Before the Dawn--A Novel of Romantic Suspense

by Cynthia Eden

  Her cheeks reddened at that not subtle hit. “I found a witness and evidence that we can use on this case. Evidence your guys missed. Do we really want to play the blame game now?”

  He shook his head. “Just tell me you were carrying.” And worry was there, creeping into his voice. “You go alone into a place like this, with no backup in sight... What in the hell were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking that I didn’t want anyone else dying by this man’s hand.” Her chin notched up. “I was thinking that I’m a licensed PI who, yes, does carry a weapon. I’ve been to scenes a whole lot worse than this before and I will be at them again.” She wasn’t going to back down and play the helpless victim.

  That won’t be me again. She’d sworn that to herself. Her gaze darted around the group and she caught the dark look exchanged between Tucker and Macey.

  Alarm bells went off in her head.

  I am not going to like what’s coming.

  The detectives headed back to their vehicle. She knew they were calling this in to headquarters and, hopefully, getting an all-points bulletin out for Red. Macey inclined her head toward Dawn. “There anything else about the scene you think we should know?”

  “Red is our key.” And I wish I’d caught him. But Red knew this area too well. He’d been able to disappear between the maze of buildings, snaking away and vanishing like a ghost. “He said the killer came to see Jane—Heather,” she quickly corrected. “The guy left his gloves and Red took them.”

  “Why didn’t he report what he’d found?” Macey shook her head.

  “He was afraid.” Once more, her gaze swept the building. “This was his home. If he called the cops, they’d force him out.” And that was the same reason she was worried about the APB. “He’s going to stay far away from cops. I should hunt for him. I have some contacts in the homeless community. I can put out the word about Red and see what turns up.” She was betting she’d get a hit faster than the NOPD.

  “Do it,” Tucker said. “But do it on your way home.” His hand curled around her elbow. “I want to talk to you and your friend Jinx.”

  He...he hadn’t talked to Jinx yet?

  He led her to her vehicle as the detectives called out for Macey once again. She knew he was angry, but his touch was incredibly gentle on her. “You didn’t flinch this time,” he murmured.

  They were beside her car. She looked up at him, frowning.

  “When I touch you, you usually flinch away.” His fingers slid carefully down her arm. She could feel the calluses on his fingertips. “You didn’t this time.”

  “Tucker...”

  “I’m worried you’re a target.”

  She’d been worried about the same thing ever since someone had slipped into her home.

  “I need you safe, Dawn. I will do whatever is necessary to ensure that safety.”

  Her gaze searched his. “Why do those words give me such a bad feeling?”

  He looked away. “I’ll follow you home. We’ll talk there.”

  She didn’t want to go home. She wanted to pound the pavement and find Red. She wanted to find the jerk out there who’d killed Heather Hartley. She—

  “I can pull rank and put you under protective custody right now. I can have you in a safe house within the hour.”

  Her jaw dropped. “No. Absolutely not.” She wasn’t going to be shut away. Now she was the one to grab on to him and hold tight. “You’re not serious.”

  He looked down at her hands, then back up at her face. “When it comes to you staying alive, I absolutely am.” He inched closer to her and his body brushed against hers. “Haven’t I proven that already? That I will do anything to keep you alive?”

  Even shoot his own brother.

  She looked away, her emotions too tangled for her to understand, and she saw Anthony, frowning at her. He took a step toward her but she shook her head. She was okay. She didn’t need him riding to her rescue. She didn’t want anyone doing that. I can save myself.

  “Dawn?”

  Her gaze was pulled back to Tucker’s. She gathered her emotions and when she was sure she could speak calmly, she said, “You aren’t pulling rank. We’re working this case together.”

  His eyes glittered at her. “Your friend Jinx didn’t show up for work.”

  He’d said he hadn’t talked with her yet, but she’d just thought maybe he’d gotten sidetracked. “Jinx always goes to work. That job means everything to her.”

  “Her boss tried calling her, but Malone said he only got her voice mail.”

  And Dawn had gotten her voice mail, too.

  “I’m not liking this shit, okay? You think someone’s been in your home, another girl from our hometown is already a victim and now your downstairs neighbor is suddenly off-grid.”

  “I have a key to her place.” A key that she used to water Jinx’s plants when the other woman went out of town. But Dawn shook her head. “What am I saying? We aren’t going into Jinx’s place. I’ll try calling her again. I’m sure she’s fine.” She has to be fine.

  She dialed her friend as Tucker watched. One ring, two, then—

  “This is Jinx. You know the drill.”

  She didn’t leave a message this time.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “JINX?” DAWN POUNDED on her friend’s door. “Jinx, please open up if you’re in there, okay?”

  There was no sound from inside the condo.

  Dawn turned toward Tucker. “I don’t like this.”

  Neither did he. Not for one damn moment. Dawn didn’t think he’d been serious about the protective custody bit. She was dead wrong. The way this game was playing out—hell, no, it wasn’t going to end well. He could see the danger and the death coming. Since he’d been working in Violent Crimes, he’d learned too much about killers.

  And the bastard who’d killed Heather? He wasn’t going to be the one-and-done type. If he truly wanted to be like the Iceman, then more bodies would be piling up.

  Hell, there could already be more victims out there. Victims that just hadn’t been found yet. Victims who were already in their frozen graves.

  “I think I should get my key.” Dawn bit her lower lip. “Just to make sure everything is okay in there.”

  Sounded like one hell of an idea to him.

  “It’s upstairs. Come on.”

  He was right behind her. She’d scared the hell out of him when he couldn’t get her to answer the phone earlier, and then when she’d said that she needed backup, he hadn’t been able to get to her side fast enough. When he’d gotten to the scene, he’d wanted to race up to Dawn and pull her into his arms.

  Instead, he’d locked down his emotions and gotten the fucking job done.

  But...

  She breaks my control. She always has. That was one of the most dangerous things about Dawn.

  He watched as she unlocked her door and tapped in her alarm code. “The key is in my bedroom,” she threw over her shoulder as she headed toward the room. “Just give me a second to get it—”

  She’d vanished inside the bedroom. And her voice had abruptly cut away.

  “Dawn?” He took a step toward her room, expecting her to reappear. In just a second. Exactly as she’d promised.

  But she didn’t appear. And it had gone dead silent in that condo.

  “Dawn!” He shouted her name even as he yanked his gun out of his holster and ran after her. He rushed into her bedroom, searching for a threat, but Dawn was alone in there. She’d frozen just steps inside of her doorway.

  He kept his gun in one hand even as he reached for her shoulder with the other. “Baby, you just—”

  He saw the roses. Blood red. A bouquet of them, placed right on her pillow.

  “They weren’t here when I left,” Dawn whispered.
<
br />   Rage boiled inside of him. He’d seen her turn off the alarm himself, and there had been no sign of forced entry at her front door. He hurried around her bedroom, checking under the bed, going into her closet, searching the bathroom...then searching every room in her condo to make sure the SOB wasn’t still inside the place.

  But no one else was there. Nothing else was disturbed. Exactly the way Dawn described the other break-ins.

  He went back to her side. She was still standing just inside her bedroom, her eyes on the bed.

  “He knows about my tattoos.” Her voice was quiet, whispery, as if she were afraid someone would overhear her. Her head turned and she stared at him with eyes gone dark. Her pupils were too big. Her expression too stark. “I put roses over the worst of my scars. Jinx did that for me. She...she tried to make my past less ugly.”

  And some bastard had just delivered roses to her bed.

  His gaze flew around the room. “You have a motion detector attached to your security system?” She’d told him that before, but he needed to be sure.

  “In the den, yes, there’s one in there. I made sure one was in there because any intruder would have to come in through the front door in order to get to my bedroom.”

  Not necessarily.

  “Not like he could scale the side of the building and come in through the balcony,” she murmured.

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  His gaze swept the floor. He didn’t see any dirt there. No tracks left behind. Slowly now, he backed away from her. He went back to her closet. A big, walk-in closet. He opened the door there.

  “Tucker?” She followed behind him.

  He surveyed the clothes that were neatly hung, and the shoes that were arranged so carefully. “Everything look the same to you in here?”

  “Yes.”

  The bastard was in her bedroom. He’d believed her story before and now his rage was even greater. It was—

  “Everything but that rose petal.” She brushed past him and knelt on the floor. “That wasn’t here before.”

  And sure enough, there was a small rose petal—actually, more like half of a petal—that had been dropped and forgotten on the floor of the closet.

  Dawn stared up at him, not touching the petal.

  Think, fucking think. “You said this building was historic.”

  She nodded as she rose once more.

  He glanced at the wall behind her. And then he went to it. He started rapping his knuckles against the wood.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Checking to see if anything is—” He rapped again. Only this time, the resulting sound was different. Pay dirt. “Hollow.”

  His hands slid around the wood. It looked like a wall, but at the very bottom of that frame, he found a ridge of wood that stuck out. He pulled on that wood...

  The wall popped open.

  “You are freaking kidding me,” Dawn said, voice stunned.

  No, he wasn’t.

  He pulled out his phone and used the flashlight app to shine light down into what looked like an old laundry shoot. “It goes down to the bottom floor.” And there was a damn rope there. Tied off right near the small door he’d just managed to open. The bastard had been using that rope and climbing up to her room.

  The perp had been letting himself inside her home, slipping right past her security when she was gone.

  Only... Hell. He might not have gotten inside just when Dawn was away. The bastard could have been sneaking into her room when she was asleep. She wouldn’t have even realized it. She’d said that when she woke up, she smelled him.

  Because he was with her when she slept.

  His head turned toward her.

  “Tucker...” Horror was on her face.

  “He came up from downstairs. Get that damn key to Jinx’s place, right now.” His temples were throbbing, his blood heating. This guy had been stalking Dawn. Coming into her home. And she’d been all alone.

  Again, I wasn’t there for her. A second time I’ve let her down.

  She grabbed the key from her nightstand drawer. She hadn’t touched the flowers on her bed. Neither had he. Tucker planned to get a crime scene analysis team in there right away.

  As they rushed back down the stairs, he put in a fast and urgent call to his team. And when they got to Jinx’s door, this time, Dawn didn’t bother knocking on the door to her friend’s home. She shoved the key in the lock and they ran inside.

  No alarm beeped. No lights were on. The place was as dark and quiet as a tomb.

  “Jinx?” He could hear the worry in Dawn’s voice as they searched the rooms. There was no sign of Jinx, though. No sign of her, no sign of any struggle, either, but...

  He looked up at the ceiling, then gauged where he thought Dawn’s closet would be.

  “Our condos are almost exact duplicates of each other,” Dawn said, as if reading his mind.

  He went into Jinx’s closet. Sure enough, he found the entrance to that shoot. Easy to spot, since the SOB who’d used it had left it partially open.

  “I need her to be okay.” Dawn’s voice was quiet. He looked back at her and saw that her skin had turned ashen. “I need it.” Then she turned and began to walk very slowly and very determinedly out of the closet.

  Out of the closet.

  Out of the bedroom.

  Down the hallway.

  Into the kitchen...

  Then she paused. “I saw her get a delivery a few months back.” She was staring at a white door to the right. And her hand rose and she pointed. “That’s her pantry. It must be in there.”

  It?

  Eyes narrowed, he opened the door. And he saw the freezer.

  “I need her to be okay,” Dawn said again.

  He needed to get a team out to that building.

  “Open it.” Dawn was close beside him in that narrow space. “I have to know.” She grabbed his arm and when he looked at her, there were tears gleaming in Dawn’s beautiful eyes. “I have to be wrong. She has to be out on a date. Or...or she has to be at the tattoo shop now. She has to be anywhere but here.”

  She was breaking his heart. “Dawn...”

  Her lips trembled and she suddenly jerked away from him. She yanked open the top on that freezer—

  And when he heard the sob that broke from her, he realized that her friend was far, far from okay.

  * * *

  HER SKIN WAS ICE. Her breath was cold. She couldn’t stop shaking.

  Dawn watched as Jinx’s body was removed from their building. Not just the body. They’re taking everything. The freezer, too. Because they hadn’t wanted to lose evidence. Julia had wanted to move the entire machine so that when Jinx thawed out, all of the potential evidence would still be present.

  When she thaws out. My God.

  A crowd had gathered on the street. Everyone was watching and whispering. News crews were filming.

  She heard a reporter saying the coroner had to be careful with the body transfer. The man stared earnestly into a video camera and explained to the viewers at home that there could be evidence in the freezer. Evidence that they didn’t want washed away as the body melted.

  I’m so sorry, Jinx.

  “She wasn’t in there long.” Macey came to Dawn’s side. Her voice was low, probably because she didn’t want her words carrying to any of the reporters who watched the scene with eager gazes. “I could tell that much. She wasn’t—”

  “I saw her two days ago.” Just two days. So she’d already known that her friend hadn’t been in the freezer for an extended time. Is that supposed to make it better? Because it doesn’t. Knowing that she was alive forty-eight hours ago means that she died while I was close by. She could have been dying when Dawn was pounding on her door that morning. She could have stil
l been alive then—

  Macey caught her hand. Squeezed tight. “This isn’t on you.”

  “No, it’s on the sick bastard who tortured my friend and then shoved her into her own freezer to die.”

  An image flashed in her mind. Jinx, tied, bound, slices all over her body. She squeezed her eyes shut, but when the vision was forever branded in your head, there was nothing you could do to block it out. “She died when I was one floor above her.” And Dawn had never heard a thing.

  “We are going to find him.”

  Her eyes opened. She stared into Macey’s gaze. Dawn saw the other woman for exactly what she was. A kindred spirit. A survivor. She’d known that, though, long before she’d seen the scars that Macey carried.

  It’s in our eyes. The truth is there. She’d gone to a few support groups over the years, and the survivors always looked the same.

  “Two more of our team members are flying in from DC,” Macey told her. “With the second victim—”

  “It confirms he’s a serial.” She already knew this.

  But Macey nodded. “And the fact that he killed your friend, that he left roses on your bed...that means he’s put a big, shining target on you.”

  Tucker was just steps away. He’d looked different ever since they’d found Jinx. His features were sharper, his gaze harder. She could practically feel the tension rolling off him. He hadn’t wanted her opening that freezer, probably because he didn’t want her to have that last image of Jinx branded in her mind.

  “She was my friend,” Dawn murmured. “I had to lift up the freezer and look inside. I had to find her.” Her gaze was on Tucker as she said those words. Was he close enough to hear her?

  Macey looked over her shoulder. “There are things we all have to do.” She squeezed Dawn’s hand and then let her go. “I hope you remember that. I hope you understand just what he has to do now.”

  Dawn opened her mouth to reply, but Tucker was already there. He lifted his hand, offering his palm to Dawn. “We need to go now.”

  “But...that’s my home.” She’d left a light on in the bedroom. She could see it glowing as the sun started to dip beneath the sky. Just how long had she been out there, watching the authorities work? Watching as Jinx was slowly removed and taken away by Julia? “I have to stay here.”