“Hi,” a woman said. “I’m interested in speaking to an agent about a missing person’s case.”
Chapter 2
Lydia
Walking into the Rockwell Agency was completely surreal. The week since she had first seen the video that had brought her here had been completely consumed with research and planning. She had quit her job as a waitress and holed up in her apartment, only emerging for food and research sessions with Jack.
And all of her research and planning had led her here to this moment. She was actually standing in the Rockwell Agency, and she was going to talk to someone—one of them. Any minute now. She was so excited that she could hardly focus on what the receptionist was saying.
“I just need your name,” the woman said, sounding as if she might be repeating something that Lydia had been too excited to hear the first time. “And you said missing person?”
Lydia nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”
“I’ve got it from here,” a voice said, causing Lydia to stop in her tracks as she walked towards the receptionist’s desk to take the form the woman was handing her. Lydia turned, seeing a man standing to her left. A man who could be best described as strapping. She just continued to look up and up, even though she was quite tall herself. She was five-foot-seven, but he must have been eight inches taller than her. His shoulders were strong and broad, filling out his simple blue t-shirt perfectly. The t-shirt hugged his body, tapering in at his waist where it met the top of his fitted jeans that hugged his hips and strong thighs.
Before Lydia really even looked at his face, her mouth was already dry, and when she did look up to meet his hazel eyes, she swallowed hard. He stood there studying her with no clear expression on his handsome face. He had about three days of beard growth along his jaw, giving him a rugged appearance. But his hair, a rich, dark brown with hints of auburn undertones, was tidy and sharp-looking. She noticed his cheekbones next, which were cut like diamonds, and his lashes [God, they were so full and thick], framed those inquisitive hazel eyes.
He was a stunning man, and an imposing one. But after a brief moment of becoming entirely entranced by his physical appearance, Lydia realized who he must be—who he had to be.
He had to be one of them.
“Hi,” the man said, moving forward and offering her his hand. “I’m Quentin Pencer.”
Lydia placed her hand in his, wondering if she would feel anything when they touched. Would she feel the difference in him? Would she know, somehow, that there was so much more to him than met the eye?
She did feel something when she placed her hand in his, but the little flutter that moved through her hand and up her arm could easily have been attraction as much as anything else. His hand was warm and rough and encompassed hers fully, and she might be a supernatural investigator, but she was also a woman.
“Lydia …,” she said, clearing her throat when her voice cracked around the word. “Hi. I’m Lydia Winn.”
“This is Anna,” Quentin said, nodding to the receptionist. “She helps us out with some of the preliminary stuff, but I’m not that busy at the moment, Lydia, so why don’t you just come back to my office and tell me what’s going on. Missing person, right?”
Lydia nodded, glancing down at Anna and smiling in a way that she hoped was normal enough not to betray her excitement. “Thanks for your help,” she said to the woman before hurrying after Quentin. “Uh, yes—missing person … That’s why I’m here.”
Quentin led her down a long hallway, turning right at the second door they came to. She walked behind him into his office, taking in all of the detail in the few seconds that it took her to walk to the chair he gestured for her to take. It was a tidy office. Well put together. The rug beneath her was plush, leaving little indentions where her black heels pressed into the dusty-blue fabric. There was a masculine feel to the office, but it was also warm and welcoming and almost cozy at the same time. He had done a good job of bringing blue in through the pictures on the walls and the upholstery on the couch beneath the window. There were mustard-yellow accents, lending a richness to the overall feel, and the frames that were on his desk were a burnished gold. She felt like she could learn a lot about him just from looking around, and it was clear that he was a deliberate man who took care in presenting himself and his spaces.
That was interesting. She was going to have to write that down when she got back to her hotel later that night.
“Are you nervous?” Quentin asked, clearly interpreting her silence and her averted eyes as signs that she was worried about talking with him. “It’s all right. You can take your time.”
“No,” Lydia said, quickly, before thinking better of it. “Well, yes … I am, of course, nervous. But I was just looking around your office. It’s very nice.”
“Thank you,” Quentin said, leaning back in his mahogany chair and smiling at her. “So. What did you come to talk to me about?”
Lydia had run this moment through in her head over and over again, and she had her story straight in her head. She wasn’t the kind of person who usually told lies, but she had persuaded herself that investigators were allowed to bend the truth—or in this case, completely fabricate it—in order to engage in their craft. And she needed to work with him to make sure that she was right. To see what he really was, and what his friends were like, and how they lived their lives. She needed to find some way to get him to reveal himself to her.
“I have a sister,” Lydia said. That part wasn’t a lie. “And she’s missing.”
Her sister, Ginny, would be shocked to hear that, given Ginny was up in Oregon with her husband and their two young boys, living her life just as she always had.
“Missing,” Quentin said, nodding. “All right. What makes you say she’s missing?”
“I haven’t heard from her,” Lydia said. She had studied numerous procedural shows to see how people acted when reporting a missing loved one, and she was determined to get it right. Not too much detail—she shouldn’t appear to have her story down pat. But she did have her story down pat. “I mean, we talk all the time, and I see her most days. But now …there’s nothing. I can’t get ahold of her.”
Quentin nodded, beginning to take notes. “Okay, I can see why that would worry you. This has been how many days?”
“Four.”
“And do you know of any reason why your sister might take off for a while?” Quentin asked. “For instance, does she have a habit of being spontaneous or impulsive? Was she struggling in a relationship or at work? Did she feel like she just needed to get away from it all for any reason?”
Lydia shook her head. “No—none of that. I sort of take care of Ginny, you know? That’s her name—Ginny.”
“How do you take care of Ginny?”
“Well, she’s single and she’s alone, and she can’t really work.”
“Why can’t she work?”
Lydia felt more uncomfortable than she had anticipated, lying the way that she was. She felt wrong about portraying her sister falsely. Wrong about deceiving Quentin. She felt wrong about all of it. But she was here because she knew what this agency was. She knew who worked here. And she had spent her entire life searching for something, anything, that would confirm her belief that there was so much more to the world than people knew. Specifically, that there were shifters. She had been obsessed with the idea of dragon shifters for two years now, and she had read every single blog and every book she could get her hands on. There had never been any tangible proof. No direct sighting.
She could be the first. She was a pioneer. And she would never do any harm to the people she studied—she would never want to do that. She didn’t intend to reveal their identities to the world or shine a media spotlight on them. She had a whole plan for how she would record her findings without causing her subjects to be put under a microscope.
But to accomplish any of her dreams, she had to have some plausible reason to spend time at the Rockwell Agency, and she knew that they took cases.
It was harmless, wasn’t it? Her sister would never know, and she would pay Quentin for his time and protect his privacy. It would work out for everyone—she was sure of it.
Quentin looked up from his notebook when she didn’t immediately answer his question. “I know it might be difficult to answer some questions, okay? It might feel like an invasion of privacy, but if your sister really is missing, then every minute counts and every piece of information could be important. I won’t know what is important or not at this point, so I just need to know anything you can tell me. Is there some health reason that your sister can’t work?”
Lydia nodded. “There is. She has a very bad back. She’s in pain a lot of the time, and she can’t really go anywhere.”
“Okay,” Quentin said, jotting it down. “That’s very important. So—she lives here in the area, I’m assuming.”
Lydia nodded again. “Yes—yes, she has an apartment.”
“But you don’t live with her?”
“Right,” Lydia said, shifting slightly in her seat. He was asking her an awful lot of questions, not all of which she had anticipated, and she started to get genuinely nervous. But she coached herself—stay calm. Focus on the goal. This man is a dragon shifter—you know he is. This is your lifelong dream, about to happen.
Quentin was still writing. “Okay, so the first day that you didn’t hear from her, what did you do?”
Lydia blinked at him. “I’m sorry?”
“What did you do?” Quentin said, looking up at her. “If you usually talk to her every day, and she has serious health issues, then when you didn’t hear from her or she didn’t answer your calls, you must have done something. You mentioned that she wasn’t at the apartment. You went to check in on her?”
“Oh yes,” Lydia said, nodding. “I went over and knocked on the door, but there was no answer.”
“And you don’t have a key?”
“She likes to maintain some semblance of independence,” Lydia said, reasoning on the fly. “So, no. I don’t.”
“But when she didn’t answer …did you assume something was wrong? Is it the kind of situation where it was possible that she had gone out to run an errand on her own?”
Lydia nodded. “Yes—yes, of course. She can go out on her own. It’s just difficult for her to work. She was a, well, a secretary of sorts. Sitting all day at a desk just made her back problems worse.”
If Quentin was aware that she was filling in details she hadn’t anticipated needing on the fly, he didn’t show it.
“So,” he said, “at what point did you begin to seriously worry?”
“Well, after the second day, I knew something must have been wrong,” Lydia said. “I went to her apartment again. There was still no answer. She doesn’t really have any friends in the area, so there was no one to call. I just … I kept hoping she would show up, but now, today, I know I need help.”
Quentin nodded again. “Okay. I know you’re very worried. I have to ask, though. Why come here rather than the police? Did you hear something about this agency that made you interested?”
Chapter 3
Quentin
There was something off about the woman sitting across from him. He had known it almost from the moment that she sat down, and they began talking. He didn’t know what it was yet, but it was there. It wasn’t an uncommon thing, though. Many people who brought him cases had something to hide—something that they hoped would not come out into the open during the investigation of the problem that they needed help with.
Lydia was one of those people, without a doubt.
She was also lovely. She had long, strawberry-blonde hair. It fell almost to her waist in the back, but the soft strands that framed her face fell in layers, giving her a feathered look. Her eyes were luminous and large. Their color was almost indiscernible. They were gray, and green, and blue all at the same time, somehow. Her nose sloped downward and turned up slightly at the end, and her lips were like a little pink bow that had been placed perfectly below that upward bend. She was beautiful—not classically so, by any means. But enchanting. Entirely enchanting, in fact. If he allowed it, he could be thoroughly distracted by the dusting of freckles that danced over her upturned nose and the soft blush of her cheeks that colored her otherwise ivory skin.
He had never seen anyone quite like her, and he wondered what she wasn’t telling him. Perhaps she felt guilty. People who served in a caretaker’s capacity to someone who went missing always blamed themselves. Maybe she’d had a fight with her sister or neglected some duty she normally took care of. Maybe she hadn’t checked on her sister for a few days because her own life had gotten busy. None of those things made her a bad person, but all of them would make her feel like a terrible one.
“What brought you here instead of the police?” Quentin asked her again. She still hadn’t answered him, even though several seconds had passed. “It’s all right, Lydia, there are no wrong answers here.”
“Bad experience with the police,” Lydia said. “I just …well, I don’t trust them.”
It was a more common answer than she might think. What was interesting, though, was that there didn’t seem to be a supernatural component to her case. They usually got one of two kinds of cases at the Rockwell Agency—either supernatural cases where the person bringing the case had some idea that Rockwell specialized in such things or cases brought by people who didn’t have a criminal case or who had been turned away by the police.
Quentin wasn’t quite sure where Lydia fell within the scope, but she hadn’t said a thing about anything supernatural, and he wasn’t going to bring it up on his own. This was a straightforward missing person’s case, as far as he could tell.
“Okay,” Quentin said, not prying any further into her feelings towards the police. “Well, listen, Lydia … I’m happy to take your case and see what we can find out about your sister. Usually there’s some paperwork that we do to make things official, but I think that we should leave that to the side for now and head right on over to your sister’s apartment. You haven’t been inside it, right? Not since she’s been gone?”
Lydia shook her head. “No. No, I haven’t.”
“All right,” Quentin said, standing up and beginning to gather his wallet and his keys. “Then let’s go let ourselves in and see what we can find there.”
A terrible thought occurred to Quentin as he got ready to go. There was every possibility that Ginny was dead inside of the apartment from either some illness, or an accident, or even, as far-fetched as it might be, a murder. That would be a horrible thing for Lydia to walk in on, so he backtracked on his previous statement. “Actually,” Quentin said, slipping his wallet in his back pocket. “You don’t have to be there for this part. You can give me the address, and I’ll plug it into my GPS.” He waggled his phone at her, as he grabbed it off his desk. “I can go survey the apartment and see what I can learn. Then I can update you.”
Lydia shook her head. “No—no! I want to be there. I know why you’re saying that, and I need to be there.”
“Fair enough,” Quentin said, not elaborating. He had given her a choice, and he would respect the one she’d made. For her sake, he hoped very much that they would not find her sister there, dead. But if the woman had been missing for three days, dead in the apartment might be preferable to the alternative. That was just the gruesome reality of things.
Quentin was leading Lydia out of his office, when Hannah walked down the hall, passing by them. “Hi, there,” Hannah said, cheerfully. “I’m Hannah. I’m an agent here, as well. You’re in great hands with Quentin. I love your top, by the way.”
It was a very nice top, actually, Quentin noted, now that he was behind Lydia and he had more opportunity to survey her below the neck. She wore a long-sleeved blouse in a sea-foam green color, and it draped over her tall, slim frame gracefully. Her jeans were fitted, hugging her long, slim legs. The cuffs of her jeans were turned up at the ankle, and she wore simple gold flats. She wasn’t
curvy by any means. In fact, she looked more athletic—like she might have a swimming background. But she didn’t need a full chest and curvy hips to be sexy. There was an elegant sexiness about her tall, slim figure.
“Thank you,” Lydia said, smiling at Hannah, oblivious to the fact that Quentin was checking her out from behind. “I’m Lydia. It’s so nice to meet you. Really, really nice.”
“Lydia,” Hannah said, pressing the woman’s arm. “Such a pretty name. Well, like I said—Quentin will take good care of you. But you let me know if you need anything, or if he doesn’t return your calls fast enough, okay?” Hannah poked Quentin’s shoulder playfully, showing that she was teasing, then hurried on her way to her own office.
Lydia walked outside with Quentin. “She’s very nice.”
“Hannah?” Quentin asked, hitting the unlock button for his car. “Yes—she’s the nicest person you’ll ever meet. I guarantee it.”
“Tell me more about her,” Lydia said as they got into the car together.
Quentin glanced around, looking for Lydia’s car, which he spotted on the far side of the parking lot. It was the only one he didn’t recognize, so it had to be hers. Out of habit, he memorized her license plate. It was something he always did with a client—in case he lost them or needed to do a search on them to see if they were telling him everything he needed to know. It was often a useless piece of information, but, on occasion, it came in handy.
He got the address from Lydia before acknowledging her question, plugging it into his phone. “Tell you more about Hannah?” He started to drive out of the parking lot. It was a surprising question. He had thought that they would continue to talk about Ginny, her sister. But perhaps Lydia needed a distraction from what they were about to do. “Okay, well, Hannah has been a friend of mine for my whole life, really. I can’t remember not knowing her. She’s sweet, and she’s caring, and she helps everyone, whether or not they ask her to. But it’s genuine with Hannah. She loves people. Oh, but she loves animals more. If you want to win Hannah’s heart forever, show her your puppy. Or your kitten. Or your bird, or mouse, or rabbit—anything. That’s her soft spot.”
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