Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

Just as she did get comfortable, a large, furry creature hopped onto her stomach, curling up there with a contented hum.

  “Oh …,” Hannah said, opening her eyes and peering down at the white ball of fluff that had made her its pillow. She smiled, blinking back at the cat’s blue eyes and tilting her head when it turned his. “Hello, Sir Kitty-Cat,” she said, bringing one hand down to stroke the cat’s head. “I see you’ve decided to enjoy the sun with me.”

  “His name is Gifford,” Isaac said, running up to pet the cat as well. “Not Sir Kitty-Cat.”

  Hannah smiled at Jack’s middle child. Jack and his kids had been adopted as part of the family after Lydia had made her move down here permanently to be with Quentin. Considering that Jack had lost his wife—the woman he thought he had loved even though he had ended up not knowing her at all—he had followed Lydia with the kids, so that they could all have some continuity. Now Aunt Lydia could still see the children every day, and Hannah and the others got the added benefit of having little feet running around at the Rockwell Clan get-togethers.

  “You’re right,” Hannah said. “His name is Gifford. How do you spell Gifford?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Hannah thought about it for a minute. “Gifford. I think that’s …M, N, Q, P, T, X. Right?”

  Isaac laughed, scrunching his nose. “No way!”

  “Well, to know that I’m wrong you must know how to spell it after all,” Hannah said, handing Gifford over to Isaac. “Why don’t you go get him a treat? Oh—be careful,” Hannah added, somewhat urgently, as Isaac scooped up Gifford with delight and hurried off with him to the house where he knew that Lydia would help him find a treat for the indulged cat.

  Norman sat down in the chair beside Hannah, chuckling as Isaac ran off. His backyard was filled with people. Gideon Rockwell, Norman’s only son, was there along with his wife, Nola. Then Barrett, Gideon and Nola’s only son, was there with all of his friends and fellow agents. But having Barrett and all of the other agents over was becoming an increasingly immense task, given that in the past six months three of them had fallen in love. Ryan and Angela were together all the time now, and Jordan and Wes were equally as inseparable. Lydia and Quentin were joined at the hip as well, and Lydia was with Jack and his three kids. So, their group was growing for get-togethers, and from what she could tell, Norman loved it.

  She smiled over at the older man—the oldest-living member of the Rockwell dragon shifter clan. “Thanks for letting us all run around your backyard,” she said, getting comfortable in her seat again.

  “It’s my pleasure,” Norman said, sipping his iced tea. “Nice to have little ones around again, isn’t it?”

  Hannah nodded. “Yeah, they’re sweet kids. I hope I didn’t send Gifford off irresponsibly though. Poor guy. I think Isaac was holding him rather awkwardly around the middle.”

  “Gifford is a tough old bird,” Norman said. “Just like me. We’re just fine that way. And we have the same color hair!”

  Hannah laughed, as she leaned down and picked up her own drink from its spot on the ground beside her. “Well, there you go.”

  “You know, this house used to be filled with children’s laughter,” Norman said, looking around and shaking his head. “Those were the days. So long ago now.”

  “We didn’t really come over here much when we were younger, though,” Hannah said. “Or do you mean when Gideon was younger, and he had his friends?”

  Norman cleared his throat. “Yes. All of it. Different children at different times.”

  It wasn’t really a strange answer, but the way that Norman said it piqued Hannah’s curiosity. “It’s funny that you only had one son. And Gideon only had one son. It’s like each of you made one heir to take over the agency, and then that was enough. Did you ever wish there were more kids around?”

  “There’s no point in wishing for something you can’t have, now is there?” Norman asked lightly, taking another sip of his tea. “How is Barrett doing these days?”

  It was a somewhat abrupt change of subject, but Hannah was eager to have that conversation, anyway. She often talked to Norman when she needed advice, relying heavily on the older man’s wisdom. “He’s tired, Norman,” she said, lowering her voice even though it wouldn’t keep anyone from hearing her if they were listening. Having friends with heightened hearing meant that few things stayed a secret for long. “Isn’t there anything you can do to take the pressure off him? You know that he’s running the agency well. It’s not his fault if things go missing.”

  Norman sighed, shaking his head. “Nothing I can do about that, pumpkin. Except back him. Which I will. But I can’t make the concerns go away. The fact of the matter is, there’s been missing money, misplaced client files, leaked information, a video showing a dragon flying, …reports of supernatural activity. It’s too much for me to just keep excusing. People are going to keep pressing for answers.”

  “But you trust Barrett,” Hannah said. “You know that he’s not stealing money or being careless with our secrets or our files.”

  “I do trust him,” Norman said, nodding. “And I’m keeping an eye on things. I don’t know what the answer is yet. But I’m counting on the four of you to stick with him and make sure that he knows he has friends and support.”

  Hannah nodded. “Of course, we will. We all will. Barrett is a good leader, Norman. He’s the only person I would want leading the Rockwell Agency.”

  “I feel the same way,” Norman said.

  Gifford came running back to Hannah, and she scooped him up, setting him on her lap to stroke his soft fur. “Did you make it out alive?” she asked the cat, scratching between his ears. “Good boy. Yes, you’re a good boy.”

  Angela walked over and sat down beside Hannah, reaching over to pet the cat. “I just love this sun. It’s funny because when I moved here last year, I thought the heat would be the death of me, but I love that it’s only mid-March, and we’re already feeling warmer. In England it would be months yet before we started to get a whisper of summer.”

  Hannah always loved listening to Angela’s lilting, English accent. Everything the woman said sounded so sophisticated, and she was always so effortlessly elegant. And smart, too. Angela was studying botany, and Hannah loved the idea that Angela cultivated plants and worked to understand their special properties and benefits to the world.

  “Oh, well, see how you feel in May,” Hannah said. “You’ll have already had several weeks of hot weather by then, and you may not feel so happy about it.”

  “Then I’ll enjoy this while it lasts,” Angela said.

  Ryan came over to his girlfriend, dropping a kiss on her head and squeezing her shoulders. “Hello, beautiful woman. Freshen your drink?”

  Angela tilted her head back for a proper kiss and handed him her glass. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

  Sighing happily, Hannah watched the two lovebirds interact. She was happy they had found each other, and there could hardly be two people who fit together better. Unless it was Jordan and Wes, who were currently engaged in a battle of ring toss, shouting smack talk at each other and drawing a crowd of onlookers. Or Lydia and Quentin who were sitting together in one chair, curled up, watching and laughing. It was nice to see love all around her.

  Hannah didn’t even feel jealous, though she would certainly love to find her own match someday. She thought she had, but it had all blown up in her face. Perhaps she had been the one who had made it blow up, or perhaps it had just been doomed from the start. Maybe it was even him. She didn’t know. But she still missed having someone to hold hands with. Someone to talk with in the evenings.

  But looking at her friends and their lovers, she knew that what she’d had with Alex hadn’t been nearly as real as she’d thought. It was never like Ryan and Angela’s relationship. Never like Jordan and Wes, who were best friends and perfectly suited for one another. Not like Quentin and Lydia, who spent all their time gazing at each other. She had chalked that up to the idea that such ro
mances were only for fairytales and romance books, anyway, but now she saw them happening in real life, and she knew—Alex hadn’t been her person.

  She really wanted to find her person, and someday, she hoped, she would. In the meantime, …

  “Give me some kisses, Gifford,” Hannah said, lifting the cat up to nuzzle her face against his. “Who loves you, Giffy? Aww …that’s right. I love you. Yes, I do.”

  Chapter 2

  Liam

  “Jury’s back.”

  Liam jumped up, straightened his tie, and grabbed his suit jacket from the back of the chair. He pulled it on, nodding to his client. “Okay, this is it. No matter what happens in there, keep your face neutral. Try not to react. There’s too much media around for that. Especially if we do get a guilty verdict. I don’t think we will, but if we do remember that we still have sentencing and a display now could work against you with the judge.”

  Taylor Epps nodded, the big, bulky man looking genuinely nervous. “Yeah, I know. But it’ll be not guilty, right, man? Not guilty …”

  There was no way that the verdict should come back guilty. Liam had the law on his side, and his client wasn’t guilty, and he had charmed the whole room—judge and jury alike. It was an open-and-shut case, and the prosecution had only tried Taylor to make a point. It was a point that Liam was hoping would backfire on them.

  But he couldn’t promise Taylor that the jury would come back with a not-guilty verdict. He could never promise that.

  “I think it looks really good for us,” Liam said, putting his hand on Taylor’s shoulder and patting supportively. “Come on. Let’s get out there.”

  Liam walked with Taylor back out to the courtroom where the judge was waiting. The jury filed in once they were seated, and Liam barely listened to the judge going through her usual spiel about what was about to take place. His pulse thudded, his adrenaline running high as the jury foreman stood up and cleared his throat, reading from the piece of paper he held. “On the count of felony murder, we find the defendant …guilty.”

  There was a gasp in the courtroom, and it was all that Liam could do to stay on his feet and not react. He had a hot, Irish temper running through him, and he wanted to shout out that that verdict was insane. Even the judge looked shocked, and Taylor was trembling beside him.

  But he didn’t shout out. He didn’t do anything other than stand there and listen to the judge thank the jury for their service and go through the rest of her usual speech.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Liam said to Taylor through gritted teeth, keeping his voice as hushed as possible. “Fake it ‘til you make it. Keep standing up straight. Face forward. Neutral expression. If you have to have any expression, look confused but humbled. You don’t agree, and you don’t understand, but you’re not fighting back.”

  “I’m going to pass out,” Taylor whispered back to him. And then he did. The large man with a sweet personality and a tattoo of his mother’s name on his bicep passed out right there in the courtroom, sinking to the floor with a thud.

  Chaos ensued, and Liam was in the thick of it all, making sure that his client was taken to the hospital and entering several items into the record relating to the verdict, requests for sentencing, and notes about care for his client. But, ultimately, there was nothing he could do as Taylor was taken away on a stretcher to the hospital. He couldn’t change the verdict for the man. He wanted to though. He really wanted to.

  Taylor had been the inadvertent getaway driver in a robbery. One of his so-called friends had shot a man before jumping into the car and telling Taylor to step on it. Shocked and confused, Taylor had sped away, and the man his friend had shot had died. If a person dies while a felony is being committed, then everyone involved gets a murder charge. That was why it was called felony murder. But it wasn’t always fair. Taylor hadn’t known why his friends had told him to stop at the house in the suburbs that night. He hadn’t known they were lying when they said they were just going to go pick something up from a friend. He hadn’t known or participated in any of it, and he definitely hadn’t killed anyone. But the prosecution had said that he was the getaway driver. That he knew. That he’d aided and abetted.

  It was bullshit, and the jury should have seen through it. They should have looked at Taylor and known that he hadn’t killed anyone or participated in killing anyone. It should have gone differently, and Liam and Taylor should have been walking out of the courtroom right now to give their statements and then go celebrate with a drink.

  But he would be lying if he said that he hadn’t worried about exactly this outcome. Because he hadn’t won any of his last three cases. It had been almost two months since he’d won a case, in fact. Or even a motion. Nothing had gone his way.

  Not since that night in the bar when the old woman had appeared out of nowhere and told him that he would never amount to anything—that he would always be mediocre.

  Had she gotten in his head?

  Liam drove back to his office from the courtroom, his hands gripping the wheel tightly, as his thoughts all centered on that one old woman. He didn’t want to think that she had gotten to him, and that he was performing poorly because she had freaked him out. He was in a line of work where his performance made the difference to whether other people got to keep their freedom or not. He couldn’t afford to be thrown off by an old woman’s hateful comments.

  He was better than that. He was stronger than that. He was Liam O’Malley, one of the lead defense attorneys at a firm that allowed him to pick his own clients. He defended people who deserved the best possible defense, and then that’s what he gave them. Or at least, that’s what he used to do.

  The old woman, he’d found out after weeks of research, was Winnifred Roster, grandmother to Trinity Calhoun, a girl who he had casually dated for a few weeks the year before. Trinity had been young at twenty-four years old. She was younger than he usually dated, but she was a fun girl, and they’d enjoyed their time together. He hadn’t known until Winnifred talked to him in the bar that Trinity was actually quite wealthy. She had never mentioned it to him, and he had certainly never asked. They hadn’t talked about things like that. They’d spent most of their free time in bed, or out hiking, or hopping from bar to bar.

  But apparently Trinity had plenty of money, and her grandmother was convinced that he had stolen it from her.

  Now he couldn’t seem to do his job correctly because of the old woman, and Trinity hadn’t answered any of his calls. He hadn’t thought that the breakup with her had been bad, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was just wrong about everything these days.

  It was late in the afternoon, and when Liam got back to his office, he packed up his things, returned some emails, and headed out. The trial had been four days long, and trials were always all-consuming. He needed a night out, and he knew exactly where to start. Even if it was only just after six o’clock.

  When he walked into his usual bar, Misti was already there, pouring drinks, and he walked towards her with relief, signaling for a whiskey.

  “You’re in a suit, and you’re drinking whiskey,” Misti said, plunking his drink down in front of him. “Bad day at the office?”

  “The worst,” he said, knocking back the liquid in his glass with one swallow. “Hit me again.”

  “Oh, baby, I thought you’d never ask,” she said, pouring more whiskey into his glass. “Wanna talk about it?”

  “Not even a little bit,” Liam said, knocking back his second drink. “In fact, tonight, I want to forget I’m a lawyer altogether. How about that?”

  She poured him another drink. “You’re well on your way to forgetting everything altogether,” she said, shoving her red tresses back from her face. Her hair was so wild that it often spilled across her eyes, hiding her green gaze.

  Liam leaned over the bar towards her. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Calm down, boy,” Misti said, lightly. “Couldn’t have been that bad of a day.”

  “Come on,” Liam said. �
�Get someone to cover you. Let’s go down to the river, and take our shoes off, and put our feet in the water while we lie on the grass. We’ll see the stars. We’ll get lost—away from it all.”

  Misti patted his hand. “I’d love to, but I can’t. Some of us don’t make money whether our clients are happy or not. I’ve got to keep the drinks coming, and you—I think you’d better take your third drink and then go home, bud. You need to sleep it off.”

  Liam groaned, dropping his head into his hands. “What is wrong with me, Misti? It’s that damn woman.”

  “A woman finally got under your skin, Liam O’Malley? Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “You could say that,” Liam said. He picked his head up, and he could see that a woman he often danced with was headed straight for him. He was definitely not in the mood, and he threw some cash down on the counter for Misti, then slipped off his barstool and headed back out to the parking lot. He knew he was too drunk to drive home, so he called a cab and stood out in the fresh air, rocking back and forth from his heels to the balls of his feet, as he waited. When the car pulled up, he got in and gave the man his address, briefly acknowledging how pitiful it was that he was going home, three whiskeys drunk, at 7:00 in the evening.

  Misti was right. He needed to sleep it off. He needed to sleep off the last six weeks and regroup.

  His phone rang as the cab driver drove through the streets of Baton Rouge, and Liam picked it up without looking at the caller ID. “What?”

  “You okay?”

  It was Mark, the private investigator who worked at the same firm with Liam. They were good friends, and they often went out together on the weekends to live it up. Mark was a good guy, through and through.

  “Yeah, what do you want?” Liam asked, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back.

  “You know that woman you asked me to track down? The one that talked about her granddaughter?”

  Liam’s eyes opened again, and he was suddenly a bit more sober. “Yeah …”

  “Well, I made up a file on her when I was researching her for you. The granddaughter’s name was Trinity. Sticks with you, doesn’t it?”