Cynthia Eden - Before The Dawn

But not me. I didn’t love him.

Because she’d lost her heart to his younger brother. She’d fallen fast and hard for Tucker Frost the first time they’d met.

She’d been thirteen. He’d been sixteen. She’d been so taken by him that no other boy had ever been able to compare. But when he’d turned eighteen, Tucker had left her. He’d joined the Navy, gone far away. She’d heard people say that he’d become a SEAL.

And he’d just...vanished.

Until a few weeks ago. Until he’d come back and she’d turned around and found him standing in the library at Louisiana State University. He’d been looking for her. And she’d been lost.

“Does Tucker know what you’re doing?” The broken whisper came from her. That had been her darkest fear as the hours had slipped by and her pain had continued.

Jason had picked her up from her dorm room. He’d said that Tucker wanted him to give her a lift out to their place. She’d gone so easily, so happily, never hesitating. Only he hadn’t driven her to their home. He’d taken her away from the city, to the edge of the Mississippi River. To this little cabin.

The first time he’d hit her, she’d been stunned. Too stunned to move. The second time, he’d hit her so hard she couldn’t move.

Jason tilted his dark head down, seeming to give her question deep thought.

Her heart pounded frantically in her chest. “Tucker won’t like this,” she said, desperate. “You’d better let me go. You don’t want Tucker angry—”

His head lifted. His eyes—eyes the exact same shade as Tucker’s—met hers. And he smiled again. Tucker’s smile. Oh, God. “Of course he knows. Why do you think he came to see you when he arrived back in town? You’ve been on our list for quite a while.”

Her heart stopped. Dawn shook her head. No. Anger was there, beating just below the terrible fear. Tucker wouldn’t do this.

Not Tucker.

He’d...he’d seemed to care about her. They’d always been close, secretly so before he left for the Navy. Nothing romantic or sexual, just...friends. They’d been friends when they were kids. He’d walk her home. He’d make sure she had all her books.

But when he’d come back recently, when he’d come back as a man and found her at LSU, they’d stopped being just friends. They’d become so much more. He’d become everything to her.

Not Tucker.

The knife lifted and her breath came a little easier.

Then the blade sank into her shoulder, going deep, and he twisted the hilt. Dawn choked out a scream.

He laughed at her. “Surely you’ve read the stories in the paper? I mean, the press seems to be giving our kills a great deal of attention.”

Our kills?

“They even gave me a name.” He pulled out the blade and gazed at the blood on the weapon. “The Iceman.” He nodded once, as if satisfied with that name. “But they are so clueless. They don’t know why I freeze the bodies. They don’t get it at all.”

OhGodOhGodOhGod. Yes, she’d heard the stories about the Iceman in the paper. The guy who’d been abducting women for the last few years. The man who froze their bodies and...kept them. Kept them so very long before he would call the cops, tipping them off to the locations. And those poor women would be found, so perfectly preserved, in freezers.

She looked up at Jason. His thick, dark hair. His perfect features. His gleaming eyes. That dimple. Dawn could only shake her head.

“The press should have realized it wasn’t just one man committing the crimes,” he said. “I mean, really, it’s more like Icemen than Iceman.”

“Not Tucker.” Her breath heaved out. “You’re lying!”

His eyes narrowed. “Why?” That bloody knife came back to her cheek. She knew he was going to cut her face. Dawn tried to brace herself for that pain. “Because you think you know him? Because he fucked you?”

She felt her face flame. Yes, he had. And Tucker had been her first. Her only. She loved him. She trusted him. She—

Jason laughed. Hard, deep laughter. “You are so clueless. Blood comes before anything else. Tuck has my back. He always has. He’ll be here soon, and he’ll prove the truth to you.”

The tip of the knife pressed into her cheek, a shallow cut, taunting her.

“And you’ll see the truth for yourself.”

He turned away from her.

Dawn twisted her bleeding wrists behind her, struggling as hard as she could against the rope. Terror clawed at her insides as the stories of the Iceman’s kills ran through her mind. All the victims had been young women—pretty, single. When their bodies had finally been recovered, they had been covered in slices. Stabbed again and again. Tortured. Then frozen in time...as if...as if the killer wanted to savor them.

I won’t be another victim.

“They’re alive when I put them in the freezer.”

For an instant, her struggles ceased. Stunned, she could only stare at his broad back.

“I make sure of it,” he added. “The cops haven’t released that part to the media, but I always put them in the freezers when they’re still breathing. I like for them to feel the cold sliding over them. I know it makes them long for the pain again.” He looked back over his shoulder at her, and his profile... It is so like Tucker’s. “I told you, before I’m done, you’ll grow to like the pain.”

No.

She yanked hard at the ropes and Dawn thought she felt them give...just a bit.

She also heard the growl of a car’s engine outside the cabin.

His smile stretched. “Right on time. I’ll go greet Tuck, then the real fun can get started.”

She opened her mouth, ready to scream. She’d done that before, screamed endlessly, but he’d just laughed and said that no one was around to hear her.

This time, though, he leaped forward and slapped his hand over her mouth.

Anger hardened his face. “I’ll be the one to talk with Tuck first.” Then he slapped a gag on her in mere moments. He shoved it into her mouth, bloodying her lips even more, and then tied it behind her head. He stood in front of her as that growling engine came closer, and he leaned down, until they were eye to eye. “We are going to have so much fun with you.”

He kissed her, putting his mouth right over the gag.

“I’ll fuck you, too,” he promised.

The tears fell again, but he’d already turned away. He rushed toward the cabin’s door. Toward Tucker. And she kept yanking on the ropes that bound her wrists. He’d been so busy with the gag that he hadn’t even checked to see if she was still securely tied.

The joke is on you, bastard. I’m not. The rope around her left wrist broke free.

* * *

TUCKER FROST PARKED his car and jumped out of the vehicle. A thousand stars glittered overhead as he approached the old cabin, a place that he damn well hated.

Jason should hate the place, too. He had no idea why his brother wanted to meet him there. The cabin held only bad memories. Memories Tucker wished that he could forget. He’d gone halfway around the world in an effort to banish that hell from his mind.

Insects chirped all around him. Frogs croaked, and down near the water he could hear the deep growl of a gator. Swamps weren’t quiet—most folks had that wrong. Swamps were loud and busy, all the time. Especially at night.

And he hated this one swamp in particular. It was too full of dark secrets.

“About time you got here!”

His gaze lifted at his brother’s voice, and he saw Jason bound out of the cabin. “I’ve been waiting over an hour for you to show up.”

Tucker rolled back his shoulders. “I stopped by Dawn’s dorm. I needed to talk to her.” Because he’d gotten orders to ship out. A new mission. He wouldn’t be back for a few months and he’d wanted to tell her the news face-to-face. Hell, he hated the idea of leaving her. Little Dawn Alexander. Who would have thought that she’d come to mean so much to him, so fast? He cleared his throat. “But she wasn’t there.”