Caught: A Novella

by Red Garnier

  For years the police had searched and failed to find him, but Cody vowed to her that he would.

  But the years passed, the letters stopped coming, and one accidental day while at the cemetery, Megan found herself staring at the shiny blond head of that somber boy to whom she’d confessed her every fear and weakness. Except now he was a man, and he hardly seemed to remember her.

  He didn’t say much when she came over to say hi, but then it’s not like she had much to say, either. Her heart had been fluttering so hard she could barely remember what she’d said, or what he’d said back, she only remembered how fast she’d been back in her car, alone, and brokenhearted.

  He also seemed to be haunted by that event, for he appeared on her doorstep and said he had three things to tell her: He’d joined the Phoenix Police Department, he’d captured his parents’ killer, and she didn’t need to be scared anymore—he’d be around if she needed him.

  If it’s possible to lose your heart twice to the same person, then that was the second, and last, time, she fell in love with Cody Nordstrom.

  But while her nightmares of murders were replaced by unsettling fantasies of her and Cody, the unsuspecting man of her dreams had been treating her like sister, friend, and nun for the past couple of years.

  She’d been patiently waiting, wasting away the best years of her life while Cody saved the world from scumbags like his brother. She’d hoped that he would notice she wasn’t a little girl anymore, but he never did, so tonight, she’d put it all out on the table and seduce him.

  She nervously glanced down at herself—sexy red heels, sheer leopard thong, matching sheer leopard bra, hair perfectly mussed for that just-got-tumbled look—or in this case, tumble-me-now look—plus lip gloss that matched her stilettos … a total transformation from the usual cardigans and jeans with ballet flats.

  Cody might not even realize it was her. Oh, no, please please let him get turned on when he sees me.

  Meg backed from the bedroom door when she heard a sound downstairs, her heart pounding in anticipation, her palms sweating. The front door creaked and, just as quickly, slammed shut. She tensed when she heard him below—

  “Megan?”

  His voice. Deep and lush, even from afar it stroked her insides, the sensual baritone a warm caress to her very soul. Her heart skittered as she realized that parking a couple of houses away in order not to spoil the surprise had been a big mistake—the guy was a detective and he rarely missed a thing. Obviously while he’d been out there, surveying the streets before coming into the house, he’d spotted her Altima by the Ellisons’ home.

  Spurring herself into action, Megan quickly rushed across the room and jumped on the bed, assuming a sexy pose.

  “Nice tie,” she would say when he appeared at the door, recalling a movie that happened to be a favorite of hers, but no no no, she always admired his ties and she should look for variety.

  How about something forthright and sexy and innocent sounding. Something like, “Do you like my new panties, Cody?”

  Her pulse skipped as she imagined seeing his eyes, blue as cornflowers, go dark with arousal when he realized she had transformed from the girl next door—literally—into a real woman. Laid out right on his bed for him to feast upon. Would he finally take a bite?

  Her ears strained to hear his footsteps on the stairs, but seconds passed, and they didn’t come.

  Frowning, Megan stumbled out of bed as she heard puttering in the kitchen. She peered through the door, and saw lights from below. She also thought she heard the microwave. Great. Just perfect. She’d have to either go down there in her underwear, or put on her coat and get cooked in it while he stuffed himself, or just wait by the bed. As planned.

  She went back to the bed, wondering if he’d sounded tired and not necessarily happy when he’d said her name. This was the first hour of his first day of a long-deserved vacation.

  Should she have waited until tomorrow?

  Or maybe never?

  Maybe he’s not happy, genius. Invasion of personal space and all that.

  She frowned. Well, had he not left the door practically open? A hardass detective like him, always leaving home on the rush, never locking up—was that even logical? Protect-the-others-while-I-happily-get-myself-killed was probably Cody Nordstrom’s motto.

  She sighed drearily and then readjusted herself along the length of the mattress, plumped up his pillow behind her head and tried to relax.

  Cody was far from perfect—under every joke lay a troubled man.

  But her troubled little body just adored her troubled man, and she’d like to think that she understood him better than most.

  He felt responsible for what his brother did all those years ago, and because of that, Cody didn’t know that he was a higher caliber man than most.

  He was one of the best homicide detectives the force had ever seen, but when it came to his personal life, he could stare at something and just not see what stood before him. Now, Megan would do anything to finally be seen. Even strip.

  Be sexy, she thought as she stretched out over the bed in a way she hoped would flatter what she considered her plain, none-too-curvy figure.

  She was dying for him to get up here and let her put his rough-hewn, pretty-boy, Armani-ad face between her hands and kiss those lips she dreamed about for the first time, when she heard squeeeeeach from the closet door.

  Frowning, Megan raised her head and sat up straighter, when a flash of movement in the shadowed interior caught her eye.

  Her heart stopped. The fear was so overwhelming that it paralyzed her. Ice started to build, chilling her skin, her hands, her feet, her brain. Once again, she became statuesque as a shockingly familiar face materialized.

  Lungs burning for air that could not make it past her throat, Megan stared into the darkness, a part of her numbed mind screaming at her to move, do something, because someone was staring back at her.

  She had been so wound up in her plan, she had not realized she was not alone. Something was inside Cody’s room. Something, some monster, seemed to have been waiting, had been watching her, intent on doing—what?

  An image of fifteen years ago, of Cody’s brother standing over his parents’ dead bodies, assailed her, and like she had back then, she remained frozen with fear as the figure stepped out of the shadows.

  Panic gripped her by the throat, blocking out the commands of her mind for her to run run run, overpowering her so that she could do nothing, think nothing, only see him coming …

  “No,” she croaked helplessly, starting to scramble back against the headboard.

  “Shhhhh,” he said, and the fact that he was speaking to her only alarmed her further.

  She’d never been so scared in her life. Not even that time long ago, because that time she’d been a girl, and at first she’d thought that what she’d witnessed was a dream. Now she knew for a fact that some little boys did kill their parents.

  She knew that the man she had grown to love spent his days hunting down the scum of the earth, all of whom had taken someone’s life, just like his brother.

  Life was not pink anymore in her eyes, and it had not been pink for a long, long time … this shadow … this criminal … coming toward her was REAL. He was real and he was closer and he was talking to her!

  Her every nightmare, her nightmare of being murdered, of dying a stupid virgin, was real.

  Suddenly fear kicked instinct into action. She opened her mouth wide, panic and fear tangling together for a voice, tumbling to form a big, loud “HEELP MEEE!!!” that the entire world would be able to hear, or at the very least, Cody, her hero, but a black rag came over her nose, and she had no time to scream.

  TWO

  “Meg?”

  Cody rubbed the tension in the back of his neck as he waited for the microwave to ping, then he scanned the staircase, expecting Megan to appear, her clover-green eyes bright and excited as she came up with an explanation—and it had to be a good one—for breaking and ente
ring into his home.

  He knew himself well enough to know that he’d glower at her only for a minute—or perhaps a couple of minutes more because, dammit, she could’ve gotten hurt! Plus where the hell did she learn how to pick locks? Especially his state-of-the-art locks?

  Then again, Megan Banks was the kind of woman who always surprised a man, and he knew that even if he glowered for a whole damned hour, as soon as she flashed one of those pearly white smiles, he’d be done for.

  Heck, he might as well just give her a key so she could come in and make herself at home whenever she’d like to. You wish, don’t you, asshole? Come home to her for a nice warm meal, a long, wet kiss, and then it’s upstairs together to make a couple of babies.

  His treacherous blood began to boil at the thought. Yeah, Megan was the kind of girl any man would kill for. Would travel worlds just to be able to come home to. The kind of girl for whom any man would spend a lifetime doing hero work, putting scumbags in jail, just so a girl like her could sleep at night.

  The kind of girl Cody would never, ever, touch with his callused, bloodied hands.

  Since the night of his parents’ murder, Cody knew that he would never get married. He would never get the girl, the kids, the dog, or the happily ever after.

  He would get the killers.

  There were always casualties in a story, and his personal life would be one of them.

  It seemed a small sacrifice at the time, in exchange for justice and capturing his parents’ murderer. Now, the criminal—his brother—was behind bars, and although he hadn’t gotten the death penalty due to his being a minor at the time of the crime, the bastard had gotten life. Which was mighty fine with Cody.

  And yet Cody’s thirst for justice was still not appeased. He needed new cases, tougher cases, meaner criminals, all to keep his head buried so deep in work, he wouldn’t think of what he’d lost in the blink of an eye. With one bad call. One bad day.

  He heard footsteps up in his bedroom, and he cocked his head as he pictured Megan coming down the stairs, doing that hip-swing thing she did that drove him crazy. His eyebrows furrowed when she took her goddamned time. What in the hell was she doing up there? Wrestling?

  “Megan?” he growled, annoyed.

  Ding.

  He ignored the microwave when a thump was followed by an eerie silence, and a chilling premonition slid up the back of his neck. His hackles rose. Legs tensing as his blood began to pump faster through his veins, he yanked his Glock out of its hip holster and climbed the stairs, two at a time, silent as death.

  All was quiet upstairs—unnaturally quiet. Not natural, when Megan was around, for things to be still for more than a second. If she gets hurt … He pushed the thought aside, narrowed his eyes and scanned the hallway, dark at this time of night.

  A window screeched from the guest bedroom, but it had been the master bedroom where he’d heard the noise, and it was from that direction that he heard a soft moan.

  He parted the door and peered into the darkness, gun carefully doing a one-eighty-degree turn. “Megan?”

  Again, that damned tickle in the back of his neck. It had happened far too many times to ignore. Something was wrong. Megan wasn’t answering.

  The moan became louder, as if pained. He hit the light switch and he saw, sprawled over his duvet and pillows, a little bundle of flawless white skin and loose honey-wheat hair.

  “Megan?”

  He froze one step into his bedroom, and his cock shot up like steel. Holy Mother of God, I’m not seeing what I’m seeing.

  But he was.

  Megan. With skin that looked air-brushed and sweet. Hair you could wrap yourself in. Sweet little Megan was in his bed—wearing the cutest, sexiest, out-of-this-world outfit.

  His heart pounded as his mouth watered, and for this moment, this one moment, he didn’t wonder what she was doing there. It felt like she belonged there, like every time he had dreamed her there had summoned her to do it for real. Make his every wet dream come true.

  He pulled his eyes away, off her chest—a chest he wanted to taste with his tongue—no, he didn’t just think that, fuck, this was Megan! Meg, dammit, not some bimbo, and he glanced up, swallowing thickly.

  His voice came out raspy, and what he said made not one lick of sense. “That’s my bed you’re in.”

  She stared at him with those big, wide, green eyes, and he stared back. No, he wasn’t staring, he was gawking like a stupid idiot, like a complete moronic idiot with his gun still in his hand, but he couldn’t stop. He had worked on his discipline, for twenty years he had worked like a dog to one day be able to forget what the monster inside him was capable of doing, but damned if this girl didn’t tempt him.

  She moved, a sinewy undulation like a ribbon being made into a twist, and when she kicked her legs, more of her perfect, nearly-nude body became exposed.

  His gun trembled in his hand as he slowly put it back in its holster, but he could not tear his eyes away from that shadowed valley between her legs, a V of curls glistening dark under the sheer leopard print of her panties.

  Greedily, he took in the length of her toned thighs, down to her slim, creamy white ankles, and his blood rushed through his veins as he imagined … imagined what it would be like with her. With the one woman he’d sworn to himself to never touch.

  And the only one you’ve ever wanted.

  She moaned, softly, the sound sexy and making a growl get trapped in his throat as he fisted his hands at his sides and reined himself back, locked his legs in place. And then it finally registered that she did not seem happy, that the moisture shining in her eyes wasn’t desire, but tears.

  Another muffled sound came, and he noticed her mouth was not moving as she spoke, and she was … struggling in her binds? Binds?

  “What the hell?” He took a step closer and his heart sputtered when he saw the words scrawled on dark red marker on her navel. A name. His name all over her perfect skin. One for every year he’d served in jail …

  IVAN IVAN IVAN IVAN IVAN IVAN IVAN.

  But Ivan was locked up.

  Cody had locked up his own brother.

  The kid he’d protected when he was young.

  Against his every raging instinct to protect his own kin, he had trained like a mad man. He’d chased him for years, in his dreams and fantasies, and later, for real, so that he could have the pleasure of finding him, catching him, and locking him in.

  And he had.

  He had come back to Phoenix, hell on Earth, if you asked him, and he had the bastard convicted for their parents’ murder—even though evidence had been scarce, he’d still managed to prove him guilty. And yet now … his name was written on Megan’s body. How the fuck was that even possible?

  Never, in his life, had he ever felt this all-consuming frustration, except the time he’d seen his parents lying sightless in a pool of their own blood.

  His eyes flew up to Megan’s tear-filled ones, while an icy rage hardened his veins until the cold of Antarctica would’ve seemed like a warm summer. “Who did this?” he demanded, pulling—there was no easy way of doing this—at the clear packing tape that covered her mouth.

  She gasped for air and Cody yanked out his knife and cut her binds with two swift moves, listening for any strange sounds other than the wild pounding of his own heartbeat and Megan struggling for words.

  Instantly his senses became alert, ears, mind, eyes, all over the house, for he could still be there. The bastard could still be in the house. He had an urge to chase him, but first he pulled her up and checked her pulse, and stared into her wide, scared, tear-streaked eyes.

  With a quick check he realized she was breathing, gazing up at him with a strange expression of disappointment and fear in her face. When she opened her mouth to speak, he was about to tell her to “save it” when he heard them, footsteps racing down the stairs, and his insides kicked into overdrive.

  Fury, red hot and scalding, poured over his veins, and before he knew it he was on his fe
et, kicking open doors of the other rooms, running down the stairs, outside, gun drawn as he chased—he didn’t know who he was chasing, he was chasing something, some bastard he had to catch and beat down to a pulp.

  Who? Ivan was in jail—what bastard dared come into his home and leave a message with Megan? Megan. His one weakness. The one person in this world who could make Cody forget about justice, the law, and common sense.

  In some cases, when a man loves a woman, he takes her in his arms.

  But in his case, if he loves a woman, he stays the hell away from her—and that was exactly what Cody had done his whole life.

  Megan had seen death at an age when all girls her age only saw balloons and flowers and sun. The killer she saw wore Cody’s same goddamned face, which was enough to disgust anyone.

  He had spent his life with one mission: to protect her, to keep an eye out for her, to make amends. To make sure that she never again in her life had to see an ounce of injustice go unpunished, never see more darkness than what she’d seen that day with him. He had been her friend because that was all he could be, when many nights he had wondered who was her lover.

  He had even prayed that if Megan ever decided to marry some nice respectable guy who added numbers for a living, Cody would be transferred to Timbuktu or some other faraway place where he never had to watch her with him. He had done all this—everything—for her. And some crazed man had touched her, hurt her, in his own home, under his very own nose.

  Someone who wants to fuck with your head … who knows how much she means to you …

  He pushed the unsettling thought away and after one final scan of the guiet neighborhood, he went back, climbed up the stairs, and yanked out his cell phone in annoyance while it rang its little buzzer off. He picked up with a growl.

  “Nordstrom, bad news.” His partner, Zach. Like he ever called with good news.

  “What is it?” he said in exasperation, storming back into his room. “I’m kind of busy here, man.”

  He glanced at Megan across the room, on the floor now, shivering, beautiful, vulnerable, and he wanted to howl at the moon, a call to all the desert wolves to come out and have this perpetrator for dinner.