Before the Dawn--A Novel of Romantic Suspense

by Cynthia Eden

  “Did she call to say where she was?” The first time in a year. That wasn’t a good sign.

  “She didn’t call.” The man crossed his arms over his chest. “But she’s probably just sick. Like I was saying, she’s a good tattoo artist. The best I’ve seen in this town. I don’t want the law hassling her.”

  He needed to play this better. So he switched gears. “I know a friend of hers, okay?”

  “What’s that friend’s name?” Suspicion was heavy on the man’s face.

  “Dawn Alexander.” The name would probably mean nothing—

  A wide smile broke across the guy’s face. “Should have started with that.” He shoved aside Tucker’s ID and offered his hand for a shake. “I’m Malone Blade. I own this shop.” He pumped Tucker’s hand. “Dawn... How’s she doing?” He cocked a brow. “Still loving those tats?”

  Dawn has tats? He kept his face expressionless. “Absolutely.”

  Malone nodded. “Jinx did a great job on them. When you’re dealing with scars, you always have to be extra careful. Covering them can be a tricky business.”

  A lump rose in Tucker’s throat, but he swallowed it back.

  “Covering scars, though, that’s a specialty with Jinx. She can turn something that was an ugly reminder into something beautiful.” Malone gave a low whistle. “I swear, those roses look real on Dawn. The detail that Jinx did with the petals is truly amazing. Got to give my girl props. She is one talented woman.”

  And she was also a woman who wasn’t there. “Any idea where I can find her?”

  Malone sighed. “Honestly, I’m not sure. Like I told you already, she’s not usually late like this.”

  “You tried calling her?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Yeah. But I just got her voice mail.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not the kind of boss who keeps twenty-four-seven tabs on his employees, you know?” But there was still an edge of worry in his eyes. “Why did you need to ask her those questions?” He put his hands on the counter once more. “Did something happen to Dawn?”

  “Dawn is fine.”

  A relieved sigh slid from Malone. “Good. Because I owe that woman and getting Jinx to tat her...hell, that isn’t payback. Not even close to payback.”

  He owed Dawn?

  Malone reached behind him and pulled a framed photo off the wall. In the photo, he had his arm around the shoulders of a young, redheaded girl. “My baby, Melanie.” He swallowed. “She got involved with drugs. I told her to stay away from that lifestyle, but she got hooked and then she ran away. The cops couldn’t find her. Hell, I don’t think they even tried. Another junkie on the street. Not exactly high priority for them.”

  Tucker tilted his head as he listened.

  “Dawn took my case. She found my girl within the week. And twenty-four hours after that, Dawn and I had Melanie in rehab.” He smiled as he stared down at the photo. “She’s at Tulane now—going to be a lawyer. Turned her whole damn life around.” Carefully, he put the framed photo back up on the wall. “The tats were supposed to be part of my thank-you to Dawn, but she and Jinx, they got to talking...and the next thing I know, Dawn found a place for Jinx to live.”

  She moved Jinx into her building.

  “She’s a fixer,” Malone murmured. “You tell Dawn your problems, and she makes them go away.”

  But no one makes her problems vanish.

  “I owe her,” Malone said again. “So if there is trouble, I want to know about it.”

  Tucker slid his card to the other man. “Like I said, Dawn is okay right now.” And I’m not going to let that change. “When Jinx comes in, get her to call me.”

  Malone nodded.

  Tucker left the shop, but unease nagged at him. They had a copycat working in the city. And at the exact same time the bastard started hunting, Jinx Donahue had her first ever unexplained absence from work in a year?

  Maybe she’d pulled an all-nighter. It was the weekend, after all. Maybe she’d stayed up late partying, but...

  She didn’t answer her door.

  And Tucker didn’t like coincidences.

  If someone had been sneaking into Dawn’s place, if the guy had come into her building and Jinx saw him...then the tattoo artist could be a person their perp wanted to eliminate.

  She could be a target.

  As he walked out on the street, his phone rang, vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw Macey’s name on the screen. He swiped his finger across the screen and put the phone to his ear. “What have you got?”

  “We know who our victim is.”

  Hell, yes.

  “Her name is Heather Hartley, she’s a twenty-one-year-old former student at Louisiana State University.”

  His heart rate sped up.

  “We used her dental records to track her.” Macey was speaking quickly. He could hear the murmur of voices in the background. “The woman had no police record. From what I can tell, she never had any trouble with the law. Not so much as a speeding ticket.”

  “Why wasn’t she reported missing?” He walked quickly down the street.

  “Her parents are both dead. She was failing her classes at LSU, so she dropped out last fall. Her friends thought she just went somewhere to start new. They had no idea...”

  That she’d become a victim.

  “She grew up in Baton Rouge,” she continued, and now her speech sounded more...measured. “Even went to Rondale High School.”

  He stopped walking. “I went to that school.” He’d gone there. Jason had gone there. Dawn had gone there. “Shit. She’s not some random victim.” No, she was a deliberate message. “We need to see if she has any links to Jason Frost. Because maybe she—”

  “She is linked to him.”

  The heat was blistering.

  “Her cousin was the first victim of the Iceman.”

  They had a big fucking problem on their hands. “Call Samantha and let her know what you’ve found. I need to get to Dawn. She thinks someone has been stalking her, and I damn well believe she’s right.” A killer was playing a very deadly game with her.

  He heard Macey’s quick inhale.

  “If this guy is targeting victims related to the Iceman, then Dawn is going to be his big prize. He’ll go after her.” No doubt in Tucker’s mind.

  “There’s something else...”

  He crossed the street and jumped into his rented SUV.

  “Heather’s wounds were all made with a knife that matched up exactly to the weapon that Jason Frost used. The cuts were all exact duplicates of the ones he inflicted on his victims.”

  Duplicates. Because that was what a copycat did. He duplicated.

  “This guy knows the Iceman, inside and out.” He cranked the SUV and transferred the call over to the Bluetooth system. “He’s going to want to finish what Jason Frost started.”

  He’ll want to kill Dawn.

  Not happening. “Dawn needs to be under protective custody.” She needed to be a million miles away from the city. “I’m getting her now.”

  * * *

  DAWN STARED AT the line of yellow police tape. That small, plastic line was supposed to keep the perimeter safe from intrusion.

  There wasn’t even a cop stationed there to keep prying eyes away. And that little bit of tape? It certainly wasn’t going to keep Dawn out. She headed toward the warehouse, her gaze scanning the perimeter. There were no other cars there, no sign that anyone else was nearby. She could smell the river and the sun beamed down from overhead. Dawn slipped on gloves—she always did that when she went to investigate a scene.

  Don’t ever leave a trace behind. Especially if you’re doing something not exactly legal. Advice she’d learned from Roth. Roth’s Rules to Spy By. That was what he’d called them. Never leave a trace because you d
on’t want to give the cops any reason to come down on you.

  She didn’t go to the front entrance. She slipped around the building and, yes, not surprisingly, she found a broken window. Dawn slipped inside.

  The building smelled musty. Light shone in through all of the windows, so she could see easily as she searched the area. The police had certainly left signs that they’d been there. Evidence tags. More tape and—

  She heard a rustle behind her. Dawn didn’t hesitate. She yanked her weapon from her bag and spun around, her grip dead steady. “Freeze!” Dawn yelled.

  And the rustle stopped. She saw a man standing in the shadows, his shoulders hunched, his chin pressing to his chest. “I...I don’t want no trouble...”

  “Then you shouldn’t sneak up on a woman.” Her heart drummed frantically in her chest but her grip never wavered. Getting a concealed carry permit had been one of the first things she’d done when she got her PI license. No way was she going to walk around without a weapon.

  He shuffled back. “Y-you’re in my h-home.”

  Goose bumps rose on her arms as she studied him. Older, maybe nearing seventy, with a long, grizzled beard. There were dirt smudges on his cheeks and his clothes were mismatched. He wore one flip-flop and one sneaker. His jeans were held up thanks to a heavy rope around his waist and his dress shirt had been tucked in to try to keep the jeans in place.

  “Sorry,” she murmured but didn’t lower her gun. “I’m a PI. I was investigating the crime that took place here.” My home.

  He took another shuffling step back. If possible, his shoulders hunched even more.

  “How long has this been your home?”

  He licked his lips. “Don’t...don’t really know.” He lifted up his thin wrist. “Don’t have a...a watch, you know?”

  She considered him a moment. “You knew the building had electricity, didn’t you?”

  His gaze cut away from her. “Maybe... I saw a light one night.”

  And he’d come in from the dark.

  “What else did you see?”

  His lips had clamped together. “Didn’t do nothin’ wrong. Empty building... No one was usin’ it.”

  “Someone was. Someone killed a woman here. And they kept her body in a freezer.” When he didn’t speak, she added, “If it were my home, I’d be aware of what was happening inside. If I saw a freezer, I’d look in it, thinking maybe there was some food in there.”

  She could hear the rasp of his breath.

  Her phone began to ring, vibrating in her pocket. She ignored it. She wasn’t about to take her attention off the man in front of her. “What’s your name?”

  “Red.”

  She could see that part of his gray beard contained the faintest streaks of red. Maybe once upon a time, he’d gotten that nickname. Or maybe it was his given name. She wasn’t going to push on that just yet. “Red, did you see a freezer here?”

  He gave a quick, nervous nod.

  Her phone stopped vibrating.

  “And did you look inside it?”

  His hands came up from behind his back.

  “Stop!” she yelled, thinking he was pulling a weapon, but...he was just showing her the gloves he had cradled in his hands. Expensive gloves from the look of them. Leather?

  “Left these...” he murmured. “Saw him put them behind the wall. I...I never touched them before t-today...was scared...”

  The killer had left those gloves?

  “Didn’t want police to take ’em...” His jaw jutted out. “I can use them m-more...”

  So he’d taken the hidden gloves. Dawn licked her lips. “Did you see anything else?”

  His shoulders dropped. “I was...hungry.”

  He was skeletally thin, so she was sure that he had many hungry nights. Pity twisted through her. “When you looked in the freezer, you saw her, didn’t you?”

  “Frozen lady. Blue, icy.” He lifted his gloved hands and pressed them to his eyes.

  She stepped toward him. “Why didn’t you call the cops?”

  “My home!” Now he sounded angry. “They would have t-taken me from my home! I didn’t hurt her! Never hurt anyone.”

  So he’d stayed there, with the dead woman...for how long? “Did you see the man who hurt her? The man who left those gloves?”

  Red licked his lips. “He...visited.”

  Her goose bumps got worse. She needed to get Tucker down there. Needed Anthony to hear this guy’s story.

  Her phone vibrated again.

  “Did you see him when he visited?”

  “H-hid.” His head lowered. “Didn’t want to get...f-frozen.”

  Those words made her heart hurt. “Red, may I buy those gloves from you?” Because there might be evidence on them. Especially if Red was telling her the truth and this was the first time he’d gotten them from their hiding space. “It’s warm outside. You don’t really need them now, anyway.”

  He frowned at her.

  “I’ll give you a hundred bucks for them.”

  He dropped the gloves on the floor.

  “Great.” Wonderful. She pulled the money out of her bag and offered it to him. He inched forward, his gaze darting to the weapon she hadn’t put up, not yet. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she promised. She lowered the gun.

  He reached out his hand. She put the money on his palm and then—

  He snatched the bills and ran.

  “Red!” She chased after him, but that guy was fast. He shot through the building, zigging and zagging. He knew the building, she didn’t, and she was getting lost in the tangle of rooms. Like being in a maze. She stumbled after him, doing her best to follow his pounding footsteps, but then he was bursting out the front door. She yelled after him, but Red wasn’t stopping. He tore through the yellow tape and kept going.

  And her phone was still ringing. She yanked the phone from her pocket, not even stopping to see who was calling. “What?” She scampered down the steps, her gaze jerking to the left and to the right.

  There was a pause and then... “Dawn?”

  Tucker. She swallowed and edged toward the little gap between two buildings. Too small to be called a real alley. “I could use some backup,” she told him. “It would really be appreciated right now.” Because there was too much ground to cover. Red had her at a disadvantage. He would know all the hiding spaces around that area. All the quick exits. And she was just following blindly.

  “What? Where are you?”

  “I’m at the warehouse. The scene of our Jane Doe’s imprisonment. And a witness just gave me the slip.”

  * * *

  “HOW DID YOUR team miss the witness?”

  Tucker was pissed. Dawn thought that was pretty evident to everyone gathered at the warehouse. When she’d said she wanted backup, Dawn hadn’t quite realized just how big her cavalry would be.

  Tucker had arrived. Macey had arrived. Anthony had come running, along with his partner, Detective Ronald Torez. The group was assembled in front of the now-ripped line of police tape, and Tucker’s low, cutting voice contained more than enough fury to torch New Orleans.

  “I don’t know,” Anthony growled back. His eyes were covered by a pair of mirrored sunglasses. “But you can bet I’ll be finding out. Uniforms cased the scene. They should have found our guy.”

  “Not if Red didn’t want to be found,” Dawn said. Maybe he’d felt intimidated by all of the uniforms and he’d hidden from them. But when it had just been her there...he came out to play.

  Anthony’s lips thinned. “The guy was really living here the whole damn time that woman was in the freezer?”

  “She has a name,” Macey spoke up. “Heather Hartley.” Her gaze cut to Dawn. “We ID’d her. Heather was only twenty-one. Former LSU student. A girl who went to the same high
school you did.”

  And I was twenty-one when Jason took me. Even though she was sweating under the hot heat of the sun, the breath that Dawn took seemed to chill her lungs. “Red gave me the guy’s gloves.”

  Gloves that had already been bagged and tagged by Macey.

  “Maybe there is some DNA evidence on them. Something we can use. Red said they’d been hidden the whole time.”

  “I’ll get the FBI’s team to check them,” Macey said.

  “But—” Anthony began, his cheeks red.

  “Our team is faster.” Macey wasn’t mincing words. “We can let the NOPD handle it and get caught in your backlog or I can contact my boss, Samantha Dark, and she will give this evidence priority. We’ll have results faster than you can blink.”

  He blinked.

  “The FBI is taking point on this now.” Tucker’s voice was still that lethal rasp. “Every bit of evidence we are collecting is pointing to the fact that we could be looking at a serial. This isn’t a one-and-done deal, not if our guy went to the trouble of finding a victim from the Iceman’s home turf. He’s emulating the Iceman too perfectly. There will be another victim. We have to act, right now, and by getting these gloves to our team, we will save valuable time.”

  A muscle jerked in Anthony’s jaw, but he nodded grimly.

  Torez rubbed the back of his neck as he studied Dawn. Everyone called the guy Torez, never Ronald. He hated being called Ronald, she knew that from past experience. In his midthirties, Torez had transferred from Biloxi just last year. He was a quiet guy, intense, but he always seemed to have Anthony’s back—a good trait in a partner. “You gonna be able to give us a good description of Red?”

  “Five foot nine, maybe one hundred and thirty-five pounds.” He’d been so terribly thin. “He was bald, but he had a long, grizzled beard, one with red streaks. Dark eyes, thin cheeks.” She quickly described the clothing he’d worn. “I think this guy is a loner, so I doubt he’ll show up at any shelters. You can still check them but—” her gaze swept back to the building “—my money says he’ll come back here.” Home. “So you should put a patrol on the warehouse.”

  “A patrol might stop folks from just busting inside a crime scene,” Anthony murmured.