Just twelve hours earlier she would have suspected him of trying to get rid of her, but she realized that she didn’t worry about that at all now. She knew instinctively that she could trust him, and that he wasn’t the kind of person who would manipulate a situation—or kill a person out of spite or some sense of necessity. He wasn’t putting her in danger. He was giving her a new experience, and she gave herself over to it, stretching out her limbs and letting her body fly.
When he swept her up in his wing, it was so gentle that she barely felt it. She rolled along the span of his wing, sliding towards his large body. He let her rest there for a moment, catching her breath, and then he flew upward again, moving with such speed, and power, and grace all at the same time. When they had soared high above the ocean again, he tossed her lightly this time, sending her just a little higher, and then he let her fall.
Victoria laughed, the sound getting lost in the rush of wind around her, and she balled herself up this time, rolling over and over again in the air as she tumbled.
He caught her once more, splaying her across his back, and she lay there gasping for breath, amazed at the way she felt. Never in her life had she considered going skydiving, but now she had done something even better.
For the next hour, Barrett flew her around the sky, letting her fall, then catching her again, and sometimes taking a break by just coasting along. Eventually, though, he made his way back to the spot where he’d shifted, and he slowly drifted down, taking them lower and lower until they were in the trees growing up out of the swampy bayou, and then finally right on the ground.
He bent down low, letting her slide off his back, and when she did, her legs were wobbly and her head was spinning. She grabbed onto a tree to steady herself and remembered what it was like to be back on land. Victoria closed her eyes and breathed in slow and deep, getting her bearings back. When she turned around again, Barrett was standing there in his human form. He’d pulled a pair of jeans on, and they were sitting low on his hips as he stood there, looking at her.
It felt like he was waiting for her response—almost as though he thought that she might not be entirely pleased with what they had just done.
Victoria smiled, and his face relaxed a bit. She tried to find the words to express how she felt about the experience he’d just given her, but she found that no words would come. She tried for a minute, and he stood there, watching her somewhat warily, until she finally gave up. Victoria walked over to him, and she put her arms around his neck, lifting up onto the tips of her toes to be able to reach that high. He was such a big man, but she held him to her anyway, hugging him hard, and after only the briefest of hesitations, he put his own arms around her.
His hug was so fierce that it lifted her right up off her feet, so that she was suspended in his embrace. Victoria smiled and relaxed in his arms, her nose pressed into the nape of his neck. His lips brushed over her hair and then her shoulder, and he released her, stepping back and taking his own steadying breath.
“You seemed like you were having fun,” Barrett said, clearing his throat, slightly. “I would have stopped if you were scared.”
Victoria smiled again. “I wasn’t scared. I trusted you.”
His eyes lingered on hers for a long moment, the heat of the kiss they had shared and the intimacy of flying through the air together radiating between them so strongly that it was almost an overpowering force. It would have been so easy to just fall back into his embrace and let him start kissing her all over again. He would, too. She could feel it. If she made a single move towards him, he was going to sweep her back up into his arms, and they would both be lost in the explosive connection between them.
Part of her wanted to do exactly that—a big part of her. But she knew that as incredible as this night had been, it had to end here, before things had gotten to the point where they couldn’t resume the professional relationship that was required for them to get justice for both him and the woman he’d found dead in his house.
“We need to talk about what happened at your parents’ house,” Victoria said.
And just like that, the kinetic passion of the moment fizzled. It didn’t disappear entirely, but the awareness of what his parents had revealed settled over the situation like a heavy, wet, woolen blanket.
Barrett’s face fell, and he looked away from her, his hands settling on his hips as he surveyed the bayou through the darkness of night. “I have a sibling,” he said, dully. “Who I never knew about, who may or may not be alive, and my family has been lying to me my whole life. And not just my parents—my grandfather, too. I thought that I at least had him in all of this, but I don’t. I don’t have anyone I can trust other than my friends who work with me at the agency …and you.”
It made her feel good to be on the list of people he could depend on. She wanted to be that person for him.
Walking around him so that she was facing him again, she took his arms in her hands and looked up at him. “That may be true,” she said, not sugarcoating the situation. “You may have just found out that you can’t trust your family. You would be surprised how often families are the people that you never want to trust—I see it all the time in my work. It’s a really hard thing to find out, but you have the advantage of having created your own family outside of your biological family, and you can rely on them. And on me.”
“Vic—.”
She shook her head, keeping him quiet. “No, I’m not done yet. That’s the understanding, compassionate part of the speech. Now comes the hard part. I know that this is bad news, but you have to get over the betrayal part. Now. And you have to handle this in a smart way. Like an investigator. Like an investigator who now knows something that nobody else knows that you know. And you need to use that to figure out who you can trust—and you can use that to clear your own name and make sure that you don’t end up paying for something you didn’t do. So—yes. This sucks. And, yes, you needed to blow off some steam. We did that. Now we move on.”
Barrett looked down at her the whole time she spoke, and his expression never changed, so she wasn’t sure how he felt about her tough-love approach to the situation. But when she stopped talking, he smiled slightly—not because he was happy about what she’d said, but because he knew she was right.
“Jordan is going to like you,” he said, stepping back from her and dragging a hand through his hair as he looked around. “You’re right. I can deal with what I need to figure out with my family later—the emotional part of it, anyway. In the meantime, there’s a dead body in my house.”
Pleased, Victoria nodded. “Exactly. So—you have a sibling who was accused of—what? Betraying the Clan? Being corrupt? How does that information change what we already know?”
“Well it explains a lot about why everyone older than me is not so willing to give me the benefit of the doubt,” Barrett said. “Beyond that—it’s starting to put the picture together. The biggest question I have is where is this other sibling? Is he or she dead? If that’s the case, then I don’t know that we have a new lead. But if he or she is alive …”
Victoria nodded. “I’m thinking the same thing. If you have a sibling out there who has already betrayed the Clan once, then what’s to stop that sibling from coming back to cause more trouble? What’s to stop that sibling from sabotaging you out of bitterness?”
Barrett looked at her, then reached for her hand, pulling her to him. “Let’s get out of here.”
“What, you don’t want to continue standing in the bayou in the middle of the night?” Victoria asked. “How strange.”
“I’m always in the bayou in the middle of the night,” Barrett said, “but right now, I need to talk to my grandfather. First, I need to see if he’ll be honest with me, not knowing that I know. Second, I need to hear what happened with this sibling, and where he or she is now. And I’m not waiting until morning.”
Victoria smiled, pressing his fingers. “Then let’s go.”
Chapter 19
Adele
>
“He knows.”
Tall and willowy, with hair the same chocolate brown as Barrett’s and eyes that held so many glints of gold that they fairly glowed, Adele walked, head held high and eyes focused ahead. She didn’t look at her brother or respond to his obvious statement. Cade was always one for stating the obvious, and none of her reprimands over the years had ever broken him of the habit. Now she hardly noticed it anymore, ignoring him whenever she saw fit and remaining immersed in her own thoughts until she was ready to voice them.
Barrett did know, though. Cade’s statement was as right as it was unnecessary. And the fact that Barrett now knew that he had a sibling—rather, siblings—it threw quite a wrench into her plan. Of course, he didn’t know all the details, and that was something. But it wouldn’t be long before he began to unravel the pieces. After he had dealt with the shock, he would go to Norman. Adele had been stalking her baby brother long enough to know that whenever Barrett needed advice or a confidant, his first choice was Norman.
And Norman, when confronted, would spill everything he knew. Adele had vivid memories from her life in Baton Rouge, and she remembered always knowing that Norman was never on her side—not once. Not ever.
Why he had kept his silence so long, she didn’t know. Perhaps he was protecting his youngest grandchild, who he seemed to favor, from things that would only hurt him. But now Norman would break his silence, and rather than flying destructively under the radar, she and Cade were going to be the first and only thing everyone was talking about.
Again.
“Adele, he knows,” Cade said again, more insistently this time. “He knows … This isn’t the plan.”
“I know it’s not the fucking plan, Cade,” Adele said, stopping in her tracks on the sidewalk and looking up at her brother, who was only twelve months younger. “I made the plan, didn’t I? I know how it’s supposed to go.”
“But what do we do now?”
Adele tried as hard as she could to be patient. Cade had, after all, abandoned their family and gone with her after everything had come to a head thirty years ago. In the three decades since they had abandoned Baton Rouge, they had always stuck together, and even though Cade did not have her wit, or intelligence, or even her common sense, he did have a fierce loyalty to her that stemmed out of a total dependency. She was the kind of woman who could appreciate that.
“That’s what I’m figuring out,” Adele said, beginning to walk again. “Nothing is ruined. We can still finish what we started. We just have to adapt.”
“Maybe we should just leave,” Cade said, hurrying to catch up with her, as she strode ahead of him. “I kind of miss doing other things, Adele. Just normal things. We’re just living in hiding here, and I still don’t get why it’s so important to ruin everything for Mom, and Dad, and Barrett.”
Adele knew that her brother really didn’t understand. She didn’t know how such things could escape him, but apparently they did. She sighed and explained it to him again, as they continued to walk down the street in the dead of night, both of them entirely hidden from view by the bands that were wrapped around their individual wrists, courtesy of one of Adele’s friends who knew more than his fair share of magic. As long as the bands were on them, they were entirely invisible to the human eye and to the camera.
“Try to pay attention,” Adele said. “The people you call Mom and Dad—Gilbert and Nola—hung us out to dry. Do you remember that thirty years ago, Cade?”
“They didn’t like what you did.”
Adele rolled her eyes. “They didn’t like that I was the first person in the Rockwell Clan to ever realize what asses we were all making of ourselves, walking around and living in hiding from the world like we’re the ones with a secret to be ashamed of.”
Cade nodded, having heard her spiel of justification before.
Adele didn’t care how many times he’d heard it—she was going to say it again because every time she even began to think about what had happened, she grew more furious.
“We’re the ones with the power,” Adele told Cade. “We’re the ones who are majestic creatures who can shift into dragons on a whim. We can run faster than cheetahs, and we’re stronger than any of those ridiculous superheroes that humans keep daydreaming up to be in their movies. We’re incredible, Cade. And they want to just sit on all that knowledge and power and do nothing with it—nothing but protect the citizens of Baton Rouge, as though that was some sort of noble calling. We should be leading the world—that’s what we should be doing. People should know about the Rockwell Clan and what we can accomplish. What we’re capable of.”
Cade was nodding still, having learned long ago that even playing devil’s advocate against her on this point was an unwise endeavor.
“Still, though,” Cade said. “Dad didn’t like that you lied to him to get access to the agency and then filmed all that video stuff.”
“His name is Gideon Rockwell,” Adele said. “He’s not my father, and you shouldn’t consider him yours.”
“But he is my dad.”
“Biologically,” Adele said. “Yes, it’s his genes in our bodies, but beyond that—he’s no relation to us. Tell me I’m right, Cade.”
“You’re right,” Cade said, responding instinctively and immediately.
But Adele found little satisfaction in that.
She stopped walking and turned towards her brother. He did the same, looking at her and waiting for whatever she had to say.
“Thirty years ago, I decided to take what was my birthright, the agency, and make it into something that mattered. Something that would advance the Rockwell name,” Adele said, speaking as though she was addressing a large crowd to stir up their emotions. “I wanted to leave my own legacy and to make our legacy great. People who achieve great legacies sometimes have to do things that other people find wrong or distasteful. It’s our birthright, Cade. It’s what we have to do to get to where we’re supposed to be. So, yes, I lied to Gideon Rockwell, and I got access to things that he didn’t want me to have. Yes, I filmed it all and put together a powerful statement about the Rockwell Clan. I lied to far more than just him. I got testimony from the elders and the other members of the Clan when they were talking to me, not knowing that I was recording it. And I put it all together, and I was ready—I was so ready—to release it and to claim what everyone should already know is ours.”
Adele was breathing hard now as she spoke, feeling the adrenaline and the fury that still filled her at the thought of having her passion project ripped from her.
“They took it from me, Cade” she said, biting out the words. “And what’s worse—they destroyed it. They destroyed the way that I had chosen to tell the world what I am and who we are. And they berated me. They put me on trial. They said that I was a traitor. That I couldn’t be trusted. That I had betrayed and humiliated my family. And do you know what Gideon and Nola did through it all?”
“I was there,” Cade said, taking her question literally. “Of course, I know.”
“They let it happen,” Adele said. “They stood by the side, and they let people who should have been answering to me as I took my rightful position as the head of the agency and the new Rockwell Clan—they let them mock me, and shame me, and dig up every bad thing that I had ever done and parade it in front of all the people who were supposed to be my supporters. They let the elders destroy me. And they told me to get out. They kicked me out of my home and my family, and they said I was no longer welcome.”
“I was there,” Cade said again.
“And you were the only one who stood by me,” Adele said. “That’s why I brought you with me. Why I had to. They didn’t deserve to keep someone loyal and loving in their home—not after what they had done.”
Cade nodded. “Yes.”
“Because of what they did over those miserable months of trying me for my high crimes against the Clan, I’ve been too consumed by hate for the past thirty years to pursue what I know was my destiny, Cade. Revealing your
self as a dragon shifter when you’re alone, isolated, and shunned, is altogether different than revealing yourself as a dragon shifter with the support of an entire Clan behind you. I’ve spent the last thirty years plotting the demise of Norman, and Gideon, and Nola. Of Barrett, too, because he was weak enough to fall into line with what everyone told him he should do. Because it should have been me in charge of the agency. Because he has what’s mine. And I won’t stop there. I’ll destroy them, and then I’ll call the others to my side. There are many, many of the Rockwell Clan who remember me, no matter how hard Gideon and Nola worked to make sure that all records and memories of me were expunged. I’ll call to me all who can be loyal, and finally, all these years later, we’ll reveal ourselves to the world, who we really are.”
Cade nodded. “Yes.”
Adele jabbed a finger against his chest. “That’s the plan, Cade. It always has been, and it still is. The fact that Barrett has just learned that he isn’t an only child throws a wrench in how we were doing things—I’ll admit that. I was toying with him. Enjoying the game. Being subtle. Making him out to be what they all told me I was—a corrupt traitor incapable of being trusted with the agency. Now we’ll have to speed things up. A body in his house isn’t enough. Showing that body to a police officer isn’t enough. It’s time, apparently, to make a real move and expose Barrett entirely. We need to take him out of the picture.”
“But if he wants to fight us, then we can just beat him,” Cade said, thinking as simply as ever. “Why not just face him and fight him?”
Adele began walking again, their rented apartment not far now. “Cade, if all I wanted was a battle, I wouldn’t have waged a guerilla war, now would I?”
Cade didn’t answer. He just hurried to catch up with her. “What should we have for breakfast? I’m hungry.”
“I’ll make you a bagel.”
Chapter 20
Rockwell Agency: Boxset Page 107