Approaching forty, he was mindful his body wasn’t the same as it had been when he’d been able to throw a ninety-five mile per hour fastball for his high school baseball team. That’s 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 twice a week. For all his efforts he still weighed the same as he had when he’d landed in Iraq.
But it 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 a back and forth scraping motion. He countered the annoying whap, whap, whap 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, 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, liked to tease him about.
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.
Once he’d gotten his bad marriage behind him, he’d finally taken the plunge and bought a little Spanish bungalow with a nice 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 in the dating pool. After all, he wasn’t a loner or anti-social. 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 now had a son of his own. Since Ethan’s marriage, Lindeen Cody 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 chuckle about it—most of the time 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 Lindeen Cody, one of these days, tell her to knock it off. Yeah, like that was going to happen. His mother 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 one who couldn’t remain faithful for one goddamn tour of duty in Iraq.
But that was ancient history. He’d gotten over the cheating Cindy and never looked back.
Didn’t his mother realize that the only women he met on a regular basis and interacted with all day worked for him in some capacity or another? And Brent Cody refused to cross that line at work to mingle anything personal at the office like a liaison. Been there. Done that before, too. It hadn’t worked out any better. In his experience office affairs never worked out.
Because of that, if Lindeen Cody came across an attractive medical assistant at the doctor’s office who she thought her eldest son might like, 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. He’d eventually give in and meet her through his mother.
Which meant Brent went out 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 movie or dinner dates before tumbling in 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 spend too much time worrying about it either.
He 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 had picked up as he pulled along his driveway, inched his truck inside the garage. Grabbing his briefcase, he crawled out of the truck, absent-mindedly wondering whether or not the Sharks were adding a win to their column. When his stomach rumbled with hunger, 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 pizza 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, he 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. 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.
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Vickie McKeehan
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Lighthouse Reef
Starlight Dunes
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The Evil Secrets Trilogy
Just Evil
Deeper Evil
Ending Evil
The Skye Cree Novels
The Bones of Others
The Bones Will Tell
The Box of Bones
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vickie McKeehan is the author of fifteen novels and makes her home in
Southern California, next to the ocean she loves.
Visit with Vickie at
https://www.facebook.com/VickieMcKeehan
http://www.vickiemckeehan.com/
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Lighthouse Reef (A Pelican Pointe Novel Book 4) Page 31