Starlight Dunes

by Vickie McKeehan

  The sun was tipping into the horizon as River and Brent walked along the sidewalk on Ocean Street side by side as they headed to the Wagoneer with Brent carrying a worn-out Luke. River pushed the empty stroller, gliding along carried by love and happiness—the depth of which she hadn’t felt in two years.

  “I got some great shots today. Those big dark eyes of his were front and center in all of them. It’s a great beginning to adding to the album I have from when he was born. I didn’t have that many. I should’ve taken more. Had I known—”

  Brent loved to see her excited, loved it when she got that gleam in her eye, or simply watching her watch her son. What he didn’t like was to see her fade back into those days without Luke—and so many regrets. Maybe he understood better now spending time dwelling on those things that “might have been” just wasn’t worth it.

  “You’ll make up for it now by taking out your camera more often,” he proposed, glancing over at the boy he held in his arms. “He’ll probably conk out any minute now. Instead of packing him up in the car and you heading back to the inn, how about we get takeout from the Diner. We’ll go back to my place. I’ll call in the order there, maybe talk Mona into delivery with an extra tip.”

  “Sounds like a plan. But you know I can’t spend the night. I don’t want Luke waking up in another strange place he isn’t used to. He’s had enough of that to last a lifetime.”

  “I know. Instead of hot and sweaty s-e-x, we’ll order Max Bingham’s Saturday night special, and stuff ourselves with southern-fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Then I’ll follow you out to the B & B. How’s that sound?”

  She giggled. “The food sounds delicious but I’d prefer the s-e-x.”

  They crossed the street, their minds on how they’d spend the evening—when River waved to a passing couple with two kids in tow, a boy and a girl, heading south toward the Rescue Center—and probably the petting zoo before Cord closed the gates for the night. If the foursome hurried they’d just barely have time for the kids to give the rabbits a hug and take a ride on the pony.

  She followed Brent as he led the way up to his front door. Reaching into his jeans pocket to pull out his keys, he turned to River. “Hold him for a sec, will you, while I jiggle the lock. It’s a little tricky.”

  Just as he was about to stick the key in the door, Brent felt chills go up his spine first, and then Scott’s presence surround him. Without thinking, Brent grabbed River and Luke and dove into the flower bed. Two shots in rapid succession rang out striking the door dead center where they’d just been standing only seconds earlier.

  He motioned for her to stay down as a third shot whooshed over their heads. It was then he noted the sheer terror in River’s eyes as she clung tight to Luke.

  Brent crawled to the end of the dirt, purposely away from River and the boy and took out his cell phone, punched in nine-one-one. “This is Brent Cody. Get your asses over to my place now. I have shots fired again by an unknown assailant.” As he relayed the info, more bullets pinged off the house.

  “River, look at me.” He saw the panic and did his best to ignore it. “I want you to remain here, stay down, as low to the ground as possible.”

  “Where…where…are you…going?” she stuttered.

  “I need my weapon.” He’d been so distracted by setting up the barricades for the street fair that morning he’d forgotten to strap on his gun. Pinned down now, without disconnecting the call, he inched his way back up and onto the porch, ducking around bullets the entire time.

  Using his elbow, he smashed the pane of glass out of the front window of the living room and dove through the opening. Once inside, he hurried over to where he kept his loaded .45. He then moved to the hall closet to retrieve his Colt rifle.

  Ramming the handgun into the waist of his jeans, he crossed to the front door. Even though he heard sirens in the distance and knew backup was on the way, he was on his own until they arrived.

  Throwing open the door, he shouldered the firearm and went into sniper-mode. Walking out onto the porch, he used the scope to scan the street and the surrounding area.

  Brent hunkered down at the end of the porch steps where River still crouched in fear with Luke. With his hand he signaled for her to move forward through the bushes and behind him into the house. “I’ve got you covered. Come on, River, move toward me.”

  All the while he continued to look for the shooter. But when he looked down at River again, he saw her shake her head and discovered she was too scared to budge.

  “River, look at me. Look at me, honey,” he repeated. “I have to get you and Luke inside and out of the line of fire,” he whispered. “You need to scoot through the dirt on your belly if you have to and move toward me. Now, honey! Do it now! I’ll see that you make it inside I promise. Come on, honey, you can do it.”

  He watched as she finally started to slink her way through the hydrangeas on her hands and knees with Luke creeping along under her, terrified. As soon as she got within arm’s reach he protected Luke, shielding him with his own body while pushing him through the front door. He did the same with River.

  By this time the first patrol car careened to a halt. Brent watched as two of his deputies jumped out with guns drawn. They crept behind the car looking for anything that moved.

  “Where did the shots come from, Sheriff?” one officer yelled.

  “Across the street somewhere near the pier.”

  A second patrol car pulled to a stop, then another and another until there were half a dozen cars each carrying two officers.

  “Fan out, do a search.” Brent yelled as he stepped back inside to check on River. He found her hiding behind the couch, clutching Luke in her arms. He went over, pulled both of them into his chest. “It’s okay, you’re safe now.”

  “Could Wes’s parents have had anything to do with this?” River said in between quick breaths.

  Brent shook his head. “No, don’t think like that. This was meant for me, not you.” They stayed like that for several minutes longer until an officer stepped through the doorway.

  “Whoever it was is gone now. We did find a lot of shell casings.”

  “Bag ’em as evidence. Make sure you don’t miss any. Cover every inch of the area. Canvass the neighbors to see if anyone saw anything. I want a description, detailed if you can manage it. Get a sketch artist out here.”

  “Will do,” the deputy said, retreating back outside, leaving them alone.

  “Look, I’ll have an officer drive you back to Promise Cove,” Brent assured her, not wanting to let her go.

  “I…we want to stay with you.”

  He shook his head. “I need to find this person and until I do, you and Luke aren’t safe being anywhere near me. You’ve already been with one asshole You don’t need to put up with being with me and all that entails right now.”

  “You’re breaking up with me?”

  He squeezed her shoulders. “It isn’t healthy for you and Luke to be around me right now. Don’t you understand that? Until I find who’s responsible for this, until I find who wants me dead, I need to put the brakes on my personal relationships.”

  Her temper flared. “And just how many personal relationships do you have going on right now?” she snapped.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No. I think you need to spell it out for me. You can’t exactly shove people away just because things get tough.”

  “Tough? River, someone shot at me just now and they almost took you and Luke right along with it. You were so frightened you couldn’t move out there and Luke was terrified. That’s the third time they’ve made an attempt on my life. If they were a better shot…”

  “Or if you hadn’t felt Scott’s presence…if that hadn’t warned you in some way. I felt it too right before the shots rang out.”

  Brent ran a hand through his mass of hair. “Okay, if Scott hadn’t warned me the first and second times, I might not be standing here talking to you.”

  “And if no
t for you I wouldn’t have my son back. Do you think I’m that weak? That I won’t stand with you like you stood with me these past months? What kind of a person do you think I am anyway?”

  “I want you safe, River.”

  She ran a hand down his cheek. “How much safer could I be than with someone who cares about me and Luke.”

  “I love you, River. I’m not sure when it happened but I love you and Luke. All the way.”

  “Then we’re exactly where we’re meant to be.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The next day Brent walked into the Sheriff’s Office unannounced to confront Jim Richardson face to face. If the man was behind all the attempts on his life, Brent wanted him to come clean about it, man to man.

  He blitzed past an administrative assistant he didn’t recognize because his own had been let go during his absence and replaced by Jim’s personal aide.

  Brent didn’t bother to knock. Instead he threw back the door and stared at the balding, middle-aged gasbag who’d been a thorn in his side from the moment he’d taken office. Brent stated point blank, “I want you to tell me straight if you’re the one responsible for all the chaos in my life, if you’re the one who wants me dead. The least you could do is face me with the truth.”

  “What? Why would you think that?” Richardson asked, stupefied at the open accusation.

  “Why? Because you haven’t exactly been secretive about wanting my job. You’ve made it clear from day one you thought you were the better man. Ever since I got elected and you didn’t, you’ve done everything you could at every opportunity to sabotage any changes I wanted to make. You made sure you poisoned people against me, making sure they saw things your way. For the most part, I didn’t address the problems between us, a mistake I think. But I’m addressing it now. You’ve gone behind my back slinging a lot of shit. Up to now, I’ve taken it, but no more. Put up or shut up.”

  Brent could tell by the expression on Jim’s face the man wasn’t sure whether to admit it or try to bluff. After several long seconds, Brent was surprised when Jim decided to play it upfront. “I…all right…I admit I tried to damage your administration. But you have to believe me when I say I had nothing to do with all these shootings. I don’t know anything about that.”

  “What about your flunkies? Maybe one night during a poker game you decide to put a subtle word out that you wouldn’t be completely opposed to the idea if someone took me out.”

  “I didn’t do that. I talked about mounting another campaign against you in the spring. That’s it. I confess I wanted to throw up as many roadblocks as I could during the meantime because you have such limited experience. I’ve been in this department since I started as a rookie deputy some thirty years ago. You, you come along after a measly seven years and get elected because of your stint in the military.”

  “I know that’s what you think, but believe it or not, the people elected me because they wanted change. They wanted me to clean up the department. I did or tried to. But you backstabbed me at every turn. You never could accept the difference in opinion.” Brent shifted gears. “Are you the one keeping me on medical disability?”

  Jim sent him a sheepish look. “Yes. But that was because I figured if I could keep you sidelined for as long as I could, it would give me the advantage in the spring. I’d be able to show my detractors I’m better at the job than you ever were.”

  “What you’ve done, Richardson, is split the department in half. And if I decide to fight you on this, I’m taking you down. Are we clear?”

  Jim swallowed hard and nodded. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Hey, you might’ve split the department, but I’m about to turn it on its head.”

  To Brent’s surprise when he got outside to his truck, he found his brother leaning against the hood with his arms folded across his chest.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “River told Hayden where you were headed. I thought I’d better wait out here to see if they had to bring you out on a stretcher or in handcuffs. Either way, I figured you might need bail money.”

  Brent grinned. “So little faith in your big brother. That asshole is pulling strings from the inside to keep me out of action.”

  “I figured as much. But he isn’t responsible for the shootings and the bomb, is he?”

  “He’s a slime-ball backstabber asshole, but he wouldn’t go that far.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’ve confronted and interrogated suspects over the years. From what I could tell Richardson was on the level about that one thing.”

  “What are you gonna do? Fight to get your job back?”

  Brent blew out a sigh. “Honestly, Ethan, I’m not sure I want the job back. When I got here this morning, I thought I did, had convinced myself I’d do anything. But right now, I’m not sure it’s worth the aggravation. I don’t mind a good fight but my heart just isn’t in it. Did you know Murphy offered me the chief of police job?”

  “I wasn’t sure he’d mentioned it yet. But he asked me to recommend someone back in September, Labor Day weekend to be exact. I told him he should approach you.”

  “But that was before I got to Pelican Pointe, before my house exploded.”

  “Yep.”

  “Why? Did you have some premonition about this mess?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a premonition. After all, I had no way of knowing someone would try to kill you in such a drastic way. But I sensed you were unhappy for months before it happened, maybe as far back as last Christmas. Dad felt it, too. We talked about it, thought maybe it was a personal issue, you know, that maybe you didn’t have anyone in your life and you weren’t exactly thrilled about it.”

  “I was spending too much time at work that’s all.”

  “If you say so.”

  “You don’t think it was eighteen-hour days?”

  Ethan shrugged. “I know how it was with me before meeting Hayden. It felt like something was missing in my life. And when I fell for her it was like a punch to the gut.”

  “Don’t make it sound so thrilling.”

  “I must not be the great writer I thought I was because what I’m trying to tell you is that taking the fall changes your whole perspective on things. I gave up law enforcement because Hayden showed me that following a dream is what’s important. I’m not sure I’d ever taken the plunge into writing full-time if it wasn’t for the support I got from her.”

  “And what if I don’t have a dream?”

  “Everyone has something they want to do but might be stymied for whatever reason.”

  “Law enforcement is all I know.”

  “So is being single.”

  “I’m thinking about ending that.”

  “Brother, admit it. You’ve been headed that way ever since you met her.”

  “I guess I have.”

  Over the next couple of days things got more intense. With the street fair behind them, the entire town went on high alert making sure they looked out for Brent, River, and Luke. Every man took a turn at sentry duty outside Brent’s house. In addition to that, off-duty deputies volunteered their time to stake out the area, courtesy of Jim Richardson. His way of showing Brent he’d had no part in the attacks.

  River refused to hide, even though Brent wanted to send her and Luke out of town. She also wouldn’t let him sit around brooding. So in spite of the circumstances, the newly-minted little family spent as much time doing normal things as they could.

  But when they weren’t shopping for groceries, eating out, or spending time with Luke at the beach, they tried figuring out the puzzle. Who hated Brent enough to kill him? There was plenty of input from friends and family. Even her crew stopped by to put in their two cents. Everyone seemed to have a theory.

  They all had no problem digging into Brent’s past with all the enthusiasm of amateur detectives.

  “What about the ex-wife?” Julian asked. “The DNA came back female so, it’s gotta be the ex-wife, right?”

 
“I checked Cindy’s alibi, checked her current husband’s. It isn’t either one of them,” Brent explained. “Besides, Cindy’s moved on. Our marriage ended and neither one of us has any lingering hostility toward the other. There’s no motive there.”

  “And you’ve gone through the list of people you’ve put behind bars?” Ethan wanted to know.

  “Several times over,” Brent said. “I’ve even gone back in time to when I was in the army. An MP makes a fair share of enemies.”

  River jumped on that. “Wait. You think someone from your unit could do something like this?”

  “Not in my unit maybe but I did more than access control in Iraq.”

  “What’s access control?” Laura asked.

  “Checking IDs at the gate, making sure that only authorized personnel get on base, write speeding tickets when warranted, the usual cop stuff. But all that changed once I got to Baghdad.”

  “How so?”

  “Other than patrolling and dodging IEDs you mean? When I wasn’t doing convoy security for senior officers or detainee detail, I broke up fights, arrested soldiers if the situation warranted it, tried to keep the peace among units experiencing heavy conflict. Sometimes tempers flared.”

  “So with all that you could’ve royally pissed someone off, right?” Ethan prompted.

  “Sure, it comes with the territory,” Brent returned with a shrug.

  Ethan thought about that for longer than he needed to. “You know, I think you might be onto something. This is a connection to someone in Iraq.”

  “Intuition?”

  “Some, but more like deduction. The bomb should’ve been the giveaway.”

  While Brent ran down that avenue until he hit a dead end, he utilized every tactic he had at his disposal to track down the culprit. From his laptop he did online searches, checking on possible names that he’d stuck at the top of the likely suspect list—those he could remember anyway.

  After everyone had left and they’d gotten Luke to sleep, River sat curled on the sofa studying the man from across the room. Intense concentration in those deep brown eyes had her staring at them until he finally looked up and made eye contact.