Deadline

by Sandra Brown

  “If you had told me what you had in mind, I would have stopped you.”

  “You would have tried,” he said. “I didn’t want to fight with you about it. I played it the way I thought best.”

  He took a sip of wine. She made several revolutions around the rim of her glass with her index finger. The delay tactics ran out.

  Looking over at him, she said, “Tell me everything.”

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “No,” she admitted. “Not at all sure.”

  “Some of it will be painful for you to hear.”

  “I realize that. But if you don’t tell me, I’ll always wonder what he said, and I think that would be worse than knowing the full extent.”

  He started with how he’d found the property based on Glenda’s discovery. “My little covert expedition could have resulted in nothing. But I guess I’ll owe Glenda two boxes of candy this Christmas.” He then described the cabin. “You knew nothing about it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Basically it was a dump. I thought at first that no one was there. Then Jeremy told me that he could shoot me through the door. Which turned out not to be true.”

  “Were you afraid?”

  “I won’t bullshit you. My heart was in my throat.”

  “You were crazy to go there. Alone. Unarmed. They could have killed you on sight.”

  “That crossed my mind,” he said, grimly understating. “But I was relying on Carl’s ego. I was reasonably sure he couldn’t resist talking to me.”

  “Once before, he confided in a journalist, then killed him afterward.”

  “Headly told you about that?”

  She nodded.

  “He shouldn’t have.”

  “He was preparing me for the worst.”

  He finished his wine and set the empty glass on the end table, signaling that he was getting to the heart of the matter. “He was almost dead when I got there.” He described Jeremy’s condition in clinical language that spared her the graphic ugliness.

  “I called for help, then started asking him questions. He admitted that the house fire was deliberately set to kill the Wessons. He’d been very attached to them, but I guess their usefulness to Carl had expired. He confessed to killing Darlene Strong and Stef. He said to tell you that he was sorry.”

  “For mistaking her for me?”

  “Sorry for wanting you dead.” He repeated everything that Jeremy had told him about killing Stef on impulse. “He said that if he’d had time to think about killing you, he wouldn’t have been able to.”

  She absorbed all that, then, her voice thick with emotion, asked, “Anything else?”

  “He talked about Hunter and Grant.” He related that exchange.

  Choking back tears, she said, “He denied himself so much joy.”

  “His decision. He chose Carl over them. Over you.”

  “Yes, he made his decision. But unfortunately he’s not the only person affected by it.” She looked at him imploringly. “How will I tell my children about their father’s crimes? About Carl? I must, I know that. But I’m afraid that once they know about their bloodline, it will haunt them and dictate how they live the rest of their lives.”

  “Yes, it sucks. And, no, it can’t be undone. But it can dictate their lives in a positive way. They’re made of good stuff, too. Their gene pool also includes you and your father.”

  Her nod of agreement was thoughtful, made absently, but he regained her attention when he took her wineglass from her hand and set it on the table beside his. Then he clasped both her hands. “Amelia, your dad didn’t commit suicide. They killed him.”

  By the time he had finished telling her what Jeremy had confessed, tears were streaming from her eyes. The tracks of them reflected the meager light coming in through the open shutters, painting wet, silvery streaks on her cheeks.

  She pulled her hands from his and placed them over her face, sobbing into them. “How horrible for him. Oh, God, how horrible.”

  He moved to sit on the arm of her chair and rubbed comforting circles on her back. “You had to be told, and I wanted to be the one to tell you. I knew it would break your heart, but also relieve your mind. Try to forget the horrible part. The last thing your father did was also the best thing he ever did. He demonstrated just how much he loved you.”

  “He spared my life.”

  He turned her head to face him and used his thumbs to wipe the tears off her cheeks. “Jeremy could have taken that secret to his grave. Much as I hate giving him credit for anything, that confession is proof that he did care for you. Even loved you, I think. He knew you had agonized over your father’s supposed suicide and wanted you to know that he hadn’t deserted you. I think Jeremy empathized.”

  “How so?”

  “Floral Stimel is dead. She’s buried out there beneath the cabin. They’ve got a forensic team working to exhume her body now.”

  He could see the understanding in her expression as she said quietly, “His mother.”

  “Yeah. For all her misdeeds, Flora was still his mother. It upset him to talk about her. I think he loved her, too.”

  “How did she die? When?”

  “Jeremy’s time ran out before he could tell me.”

  She stared into his eyes as though trying to see into his deepest being. Then her fingertips lightly stroked his eyebrows, his cheekbone, the side of his face down to his jawline. “You were kind to him, weren’t you?”

  “He was dying.” He thought he would end it there, with that simple statement of fact, but she continued to look at him as though knowing there were ambiguities he needed to express.

  “I thought if I ever got near him, I’d want to kill him for everything he’d done. Especially to you and those boys. I wanted to hate him. But he was a broken man, Amelia. And, yeah, I felt sorry for him. Because he was a victim, too. Left to the couple who reared him, he probably would have gone a different path.

  “But Carl destroyed any chance Jeremy might have had to lead a normal, happy, and productive life. It all goes back to Carl. He’s the villain. And I intend to tell him that to his face.”

  She flinched. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not going to give up on getting a one-on-one with him.”

  “Once he’s captured, you mean.”

  He left her and, going to stand at the windows, peered through the slats of the shutters. “I wonder where the cowardly bastard scuttled to after leaving his son to slowly bleed to death.”

  He felt Amelia move up behind him, but he didn’t turn around.

  “You’re not thinking of trying to run him to ground.”

  “I doubt I’d be that lucky twice.”

  “Lucky?” She took him by the arm and turned him around with a determination that surprised him. “Why would you consider it lucky to encounter him? Why would you take such a dangerous risk?”

  He gnawed his lower lip, searching for words.

  “Why, Dawson?” she demanded.

  “Because I’ve been a basket case for long enough. I want to prove that I can hear a loud banging noise without ducking for cover. Or get through a night without pills and liquor, without waking up bathed in a cold sweat, a dying scream in my mouth.”

  “You want to test your bravery?”

  “You could put it that way.”

  Her chin went up a notch. “Hogwash.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I don’t believe that for a second. You don’t need to prove your courage, even to yourself. If you hadn’t reacted exactly as you did when Headly was shot, I’d be injured or dead, too. You didn’t duck for cover. You took command of the situation.

  “You registered the direction the shots came from, even as you pushed me to the ground and then went to attend Headly. You probably don’t even remember, but you issued orders to the people who came running, and they did as you said because your response to the emergency was correct.

  “So don’t try to sell me on the idea that you w
ent to slay a dragon in order to win a badge of courage. To win a Pulitzer maybe. Is that what this is about?”

  “What if it is?”

  “Would a prize be worth risking your life?”

  He pushed his fingers through his hair. “This has nothing to do with a freakin’ prize.”

  “Then what’s worth risking your life for?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Dawson?”

  “What?”

  “Tell me.”

  “What?”

  “What is it that you want?”

  They stood there, squared off, breathing hard, angry.

  Then he pulled her against him and began kissing her with a need so fierce it alarmed him. But not enough to stop. Especially not when she responded in kind. As though pent-up fear, despair, and lust had been unleashed simultaneously and in equal proportions, they kissed ravenously.

  But he didn’t lose his head completely. Aware of the guards patrolling the beach and keeping a careful watch on the house, he lifted her against him and carried her into a short hallway that would prevent them from being seen. He set her down with her back against the wall and resumed the frantic kissing.

  Every primal mating instinct demanded haste and nothing less than total possession. In a matter of seconds, he was pulling her T-shirt over her head. The bra must have been built in, because her breasts were left bare. He cupped them in his hands, reshaping them reflexively, rubbing his lips against her nipple until it beaded, then sucking it deep into his mouth.

  She fumbled with the buttons on his fly and then her hand was claiming him, her fingers tightly squeezing, massaging their way up until her thumb was at the tip, pressing—

  “Jesus.” Gasping with pleasure, he ground his forehead against the wall behind her shoulder in an effort not to come. “Wait, wait.”

  The fabric of her skirt was as light as air against his hands as he slid them beneath it. He worked his fingers under a wedge of lace. She was soft and warm and wet. He quickly rid her of the underpants so he could luxuriate in the femaleness, the snug, silky, wonderful feel of her.

  She pressed down hard on his exploring fingers, moaned his name, whispered, “More.”

  He lifted her up to straddle his thighs and thrust into her, fully, completely, and without caution. He would have paused then to apologize for his lack of restraint, would have rested there deep inside her, giving them both time to adjust, to breathe.

  But she rocked against him and searched for his mouth with hers, whimpering a litany of words that signaled her own urgency.

  He fucked her. He gave, took, told her with every stroke what he hadn’t been able to convey with words, communicated what he’d felt from the moment he saw her enter the courtroom, and knew, in that instant, that he’d been blessed and doomed in the same heartbeat.

  He changed the angle and the tempo to favor her. She clutched handfuls of his hair and squeezed his hips with her thighs. And when her orgasm pulsed around him, he came and came and came.

  After half a minute, he regrettably disengaged. Weakly, she slid down the wall to sit on the floor. He lowered himself beside her and gathered her against him. She pressed her open mouth against his throat and murmured his name. She slid her hand inside his shirt and pressed her palm against his heart. The gesture moved him more than a spoken endearment and felt even more intimate than the hard-core sex.

  It was time for him to go.

  He moved away from her and pulled her skirt down over her bare thighs. He passed her the discarded T-shirt, then stood up and buttoned his jeans. She remained huddled there, looking up at him with perplexity, modestly clutching the T-shirt to her chest. “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving.”

  “Why?”

  The dismay behind her voice was almost his undoing. “This shouldn’t have happened, Amelia.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “What I’ve said before. I can’t have you.”

  “You just did.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Her swallow was loud in the silence. “I know you want me.”

  “Only with every fucking breath.”

  “Then why are you doing this?”

  He backed away from her, moving toward the door into the living room, which would lead him out and away from her. “Because you had one selfish bastard who damn near ruined your life. I won’t be the second one.”

  Chapter 26

  Dawson pulled open the door to Headly’s hospital room and looked in. The patient was propped up in bed. His chin sprouted a salt-and-pepper beard, and he had bed head, but his color was better. Eva was holding a cup of coffee as he sipped it through a straw. Then he angled his head back and, making a terrible face, complained of it being as “cold as a wedge.”

  “Be glad you can swallow,” she said. “And breathe without a ventilator. If the bullet had affected other vertebrae—”

  “I know, I know,” he said crossly.

  “You’re getting meaner,” Dawson said as he came in. “A positive sign.”

  Eva greeted him cheerfully. Headly less so. After an exchange of pleasantries—“How did you sleep?” and so forth—Headly got to the matter of Flora’s grave. “I talked to Knutz a few minutes ago. Nothing to report yet. Getting lights in there last night would have been a logistical nightmare, so the team didn’t start the exhumation until this morning.”

  “How long do you think before you hear something?”

  “Hard to predict. Until they start excavating, they don’t know what they’ll find. It’s slow-going because they have to be careful not to compromise or destroy evidence. Ascertaining how she died, whether it was of disease or something else, will depend largely on how long she’s been buried.”

  The subject matter apparently distressed Eva. She tried to foist a carton of apple juice on Headly, who reacted as though she’d offered him a cup of hemlock. She returned the carton to his tray, then wheeled the trolley away from his bed. A wheel caught on the tangle of tubes on the floor at his bedside.

  Dawson motioned toward it. “Is anybody monitoring what goes where?”

  “I hope to God somebody is,” Headly groused. “So they don’t pump something out that’s supposed to be pumped in, or vice versa.”

  Eva freed the wheel and moved the trolley away from the machines, monitors, and IV paraphernalia. Then she sat down on the edge of the bed and motioned Dawson toward the chair.

  “Thanks, but I’m fine standing.”

  “You’re fine?” Headly said. “You’re twitching like a man with a rash in his crack.”

  It was true. He was as restless as he’d been all night. He’d known sleep would be out of the question, but when he returned to his hotel, he’d laid down and had at least tried to rest his weary body.

  But within minutes he was up again, moving around his hotel room without aim or purpose except to outdistance his memory of Amelia’s disillusionment and the pain he had caused her when he left. He was doing her a favor, but it had entailed humiliating her, and he couldn’t stand that.

  Headly broke into his disturbing thoughts. “Cough it up. What’s the matter?”

  Eva laid her hand on her husband’s arm, a silent command for him to can it. To Dawson, she said, “You were on your way to see Amelia when you left here yesterday.”

  “Um-huh.”

  “How is she holding up?”

  “Okay. Ambivalent about Jeremy. She wanted to know everything, but dreaded hearing it all.”

  “You told her everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “About her father?”

  “That was the toughest.”

  “How’d she take it?”

  “Just as I expected. A meltdown over how he’d been tortured. But grateful to have it confirmed that he hadn’t taken his own life.”

  Sadly, Eva said, “Lord, that poor young woman has been put through so much.”

  Like he wasn’t aware of that. Like he wasn’t being a godd
amn Sir Galahad to spare her from being put through more. He didn’t say that, just made a motion with his shoulders to show that he agreed: Amelia had suffered some serious shit.

  After giving him time to elaborate, which he didn’t do, Eva got up and began straightening things in the room—the stack of fresh towels that an orderly had left near the sink, a bouquet of flowers sent from Headly’s office in DC, a sheaf of hospital insurance forms. None of these things needed her attention. She was trying to pretend that she wasn’t about to pry, that this was a casual and spontaneous conversation.

  Of course Dawson knew better.

  “How were the little boys?” she asked.

  “Good. Oblivious about their dad. For now. Which is as it should be.” In spite of his dark mood, a smile hiked up one corner of his mouth. “I had to give them a lesson in biology.” He related the anecdote. Eva and Headly laughed.

  “After dinner, Amelia let them make their own sundaes, which were disgusting because they dribbled on everything she set out, including blackberry jam. They made a mess, but I think it was important to her to let them have a good time last night. Considering yesterday’s…event.”

  The three were quiet for a moment, then Eva ventured to ask, “Did you explain to her why you went to such lengths to go after Carl and Jeremy?”

  “We talked about it some.”

  They looked at him, expecting more, but he didn’t expound.

  Eva pressed on, her misty, wistful expression straight out of a greeting-card commercial. “Amelia is an excellent mother.”

  Dawson cleared his throat. “She is.”

  “And she’s such a sweet-natured person. It was kind of her to stay here with me through that terrible first night.”

  “Sure was.”

  “We talked like old friends, not like two women who’d just met.”

  “Hmm.”

  “She told me that the boys continually ask about school, because they’re aware that it starts next week. She doesn’t know how to tell them that they might not be going back when the other children do. They want a house with a yard so they can have a dog.”

  “I know all this, Eva.”

  Bickering with Headly was a normal part of their repartee. But he’d never had a cross word with Eva. Taken aback by his testiness, she lapsed into silence. But now that his anger over the situation had been given an opening, it burst of out him.