Deadline

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.”