Phoenix, Arizona—August 2005
He did the same thing every year.
On August 22, at 6:00 p.m. sharp, Cody Nordstrom would drop whatever he was doing in order to head straight home.
He’d have trouble getting to his front door sometimes; phone calls, unsolved cases that suddenly needed his attention, always popped up on this day. But he’d ignore them as best he could.
He’d ignore the tempting call of a cold beer after work, and the buddies clamoring for him to come over to the Starbucks by the station, and the paperwork on his desk and the meetings with his superiors, and he’d drive straight home.
He would start a cold shower, put out his clothes—a black Armani suit and a crisp white shirt he had dropped off in the morning at the cleaners and picked up on his way home—and for this day, the only day in the entire year, he would wear them with a solid black tie.
By 6:15, toweled dry and somberly dressed, he would stop by the corner neighborhood florist and purchase two dozen white roses. Then he would climb back into his car and drive with care, glancing now and then at the petals riding shotgun beside him, starkly innocent against the dark upholstery and caught in mid bloom.
By 6:30, he would reach the cemetery.
This was his destination, and he’d stay here for hours. Until the traffic waned, and the hot desert day began to morph into a cool night.
He’d keep his face downcast, his thoughts to himself, and those white roses would lie on the ground, right on the spot where the bodies of his two parents had been buried.
There was comfort in this routine, and maybe there was some punishment in it, too; punishment in the gloomy sight of the graves during the evening. Yet today—
The hair at the nape of his neck pricked, and Nordstrom raised his head in puzzlement.
He scanned the cemetery for signs of disturbance, noticing how this one time, this strange time, the sun was shining bright, casting an orange glow across the scattered grass, hitting the only tree nearby at an odd angle. He didn’t know that what followed would rock his world—for he hadn’t seen her yet.
“Oh, is that nice girl with you?” a female passerby asked him, noticing that he was looking in the direction of the tree.
Uncertain of the curiosity prodding him to find out to whom she was referring, Cody stared at her hard, then he glanced back at the tree. There, leaning against the trunk, was a … female.
“That girl, is she your sister?” the woman insisted.
Cody honed in on the girl. No. Not a girl. Too curvy to be a girl.
“She comes to visit this same grave every Saturday, too,” the stranger offered before hauling her bag closer to her chest and walking away, dragging a small toddler behind her.
Fixated on the slim figure by the tree, Cody narrowed his eyes as he tried to place her. Blond hair to her shoulders, brilliant eyes even from afar. His pulse stopped.
Something about her, the way she held so still and quiet as she looked back at him. Her skin, the shade of her hair. Time stopped as they stared at each other across the graves and trees and grass.
Megan.
Holy fuck—it was her. It had to be.
But she was there, and she was … walking over? Holy hell, she was walking over.
He stood slowly, wondering if she knew it was him—Cody. Of course she knew. Megan had never looked at his twin quite the way she used to look at Cody, quite the way she was looking at him now.
Ahh, fuck, his groin was heating.
She was a woman now—a very sexy woman—and he wished he hadn’t seen her, for she’d plague his mind from now on.
He hadn’t planned to look for her. Not after social services took him away—he sure as hell hadn’t returned for that. He was just plain bad luck, should let the girl continue on with whatever kind of life she was leading, which was for certain better off without him in it.
She should stay away from a problem like him.
True, he had become a cop. Homicide detective and all that.
He was supposed to be a good man, but the same blood as that of a killer ran in his veins, and he knew what he really was. Soiled. Unfit. And responsible for what that sick bastard had done.
Thoughts of his twin brother made his lips curl in disdain. Theirs had been a complicated relationship, spawned by parents who did not pretend that doing things halfway was okay. They liked to challenge their other son to become more like his responsible brother, but he never seemed to make it to the bar they raised.
This did little to encourage sibling harmony between the two, and somehow Cody, as the eldest, had felt compelled to allow for Ivan’s rebelliousness. Until that day. What Ivan had done was so sick, so twisted, there would be no going back from it.
“I killed them,” he said that fateful day when Cody had been taking Megan to the lake, intent on stealing a first kiss from her. Cody would not have believed him had his parents not been lying there, in a crimson pool. Dead.
Dead at his brother’s feet.
“I told you I would.” Ivan had looked at him with hard blue eyes, a monster with Cody’s own face.
And deep down, Cody feared that a monster lived inside him, too.
One that made him steal that kiss from Megan. One that imagined taking her virginity, the virginity of the only girl he really cared for. The monster that even then, after seeing with his own two eyes what Ivan had done, urged him to hide his brother, to protect him.
Maybe that monster would have surfaced if Megan hadn’t been there, her face pale and frightened, her eyes round as moons. The horror and pain he felt that day, that she be witness to what had become of the Nordstroms, made him want to tear off his face, the face of a murderer, and forget he’d ever had the last name Nordstrom.
But his parents’ sightless eyes, staring from the ground, seemed to yell their disappointment. And he knew that he’d spend the rest of his life trying to make amends.
“It was my fault,” he told her, when Ivan dropped the weapon and ran. “It’s all my fault, Meg.” And he’d hugged her for as long as he could, until the first officers on scene pried her away.
Those were the last words he ever said to her before his new family claimed him. He saw her little face in the windowpane watching him being taken away. He didn’t know if she was crying, he could hardly raise his face to see his neighbors, knowing they all thought: One of those boys did it.
His brother had, yeah, but Cody could have prevented it.
Your fault, Cody.
He fisted his hands at his sides and reminded himself he was a cop now, a detective. He put bad guys in jail. He shouldn’t be ashamed anymore.
“Hey?” Only an arm’s length away from him now, she blinked at him, her gaze wide, and he didn’t know what to do except stare.
Up close, her eyes were maybe a little greener than he remembered. A little smarter. Her lips a bit fuller. Her breasts a hell of a lot more—you’re staring at them, asshole!
He brought himself up short and shook his head. “Hey.”
She stared at him, her eyes teary as though she had expected more contact from him through the years, a better hello right now, and still he stood there and willed himself to grow cold against this woman. She wasn’t the girl he’d lusted after as a teenage boy.
He imagined ice growing in his veins and that ice moving up to his heart. Nothing got to him, ever. He didn’t feel, not after his parents had been brutally murdered. No feeling. Ice man. Ice cold on the inside. But that cracked when she beamed at him, and before he knew what the hell happened, she was hugging him like crazy and just like that it felt like she was squeezing his heart. “Welcome home, Cody.”
Right then and there, she had him.
She.
Had.
Him.
But he’d be dead before he ever let her know.