

  Ryan looked at her, and he could tell just how much turmoil she was in. He didn’t blame her, and he hated that he couldn’t fix it for her. He touched her arm, causing her to look up at him, and as gently as he could, he tried to reassure her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. We shouldn’t talk over you. I know you’re scared. I don’t know how we’re going to do it yet, but we are going to fix it, Angela. I promise you that.”

  She nodded tightly, tears just brimming at the corner of her eyes.

  He pulled her to him, wrapping his big strong arms around her and holding her close as he kissed her hair. Ryan didn’t care that Jordan was standing right there, witnessing him act very unprofessionally towards a client. Angela wasn’t a client anymore, and this wasn’t business. This was personal.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Ryan whispered to her, stroking her hair as she clung to him. “I’m so sorry.”

  Angela tilted her head back just enough to look at him. “I don’t suppose dragons can eradicate DNA evidence.”

  Ryan looked at Jordan, who looked right back at him. “Actually …”

  Chapter 31

  Angela

  “Ryan, I was joking,” Angela said hurriedly, concerned when Ryan and Jordan began talking quickly and quietly about how they might destroy the evidence. “Ryan—honestly. I was trying to lighten the mood, that’s all.”

  Her head was spinning. She couldn’t let herself think about the reality of her situation without getting sick, so she had tried to be casual about it. Now everything was worse because Ryan and Jordan were on the cusp of committing a crime themselves, and neither of them were listening to her try to tell them that she didn’t want them to do it.

  “Ryan!” Angela shouted his name, forcing him to stop talking and look at her. “I thought you weren’t going to talk about me like I’m not here.”

  Ryan winced. “Right. I’m sorry.”

  “You can’t destroy evidence. You’ll go to prison, too.”

  “I’m not going to do it myself,” Ryan told her. “Hannah and Quentin are. I need to stay here with you and Jordan and deal with Leanna. All Quentin and Ha
nnah have to do is get rid of the evidence. Hannah is a black dragon, like me. Remember how I told you about that? She can move things with her mind, just like I can. It’ll be easy enough for her to get rid of the evidence.”

  Angela shook her head. “You can’t …move DNA. You said that you had to be able to see the thing you’re moving. You have to be able to picture it. That’s why you couldn’t open locks by moving the mechanism if you didn’t know what the mechanism looks like.”

  “She’ll figure it out,” Ryan said. “Quentin will be with her, and he can look into the future by four or five seconds. Sometimes up to ten seconds if he tries. They’ll work together and they’ll make sure that the police don’t have enough evidence to put you at the scene of the crime.” He took her hands in his. “Angela, I need you to forget about that part for right now. I know it’s hard, but we have bigger issues to deal with. Leanna is out of control. She has to go now. We can’t wait any longer.”

  There were so many problems with his plan, but Angela had sworn to trust him, and she didn’t have any other options anyway. She nodded, forcing the threat of imminent arrest from her mind and focusing. “Fine. What do you want me to do?”

  “We’re doing another séance.”

  “That did not go well last time,” she said. “If you disappear again, I think I’ll lose my mind.”

  “I won’t,” he said firmly, pressing her hands. He looked down at her with such commitment and confidence that she actually did feel a bit of comfort unfurl inside of her. There was something so reassuring about Ryan. She felt safe with him. And he was a dragon shifter. He was a magical creature who came from a long lineage of other magical creatures, and together they all worked to protect the world from evil, supernatural forces. There was no one better to keep her safe, and no one she wanted near her more.

  “Okay,” Angela said, once again making the decision to act on the trust she had decided to have. “All right. I’m ready.”

  Everything moved quickly. Jordan and Ryan set up the circle once again. The small woman was a fast mover, and it seemed as though one minute nothing was in order and the next everything was organized.

  Ryan took her hand, leading her into the circle with them, and Angela took a breath to steady herself as they all sat down so close that their knees were brushing.

  “Same as before,” Ryan said, still holding her hand, his thumb caressing her palm soothingly. “You’re going to follow me. No resisting. No pulling back. Lean into the connection. Invite the connection. And whatever you see, whatever you hear, whatever you feel—don’t pull back.” He squeezed her hand. “And I won’t either. No matter what I see.”

  “Or what you hear or feel,” Angela said, making a pitiful attempt at a joke but also needing to emphasize to him how much he needed to stay with her this time.

  He nodded, and he pressed her hand again. “No matter anything.”

  She nodded, and then closed her eyes. Ryan lulled them into a state of openness again, and this time it was much more difficult for Angela to relax and follow Ryan’s lead. The only way she could imagine it was by reliving those sweet, intimate, tender moments between them in the clearing in the bayou. The memory of the otherworldly connection they had shared allowed her to keep her body loose and her mind open. And as she did, she drifted further into the same scene she had experienced the night before—less than twelve hours earlier.

  They were approaching the tree line again, where Ryan had disappeared last time. Angela held her breath, fearing that the young boy that terrified Ryan so much would reappear, and everything would fall apart, but Ryan was being proactive.

  She looked to her left, and she could see that she was standing in the bayou. Ryan was on her left, in her line of sight, and Jordan, she could tell, was to her right. They were walking together, Ryan’s hand wrapped around hers, and he was talking in a tone that was enchanting, even to her.

  But his words were far from seductive. He was taking a new tactic with Leanna.

  “You want something,” Ryan was telling Leanna, as though she was right there beside them. “You want justice. Revenge. You’re not going to leave until you get it, and we’re not going to get any peace until you leave. That means that we suddenly have an interest in making sure you get what you want. I know I’ve stopped you twice now, but I have to take care of the people I care about first. So if you want your ex-husband’s house to burn down and for him and your children to die—fine. I don’t like it, but I won’t stop you. Because then, if you get it, you’ll move on.”

  “You must think I’m a fool.”

  Angela felt a chill of fear move down her spine as a woman appeared in front of her. She knew instinctively that she was looking at Leanna Bard. Somehow, without even realizing it, she’d had an image of the woman in her mind, and it was eerily accurate. The woman had short, cropped black hair that framed a face that was a touch too masculine to be truly pretty. But there was a magnetism about her face. She had wide-set eyes with thick brows framing their piercing green. Her nose was straight, and slim, and strong, and her jaw was angular at the sides, giving her jaw a squarer line. Her lips were neither full nor thin, and they pressed together in a firm line, the corners of her mouth turning down as though she was perpetually miserable.

  She looked so familiar that Angela felt as though she had been living with her for months. And, she supposed, she had.

  “Hello, Leanna,” Ryan said, greeting the woman calmly. “Thank you for coming to talk to us.”

  “I’m not interested in anything you have to say, dragon shifter,” Leanna said, still stalking slowly towards them. “I want one thing and one thing alone, and I’m not going to stop until I get it. You can pluck me out of the sky with your talons over and over and over again. In the end, I’m going to get what I want. What you need to think about is how much you want to put your darling Angela through.”

  Angela felt a surge of anger towards this woman. Having a person to look at and to focus on made everything so much more real. For the first time, she really understood that this wasn’t a condition that she, Angela, had. It was another person pushing herself onto Angela and cruelly and callously ruining her life. This woman had committed murder, and it was going to be Angela who paid the price. Except that she wouldn’t. She couldn’t let that happen.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” Angela told Leanna, drawing the woman’s attention. Angela’s fists were balled at her side, and her person was almost vibrating with the force of her anger. “I think you’re pathetic. And you won’t beat me. If you want to take me on, then you need to be prepared that I won’t stop fighting.”

  “Oh, look who got a little bit of gumption,” Leanna said, smirking. “The sweet little pansy of a Brit. That’s adorable, but also a little boring. I control you.”

  “Then why are you stuck here, and I’m not?”

  Leanna’s eyes flashed with anger. “I voluntarily left your body. I could have stayed. But I wanted you to know who your boyfriend really was. He’s been lying to you, you know, keeping his real identity a secret.”

  “No, he hasn’t been lying to me,” Angela said, surprised at her own calmness. “Ryan had very good reasons for not revealing his supernatural side to me. We’ve only known each other a few days, and we’ve been rather distracted with having to deal with you. You can’t get under my skin, Leanna. You may be able to, literally, but you won’t metaphorically. I’m in charge here. Not you.”

  It was a bit of a bluff, there was no doubt about that. To her own ears, she sounded much more confident than she felt, but she was also impressed with herself. Because she was facing down her tormentor, and she wasn’t shaky inside. She didn’t feel helpless. She didn’t feel afraid—at least, not so afraid that she couldn’t control it. Something had shifted inside of her, and she felt that she was finally ready to expel Leanna from her life. Maybe it was accepting that there was a whole world out there that she didn’t understand. Acceptance was a powerful thing, and she was no longer wasti
ng any of her time or energy trying to explain away or reason through these confusing revelations.

  She just believed. And that was power.

  “Oh, is that so?” Leanna said, turning from Ryan and walking towards Angela now. “Were you in charge when I shot that stupid little man in the car in cold blood? Were you in charge when his blood spattered everywhere? When I shoved his body out of the car? When I took his car and drove it to my ex-husband’s house and abandoned it on the side of the road? When I got my matches and my gasoline from my hiding spot in the woods? Are you saying that you did all of those things?” Leanna smiled cruelly. “Why don’t you tell law enforcement that? I’m sure they already know that it was you who did all of those things.”

  Angela kept her eyes firmly trained on Ryan, looking nowhere else. It wasn’t to intimidate the woman. It was because while Angela held Leanna’s focus, Ryan was slowly moving behind Leanna, ready to spring. Angela didn’t know what his plan was, but she didn’t intend to give it away. She continued to provoke Leanna.

  “I’m not concerned with law enforcement,” Angela said, lying blatantly. “I’m innocent. I didn’t commit those crimes. You did. If I’m innocent, I have nothing to worry about.”

  Anger once again flashed over Leanna’s face. “You stupid fool. That’s not how this works! Everything that I do while I control you, you will pay for, and I’m glad you will because you’re weak. You’re just like every other woman. Letting a man control you. Letting him take advantage of you.”

  “It sounds like you were the one tormenting your husband,” Angela said. “Not the other way around. After all, you were declared an unfit parent, weren’t you?”

  Leanna roared with anger, her eyes flashing with fury. Angela physically felt the force of the woman’s emotion, and it shoved her backward. The world, which had seemed so real moments ago, began to shimmer around her, as though the air was made up of sound waves. She felt too hot, and then too cold, and all the while, Leanna was heaving with anger.