BEFORE SUNRISE

Copyright © 2016 Rick Mofina

ISBN 978-1-77242-053-1

e-Formatting by Carrick Publishing

Cover design by James T. Egan, bookflydesign

Smashwords Licence Notes:

This e-book is intended for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be sold or given away to other people. If you’re reading this e-book and did not purchase it, please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the creation of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Before Sunrise is based on an earlier Rick Mofina short story, “The Last Pursuit,” and includes scenes and characters from that work.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Begin Reading

Part One

Part Two

A Note to the Reader

About the Author

Also by Rick Mofina

Contact the Author

Bonus Content – Opening Chapter or Rick Mofina’s thriller, If Angels Fall

Dedication: If Angels Fall

Dedication

For those who have given so much to so many.

All our fears are darkest before sunrise.

—Old Proverb

Part One

-Chapter 1-

Southern Alberta, Canada

“Lone Tree Six to Control, you’re breaking up. Could you repeat?”

The radio issued static-filled crackling, then a transmission.

“Control to Lone Tree Six, got a ten thirty-six domestic. Caller is Trudy Dolan at Big Diamond Farm. Site Sixteen Forty-Nine. She’s scared, whispering into the phone and hard to hear. I’ll get more info. Copy?”

“Ten-four. I’m on the way.”

“Sending you the history, Six.”

“Ten-four.”

“What’s your ETA?”

“Twenty-five, maybe twenty minutes.”

Constable Will Fortin of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Lone Tree Detachment hit his lights and siren, pushing his Crown Victoria for Crystal Butte. Rain gusted in sheets, slanting down, streaking white before his headlights. His wipers ticked against the night like a heartbeat as the complaint history for the Dolans came up on his monitor.

He knew the records showed two previous calls in the last eleven months. Fortin didn’t have to read them. He’d taken both of them.

In the first, Lyle Dolan had been drunk and shouting threats before passing out. Trudy had cancelled the call. Still, Fortin had responded and had checked on her welfare.

“There’s no problem, here, Will,” Trudy had said in the darkness from behind the door. It took some doing, but Fortin persuaded her to let him in. There she was with a cut above her left eye.

“What happened?” he had asked her.

“I scratched myself with my hairbrush,” she’d told him.

“Is that what really happened?”

“Yes, that’s what really happened, I swear.”