Rockwell Agency: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Which made it look more and more like it was an inside job. It made Barrett look like he was sabotaging his own agency. His friends didn’t believe that, and Barrett didn’t think that his grandfather, Norman, believed that, either. But part of him wondered if maybe his parents did. At least, his father, Gideon. Barrett had always been closer with Norman than with Gideon, anyway. Barrett loved his parents, and he had no doubt that they loved him, too. They had given him a good childhood and a good life, and they had always supported him. But it was as though there was some sort of emotional barrier that none of the three of them could ever cross to become truly close. Barrett saw his friends with their parents, and he saw how Norman was with everyone, and he knew that there was a level of trust and intimacy that was missing between him and his parents. He didn’t resent it because they truly had always been good to him, but now that he was in trouble, he noticed that barrier more and more.

  It was Norman who always called to check on him. Norman fought for him the hardest. Norman always made sure that Barrett knew that he had a team on his side.

  As for Gideon …he kept his thoughts more to himself.

  Barrett glanced at his phone to check the time and realized that it was getting late in the afternoon. It was almost five o’clock, and he had been in the office since seven o’clock that morning. He stretched, twisting his broad torso to relieve the tension in his back. Barrett was a big guy, courtesy of his Rockwell genes. The Rockwell family was comprised of bigger, stronger, faster people—even by shifter standards. And all of the Rockwell bloodline had bright green scales, and more power, and more speed in their dragon form. They were the leaders of the clan for a reason—they were warriors, through and through.

  And right now, Barrett was a warrior that was trapped in a prison he didn’t understand.

  Barrett got up and rubbed a hand over his dark hair and glanced towards his office mirror to make sure that his dark jeans and his white t-shirt weren’t too rumpled, after hours of being crunched into a desk chair. He had a rugged look about him, with tanned skin and big, bulging arms, and features that were good-looking in a rough, masculine way. Hannah had recently become engaged to a guy named Liam, who Barrett had heard others describe as pretty or beautiful. That was Liam for sure. He was the prettiest man in the group. Barrett definitely wasn’t pretty with his big, bulky physique and his strong, masculine features, but he knew he was a good-looking man. That was another thing that ran through the Rockwell bloodline.

  It didn’t really matter much right now, though. Despite the fact that all of his friends were partnering up—and with non-shifters, too—Barrett had no time for dating, even if he might enjoy the distraction. There was too much else to worry about.

  He grabbed his phone and his wallet, shoving both in his back pockets, and then he headed for his office door, pulling it open just as Jordan lifted her hand to knock against it on the other side.

  The two friends couldn’t have been more different in size. Barrett was tall, and broad, and took up a lot of space, and by contrast, Jordan was tiny. She was about five feet tall and delicately built—though anyone who took that to mean she wasn’t a force to be reckoned with was making a big mistake.

  But Barrett noticed the look on her pixie-like face more than her size. “What’s wrong?”

  Jordan cleared her throat, clearly bracing herself for what she was about to say. Whatever it was, she wasn’t going to sugarcoat it. “The elders and your father are here. They’re going to suspend you, Barrett. Your dad is taking the agency back over while they try to figure out what’s been happening.”

  Barrett stared at her, shaking his head. “No. No way.”

  “I told them to fuck off,” Jordan said. “They chose not to follow my advice. I would have already fought harder, but I wanted to talk to you first. Ryan is here, too, and Quentin and Hannah are on their way now. I texted them. We’ll all stand with you and stop this from happening.”

  Barrett knew that she meant it. He knew that all of them would stand with him, and he appreciated that. But that meant risking getting the whole agency shut down instead of him just stepping away for a while, and he wasn’t going to take that risk. He couldn’t believe that the elders were actually here to remove him, though. He hadn’t thought it would get to this. He didn’t understand why nobody would listen to him when he said that he was doing everything in his power to try to deal with what had been happening. He had even been willing to go to the police about the break-ins, even though that meant inviting Baton Rouge police into the agency where they might learn far too much about what actually went on there.

  None of it had made a difference.

  “Barrett,” Ryan said, coming down the hall and standing beside Jordan, his eyes troubled. “God, I’m so sorry. I hate this. I hate all of this.”

  “It’s fine,” Barrett said, nodding to his friend. “We’ll deal with it.”

  “We need to just all tell them this isn’t what we want,” Ryan said. “They have to listen to us. The elders … They’re really just a fixture, right? I mean, when is the last time that the elders have come together for something like this? Most of them don’t even live in Baton Rouge anymore.”

  Ryan wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t matter. Barrett wasn’t going to place his own welfare above the welfare of the agency. If his father wanted to step in and run things for a while, then let him. Barrett was confident that the agency would still be plagued with problems, because he knew that he wasn’t the one causing them.

  “Let them remove me,” Barrett said, giving Jordan a stern look when she opened her mouth to protest—no doubt aggressively. “Let them do it. Let them see that nothing changes, because it’s not me. It’s fine. We’ll do this their way, then. It’ll be good. I haven’t been able to focus on what is happening here, because I’ve been too busy trying to run things and take cases. Well, let Dad do that part now, and I’ll really start investigating.” He nodded again, trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince his friends. “I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  Jordan and Ryan glanced at each other, but they both stepped aside to let Barrett walk past them into the hall.

  Barrett braced himself, as he made his way to the front entryway of the agency, where four of the elders and his father were waiting for him. Norman wasn’t there, and Barrett hadn’t expected him to be. Norman wouldn’t have voted for this. He wouldn’t have supported it.

  “Dad,” Barrett said, nodding to his father.

  “Barrett, I’m sorry it has to be this way …,” Gideon said.

  But Barrett held up a hand. “Let’s not spend any time on apologies that wouldn’t be necessary if this wasn’t happening.” He wasn’t truly angry with his father because he knew this was hurting Gideon, too. But Barrett was disappointed in him.

  “We won’t,” one of the elders said, stepping forward. “Barrett, we’re here to remove you from your position.”

  “Temporarily,” Gideon said, quickly.

  “We’ll see,” the elder said. “We’ll see.”

  Chapter 2

  Victoria

  Victoria Crenshaw paced up and down the police training yard, her uniform pressed and in perfect condition. Her navy-blue shirt was tucked tightly into the waistband of her navy-blue police-order pants, and the wide belt that cinched her waist also held her gun. She was usually unaware of it, but the pants hugged the curve of her ass perfectly, highlighting her perkiest asset, as she strode back and forth, her red hair slicked back into a long ponytail.

  “Get in proper form,” Victoria said to one girl, whose butt was much too high in the air for her plank form to be acceptable. “Thirty seconds to go. Breathe in. Breathe out. If you are holding your breath—release it now! This exercise is pointless if you do not maintain your breathing. How are you going to chase a suspect, and talk into your police radio, and keep an eye out for the safety of civilians, and try to think two steps ahead of your suspect all at the same time, if you cannot remembe
r to breathe during an exercise?”

  The girl’s butt snapped down, and she and her friend looked at each other, biting down on their bottom lips to keep from giggling.

  Victoria rolled her eyes, but not without some amusement. It was her job to show these high school students who had enrolled in her program what real police work was like. It was the part of her job that she loved, partially because she wished that someone had taken a firm hand with her when she was in high school. Maybe she wouldn’t have ended up pregnant at sixteen and wondering how she was ever going to make it through the rest of junior year, much less college. She’d had big dreams for becoming an FBI agent, even from a young age. Instead, she’d chosen to spend more time with her daughter, so she’d enrolled in the police academy, instead.

  She was happy with her life as a Baton Rouge detective. She had no regrets that she’d never made it to the federal level—not when she looked at her daughter’s face and knew that they shared a lifetime of memories together. Police work was demanding enough in and of itself, and it kept her busy, and fulfilled, and she felt like she was making a real difference in the city. And she was making a difference in the lives of the students in her program right now.

  “Carter—if I see you drop your knees one more time, I’m going to make you run three miles around this yard,” Victoria said, coming to a stop in front of a blond, skinny boy who, so far, was not cutting it in her program. “That’s four seconds, three seconds, two seconds, one second—Olivia! Do not drop your form until I have said to!”

  Olivia’s head snapped up. “You said one second!”

  “I didn’t say the exercise was over, now did I?” Victoria asked, walking over to her. “Police work is about precision. It’s about following orders. You wait until I tell you to lower your body before you do it. You know that.”

  Olivia rolled her eyes and groaned. “Moooommmm.”

  “You know better,” Victoria said to her daughter, holding up a finger to cut off the exaggerated expansion of her name. “Now, come on. Everyone—on your feet. Jumping jacks next. Twenty-five, and then five burpees, and then twenty-five more jumping jacks. And—go.”

  There was a mumble of complaining that Victoria chose to ignore as she walked around the group, evaluating everyone’s performance. She was hard-nosed, there was no doubt, but she also knew that these were fifteen and sixteen-year-old kids. And they needed discipline, but they also needed encouragement.

  “Good job, Carter,” Victoria said, walking past the blond-headed kid again. “Jumping jacks are clearly your strength. Go harder.”

  Carter grinned, and his gangly arms and legs moved even faster.

  Half an hour later, the after-school program ended, and kids began to filter out of the yard, talking and laughing and making a good bit of noise as they went.

  Olivia walked over to Victoria, her arms folded over her chest. “Mom, you don’t have to lecture me in front of my friends. That’s not cool.”

  “I lecture all of your friends in front of your friends and in front of you, too,” Victoria said, picking up the orange traffic cones that they had used for relay exercises. “I’m not going to make an exception for you just because you’re my incredible, amazing, beautiful daughter.”

  Olivia tried to roll her eyes, but she was also grinning. “Mom, seriously. Don’t.”

  “Olivia, seriously,” Victoria said. “I told you—you sign up for my course, there’s no special treatment. Remember?”

  “But Grandma Rose says—.”

  Victoria cut her daughter off with a look. “Liv, you know better than that. Grandma Rose is sweet, and good, and she loves us, and we love her, but we do not take life advice from Grandma Rose. Why is that?”

  “Because Grandma Rose is a hippie,” Olivia said, parroting what she knew she was supposed to say. “I know she’s a hippie, but hippies know some cool stuff, Mom. I mean, she’s your mom. She taught you a lot, right?”

  It was always such a struggle to balance her concerns about her mother and her need to support both her mother and father in front of her daughter who loved their wild, feel-good ways. “Of course, she did,” Victoria said, “and Grandma Rose is a smart, kind person. But I don’t agree with some of the ways that she sees things. That’s all. Grandma Rose wants life to be …well, rosy. She wants to think that if we all just have fun, and love each other, and get along then everything is going to be fine.”

  “I know, and her lack of discipline at home is why you ended up with me,” Olivia said.

  Victoria put down her stack of orange cones and took her daughter’s shoulders in her hands. “Don’t say it like that. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me because you’re my daughter, and I love you. But yes—because Grandma Rose and Grandpa Bo were more concerned about never infringing on my enjoyment or my rights, as they called them, they didn’t give me any boundaries or discipline. They let me do things that I shouldn’t have been doing. Discipline and standards are essential in life, Olivia. I give those to you, and you don’t like them, and that’s fine. But you’ll appreciate them one day.”

  “Will you also give me pizza for dinner?”

  Victoria laughed, knowing that her daughter was saying they were done with serious talking. “Yes, that’s fine. Run home and call in the order. I’ll finish some stuff at my desk and pick the pizza up on my way.”

  “Okay!” Olivia hugged Victoria, and then she was off, running out of the police yard and down the street.

  Victoria smiled to herself as she put the cones away and walked back into the precinct that was her second home. She headed over to her desk and sat down, making some notes and following up on a few emails and voice-mail messages that were waiting for her. Just as she was gathering her things to leave, her partner, Izzie, walked over with a grim look on her face.

  “Hey, we’ve got a missing person’s case,” Izzie said. “Just landed it. Person’s been missing for seventy-two hours, so well past the limit. Suspicious circumstances suspected. Get this. It’s a wife. The husband is here, and he says that he almost went to the Rockwell Agency first.”

  “Ugh,” Victorian said, rolling her eyes. “More and more people are saying that these days, you know?”

  “I know,” Izzie said, her sleek, jet-black hair framing her face and falling over her shoulders. Izzie had the palest skin and the blackest hair, and her eyes were an almost translucent green. She didn’t have the kind of face that was unforgettable, which was both an aid and a detriment for police work. “I told him that he was right to bring police business to the police.”

  “Why is that such a hard concept?” Victoria asked, shaking her head. “I mean, I get it—if your dog is missing, or if you think your spouse is cheating on you, or your neighbor stole your lawn mower, then sure, go to a private detective agency. But your wife has been missing for seventy-two hours, and you go to the pop-up detective shack down the road? What are people thinking?”

  “The Rockwell people have done a really good job of marketing themselves,” Izzie said, shrugging a shoulder. “And to be fair, they’ve solved some big cases.”

  “Yeah, and they’re always calling their contacts here with favors,” Victoria said, standing up. “Listen, any chance you can do the initial processing with this guy? I need two hours to go home and have dinner with Olivia, and then I’ll come back in to work on it.”

  Izzie waved a hand at her. “Yeah, yeah. Go on. I’ll handle it. Come in when you’re ready.”

  “Thanks,” Victoria said, grabbing her bag and heading for the door. “Talk soon!”

  She headed out to her car, still inwardly steaming over the Rockwell’s. Victoria was proud to be a police officer, and she had worked hard to get where she was, and she didn’t like the idea that some band of five go-getters could have the same level of credibility as the police department. She didn’t like that they were always butting in, and from what she could tell, not always playing by the rules, either. Rules were important, and more people needed t
o respect them. If she ever met a Rockwell agent, that’s exactly what she would tell them.

  Chapter 3

  Barrett

  Barrett had taken a sleeping pill before he’d gone to bed the night that he was removed from his position as head of the Rockwell Agency. He had already been sleeping poorly, and he knew that now that he’d been removed, there was no way he was going to get any sleep that night. There was too much frustration, and anger, and worry spinning around inside his head for that. And he was going to need his rest if he was going to think clearly in the morning, when he began his own full-force investigation into what was happening with the agency.

  Barrett had also declined his friends’ offers to come over and hang out, sleep over, or show up the next morning. Everyone had been concerned, and Barrett knew it was because they cared about him. He appreciated that. But he didn’t want company. Not right now. He wanted to be alone to think, and process, and sleep.

  That was why he had gone to bed just before 11:00 and slept straight through until just before 8:00 the next morning. Barrett never slept that long or that soundly, and he woke all at once, his eyes flying open and focusing on the ceiling above him. His limbs felt slightly leaden, but he slowly began to move, sitting up in bed and twisting his torso to stretch his spine. He rotated his shoulders and cracked his neck from side to side. Then Barrett stood up.

  He walked to the bathroom and splashed water on his face, then headed to the kitchen to put a pot of coffee on before he got started for the day. He was out of his routine because he had slept late, so he wouldn’t run today. He wanted to get straight to work, anyway, and his mind was already starting to churn through strategies and possibilities. That and the lingering effects of the sleeping pill were why he wasn’t looking as he walked through his living room towards the kitchen. His senses were usually so heightened that he saw everything in a room at once, but Barrett actually tripped over the body that was lying on the ground.