But Victoria couldn’t just leave the woman’s body there. It wasn’t right. She had a duty.
But she’d promised to set aside that duty for forty-eight hours, and it hadn’t even been twenty-four.
But she couldn’t just leave the body there!
Victoria circled around the living room, walking in large ovals as she tried to figure out if she was making the right decision. One minute, she was convinced that she was. The next minute, she couldn’t believe she was even considering bringing another person in on what was going on.
The only good thing about this dilemma was that it kept her from obsessing over whether there was any future for Barrett and her or if their [fundamentally] different approaches to handling cases would be the demise of them before they had even begun.
Before Victoria had a chance to make any decisions at all, there was a knock on the door.
Surprised, Victoria’s immediate instinct was not to answer it. Nothing good could come from anyone finding her here. If it was a Rockwell Clan member, then she shouldn’t be seen here. If it was a neighbor ...that neighbor might have seen her yesterday, in her role as a cop, in this neighborhood and house. It would look suspicious for her to be found here now.
It could be a marketer. Or a delivery of some sort. It could be a person who was lost and asking for directions. It could be anyone.
The knock came at the door again, more insistently this time. “Hello?” a voice called. “If you’re in there, I could really use some help. I’m sorry to bother you. It’s just that it’s a workday and no one is home …”
Victoria walked towards the door, peering out the peephole and catching a glimpse of a brunette standing on the porch. She pulled the door open, willing to engage now at least, but still wary. “Can I help you?”
“Oh, thank you,” the woman said, pressing a hand to her chest. “I’m so sorry. Do you know how to change a tire?”
Victoria glanced towards the car on the street. “You’ve got a flat?”
“Yes,” the woman said. “I know, I know—I should have roadside assistance, but I don’t. I recently got divorced, and he always handled that sort of thing. I didn’t even think to get it. And, well, I don’t know a lot of people in the area yet. Nobody who can get off work and drop everything to come help me—that’s for sure. And I’ve knocked on three doors before yours. Please—is there anything you can do for me?”
Victoria surveyed the woman closely. She was older—much older than Victoria. In fact, she was probably in her mid or late-forties. She was dressed plainly in jeans and a t-shirt. Her dark hair was swept back in a bun. She wore no makeup, and she looked downright disheveled.
She definitely looked like she could be a divorced woman down on her luck in a new area and in need of help.
Victoria’s policewoman instincts kicked in, and she stepped out of the house, making sure to leave the door unlocked, so she could get back in. “I know how to change a tire. Do you have a spare in your trunk?”
“I do,” the woman said. “Oh my God, thank you so much. I have to be downtown for a meeting in an hour—I’m hoping it’ll lead to a job interview. And I’m just so frantic.”
Victoria glanced over the woman’s clothing. “A job interview?”
“Oh,” the woman said, flushing. “Sorry—I have clothes with me. I just haven’t changed yet. You see, I’ve been out apartment hunting this morning. Well, reality hunting, in general. I was just driving around some neighborhoods to see if there were any good houses for rent. I didn’t find much. By the way, I’m Gail.”
Victoria shook the woman’s hand, walking with her out to the car. “Well, Gail, it looks like you’re pretty flat here,” she said, surveying the tire at the back, passenger side. “You might have hit a nail or something if you drove around a construction site.”
Kneeling down beside the tire, Victoria checked the pressure and knew without a doubt that there was no saving the thing. She straightened and dusted her hands off, walking around to the trunk. She reached to open it, but it was locked, and she looked at the woman. “Could you open this?” she said, patting the top of the trunk.
“Sure, of course,” Gail said, hurrying with her keys and popping the trunk open.
Everything about Gail seemed perfectly reasonable, but Victoria didn’t fully buy it. She didn’t know why, exactly, but she was having such a hard time fully accepting that it was just a happenstance that Gail had come by and needed help. Maybe it was because she knew there was a body in the house she had just walked out of. Maybe it was because Gail had offered so many details about why she was here at this place and at this time and why there was no one else to help her. After all, Victoria had never once challenged Gail on whether or not she had done her due diligence in making sure that there was no one else except Victoria to assist her.
Maybe it was just her gut.
Her police instincts had kicked in to help someone in need, but they had also kicked in and were wondering if Gail was who she said she was.
Without letting her guard down, Victoria lifted the trunk higher and reached deep inside the big space, pulling on the hidden compartment that would house the spare tire. The pull handle gave way, opening the hatch, but before she could reach in and pull out the spare tire, she sensed a change in Gail. Before the woman even moved, Victoria felt her readying herself, and Victoria was already halfway turned around when Gail came at her.
Still, it wasn’t enough. The moment that Gail’s hand clamped around her wrist, Victoria knew that Gail was no ordinary perp or foe. She was terrifyingly strong, and there was nothing that Victoria could do to lessen the woman’s grip on her arm. There was nothing she could do to push Gail off her as Gail crowded her closer to the car.
“If you scream,” Gail whispered to her, leaning in so close that her breath whispered across Victoria’s neck. “I’ll kill you right here and right now. I know you have a daughter, Victoria Crenshaw. I’ll take her out next.”
There was nothing that the woman could have said that would have been a more effective way to get Victoria to cooperate. She went limp, allowing Gail to push her into the trunk of the car. Her heart was pounding—not for herself but because there was nothing to keep Adele—and it had to be Adele—from going after Olivia next.
And if she did, both Victoria and Olivia were going to be powerless to stop her. Only Barrett and his friends could do that, and he didn’t know where Olivia was, where she was, or where Adele was.
As the trunk slammed shut, and the car started to bounce its way down the road on its very flat tire, Victoria berated herself internally for not immediately considering last night that if Adele wanted to take Barrett down, he could use both her and Olivia as pawns to do it. It should have been the first thing she considered, and yet it hadn’t even crossed her mind. Not once. She had been too caught up in what was happening between her and Barrett—in learning about dragon shifters—in having incredible, mind-blowing sex.
She hadn’t thought about her daughter. And now Adele, a murderous supernatural creature, knew about Olivia, and she’d directly threatened her.
Victoria felt for her phone, but it wasn’t in her pocket. It was lying on the coffee table in Barrett’s living room. She could see it now in her mind’s eye, and she wanted to curse, and scream, and hit everything in sight, knowing that she couldn’t even warn her daughter. Knowing that she was helpless.
The car bumped to a stop, and all of a sudden, the trunk opened again.
Adele reached in with one hand and yanked Victoria out. Her grip was deathly strong, but Victoria refused to wince as Adele manhandled her over to another car that was parked in an out-of-the-way parking lot. Shoving Victoria into the backseat of the car, Adele crouched down and glared at the woman. “Remember, your daughter’s life is on the line if you resist me.”
Victoria glanced towards the man sitting in the driver’s seat, assuming that was Cade. “Have you hurt her?” Victoria demanded. “I want to know that Olivia is okay
.”
“No,” Adele said. “Cade—go get in the other car. Drive it back to where you found it and leave it there. Do not—I repeat, do not—leave a note apologizing for the flat tire.”
Cade got out of the car without protest and walked over to the other one, getting in the driver’s seat and taking off down the road.
Adele looked back at Victoria and smiled. “You’re being very good so far. Keep thinking about your daughter.”
“Let me hear her voice. Let me see her,” Victoria said. “I have no reason to do what you want if she’s already hurt or …”
“Dead?” Adele asked, smiling still. “She’s at school. Trust me. I’ll always be able to tell you exactly where she is.”
Adele closed the door on her and went around to the front of the car. She turned on the engine and took off in the opposite direction from the one Cade had taken. Adele was whistling to herself, and she turned on a classic rock radio station, drumming her fingers casually on the wheel. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” Adele asked, smiling at Victoria in the mirror. “It’s a great day for making a point.”
Chapter 28
Barrett
Barrett waited in the shadows as Norman spoke. Norman knew that his role was just to talk until everyone was focused on him, and then Barrett would walk out and take over. He was waiting for the right moment, but he also knew that it wasn’t going to come. He was going to have to create it for himself.
Barrett glanced over at Ryan and nodded, then stepped out into the open. Immediately, eyes turned towards him and a hushed murmuring traveled through the crowd. His parents reacted most strongly, standing up towards where Norman was commanding attention. His father looked furious, and his mother looked nervous and worried. Barrett just stared back at both of them, knowing that they had no idea that he knew everything now. He was about to pull the rug out from under them and turn their world upside down.
But he didn’t feel guilty. All they would have had to do was be honest with him and none of them would be in this situation.
Confidently, with Ryan by his side, Barrett strode towards the head of the crowd, where his grandfather stood. He reached out and shook Norman’s hand, a pointed sign of unity to the others, and then stepped into Norman’s place as the older man backed up.
Barrett turned and surveyed the crowd of people who so rarely gathered together in such a big group. He made eye contact with several, taking command of the situation, and he entirely ignored his father’s whispered attempts to get him to stop whatever he was doing.
“Barrett, this is highly inappropriate,” Gideon hissed, edging towards his son. “You have been removed from your position. You need to comply.”
Barrett addressed the crowd rather than his father, knowing that everyone there had heard the man. “My father would like me to comply with the wishes of the elders, and I understand why he would say that. As you all know, the elders have asked me to step down from my position as the head of the Rockwell Agency because they suspect that I have been corrupt and inept, and that I might, in fact, be working against the best interests of the agency. None of those things could be further from the truth.”
He paused, wishing for a moment that Victoria was there beside him for this next part. “I woke up yesterday morning to a dead body in my house.”
The crowd gasped, and his father audibly groaned, his hands covering his face.
“It’s true,” Barrett said. “I woke up to a dead body in my living room—a woman who I had never seen before. A woman that I definitely did not kill. Just as I did not leak agency secrets, or misappropriate funds, or lose important files. I didn’t do any of it. I know that it seems easy for me to stand here and say that to you,” Barrett said, hearing exactly those murmurs in the background as he spoke, but ignoring them. He sought out the elders specifically, staring into each one’s eyes. “But I can only speak the truth. And I always will speak the truth. Even when it’s embarrassing for my family. Even when it’s dangerous for me. Even when I have to risk everything just to be heard.”
“Hear, hear!” Jordan called out, from somewhere in the crowd.
Barrett found her and smiled, appreciating her support.
“I’ve only just found out, mere hours ago, that I have siblings,” Barrett said, speaking loudly and firmly.
He had more to say, but the crowd erupted with gasps, and his mother, standing close to him, began to sob, her hands covering her face.
“No,” she whispered, over and over again. “No, no—no.”
Her grief did affect him, but Barrett pressed on, determined to do what he’d come to do. “I have a sister named Adele, and I have a brother named Cade, and they’re much older than I am.” He turned now to look directly at his father, whose face was drained white and whose jaw was clenched shut. “Adele was going to be the person who took over the agency from my father, but she betrayed the Rockwell Clan. She violated your trust. She recorded you with the intention of exposing dragon shifters to the world, so that we could ascend to power. And when her plan was discovered, she almost killed a young girl to keep her secret safe until she was ready to reveal it.”
Nola was groaning loudly now, her arms hugging herself as she swayed back and forth. “No, no, no. No!”
“My family wanted to banish my siblings and erase them from our collective memory,” Barrett said. “Because they were ashamed. Because they felt humiliated and tainted by what Adele had done. So, do I. I understand why they would feel that way. But hiding it is not the answer. Shame lives in secrecy. Exposure erases shame. It erases confusion, and separation, and unhappiness.”
Barrett turned to look directly at his father, whose eyes were narrowed and whose lips had pressed into such a thin line that they had almost disappeared entirely.
“You should have told me,” Barrett said, addressing him directly. “You should have told me from the beginning, but especially when I told you that someone was setting me up, and that I wasn’t the one doing these things. I wasn’t the one betraying the Clan. It’s Adele, Dad. She’s back, and you know it as well as I do. Don’t you?”
“This is a private family matter,” Gideon said through gritted teeth. His hands were fisted at his sides, and his face was redder than Barrett had ever seen it. In fact, his father looked so furious that Ryan actually took a step forward, making sure that Gideon was aware that he needed to back down.
Barrett appreciated Ryan’s gesture, but if his father came at him, Barrett was more than ready. The more he looked at his father’s face, the more he realized that his father had always been out for his own interests first. Maybe that was where Adele had gotten it from. Perhaps she came by her need for power honestly.
“It’s not a private family matter,” Barrett said, keeping his own voice calm and ignoring the fact that the entire Rockwell Clan was standing, watching this confrontation between his father and himself. “It could have been more of a private family matter, if you had been up-front with me,” Barrett said. “But it was never going to be only a family matter, because we—our family—lead this Clan, and these people standing here right now need us to be people they can trust and rely on. And we haven’t been. You haven’t been. I haven’t been either, because I didn’t know everything I needed to know. But that changes now.”
Barrett turned back to the crowd, many of whom were looking at him uncertainly. A few seemed fascinated. But plenty of them seemed downright nervous. He tried to put himself in their shoes, imagining spending thirty years keeping the secrets of their leadership. He wondered briefly what threat or other pressure had made them all comply so much that he had never even heard a whisper of Adele’s existence.
“You can trust me,” Barrett said to the crowd. “I’m standing here telling you that I’ve made mistakes, and that my family has made mistakes. But I have never done anything to purposefully hurt this Clan, and that’s more than I can say for my parents. I won’t follow in their footsteps. From now on—there are no secrets.”
&n
bsp; There was a murmur among the crowd.
“That’s right,” Barrett said. “No secrets. The leadership is going to be transparent. I’m going to be transparent. Everything I know—you will know. Every decision I make will have a rational reason behind it, and I’ll share that rational reason with anyone who asks me. If—” he paused for a moment, looking around the crowd. “If you’ll put me back in place as your leader.”
Immediately, there was applause that rippled through the crowd, echoing off the trees around them and reverberating in the morning air. It swept over Barrett, and he realized that although he had been the leader of the Rockwell Clan for over a year, he hadn’t really ever felt like the true leader of the Clan. Until now.
People were smiling at him, and a few were nodding as they clapped.
But it was a short-lived victory.
One of the elders—a man whom Barrett had only had a few one-on-one conversations with over many years—stepped forward. His name was Vincent Coffie, and he was one of the older elders. He’d never worked at the agency himself, but his family was well enough established that he’d taken a position on the elders’ council a few years ago. “This feel-good nonsense is not how the Rockwell Clan is run,” he said, his sharp voice cutting through the applause. “Everyone—enough! He can’t just walk back in here and take back what we took from him. The elders had good reason to remove this man from his position. He’s offered no proof—none at all—that …” Vincent hesitated for a moment and glanced at Gideon, as though unsure whether he should even say the name. “He hasn’t offered any evidence to back up what he says is true. That we can trust him. That he’s not the person behind all of this.”
“Now wait a minute,” Barrett said, stepping forward and holding up a hand.
Rockwell Agency: Boxset Page 112