Before the Dawn(31)

"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


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"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.

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?"