Deadline

Unable to bear the teeming silence any longer, she said, “Eva called to tell me that you’d stopped by at the hospital.”

“Briefly. Soon as I’d gone to the hotel and cleaned up. I knew Headly would want to hear everything firsthand. He was—”

“Oh, I know how he was,” she said, laughing softly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the nursing staff has a picture of him they’re using as a dartboard. He’s not an ideal patient.”

“His mood will improve soon as he starts getting feeling back.” A few seconds elapsed, then, “Eva said you stayed with her all night. She appreciated it and so do I.”

“I wouldn’t have left her alone. Despite the surgeon’s positive prognosis, she was terribly worried about him. And about you.”

He shifted his weight from one foot to another, looking uncomfortable. “Tucker said he called you.”

“I’d made him promise to the moment they located you.”

“I would have called you myself, but they wouldn’t let me speak to anyone until I’d been questioned.”

“Headly told me that.”

“Then when I was free to call, I didn’t have my phone. They took it as evidence because Jeremy was recorded on it. Besides—”

“You didn’t feel like talking.”

He gave her a weak smile. “Right. After going over it repeatedly with the authorities, no, for a while there, I didn’t feel like talking anymore.”

“I needed some down time to let my mind settle around it, too. I wanted only to be with my children.”

“Do they know?”

“What would be the point of telling them?”

“None.”

“I didn’t think so, either.”

“How are they?”

“Want to see them?”

He grinned. “I could do with some innocence.”

They climbed the stairs and moved down the hallway, past the closed door to the guest room that Stef had used. “I spoke with Mrs. DeMarco a short while ago. They’d been notified of Jeremy’s confession. Stef’s body will be released to them tomorrow.”

“Good,” he said. “And terrible.”

“Yes.”

When they entered the boys’ bedroom, they heard them quarreling in the connecting bathroom. “Hey, what’s going on?”

At the sound of her voice, their silence was abrupt. Amelia shot a suspicious look over her shoulder at Dawson as she pushed open the bathroom door. When the boys saw him, they shoved their way past her and launched themselves at him.

He hooked his hands under Grant’s arms and used him as a weight to do a biceps curl, clenching his teeth and groaning with the effort, which caused Grant to giggle. When he set him down, he socked Hunter’s shoulder. They fired questions at him, but, talking over them, he asked what all the noise had been about.

Hunter quickly gave the classic reply. “Nothing.”

“Hunter said we shouldn’t tell Mom, but I think we should.”

“Shut up, Grant!”

“Hunter, I’ve asked you not to tell your brother to—”