by Leigh, Lora
A sinking feeling settled in the pit of his stomach as he remembered her words. “Next time just hug her, you idiot!”
Megan.
If I hug you I’ll lose control.
No. He wouldn’t hug her. But he’d die before another guy ever set a finger on her.
Heart pumping as adrenaline rushed through his veins, he grabbed his duffel with his spare guns, his knives, a set of extra clothes, passport, cell phones, laptop, and then drove like a shot over to her home, only a few minutes away. He called her cell phone the whole ten minutes it took him to get ready, leaving three messages ranging from, “Meg, call me, you’re in danger,” to, “Meg, pack your bags. I’m on my way.”
He checked the perimeter of her home as he arrived, then rang the doorbell three times. Relief assailed him when she called out through the intercom, “Who is it?”
“The damned hug patrol, come on! Open up.”
Meg opened, and for a moment he lost his breath, for the moonlight cast her face in an almost angelic glow. The flaring streetlights seemed to work entirely in her favor, casting a captivating shine to the lighter streaks of her hair, damp from a recent shower. The scent of peach shampoo drifted to his nostrils.
She still smelled like his childhood. And she looked like his dreams. Her hair was perfectly combed back, all wet and slick. The perfect symmetry of her face, the innocence in her eyes. She looked … like a goddess.
Like a virgin goddess that you could never have, never touch.
But he could protect her.
He could try to make up for what she’d seen, try to make sure no crazed fuck ever got near her. She would never know he loved her. He loved her so badly his gut ached.
A raging thirst to drink from her mouth consumed him. A rampant hunger to bite her skin and taste how soft and sweet it was. Calm the monster, calm the fucking monster—now.
Her blond curls were springing as she shook her head. “I’m not home.”
He cocked a brow. Oh, so she was pissed at him? Why? For doing his goddamned job? “All right then, can I leave a message for you?” he asked dryly.
She shrugged and stared down at her nails, suddenly engrossed.
“Pack your bags, Meg. You’re coming with me. If you have anything to say about it, you can say it in the car.”
She stared at him blankly for a moment, and then she pulled the door open wider, where—aha!
There sat her bags on the foyer medallion behind her.
So she had been listening to his messages after all.
“You didn’t think I was staying alone here with Mom and Dad out of town and a killer on the loose, did you?” she asked, her lips curving into a mischievous smile.
Cody flung his arms up in the air. “At last, the woman starts to make sense!”
“I’m sorry I lost it back there, Cody,” she murmured, grabbing the smaller bag as he went for the bigger suitcase. “I’m sorry I didn’t pick up my phone, I was in the bathroom. I just needed to get that … name … off me. This was just not how I pictured my Friday night,” she added sadly.
Cody’s jaw clenched. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry I let you go off like that. You could be in danger, Meg. From now on, you’re either with me or with a cop of my designation, but not alone, you got that?” He tossed both suitcases into the trunk of his SUV and slammed it shut for emphasis.
Padding out behind him after locking up, Meg leaned against the passenger door, watching him as he came back around, her arms crossed under her breasts. “You know, Cody, you don’t have to look so satisfied; I wasn’t going to knock on your door tonight. I did that earlier, and it didn’t go so well, remember?”
He opened the door for her. “I’m sorry.” It came out just a gruff whisper.
“Sorry I erased the evidence?” She plopped down on the seat and pulled her sweater an inch above her belly button, enough to let him see her cleaned navel, enough to make his eyes bulge and leave him salivating with the door in his hand and aching to look at more.
“I’m sorry, shit happens.”
And he was. Guilt assailed him as he climbed in behind the wheel. It’s always your fault, moron. You get everyone around you killed. You’re jinxed. Cursed. And if he were smart about it, he should go deposit Megan somewhere where she would be safe.
Megan noticed the gun bag in the backseat. “I thought you were on vacation.”
“I’m never on vacation, I only pretend to be on vacation.” He geared up the car and pulled into the traffic, heading to his partner’s home. The only place he knew she’d be safe tonight.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
She sounded serene, but somehow, hopeful. In fact, she sounded like a young bride asking the groom whether he’d booked the Ritz Carlton or the Four Seasons. And of course he was the shithead who got to tell her he’d booked neither. “I’m taking you to Zach’s, you can stay the night with them.”
The shine in her eyes died an abrupt death. “Oh.” She stared out the window and he wished he could see her expression. When she spoke, her voice was devoid of all emotion. “So you called your partner, because…?”
“Because Zach can protect you while Paige entertains you with baby talk.”
She shot him a withering glance. “Why doesn’t Zach handle this, then? You stay with me and you can entertain me with caveman talk. You’re supposed to be on vacation anyway.”
“Zach’s home wasn’t broken into. His girl—” He broke off, shook his head. “He’s homicide—and this bastard’s not dead yet. Not until I’m through with him. I’m the one who needs to find him.”
“You did not just call me your girl,” she said, incredulous.
“No, I did not,” he snapped. “But you’re my responsibility, especially now, since the bastard escaped from prison.”
“He did? When?” Her eyes widened to saucers.
“Couple of hours ago—tops. I know I don’t need to tell you he’s my responsibility, and I want you out of this, as far away as possible. Understand?”
He’d already touched her today, frightened her, and the memory made Cody feel like a loaded grenade, about to explode.
He clenched his hands on the wheel, fury and jealousy blurring his vision so hard he had to slow down in order to avoid a collision.
Probably sensing that, Meg softened her voice. “Ivan wouldn’t hurt me, Cody, not really. He always liked me,” she said.
“I’ll bet that’s what my mother said.” The memory of her sweet face always defending him to their dad made him angrier. “Ivan doesn’t like anyone.”
He couldn’t have, not anymore, not really. Hell could not get scarier than his brother. Sick. Perverted. Hurt. Lonely.
“He can’t know the meaning of the words like or love,” Cody snarled. “People like him have people like you for lunch, Meg.”
“Well, Paige won’t have me staying over, I know she won’t. She’ll … she’ll feel I’m much safer with you.” Megan smiled, but Cody didn’t.
He surveyed her with a bit of puzzlement, and she looked away with an attractive blush, staring straight ahead with an odd expression, one of determination and conspiracy. He didn’t know what she was plotting in her head, or what she and Paige had ever said about him, all he knew was that she was wrong.
You’re not safe with me anymore. You never have been.
When he’d left Phoenix, he’d thought the violence, the blood, evidence of a sick and twisted gene pool, would have wiped the stars out of Megan’s eyes, but the truth was, he still lived for a glimpse of the looks she gave him.
Maybe Ivan had been born a monster, but it was Cody who’d kept him from being caged. It was all his fault. Long before the murder, Cody should have told his parents that Ivan beheaded squirrels in the backyard. He should have put in more of an effort to stop him.
But no, he had been too consumed with his crush to see straight. Too consumed fantasizing about the blond, curly-haired fourteen-yea
r-old neighbor. His judgment would not be clouded again.
But dammit, what was he supposed to do with her?
His concentration was out of whack and her nearness wasn’t helping. Every damned second he remembered her: tied in his bed, with those beautiful breasts, that perfect skin.
Was she the kind of woman who enjoyed being tied up, under other circumstances? Did those moans she let out sound the same, when she emitted them with pleasure? His cock pushed up so hard into his pants he could barely sit straight.
Okay, so she didn’t want to go over to Zach’s, but he didn’t want to bring her along on his hunt either. Bringing her along was wrong on so many levels he wasn’t even going to get into them. And yet: Another man might do a better job keeping his hands off her, but no one would give his life for hers the way Cody would.
“Cody? It really was him, wasn’t it?”
Cody shot her a sidelong glance, wanting to deny that the man who’d tied her to the bed had any links to him. Wanting to deny that he had shared a womb, a childhood, shared a family name, with that man.
He couldn’t. And found himself nodding grimly. “In all probability, yes, it was him.”
He saw her fear, her uncertainty, drain the color from her normally rosy skin. She could’ve been sedated if the cloth had a hallucinogen, which meant she could’ve seen all kinds of things that weren’t real, and all kinds that were. She had had nightmares about him for years.
Every night when she closed her eyes, she told him, she saw Ivan. It killed him that he wasn’t there to comfort her; he almost sickly wished she’d have those nightmares again so he could be there, coo her back to sleep, hold her for security, make love to make her forget.
That she would see that criminal’s face, that he would be the first thing a woman like her thought about when she woke up, and the last thing in her mind when she went to sleep, enraged and obsessed him. It was unfair, and it made him angry to the point it pissed him off to even think it might be jealousy, even though he didn’t want it to be.
“You know what he’s after, right?” He swerved to the right and pushed the pedal, ramming the car deeper into traffic.
Her curls bounced as she shook her head. “After all this time? I don’t know.” Turning in her seat, she reached out and ran her hand over his arm—a touch, then gone. He felt it everywhere. In his chest, his stomach, his balls. He wanted to hold on to her, pull that hand back, put it everywhere at once. “Tell me,” she urged softly.
Cody laughed a dark, humorless laugh. Tell her? What? That he was a monster? That at night he imagined he rutted with her until they both passed out? That her most insignificant touch or smile aroused the socks off him … or that it was his fault?
There was so much she didn’t know.
How both Nordstroms had had crushes on her. How both would stare at her, fantasize about her. How Cody and Ivan had made a brother’s bet, that whoever took her virginity would keep her.
The next day, Cody had made a move, certain this was one bet he couldn’t bear to lose. He’d bragged to Ivan, “She’s agreed to go for a walk with me after school, so I’m going to win.”
And Ivan hadn’t liked it. “Yeah?” he’d said. “If you take something I love away from me, I’m going to take something you love away, too.”
Cody hadn’t listened, hadn’t cared about his brother’s threats. All he’d cared about was winning, winning her, making sure she would be his and not his brother’s. He’d been determined to claim her. Being a teenaged idiot, he’d had raging hormones twenty-four hours of the day and he’d planned to expend them all inside of her that afternoon during their picnic in the woods.
Never mind he hadn’t gone through with it, had changed his mind and led her back home to walk in on that nightmare of a scene. Never mind that after the murder he could never bring himself to touch her, take her, like he once dreamed of.
But they hadn’t, and now they never would. They weren’t minors anymore, but Megan Banks was more unreachable to him than ever.
If Cody touched Megan, it meant Ivan won. It meant that motherfucker knew Cody’s weakness and had made him go caveman on the one woman he cared about.
No. He’d never touch her. Ever.
Which was why his life sucked like blue balls.
If given a choice to be born again, in all likelihood Cody would say no just to keep his brother from coming into the world along with him. But then who would watch over Megan?
“Meg,” he said, softly. “He’s after you.”
FOUR
“Why are we here?”
Meg glanced around the abandoned front yard of what used to be the Nordstroms’ old home, her skin crawling as Cody kicked the front door open.
“Detour,” he said, and crooked his finger so that she followed.
At her refusal to be dumped at Zach and Paige’s home, Cody had driven all night, stopped by his office for paperwork, coffee at midnight, and in between errands, Meg had dozed on and off.
When she woke up it was 6:29 in the morning, the sun was beginning to light the empty streets, and they were back in a neighborhood her family had sworn never to return to.
Swallowing a lump of fear, Megan cautiously stepped inside, surveying the place in horror while Cody inspected the rotting wood beams above.
My God, it seemed like nothing could have ever thrived here. No evidence of life remained. The furniture was mostly gone, and what remained contained layers and layers of dust and maybe termites. The marble floor was cracked and uneven, making walking a hazard.
Assailed by a wave of pity as she remembered the once-cozy ambience of this household, Meg dragged her fingers over the dusty dining room table surface, then she recalled Ivan’s face across the table, young and predatory at sixteen and gazing at her as if she were lunch, and she yanked her hand back. “Are you looking for something in particular?” she asked Cody’s broad back.
“I always come here when I need to think.”
She didn’t imagine it; there was wistfulness in his tone, and it made her feel incredibly sad.
Standing here, while a truckful of memories threatened to burst through her walls of forgetfulness, Megan wondered how Cody could possibly bear it. Come here to “think” and at the same time, confront the horrors that had happened here. And it had been horrifying. Don’t think about it, she thought frantically as she felt herself grow faint.
But an image of Ivan standing over the bodies, bloodied and screaming as he continued hacking away at their flesh, flashed through her mind, and her blood froze in her veins. “You don’t think he would be here, too, would he?” she squeaked in sudden fear, rushing up to stand close to him. Suddenly she had the distinct sensation of being watched. The hair all along her arms rose to attention, and her heart began to thunder.
Oh, God, he was watching.
“Not sure he’d risk coming here.”
Calm and cool as ever, Cody crossed the cluttered length of the old kitchen, then went to check the glass doors that led to the back yard. As he checked for the kind of stuff detectives always check for, he said, without looking up, “You’d be amazed how many cases crack open with the most stupid mistakes—criminals returning to the scene of the crime, that sort of thing.” He straightened and pulled a fistful of hair in apparent frustration, and when he let go, part of his hair remained standing up so adorably, making him look so handsome and irresistible, that she felt her fear begin to ebb away. “What I want to figure out is where this bastard’s hiding,” he admitted.
And what I’d like to figure out is what a girl needs to do to make you notice her.
His face was so virile, Cody would make the perfect Armani model. And with that killer tie, a solid, satiny, crimson one that brought out his tan, he could be on TV right now.
Oblivious to her thoughts, he walked to the bookshelf that used to contain the world’s largest collection of family photographs, and she wondered if Cody remembered the sounds o
f his mother’s cooking.
Megan did. The clang of the baking pans, the click click click of the oven timer. It could’ve been yesterday that she was here, playing Life with Cody and Ivan and even Mr. Nordstrom, while the Mrs. pulled out homemade Margarita pizza from the oven. Ivan hadn’t seemed happy here, nor had Mr. and Mrs. Nordstrom ever been proud of Ivan the way they had, clearly, been of Cody.
“Where would you hide, if you were him?” she asked as she watched him, loving the way his muscles bulged as he reached out and wiped the dust off the empty shelves.
His head came up, and the corners of his lips formed a barely-there smile. “Here.”
“Here?” she asked, shocked. “Really?” In this decrepit, smelly old house? Well, maybe he remembers the Life days, too.
“Yep. I’d hide right here.” He banged the wall with his fist. “Under everyone’s very own noses.”
She made a face and crossed her arms. “We could say Ivan’s got that pegged, too, you know. He was hiding in your home just hours ago, and something about the way he hesitated before approaching me made me think he hadn’t planned on me being there.”
Cody’s expression darkened; his entire face tightening with anger. “And then he saw you in your…”
“My purchases, why, yes!”
The nonchalance she tried injecting into her admission seemed to pass by him unnoticed, for Cody stared at her for a long, tense moment, his blue gaze dark and shuttered and so personal she felt the muscles of her legs turn buttery. He walked over to her, moving slow and sure, like a panther. His voice dropped a decibel.
“What where you doing there?”
The gruffly spoken question stroked her insides more than any seductive whisper.
His manly stance, his hot, possessive gaze, ignited her need and hunger until her throat hurt with the need to tell him how he made her feel.
Those beautiful blue eyes he stared at her with now had seen the same thing that haunted her nightmares. Those beautiful blue eyes were exactly like the killer’s, except she liked to think that she knew their small differences.
