Deadline

He and Amelia had shared the last of the white wine. Since she’d been told to stay indoors, they couldn’t go out on the porch, which they would have preferred. Instead they’d taken their wine into the living room and had made themselves comfortable in matching slipcovered chairs.

They’d kept the window shutters open, the lights off. The precaution of semidarkness was taken only in part because of security issues. Actually they were seeking at least the illusion of privacy.

“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.”