Starlight Dunes (2 page)

Three
weeks earlier

Santa Cruz, California

A
storm churned out at sea. He could smell the rain on its way in. He might not possess the same psychic ability as his brother, Ethan, the now full-time mystery writer, but Brent Cody recognized a good Pacific squall when he saw one forming on the horizon.

He’d grown up around the ocean, not five miles from
the spot where he now walked. Except for the fifteen years he’d given to the military, he’d made this coastal town his home. Now as he left work and crossed the dark parking lot to his truck, he stared up at the ugly-looking, purple clouds moving inland. The heavy low-hanging marine layer had blacked out the stars and more than likely meant before nightfall they’d get wind gusts and rain.

His mother’s
garden could use a good soaking, Brent decided as he climbed into his Dodge Ram pickup to head for home. He placed his briefcase on the passenger side of the bench seat, and started up the engine.

A
fter putting in a fourteen-hour day Brent was more than ready to kick back in front of the flat-screen. He was pretty sure the pre-season San Jose Sharks were on the road tonight in Detroit hitting the ice against the Red Wings. Of course, he’d already missed the first two periods. Good thing he’d remembered to DVR the game.

He could already taste a cold
Anchor Steam to go with the leftover pizza he’d ordered from the night before. All he had to do was toss it into the microwave, zap it, and he had dinner. With the comfort of cheese, pepperoni and beer, he’d be set to catch the last of the hockey game.

With h
is mind on slapshots, he scanned the secure lot out of habit before exiting onto the deserted side street. He hadn’t been a member of law enforcement for the better part of a decade not to key in on his surroundings this time of night.

Since the people of Santa Cruz had elected him county sheriff
six years earlier, most of his days were like today, long and exhausting. He didn’t like to admit how much time he spent sitting on his butt plopped in front of his laptop, handling paperwork these days. Because of it he did whatever it took to stay in shape.

Since he
’d celebrated his fortieth birthday over the summer, he was mindful his body wasn’t the same as it used to be. Even though he’d once been able to throw a ninety-five mile per hour fastball for his high school baseball team, he knew those days were long gone. Though he did play softball on Sunday afternoons on a team with his co-workers, the long days were one of the reasons he made sure he jogged at least five miles three times a week. Whenever his schedule permitted, he also tried to hit the state-of-the-art gym down the street from the office to lift weights or work up a cardio sweat on the elliptical. Plus, he’d gotten into the habit of limiting his bacon and egg consumption to a measly two times a week. For all his efforts he still weighed the same as the day he’d landed in Iraq.

Bottom line, i
t sucked getting older, he thought now as he made the four-mile drive to his house. When fat drops of rain began to splat on the windshield, he turned on the wipers and listened as the blades began an annoying back-and-forth, rubber-on-glass screech. He countered the whap, whap, whap sound by turning up the volume on the Pearl Jam CD already in the player.

Glancing at his reflection in the rearview mirror, he caught the shadow of
a man with Native American features, the straight nose, the strong chin, deep-set eyes so brown they were almost black. He audibly sighed at the makings of crow’s feet at the corners and the fact that his raven black hair was starting to turn a little gray at the temples. Something his father, Markus Cody, teased him about.

It was hell
turning forty, he decided as he drove the streets of the neighborhood where he’d essentially grown up. On impulse he pushed the button to roll down the window several inches on the driver’s side in spite of the mist so he could breathe in the cool night air. If there was a benefit to living next to the sea, this was it. The fresh, salty air always made for a good night’s sleep.

Once he’d gotten his bad marriage behind him
, he’d finally taken the plunge and bought a little Spanish bungalow with a pretty view of the water. The place wasn’t large, no more than twelve-hundred-square-feet, but it suited a single guy who had no plans to ever make a family. That’s why when he got home tonight, there would be no one waiting for him, no woman, no girlfriend, not even a dog.

It was best that way, he thought, even if he did
on occasion dip his toe into the shallow end of the dating pool. After all, he was anything but a loner. He was social enough when the occasion called for it. His mother saw to that because she seemed hell-bent on fixing him up with…someone. Especially since his little brother had settled down in wedded bliss a couple of years back with Hayden and they now had a son.

Since Ethan’s marriage,
Lindeen seemed more determined than ever to get her oldest to follow in Ethan’s footsteps. Hell, she wasn’t even subtle about it anymore.

He could
laugh about it—most of the time. Mainly because the woman thought she was so damn clever whenever she invited him over to supper—as if he hadn’t caught on years earlier to her interfering ways when it came to his social life.

But what kind of social life did he really have
when he was married to his job? He supposed he needed to put his foot down and take a stand with her one of these days, tell her to knock it off. Yeah, like that was ever going to happen. Lindeen Cody had invented stubborn and patented the formula.

But the truth was without
his mother’s meddling, he rarely bothered doing anything on his own about it. For one, the long hours made it damn near impossible to sustain a relationship. In his experience women required assurances they were in it for the long-term. The one time he’d walked down the aisle to say ‘I do’ had been a disaster. While he’d promised to love and cherish, his bride had been the unfaithful one who’d had a hard time remaining steadfast for one damn tour of duty in Iraq.

But that was ancient history. He’d gotten
past the cheating Cindy and never looked back.

Didn’t his mother realize that
the only women he met on a regular basis worked for him in some capacity or another? And Brent Cody refused to cross that line at work mingling anything personal at the office. Been there. Done that before, too—and it hadn’t worked out any better. In his experience office affairs
never
worked out.

But
if Lindeen Cody came across an attractive medical assistant at the doctor’s office who she thought might interest her eldest son—or a cute saleswoman she happened to run into at the mall who looked like future daughter-in-law material—Brent would hear about it. Then he’d inevitably give in and meet her through his mother.

Which meant
Brent went on a lot of first dates—or met up with women over coffee on Saturday or Sunday mornings—to talk. If the two of them happened to click, they might plan a couple of movies or dinner dates before they’d tumble into the sheets. They might text during that time—hot and heavy. They might even resort to calling each other for a little phone flirting. It might last three weeks or three months. But it never led to anything more permanent or more serious than that.

Brent
was aware that at his age it was plenty embarrassing to leave it to his mother to hook up with the opposite sex. But on fourteen-hour days like today, he didn’t really see much hope that Mrs. Brent Cody was out there somewhere, waiting in the wings. And at this stage of his life, he didn’t dwell on it. 

H
e made the turn onto his street, a nice residential area where young families made children. On automatic, he reached up to hit the remote to open the garage door. The rain picked up as he pulled into his driveway. Slowly, he inched the big Dodge inside the narrow garage opening. Grabbing his briefcase, he crawled out of the pickup, absent-mindedly wondering whether or not the Sharks were adding a win to their column.

When
his stomach rumbled craving the leftover pepperoni and cheese, he remembered he hadn’t eaten lunch until four that afternoon and it was now well past eleven. Maybe he’d forego heating up the greasy pie and opt for a quick bowl of Cheerios instead.

Before he reached the door going into his house,
however, he held the clicker for the remote over his shoulder and hit the button to close the garage door. With that one push, the door blew. The force of the explosion blasted him through the air, knocking him back into the wall.

Brent never even
had time to reach for his .45 still in its holster strapped to his shoulder. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway. The ensuing fire had him trapped.

For a span of several seconds, h
e couldn’t feel his body, didn’t remember how he’d slid onto the concrete floor. The blinding light of what seemed like a thousand stars impaired his vision. But then just as quickly, the bright white color leveled out and speared to blazing red. He struggled to move, to lift his arm to dial the cell phone he still gripped in his other hand. He realized then and there he could only move one arm.

Brent
heard sirens in the distance. At least he thought he did. It sounded as if two dozen freight trains were roaring through his head all at once. He fought to stay conscious. When his eyes did finally clear enough, he zeroed in on all the blood covering his hands. He realized then how badly he was bleeding. As his strength faded, the blazing hue of red came back threefold.

And then
, there was nothing but blackness.

Present Day

Pelican Pointe, California

B
rent Cody’s physical injuries were healing. Gradually, a little more each day, he made progress. After three weeks, he could hobble across the street to the pier if he felt like it, even though he still walked with a noticeable limp and the aid of a cane.

Y
esterday he’d even walked down to Main Street and back again. It had taken him damn near an hour and a half to do it but he’d managed to work the slight hill at the top and stay upright.

T
he blast had dislocated his shoulder and wrenched his back out when he’d been thrown against the garage wall. He’d suffered cuts from flying glass, numerous contusions and abrasions. He’d suffered burns, a concussion, which had kept him unconscious for close to five days. The pain was still with him every single day. He did his best not to rely on the Demerol the doctors had prescribed him. Instead of the opiate, he popped naproxen like they were M&M’s.

Thanks to his father Marcus Cody, twice a week
he took the trip into Santa Cruz for PT, his physical therapy. There he worked like a dog on getting his legs to move the way they once had and his body to loosen up. The doctors had convinced him his back would get better. It would take time but if he stuck with the routine he would begin to see results.

Bottom line.
Brent was grateful he still had all his limbs. That fact alone made him very aware he was damned lucky to be alive.

But his mental state was a lot more undefined and shaky. He’d decided not to mention that
little fact to his family or his friends. His mind kept going back to that night, replaying the explosion and what he could have done differently.

He no longer had
his little house. It was in shambles, pieces here and there strewn about like toothpicks. His totaled, mangled pickup truck had no doubt saved his life. The ten-thousand-pound mass of metal and steel had somehow shielded him from the full impact of the bomb. Something the person who had placed it there hadn’t counted on.

It hadn’t taken all that long for investigators to determine that an explosive device with a sophisticated timing mechanism put together to make sure he was in that closed up space of a garage, would detonate the
second
time he pressed his remote-controlled garage door opener. Experts in matters like this were impressed with the workings of the device. Whoever had been responsible for making it possessed a decent knowledge of detonation, specifically experience with radio control. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the bomber first had to get Brent into the confined garage for greater impact. It meant the detonator couldn’t go off with the first click but had to ignite the switch the second time Brent pressed down on the remote.

Someone wanted him dead.
And they were willing to go to extreme measures to see it happen. Added to that, they were still out there.

With all his years in law enforcement, the list
of suspects could be long and varied. Any number of people—from drug dealers with friends in low places—to murderers he’d help put behind bars. Maybe they had family on the outside willing to take the grudge to the next level.

He didn’t think it
had anything to do with the serial killer, Carl Knudsen, he’d put away months ago. Since the pharmacist’s arrest, the man’s wife had been so humiliated she’d sold the business to a family from Portland, Oregon. It hadn’t taken Elaine Knudsen long for her to file for divorce and move away to parts unknown. Ten days ago, the Knudsen’s sign had come down. The new owners, Jill and Ross Campbell, had renamed the place, Coastal Pharmacy. A name change meant things were finally headed in the right direction there.

Brent for one, like many residents in Pelican Pointe,
felt it was a welcome sight, even if it had put an end to an era. It was time for a new beginning. Most were glad to see the drug store change hands. A few old-timers though still grumbled that it had always been Knudsen’s as far back as they could remember and always would be. But in time, Brent believed they would come around to accepting the latest arrivals.

He had no doubt that t
ownspeople like Nick and Jordan, Ethan and Hayden, Keegan and Cord, Logan and Kinsey, would see to it the Campbells were made to feel at home here.

But
simple issues, like watching the newcomers settle in, didn’t have him waking up at three a.m., unable to get back to sleep.

Like a baseball coach before a big game,
Brent’s mind seemed to choose that time of the night to go over his lineup of who wanted him dead.

The FBI had already ruled out most of the drug dealers in Santa Cruz.
Much to his dismay, they’d already cleared his top suspects. No doubt the whole thing had him stressed out and waking up in a cold sweat ticking off suspects. Trying to figure out who wanted him dead was always there nagging at him.

His
deputies had canvassed the neighbors. The neighbors hadn’t seen a thing. No strangers in the area. No reports of unusual cars. Which meant, so far, the bomber’s identity remained unknown.

I
t bugged him.

To make matter worse, o
ver the past three weeks, there’d been a lot of back and forth within his own department about the best course of action to take. A few of his advisers thought it best to “pretend” the perpetrator had succeeded in killing him. There had been talk about his faking his own death. But that hadn’t made a lot of sense to Brent Cody. He’d nixed that idea before it had time to take hold.

I
n the hospital room, Brent had done some major soul-searching. He’d awakened to find his worried parents, his brother, and several of his closest friends standing watch, waiting for him to come out of the coma. Since he’d spent the last three weeks in recovery mode, a little downtime had made him realize the enormous pressures of his job. The prospect of not knowing who wanted him dead was merely part of it. He wasn’t happy about being placed on medical disability even though his body had yet to regain its full mobility. With all that, he had to dig deep to remember why he’d gotten into law enforcement in the first place.

B
y the time he’d turned twenty-one he’d been an MP in the army. It meant he didn’t know how to make a living doing anything else.  If his career ended at forty, he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to handle that.

Even now, he knew there were politics at play in getting back to his job.
Those twice a week PT visits to Santa Cruz weren’t just for medical reasons. They also included mandatory trips to a shrink, paid for by the department. Brent had decided after the second visit, he might need to watch what he admitted—he wasn’t sure the sessions were completely privileged information. Even if he needed to address a few issues, like the daily grind of his job, it was best to remember to keep certain aspects of his life—private. So far, he’d managed to maintain the focus on getting his body working and his life back to the way it had been before.

While he’d been out of it,
his friends and family had gone through what remained of his home and possessions. They’d tried to salvage whatever they could from the debris. It hadn’t been a lot. Before he’d regained consciousness, his optimistic father had even leased him a truck to use. The Chevy Silverado, a model father and son had admired on the showroom floor together, had been waiting in the hospital parking lot for Ethan to chauffer him over to Pelican Pointe.

A
fter he’d said goodbye to his hospital bed, he’d moved into Autumn Lassiter’s house. The same house his brother, Ethan and wife, Hayden, had occupied up until six weeks ago when they’d purchased a larger place on Landings Bay.

Brent would have preferred to stay in Santa Cruz. But as soon as his mother started a campaign to get him to move in with
her, he’d opted for his late grandmother’s little bungalow on Ocean Street. It made the most sense. Even though it meant he’d have to hobble around on his own, fix meals on his own, even though the cottage didn’t have all that much furniture left inside, he needed and wanted his solitude.

That’s why b
efore his release, his mother and Hayden had furnished the rooms with a few odds and ends people had donated. The rest they’d picked up at thrift stores in Santa Cruz and San Sebastian and had hauled over for him.

Brent found the gesture incredibly generous, especially since
Hayden had her own house to fix up. For the last couple of months, she and Ethan had been involved in major renovations on the home they’d bought, the much-larger one that had once belonged to Sissy Carr, the one-time banker’s daughter and embezzler.

The
couple had wisely put the history of the Carr house behind them. Good thing too because with an eight-month-old baby, no family needed the extra space more than the Codys did. His nephew, Nate, was sprouting up faster than a weed in spring.

As
Brent wobbled along Ocean Street toward the beach, he glanced over at his brother walking beside him, pushing a stroller. He couldn’t believe fatherhood had taken Ethan Cody full circle.

“
Sorry, Nate, I know you love to go faster but your uncle here is having trouble keeping up.”

“Kiss
my ass,” Brent muttered.

“Hey, is that anyway to talk in front of my baby boy?”

Brent looked over to see Nate sound asleep. “I doubt I could get in position anyway. Funny thing happened to me last night though.”

“If this is about your sordid sex life I’m all ears.”

“I don’t have a sordid sex life.”

“That’s just sad, bro.
You’re a single guy with no strings and no significant other in your life. And no prospects on the horizon either—at least none that I know anything about.”

“Not unless you count the cute brun
ette who kept sticking a bedpan under my ass the entire time I spent flat on my back and couldn’t make it to the bathroom on my own.”

Ethan shook his head. “If that’s all the action you’ve gotten lately, I’ll say it again. That’s just pathetic.
So what happened last night?”

“You know that rumor about Scott Phillips?”

“You mean the fact that he’s a ghost? Yeah. It’s no rumor. Ask Hayden next time you see her. Hell, for that matter ask Cord Bennett or Logan Donnelly. You saw him? Where? In Autumn’s house?”

“
No, not in the house. I saw something. Someone.”

“Scott’s all over this town
, Brent. Has been for years now, ever since he didn’t come back from Iraq. Scott paid you a visit?”

“Not really. Last night I nuked some
chicken in the microwave, cooked it way too long and ended up having to stuff it down the garbage disposal. I had to settle for a ham and cheese sandwich. Anyway, the smell stunk up the house so much though that I had to open the front door to let in some fresh air. When I did, I saw this guy standing across the street on the wharf looking out to sea.”

“That’s not
so unusual. People stand there all the time, especially tourists. It’s a pretty view.”

“
It is. But that’s not the unusual part. This guy was just standing there staring up at the lighthouse.” Brent stopped walking to bob his head in the direction of the cliffs. “And there, up ahead, the area that collapsed during the storm three weeks back.”

Ethan nodded. “The night you almost died.” Ethan tapped his brother gingerly on his injured back. “I’m glad you didn’t. Not sure I said that to you
in the hospital but I’m saying it now.”

“I’m pretty happy about that, too.”

The night Brent’s house exploded, a Pacific disturbance had rolled in hitting the coast hard. It had brought power outages and flooding to the area. For two days the massive wind and rain had battered the cliffs. Once it had passed, the top of the bluffs near Smuggler’s Bay had given way to a series of mudslides. The shift in the earth along with the erosion had given up a Chumash encampment beneath the surface sand and grit.

Brent knew f
or scientists it amounted to hitting the lottery. For the local tribe it caused them a headache, an immediate uneasy fear that sharks of the two-legged variety would descend in droves and start removing Chumash relics from the past. Although the so-called experts might shed light on how the tribe had lived, it didn’t mean there was a happy medium, at least not yet.

“So what happened after you saw Scott Phillips?”
Ethan wanted to know.

“He vanished into thin air right
in front of me. Seriously. One minute he’s standing there big as life, the next he’s gone. I swear to God it was so weird that I thought my pain had crossed over into hallucinations. But before I flushed my meds down the john, I remembered a conversation you and Dad were having one afternoon about ghosts, specifically Scott Phillips.”

Ethan sighed. “
We were talking about it because Scott’s often done that to me, and quite a few others. Locals say it isn’t unusual to see him strolling around town with Megan Donnelly.”

Brent scratched his
chin at that and shook his head. “Megan Donnelly? Logan’s sister, the one murdered by the serial killer, Carl Knudsen, when she was seventeen? That Megan Donnelly?”