Twas the Night Before a Big Case

She was running. Her breath coming in quick short gasps as she scaled the wall of rock before her. Suddenly the petite red-haired woman lost her footing and plunged downward, falling, falling, falling...

The scream of a woman awakened Ali Brown and then she realized it was her own. Opening her eyes she knew now that she wasn't falling to her death from a rocky ridge or being pursued by a mad man. The criminal profiler was at home. Alone. Safe in her bed with her gun beneath her pillow.

A deep sigh escaped her. The dream had been so real. She allowed her mind to return there, trying to remember the details, hoping to tie them to a past experience coming back to haunt her on the eve of a new case in a new city. But each vision flitted away just as she reached it.

The dream had been almost like...

Almost like...

She threw back the covers in frustration and swung her feet off the bed, encountering droplets of sweat beaded across her forehead as her hands rubbed at her face, trying to force the memories to the surface. She was drenched with perspiration all over her flannel-clad body.

Nerves. It's just new case nerves.

I'm being irrational. I had a bad dream and that's all it was.

The clock face assured her she still had hours before being officially awakened. Hours before she had to start yet another new journey to another new town to hunt another new killer, but she didn't want to go back to sleep. She was afraid the dream would return and something about it terrified her as irrational as that sounded.

Shadows danced across the wooden beach house floor as palm fronds outside her bedroom window swayed from the gentle ocean breeze. She wasn't looking forward to the colder mountainous climate of Georgia this time of the year. She loved the beach.

Ali wasn't looking forward to encountering the man who had killed three women so far either. But the seasoned law enforcement officer knew she had a job to do, and it hadn't been done by anyone else in a decade. She owed it to the victims to be their voice now, after years of silence. She owed it those who had spent their time teaching her what they knew about cold case investigations, too. Despite her ominous feelings about this case, or the nightmare that had awakened her, she couldn't back out of the case now.

Arising from the bed, Ali Brown pulled her gun from beneath her pillow and shut off her alarm clock. The 30-year-old had no idea that the killer she was about to seek was already gearing up for her arrival, and he would have an advantage over her that she might not be able to overcome.

Never before published prelude story for "Ali Brown Criminal Profiler Series: The Group of Three Murder Mystery" book by Radell Smith -- written under the fictional pen name of A. Ryder.