Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  But Jordan always hated to turn a case over to the police. Each case that she took on became hers, personally, and she wanted to see it through to the end. At this point, the police probably wouldn’t ask either her or Wes any questions that they couldn’t come up with answers to without divulging his ability to hear thoughts and her ability to, as Wes put it, be a superhero. But she still didn’t want to let go of the case, and she thought that Wes probably felt the same way.

  So, she shut the bedroom door behind Wes and Kevin and sat down at her laptop, sketching out a rough plan for how to proceed. She needed to go back to the bar and visit the alley in the back to see if there was any evidence left behind. She needed to see if the bar had any footage. She needed to see if any of the bartenders recognized the two sketches that she had made, and if they had a name for either assailant. She needed to do research on gem thefts in the area. Were the police already aware that this was a problem? Had there been any related cases? She needed to find out who Sal was and why Alana trusted him.

  And, least pleasant, she needed to tail Alana and see what the woman did next. In fact, if it weren’t for Wes’ shoulder, that was what she would be doing right now. Alana could very well lead her to the person or place that would break the case wide open for them.

  Jordan checked her phone, biting her bottom lip. She really needed to be tracking Alana, but she didn’t want to leave Wes again. She had already left him once to go try to get her head on straight, which definitely had not worked based on how she was still reacting to him. She felt jealous whenever Alana touched him, and whenever Wes touched her, she still felt that same warm sensation flood her.

  It was, frankly, incredibly frustrating.

  Maybe getting out and tailing Alana on her own was exactly what she needed to do, actually. After all, it wasn’t as though she normally conducted her investigation alongside her client. She was the investigator. Wes should stay here and rest.

  Jordan got up and started to gather her things, but as she was putting together what she would need, Kevin came out of the bedroom, his bag in hand.

  “Well, that’s that.”

  “What’s what?” Jordan asked, glancing up at him. “How is it going?”

  “It’s gone,” he said. “The bullet was lodged in there, but it was starting to work itself out. It was an easy removal, aided by some local anesthetic. The wound looks strangely healthy, and his pain is well managed. I would say that, within a few days, he’ll be moving around easily enough.”

  Jordan straightened, putting her bag over her shoulder. “Really? He’s fine?”

  “Strangely fine,” Kevin said, giving her a knowing look. “I don’t know how you do it, but whenever you call me in to see someone, it’s always hush-hush, and it’s never as bad as I expect it to be. A man who was shot in the shoulder last night should not be in such good condition.”

  “What can I say?” Jordan said, shrugging a shoulder. “He’s resilient. Thank you for seeing him.”

  “Well, I still owe you,” Kevin said, heading for the door. “You did keep me from being sued by my nightmare patient.”

  Jordan smiled, remembering that investigation fondly. It had been an intriguing one. And she hadn’t felt her heart go all melty every time that Kevin had touched her, which was a bonus in and of itself.

  “Thanks again,” she said, walking Kevin out. “I’ll call you next time I need you.”

  “Try not to need me for a while,” Kevin said, lifting his hand as he headed down the hall. “See ya.”

  Jordan looked back towards her bedroom as she closed the door, frowning slightly. She had expected Wes to need greater medical attention, and now that he was all patched up, it was going to be much harder to leave him behind.

  She walked over to the bedroom and pushed the door open, seeing Wes standing up from the bed. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, walking in and grabbing his arm to help him.

  He patted her hands away. “Ah-ah. I’m fine. I can do it myself. My legs aren’t broken, now are they?”

  “Not yet,” Jordan quipped, letting go of him and stepping back. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine,” Wes said. “That local anesthetic is great stuff. I feel nothing right now. And I heard the doc’s thoughts. Nice guy by the way. In his thoughts, he said that I’m in remarkably good condition, and he wonders what the hell your secret is. So—I have it on good authority that I’m free to move around.”

  Jordan pursed her lips, knowing for sure that there was no way she was getting out of taking him with her now. “Well then, since you’re so ready for action, how about putting on a shirt and coming with me? We need to find Alana. I shouldn’t have let her walk out of here like that. She could lead us to the person we need to break open this whole thing.”

  “I’m on it,” Wes said, saluting her with his good hand. “Just one thing. I should probably wear a shirt.”

  Jordan looked at his freshly bandaged shoulder, noting that it looked clean and pristine. But he was right—he needed to be covered up. He couldn’t walk around looking like a bodybuilder on the loose. His shirt was in the alley, though.

  “You should probably wear a shirt,” Jordan said, “but none of mine are going to fit you. Hold on. I probably have something around here. You’d fit into Ryan’s probably.”

  “Who the hell is Ryan?”

  Jordan almost laughed at his indignant tone as she walked out of the bedroom and down to the hall closet where she had several sets of spare clothes set aside. There were clothes for her friends there too because one of the job hindrances of dragon shifting was often ruining an outfit by shifting without taking it off. They were constantly in need of spare clothes, and she’d had to run an emergency pair of pants over to one of her friends on a number of occasions. They all kept spare clothes for each other on hand.

  “He’s one of the agents I work with,” she said, rifling through the clothes she had on hand. She wanted a button-down that he wouldn’t have to pull over his head. “Here—try this.”

  She walked back to him with the shirt, but he still looked perturbed. “Why do you have his clothes here?”

  Jordan arched an eyebrow at him, enjoying his discomfort but also uncomfortable herself with how much she liked the fact that he sounded jealous. “I have clothes for all four of my fellow agents on hand. You would be surprised how often it’s necessary in our line of work.”

  “So, you’re not dating Ryan?”

  “Ryan is wildly in love with his girlfriend, Angela, who is a good friend of mine as well,” Jordan said, pushing the shirt against Wes’s abs. “Now stop finding excuses to continue walking around shirtless and get dressed.”

  Wes smiled again, hearing that Ryan was safely taken. He took the shirt from her, then lifted his hand up. His fingers skimmed against her collarbone and Jordan’s breath caught in her throat. She was about to ask him what he thought he was doing when his finger hooked around the string that hung from her neck and tugged. “What’s this? You wear it all the time.”

  Before she could stop him, Wes had pulled the dried pig’s foot out from under her shirt where it had had been hanging, disguised between her breasts. When he saw what was on the necklace, his eyes widened, and he dropped it.

  “What the hell is that?” he asked, his face scrunching up. “Why are you wearing an animal’s foot?”

  Jordan tucked the necklace back under her shirt and gave him a look. “You shouldn’t be so nosy. But since you were, you might as well know—this helps block you from hearing my thoughts.”

  “Really?” Unperturbed by her accusation of nosiness, Wes reached for her necklace again, pulling it out and staring at it. “Is that a …pig’s foot?”

  “It’s a dried and cured pig’s foot, yes,” Jordan said, moving back from him and pointedly tucking the necklace beneath her shirt again. “It has certain helpful properties. It’s a blocker, essentially. It can help block evil spirits. It helps block the connection that you’ve formed with other pe
ople’s minds. It’s a useful thing to have around.”

  “There are evil spirits?”

  His endless curiosity was endearing, but that was enough questions. “Get dressed,” Jordan said, pointing to the shirt again. “Or I’m leaving without you.”

  “Fine, but I want to know more later.”

  She turned her back as he got dressed, but when he grunted in frustration, she turned back around again and helped him get the shirt over his bandages. “Gently …” She guided the fabric into place as he tried awkwardly to help. “There. Can you button it yourself?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  He absolutely could button it himself, and they both knew it. But Jordan said nothing, beginning to fasten the buttons on the shirt, working from the bottom up. Her fingers skimmed against his defined abs, then brushed over his pecs as she fastened button after button. She didn’t look up at him until the very last button, her eyes lifting to his as her knuckles brushed against his chest.

  Wes put his hand on her waist, drawing her closer with an unreadable look in his eyes. He was much taller than her, and as he pressed her against him, she leaned her head back to keep looking at his face. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and she knew that she should pull away, but she didn’t seem to be able to. Her hands rested flat against his chest, and she felt her cheeks flush with heat as he gazed down at her, his hand on the small of her back.

  “Jordan,” he started to say, his voice low.

  She pushed back from him, her movement abrupt in an attempt to get herself under control. “Come on. You’re a bit woozy that’s all. We should go.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, as though weighing whether or not to contradict her explanation for why he had pulled her to him, but then he nodded, slowly. Clearly he had decided to let the moment pass. Jordan was both grateful and disappointed.

  With Wes dressed, the two of them made their way out of the apartment, taking the elevator down the to the first floor instead of the stairs, as Jordan normally would. Anything they could do to ease the burden on Wes’s shoulder, they would do. Her car was still at the bar, so they hailed a taxi. Their first stop would be the very place where Wes had been shot the night before.

  Chapter 20

  Wes

  Going back to the bar in the daytime made it all that more surreal for Wes that he had been shot there the night before. But they didn’t stay long. Jordan unlocked her car for him and told him to sit down, then she ran back to the alley and did a quick sweep. When she returned, she had his shirt from the night before.

  She got into the driver’s side of her car and put the shirt on his lap. “There!” She nodded towards it. “It was still there, and it’s better that it not be. I didn’t see anything else other than some blood and signs of scuffing at the edge of the alley where there’s dirt and dust collected. We’ll call later to see if they have any footage, but I didn’t see any cameras posted that would cover the alley. If there had been, we might have already heard anyway.”

  Wes used his good hand to pick up his t-shirt, thinking of how he had been about to use it to pick up the first gun when he’d been shot by a second one. He couldn’t believe that he had actually been shot. He was a landscaper in Baton Rouge. A kid from a big family—a happy family, no less. He didn’t get involved with drugs, drank primarily socially, and usually only when there was a big game on. He kept his nose clean. He wasn’t the kind of guy who should end up being shot in a back alley.

  The one strike against him was his awful taste in women. Alana had landed him in this position. He glanced sideways at Jordan as she began to drive. When she had buttoned up his shirt, the light touch of her fingers and the unexpected intimacy of the moment had overcome him. He had wanted to pull her close, bend his head, and kiss her. And for a moment, he had thought that she wanted that, too.

  But she’d pushed him away, and he hadn’t wanted to press her. He knew she felt a connection between them, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it. He wouldn’t make her right now. But there was going to come a time when neither of them could ignore it any longer.

  “Where are we going?” he asked her, glancing around.

  “You’re telling me,” Jordan said. “Alana is off work for the day. She would have gone home, gotten a game plan, and she’s either gone out, or she will shortly. So—where is home?”

  Wes gave Jordan Alana’s address after a moment of recollection. They had lived together for a number of years, and when they’d broken up, Alana had moved out. He’d had to drop some of her things off some months ago, but his memory was fuzzy. “I think that’s it,” he said. “I could have the number wrong.”

  “We’re just looking for her car,” Jordan told him. “What make and color? License plate number?”

  “I don’t know her license plate number,” Wes said, “but she drives a red Mazda.”

  Jordan nodded, plugging the address he’d given her into her phone. “Good enough. Looks like we’re about twenty minutes away from her. That’s longer than I would have liked. I should have followed her when she left my apartment.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t think I should leave you again,” Jordan said, matter-of-factly. “And I half-wondered if she might not come back, once she got over her ego. I clearly underestimated her ego. It’s fine—we’ll catch up with her. No idea who Sal is, right?”

  Wes scoffed. “None. Clearly I know nothing about her.”

  “Well, we’re about to find out plenty,” Jordan said, pushing past the speed limit in an attempt to shave a few minutes off their driving time. She was going off her instincts, which were well-honed, and she thought that Alana would be driving away from her house soon. She didn’t want to miss her. “I can’t decide if she’s very intelligent and something of a mastermind behind all of this, or if she’s just gotten herself in over her head.”

  “Let me put it this way—nothing happens to Alana by accident,” Wes said. “She is always in charge. I’m thinking about last night, and there’s something I have been meaning to ask you.”

  Jordan glanced over at him, hoping the question was of a professional rather than personal nature. “Yeah?”

  “When the slight woman—the one with the gun—when she forced me outside it was because she said that she could hear what I was thinking about as I walked towards her. Have other people been able to hear my thoughts this whole time, and I haven’t realized it?”

  Jordan shook her head. “No. It shouldn’t work like that. Well—” she said, correcting herself. “It’s not often like that. Transposed thoughts can sometimes go in both directions, meaning that as you’re listening to someone else’s thoughts, yours get caught in the flow. But that is usually in moments of intense emotion or stress.”

  “Like realizing you’ve found the murderer you’re looking for?”

  “I guess so,” Jordan said. “Honestly, I don’t know. I do know that I haven’t been able to hear any of your thoughts, so it’s not something that’s happening all the time.”

  Wes shook his head. “I don’t think it’s ever happened before. Maybe it was the adrenaline rush.”

  “It could be,” she said, looking at the GPS on her phone and making sure that she was on the right road. “Keep your eye out. If you see her car, yell. I don’t want to miss her.”

  “I wonder what she’s been doing with all the money.”

  Jordan took a sharp left, following the blue line on her phone. “What money?”

  “If she’s part of a gem theft ring, she must be making money,” Wes said, “and it wouldn’t be a small amount, I’d imagine. But when we were together it never seemed like she had a lot of money. I paid for most things, and she never really offered to contribute to the bills. She always dressed nicely and had her nails done. You know, she took care of herself. But how expensive could that have been?”

  Jordan thought back to the outfit that Alana had been wearing when she showed up to Jordan’s apartment. It had de
finitely been designer, although she wouldn’t expect Wes to have realized that necessarily. He was still right, even so. If she was making money from a theft ring, and she was high up in that theft ring, then she should be making enough to afford designer clothing and plenty more.

  “I wonder if we can trace her that way,” Jordan mused, half-talking to herself. “If we can see where she’s been spending money, or rather, how she’s been spending money, then we might be able to see where the money is coming from. That’s a good thought. Nice job.”

  Wes laughed, the sound warm and light. “I was just wondering why she never offered to even pay for dinner now and then.”

  She smiled, looking over at him and shaking her head in amusement. It was with effort that she refocused on the task at hand. Jordan guided them closer and closer to Alana’s house, keeping her eyes peeled for a red Mazda and hoping that she hadn’t miscalculated. It was a gamble, assuming that Alana would have gone home and stayed there for some time before venturing out again, but it felt right. She’d had a shock, and she would need to regroup. The safest place to do that was in her own house, surrounded by a familiar, safe environment. Perhaps she would make some calls and make some appointments to see the people who she wanted to talk to. Any minute now, she would be getting on the road.

  “You’re getting close,” Wes said. “I remember this area. You’re less than two minutes away from her house, probably.”

  Jordan nodded, checking with the GPS. She took a left, and then another left, entering a subdivision with lots of nice houses in tidy rows. “This is not a cheap neighborhood,” she said, looking around as she headed for Alana’s street. “It would cost money to live here.”

  When Jordan turned onto Alana’s street, she could feel her heart pounding. She looked at each house, hunting for the red Mazda. She didn’t see one, though, and her hopes plummeted. They had already missed her, and they hadn’t seen her car on its way out.