Page 1 of Burn Dragon Burn
PROLOGUE
Buzz! Buzz-Buzz-Buzz!
“Who is it?” She screamed from under the covers where she’d fallen asleep on the couch, promising herself to disconnect the stupid doorbell on her first day off.
“Your partner. We’ve got a case,” came Fitz’s gruff reply.
Pulling the blanket from her head, Donatella Hale, known as Hale since she’d joined the police force ten years ago and Nat to her friends for most of her life, groaned aloud as she realized not even the sun was up yet. Throwing her feet onto the floor and making her body follow, she grabbed her robe and threw it on as she made her way to the front door.
Looking through the peephole just to be sure, she unlocked the door and turned the knob, before opening it all the way and grabbing Fitz’s cup of steaming coffee.
“Hey! I just bought that,” he snarled.
“I can tell. It’s still hot and doesn’t smell like your nasty cigarettes.”
Taking a sip as she started up the stairs to her room to get dressed, she called over her shoulder, “What the hell time is it anyway?”
“Four a.m., your Ladyship. Got any food in your fridge?”
“Yep! Stopped at the store last night.” Stepping onto the second floor, a cold chill raced down her spine. The kind a person gets when someone rakes their fingernails down a chalkboard or walks over their own grave. Stopping at the railing and looking down, she asked, “What and where?”
Having worked together since Nat became a detective three years ago, Fitz knew what she was asking and answered, “DB in the Park.”
Closing her eyes, knowing what the answer to her next question was going to be, but needing to hear him say it, she asked, “It’s a girl?”
“Yes.”
“In Manlowe Park?”
“Yes.” Fitz walked into the foyer holding half a ham sandwich and looked up at her. “And?”
“And she’s twenty-one. Her neck’s been slashed. No signs of sexual assault. All her belongings are with her and she has a yellow ribbon wrapped around her right wrist.”
“Yes.” He took a bite of his sandwich. “And?”
“And she’s missing her heart and her liver.”
“You are right again, but then, I never doubted otherwise.”
Blowing out a long breath, she turned towards her room, crossed the threshold and closed the door. Leaning her back against the wood, she ran her fingers through her hair, pulling the scrunchie out as she went, and looked at the picture of her mom and dad she kept by her bed.
Taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling, she crossed the room and picked up the frame, running the tip of her index finger over their faces. Setting it back on the bedside table, she walked into the closet and grabbed her last clean suit.
Laying it on the bed, she looked back at her folks and smiled. “I know it’s not your fault I can see all this shit. Hell, it evenhelps with my job, but the dreams with the hot guy and the Dragon, those are seriously freakin’ me out.”
1
Come on, Hale. There’s nothing you can do right now.”
“Nothing I can do?” She snatched her arm from his hand and narrowed her eyes. “I can damn sure stand right here until they load her into the bus, Fitz. No one was here to save her.Weweren’t good enough. But I can stand here and make sure she’d taken care of. It’s called respect and you used to have some.”
Holding up his hands in a sign of surrender, the fifty-something, dumpy detective with more gray hair than dark and yellow teeth from too much coffee and too many cigarettes, acknowledged, “Okay, all right, I’ll have a smoke and wait for you to go back to the squad room. I’ll pull out the other files as soon as we get back. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’s made a mistake this time.”
Nodding as she looked at the black plastic bag containing the twenty-one-year old’s body, she couldn’t get past the fact that once again her ‘gift’, that’s how her parents had referred to it, had let her down. Why couldn’t she see this shit before it happened? What good were her visions, if she couldn’t use them to help?
Following the morgue attendants as they pushed the gurney towards the huge, dark blue and white van marked Tarrant County Coroner’s Office, Nat waited until Misty Blake was safely inside before heading for her car. Stopping next to Fitz as he put out his fifteenth cigarette of the day, she bumped his shoulder with hers and blew out a long breath.
Looking over her shoulder, the light of the newly risen sun glittering on the water, she asked, “Hey, can you get a ride back to the precinct?”