Deadline

by Sandra Brown

  “We’ve tried to turn that thinking around.”

  “Headly told me that, too. But there’s more to this resistance than general self-denial. I think he’s resisting me for a specific reason.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I feel it. I believe it must have something to do with Jeremy.”

  Eva said nothing, just waited for her to elaborate.

  “Possibly with Jeremy’s PTSD, with him being who and what he is.”

  “Dawson would never lay your ex-husband’s sins at your feet. I know him well enough to assure you of that.”

  “No, I don’t believe he would either. I think…I think…Actually, I don’t know what to think.” She bent her head low and massaged her temples. “Where did he go? What could Glenda have uncovered that sent him flying out of here?”

  Earlier they had discussed the possibility of calling the researcher and asking her what she had revealed. But neither knew how to reach her or even what her last name was. They had decided to wait until morning and call her at the magazine office. Eva had cautioned Amelia against becoming too optimistic. “He’s relied on her for years. She’s like a secret weapon. I doubt his Glenda will betray his trust.”

  If the researcher was as protective of her sources as Dawson was, Amelia doubted they’d learn much from her, either. But she didn’t know where else to turn for answers.

  “For him to have left Headly tonight, it must have been something vitally important.”

  “He knew Gary was out of immediate danger.”

  “Yes. But still. He’d been agonizing over him for hours. What could possibly have prompted him to leave and not even to call to check on him?”

  “I’ll admit, that doesn’t seem like Dawson. Tell me again everything he said.”

  Amelia reiterated the conversation in the stairwell. “Could it relate to what Willard Strong told him?”

  “About a shack that Jeremy owned?”

  “You don’t suppose…Oh, Lord. You don’t suppose that Glenda located it. Surely Dawson wouldn’t go there alone.”

  “We’ve got to tell Gary.” Eva stood up and headed for the door.

  “Eva, no.” Amelia followed her from the waiting room and down the corridor. “You can’t tell him. His blood pressure.”

  “That can be controlled with medication. But if he learns later that I didn’t tell him about this immediately, I can forget our Alaska cruise. He’d probably divorce me.”

  They entered the ward without any of the medical staff seeing them and slipped behind the privacy curtain. Headly’s eyes popped open. He took one look at them and knew instantly that they weren’t there to fluff his pillow. “What?”

  “Tell him.” Eva scooted aside so Amelia could move closer to the bed.

  In a rapid whisper she filled him in, concluding with, “If Glenda gave him an idea of where this shack is, do you think he’d be foolish enough to go there alone and confront them?”

  His gaze moved back and forth between them, ending with his wife, whose distress was as apparent as her resignation. Headly closed his eyes and gave a long sigh. “Fuck.”

  More than a profanity, the word was weighty with despair. Coming from a man of purpose and action, it heightened Amelia’s fear. “They’ll kill him, won’t they?”

  He roused himself and opened his eyes. “Not if I can help it. But goddammit, I’m trapped here. Eva, call Knutz. His number’s in my phone.” Eva moved to the closet where his personal effects had been stored.

  “I don’t know what to tell him.”

  “Let Amelia do the talking.” Looking at her, he said, “Tell him what you just told me. He’ll have Glenda tracked down. He’ll mobilize the local authorities and maybe, just maybe, they’ll intercept Dawson in time.”

  “And if they don’t?” Amelia asked.

  “Carl will probably give him the interview of his career. He’s done it before.”

  Eva stopped dealing with the cell phone and looked at him with alarm. “Gary, no.”

  Amelia, noting her reaction, said, “What? What about an interview?”

  Ignoring his wife’s distress, Headly told her about the coup a Washington Post reporter had achieved. “The day after the interview ran, Carl released him along a rural road in West Virginia. With a bullet through his brain. He was awarded the Pulitzer posthumously.”

  * * *

  He was in the midst of his nightmare, laboriously clawing his way up the incline toward Hawkins, who was shouting at him from the crest, when he was startled awake by a heron that took flight out of the marsh with a noisy flapping of wings.

  He’d been spared the horrible ending of his nightmare, but he was still shaky and leaking a cold sweat. He dried his face with his shirttail and took a sip from a bottle of water.

  He was surprised he’d been able even to doze, and equally surprised that he was still alive. Had Carl or Jeremy come upon him, he could have been murdered in his sleep. Although he’d had about a two-hour nap, he didn’t feel rested. However, despite his fatigue, and the sun not being completely up, he was impatient to get under way.

  He replaced the battery in his cell phone. That amounted to beaming his location to the authorities if they were looking for him, but he had to take that risk. He needed the phone to help him navigate.

  He took only it and the water bottle with him when he left the car. A weapon would have been superfluous. Jeremy had missed Amelia because of Dawson’s quick action. The bullet he’d fired at Headly hadn’t been a head shot, and it had lost velocity due to the distance, preventing it from inflicting the damage it could have. But regardless of his bad luck yesterday, his marksmanship skills were renowned. A man foundering in a marsh would be easy pickins.

  Dawson had decided to take a zigzagging route from this point, working his way up the trapezoidal-shaped parcel, which was much narrower at the base than at the top, which was farther inland. If he reached the northwest corner without finding anything and this turned out to be a wild-goose chase, he’d follow a diagonal line back to his starting point.

  The water he’d stepped into last night never got any higher than his knees, but it soaked the legs of his jeans and filled his boots. He fought his way through areas of thick cordgrass and clumps of palmetto palms, with their leaves that were shaped like knife blades and which were just as sharp. The insects were aggressive and merciless. He didn’t want to think about the species of reptiles he might encounter.

  He had estimated he could walk twenty acres in half an hour or less. But slogging through water and thrashing through the uncharitable plant life increased the effort and time required.

  Fortunately, as the elevation rose, the soil became firmer and less brackish, and the marsh grasses gradually gave over to forest. Soon he was walking under tree branches that formed a tangled, dense canopy overhead, which kept the forest floor shady. Undergrowth flourished. Vines twisted up tree trunks. Lacy ferns formed patches of vibrant green. From every vantage point, the landscape looked like a diorama of shifting shadows, a wilderness of undisturbed camouflage.

  Which is why he almost missed it.

  Had it not been for a pair of redbirds that caught his attention as they streaked through the woods calling to each other and then lighting on the tilting television antenna attached to the edge of the roof, he might have gone right past without seeing it.

  He stopped dead in his tracks and then quickly crouched behind a thicket of palmetto. He figured that if Carl or Jeremy had spied him or heard him, he would already be dead.

  The structure was larger than what he would term a shack. More like a cabin. It squatted in a small clearing surrounded by trees. Tall grass and wild shrubbery grew right up to the exterior walls, which were constructed of raw lumber that had weathered to blend in with the dun tint of tree bark.

  The low roof was completely covered with lichen and fallen tree branches, where vegetation had taken root in the naturally made compost. From the air, it would have blended in with the l
andscape. Not even from a helicopter, flying low, could it have been spotted.

  He had come onto it from the front. There was a porch of sorts about a yard square, a door flanked by small windows, placed high. The window glass had been smeared with something to prevent it from reflecting light. No telephone or electrical lines were in evidence, but a generator, painted in camouflage, was tucked against one exterior wall and covered in vines.

  Dawson thought wryly: this is the reward for a lifetime of crime? But then, one of Carl Wingert’s grievances had been the obsessive materialism of the American people. In this, at least, he practiced what he preached.

  Dawson waited ten minutes by his watch before daring to move, then began a slow and silent approach. When he could go no farther without stepping out from the cover of the trees, he stopped to take several deep breaths.

  Two people came to mind: Corporal Hawkins, the young soldier from North Dakota who was featured in his nightmare. And Amelia, the last woman he would kiss. The first woman he would love. If he didn’t live through this, he hoped that by some cosmic miracle they would both know that in his final moments he had acknowledged his unpaid debts to them.

  He stepped from the relative safety of the trees and walked toward the cabin. No one called out a warning. No telltale shadows appeared at the foggy windows. He heard no rustling sounds, nothing to indicate that the dwelling was inhabited.

  But as he was about to step onto the porch, he recalled something Headly had told him: We should have known it was booby-trapped. A snitch had told the FBI that Carl and Flora were hiding inside a house in southern Florida. A covert raid was planned and perfectly executed until a Special Ops agent stepped onto the wooden porch. He and the structure had been blown to smithereens. Three fellow agents had been critically wounded despite their protective gear.

  Dawson equated booby traps to IEDs. He’d seen their handiwork up close. Thoughts of the ravages they were capable of went through his mind as he eased himself up onto the small platform.

  Nothing detonated. He expected gunshots at the very least, but all he heard was the domestic spat between the redbirds. He reached for the doorknob and turned it. Surprisingly it wasn’t locked. The door swung inward. The first thing that greeted him was the smell. Old garbage, sour sweat, blood.

  “I could shoot you through the door, so you’d just as well come in.”

  Not a voice he recognized as Bernie’s.

  Heart thundering, hands raised, he stepped across the threshold, using his foot to push the door open wide until it came up against the wall. No one was behind the door. He swept the room in one glance.

  Reeking metal trash can. Cast-off furniture. Dirty dishes piled high in a stained sink that didn’t have a faucet. A wooden pallet in the corner stacked with packs of bottled water. A Frigidaire that was decades old.

  And on a sofa was a bearded man, semireclined. He was holding a pistol, but listlessly. Upon identifying Dawson, he registered his surprise. “You?”

  “Me.”

  All the things Headly had told Dawson about Carl Wingert came flashing back to him in an instant. You can’t be well enough prepared for Carl. Dawson spun around to check behind him, but only the monotonous landscape lay beyond the open door.

  One time, in New Mexico, he jumped from the rafters of an old horse barn. Shot the agent who’d chased him in there point blank in the chest. Dawson looked up at the low ceiling. No rafters. No attic.

  The man on the sofa seemed amused by his jumpiness. “Relax. He’s not here.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  Satisfied that they were the only two in the place, Dawson said, “I’m not armed. I’m going to lower my hands.”

  Jeremy Wesson, a man about whom he’d been rabidly curious, a man he’d resented with every fiber of his being, a man he wanted to see severely punished for killing Stef and almost killing Headly, didn’t look that evil or menacing.

  He was regarding Dawson with equal curiosity, taking in the full measure of him. “You look even taller up close.”

  “You look like shit.” Against his beard, Jeremy’s complexion looked clammy and waxen.

  “Rough twenty-four hours.”

  “They haven’t exactly been a picnic for Headly, either.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “He’s going to be okay.”

  “In the split second it took the bullet to get there, he turned.”

  “You missed Amelia, too.”

  “I wasn’t trying that hard.”

  Dawson wouldn’t credit him with total sincerity, but Jeremy did dip his head for several seconds in what could have been remorse. When he came back to Dawson, he noticed that his boots and jeans were wet. “Tough to get here, huh? How’d you find it?”

  “I never reveal a source.”

  Jeremy stifled a laugh, which caused him to cough. To cover it, he turned his face into his shoulder. When the coughing subsided, he asked, “Are the cops behind you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You came alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to meet you face-to-face.”

  “What for?”

  Dawson didn’t respond.

  “You fucking my wife?”

  “She’s not your wife. But, no.”

  Whether or not he believed that, Dawson couldn’t tell.

  “Did you come here to kill me?”

  “No.”

  “Because if you did—”

  “I didn’t.”

  “—you’re too late.” He pulled his hand away from a bloody, festering mess on the side of his lower abdomen. “I’m already a dead man.”

  Chapter 24

  Dawson was kneeling beside the ratty sofa before he even realized he’d moved. He pushed Jeremy’s hand aside and raised the hem of his dirty shirt. Under it was a putrefying wound. The tissue was puckered, pussy, and red around the dark bullet hole, which was clotted with dried blood. “Jesus. This looks bad, but it’s stopped bleeding.”

  Jeremy gave an ironic grin. “I’ve run dry.”

  Dawson feared he was right. Most of the bleeding must have been internal and considerable. Beneath his bushy mustache, his lips were gray. He let go of the pistol. It landed on the floor inches from Dawson’s knee.

  “I lied about shooting you through the door. It’s not loaded.”

  Dawson yanked his cell phone from his belt.

  “Don’t bother.”

  Ignoring Jeremy’s weak protest, he punched in 911. When the operator answered, he said, “Listen carefully.” He told her his general location, then the geographical coordinates of the tract. “I need medical care for a seriously wounded man.”

  “What’s the nature—”

  “He’s been shot in the gut.”

  “Is he—”

  “We’re in a cabin, but there’s no road to it. Send a search-and-rescue chopper. They won’t be able to set down. Tell them to come prepared for that and to look for smoke.”

  “Smoke?”

  “That’ll help them find us. And my phone will be on.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Dawson Scott.”

  “The Dawson Scott everyone’s looking for?”

  “They’re looking for me?”

  “All over the place.”

  “Well, they can find me here. I’m with Jeremy Wesson. Got it? Jeremy Wesson. Tell them not to come in shooting. It’s just the two of us, we’re unarmed, and he’s in a bad way.”

  “Okay, stay on the line, Mr.—”

  “You do your job. I’m gonna do mine.”

  He disconnected and didn’t answer when his cell phone rang almost immediately. Moving quickly, he dragged the overflowing trash can outside and upended it to dump the nauseating contents. He gathered up sticks and dead brush and crammed them into the can, then went back into the cabin. “Matches?”

  Jeremy motioned feebly. “Shelf above the sink.�
�

  The rickety dining table was piled with newspapers. Dawson took them and the box of matches out to the trash can, stuffed the newspapers down among the kindling, struck matches to them, and left them to burn.

  Jeremy was looking worse by the moment. Dawson steeled himself against the compassion welling inside him. Slipping on his professional objectivity, he started the video recorder on his cell phone. He didn’t care about the quality of the picture, but anything Jeremy said could be very important later. “Who shot you?”

  “The cop.”

  “The one you killed?”

  “Daddy did.”

  “Carl Wingert. He’s your father?”

  “That’s right. How did you find out?”

  “Never mind that now. Where is Carl?”

  “I told you. He left.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Last night sometime.”

  “You’ve been here all night alone? Why didn’t you call for help?”

  Jeremy gave another dry laugh, which caused a fit of coughing. Gasping, he said, “I’d rather bleed out here than die in prison.”

  “Carl left you here to bleed out? Why didn’t he take you to an ER?”

  Jeremy looked down at the wound and when he raised his gaze back to Dawson, there were tears in his eyes. “He knows a lost cause when he sees one.”

  Dawson ran his fingers though his hair. “Christ. Doesn’t the man have a heart?”

  “You know about him? Beyond Bernie, I mean. You know about his past?”

  “Yeah, I know. Much more than I want to.”

  “He’s had to leave people behind before.”

  “He chose to leave them behind.”

  “Heroes are forced to make hard decisions.”

  “Hero?” Dawson sneered. “He’s a chickenshit.”

  Jeremy said nothing, but he took a swipe at his eyes to brush the tears away. “He left me with one bullet. I knew what he expected me to do with it, so after he’d been gone for sixty seconds or so, I fired it.” Dawson followed his gaze to the ceiling where the wood was splintered around a bullet hole.

  Jeremy said, “Daddy hasn’t made many mistakes, but he made one last night. He didn’t come back to see that I’d really done it.” He leaned back against the soiled sofa cushion and closed his eyes. A tear leaked from beneath his eyelid, rolled down his cheek, and was absorbed by his beard. “I didn’t want to blow my own brains out, but I hoped to die before anybody got here.”