Deadline

“Don’t hold your breath. Right now, I’m beat. I’m gonna grab a shower, a burger, and a ball game on TV. If you want more of the gruesome details, you’ll have to read them in my story, like everybody else.”

Dawson clicked off, put his phone on vibrate, then fell back onto the bed and laid a forearm across his eyes. He hadn’t lied about being exhausted. He needed sleep, but he’d sworn off antianxiety pills and sleeping meds. Whiskey had lost its dulling power, providing only a temporary buzz followed by a cottony head and queasy stomach.

Which left him to his own devices to find tranquility. By God, he’d get there by sheer force of will.

But when he closed his eyes and tried to focus only on clouds drifting across snowy mountain peaks and brooks rippling through primeval forests, his mind stayed stubbornly fixed on the woman who had walked out of his life earlier today.

The woman he wanted like hell, but couldn’t have.

Headly had asked him why he didn’t go after her. Wasn’t the answer clear enough? She hadn’t wanted him to. She’d “had it.” He was an opportunist, a con artist, working the inside track, even baiting her children, to get the goods. That was her opinion of Dawson Scott.

But even if he’d been straightforward with her from the start, had come clean and told her everything, won her confidence and possibly even her affection, he still would have let her walk away today. He was no martyr, but he wasn’t a completely selfish bastard, either. The last thing Amelia Nolan needed was another man in her life who woke up every night screaming.

He was struggling with that humiliating memory when he felt his phone vibrate. He picked it up and, seeing Headly’s name, swore. He started not to answer, but that would only delay the inevitable. He clicked on. “I’m about to get in the shower. Can I get back to you?”

“No. This is urgent.”

“You sound out of breath.”

“I am.”

“What have you been doing?”

“Yapping at their heels.”

“Whose heels?”

“Sheriff’s office, Savannah Metro, finally got Knutz involved. Good thing I kept yapping.”

“If your blood pressure goes up, Eva will—”

“They lifted a fingerprint off the rain slicker.”

Dawson bit back the rest of what he was about to say.

“It matched so well I got a hard-on. Guess whose print.”

“Jeremy Wesson’s.”

“Skip the shower and get over here.”

Chapter 16

Against her will or reason, Amelia was captivated by Carl Wingert’s Wanted poster.

In 1970 he had launched himself from the rank of petty crook and troublemaker to notorious outlaw by boldly robbing a federal bank in Kansas City. He did it in broad daylight on a busy Friday afternoon. He didn’t wear a mask or disguise of any kind, as though he’d wanted to be recognized and given credit for the crime, which included the execution-style shootings of the bank president, the teller who’d emptied her drawer for him, then ill-advisedly set off an alarm, a guard who made a valiant attempt to thwart him, and a city policeman, who, by sheer happenstance, had been waiting in line to deposit his paycheck.

Security cameras had captured numerous photographs of Carl that day because he’d made no attempt to avoid them. The time-lapse photos had been enlarged, enhanced, and were the only images of the criminal that existed except for class pictures, which chronicled a public-school boy’s transformation from a scowling child into a thug who looked progressively angrier with each advancing grade. He dropped out after his sophomore year.

The best of these exclusive pictures of Carl as an adult had been selected for his Wanted poster, and as Amelia studied them, she asked herself repeatedly if this man was, as Gary Headly claimed, her sons’ grandfather?

That possibility alone was upsetting. But it was especially disturbing to think that Jeremy might have known. If he had, had he kept it a secret because he was ashamed of his heritage and wanted to protect her and his children from disgrace? Or had the reason for his secrecy been more sinister? It was a chilling possibility.

Suddenly she became aware that the room had grown dark except for the laptop’s screen. She hadn’t meant to stay this late. But as she made to push back the desk chair, her motion was arrested by a noise coming from downstairs.

She knew every nook and cranny of the house, each stair tread that groaned beneath someone’s weight, every hinge that squeaked unless oiled regularly, which drawers stuck when the humidity was especially high.

Only someone that intimately familiar with the house would recognize the scraping sound the kitchen door made against the floor when it was pushed open.