Beneath the Dawn (Wild Rose Point #8)

Prologue

Wild Rose Point, Oregon

Dante Avera opened drowsy eyes and squinted at the beeping clock going off on his nightstand.

Reaching out, he flashed his hand in front of it and was met with immediate silence.

Nice. He didn’t even have to touch it. He mentally thanked the woman in the electronics store for suggesting he give it a try.

Easing up in bed, he glanced around the bedroom.

The last time he was here, his father had been alive.

That had been more than ten years ago, yet the bedroom looked the same.

But then, that was the essence of Wild Rose Point, a town on the scenic Oregon coast. His father used to say it was a place whose beauty would never change.

It had grown in population, as most places eventually did; however, it somehow still retained that small coastal-town look and feel.

Nestled between a few other coastal small towns, it was a little over an hour from Portland and mere minutes away from some of the region’s most prestigious ranches and sprawling farmland.

This section of the coastal community, known as Lasco Cove, encompassed two miles of private beach property shared by three homes.

Thanks to a private road, there was no way strangers could access this stretch of beach.

However, like his father, the owners of the other two houses had passed away, and the homes were sometimes rented out. His father’s, however, was all his.

He could recall the first time he had come here with his father.

It had been the year after his mother had died of a brain aneurysm.

He had been eleven at the time. Every summer before then, they’d returned to Italy, where his parents had met and married, to spend time with the large family they still had there.

He knew the story well. His parents had met in their teens, when his father had gone to Italy each summer to visit his uncles and cousins. Mario and LaRosa kept in touch, and once she’d finished high school, he returned to Italy to marry her.

But after his wife’s death, everything had changed.

Mario had explained to his son that returning to Sicily every summer without his beloved LaRosa was a pain he hadn’t been ready to bear.

So, while still grieving, he and Dante had established a new normal.

Wild Rose Point became their summer retreat.

They rented the beach house for a couple of years, and when the owners had decided to sell, Mario bought it.

It became a place where father and son spent the entire summer together, enjoying everything the scenic coastal town had to offer, especially the beach.

When Dante turned fifteen, they began splitting their summers─half in Wild Rose Point and the other half in Italy─visiting both paternal and maternal relatives.

As a teen, Dante had loved to go to Sicily to help out at the Avera Family coffee plantation, and even now at forty-two, he went every chance he got.

His father’s five uncles and their nine sons and three daughters were doing a fantastic job of maintaining the family’s massive business.

Avera Coffee was popular throughout Italy and abroad.

Dante had traveled to Sicily immediately after his godbrother, Skylar Kingston’s, wedding in June. He had spent an entire month with his large family before arriving in Wild Rose Point yesterday evening. It was mid-July, and according to forecasters, the weather for this month looked great.

Glancing out the window, he was glad to see it was still dark.

The one thing Mario Avera had instilled in him was that the best time to go swimming was right before the first sign of light in the sky at sunrise.

There was something invigorating about swimming beneath the dawn.

The waters were usually peaceful, serene, and calm.

It was as if all the sea life was at rest, allowing him to have the entire oceanic universe to himself, to meditate and appreciate the glorious dawning of a new day.

It was the perfect way to get an energy boost, to invigorate his soul and reset his mental health.

At the Ursala Hotel and Resort in Sedona Valley, Arizona, where he made his permanent residence, he made it a point to swim every morning in the fitness center pool.

However, it was enclosed and wasn’t the same as swimming in the ocean.

So, while he was here, he’d make it a point to get to the beach every morning.

The cool air hit his naked body as he stood and moved to the bathroom.

He loved this sprawling two-story house with three bedrooms and two baths on the second floor, and a living room, dining room, eat-in kitchen, and full bath on the first, with a screened patio off the kitchen.

And he especially liked his father’s spacious bedroom.

Mario had never rented the place out when they weren’t using it, and Dante hadn’t rented it out either.

For years, Ms. Della Canton, one of their neighbors, would check on the place for them.

After Ms. Della passed away a couple of years ago, he had hired a housekeeping service to take care of the cottage.

He hadn’t known how much he’d missed coming here until now.

A short while later, after grabbing a towel and putting on his swimming trunks, he headed for the beach. His four months of physical rest and mental relaxation in Wild Rose Point, Oregon, had begun.

***

Billings, Montana

Marti Goshay glanced at the obituary she had received with today’s mail and drew in a sharp breath.

Larry Upshaw was dead? When they had met thirteen years ago, she had been twenty-four ─ young, naive, and far too trusting.

When her then-boyfriend, Malcolm Edwards, had introduced Larry as one of his four best friends, she had thought he was a really nice guy.

Unfortunately, in less than a year, she had found out how wrong she had been.

Larry had been a cruel human being. A demented sicko. In fact, she had soon discovered that her boyfriend Malcolm was a demented sicko and a cruel human being as well. And his three best friends--Wesley Nathon, Robert Tiller, and Sonny Arnold—were as bad, if not worse.

She stared at the obituary, wondering who would send this to her.

Last she heard, all five men were still serving time.

Each had been given thirty years with no chance of parole when it was discovered that the friends were operating a child pornography ring, where in several videos they had been participants.

And at the time, all five men had been married, with outstanding careers and had been well-respected in Sacramento.

Wesley had even announced his bid to run for mayor a few weeks before everything went down, with Malcolm as his campaign manager, Robert as his campaign treasurer and Sonny as his communications director.

Larry was expected to be promoted to chief of police once Wesley became mayor.

She had effectively ruined all their plans.

Marti studied the envelope in which the obituary had been sent. She had moved from Charlotte to Billings two years ago. How did the sender get her current address? Although the envelope was postmarked, it did not provide a location from which it was sent.

Very few people knew of her relationship with Malcolm, and as a result, no one had suspected that four years after she’d ended things with him, that she had discovered the vile and sordid business he and his friends were doing on the side and made sure they went to prison.

It had been her way of paying them back for what they had done to her years earlier.

People always said payback was a bitch, and she had become that bitch.

She felt chills run through her as she tossed the obituary on the table and walked toward her home office, needing to know how Larry Upshaw had died in prison.

According to the three-week-old article that she pulled up on her computer, he’d required extra security from the guards to protect him from the other inmates, right from the time he’d started his sentence.

The other offenders had a problem with the fact that he’d been a cop and had broken the cardinal rule: You don’t mess with kids.

Often the inmates would serve up their own brand of criminal justice.

And unfortunately for Larry, they gave him the death penalty.

He had been found one morning by prison guards with his throat slit. The other prisoners weren’t talking, claiming they hadn’t seen a thing. So far, no charges had been filed.

She leaned back in her chair as an uneasy feeling settled within her. Who would have wanted her to know that Larry was dead, and why? Only those five guys knew she had been the one to uncover their crimes.

It had made her feel good ─ a year after they’d gone to prison ─ to pay them a visit and look into their shocked faces when she’d revealed what she’d done.

Although they had been convicted of sex crimes against children, she wanted them to know that they hadn’t gotten away with gang raping her, either.

She had been the one ─ with the help of a private investigator she had hired ─ to uncover their porn operations and notify the authorities.

And since they’d promised each other that they’d share everything, she told them that she hoped they would enjoy sharing time together in jail.

Shutting down her computer, she began pacing the floor. Obviously, someone else knew. Could one of the other men have sent the obituary? But then, how would any of them know where she was living now?

She stopped pacing. She was just making herself crazy.

So she decided to be proactive and call her former PI, Warren Overstreet.

It had been his investigative report that had exposed what Malcolm and his friends had been doing.

And since he was well-versed with the case, she thought he’d be in the best position to find out who’d sent her the obituary.

After a short conversation, Mr. Overstreet told her it wasn’t surprising someone found out her current address.

These days, people could find out practically anything, especially if they ventured on the dark web.

But he offered her his services, if she felt she needed them, though he believed it wasn’t likely that she’d be bothered again.

Too soon, Marti discovered that would not be the case.

A week later, a small hawthorn tree, often called unlucky, was delivered to her place.

And she knew what that meant. She’d grown up in San Francisco, where one of her aunts had owned a florist shop.

Aunt Gilley would say that although the hawthorn was a beautiful shrub, it was considered to be a sign of death and misfortune.

A shudder of dread raced down her spine as she opened the card that accompanied the shrub. It read…You are responsible for Larry Upshaw’s death, and your life will become a living hell.

You couldn’t get any unluckier than that…