Deadline

“I know their circumstances, and they stink, but I can’t fix them. It would be wrong of me to try. My intrusion would only make their situation worse.”

“Amelia wouldn’t see your involvement as intrusion.”

“How do you know?”

“You make her head spin.” He registered surprise. Seeing it, she added, “She told me so. In confidence. Which I just broke.”

His heart levitated, then sank. “That’s nice to hear, but it doesn’t make a difference. The situation is—”

“Subject to change soon.”

Headly’s mumble arrested Dawson’s angry pacing. “Why do you say that?”

Headly looked over at Eva. “Maybe I will have some of that juice, but with ice. Would you please get me some from the machine down the hall?”

She folded her arms over her middle. “Hell, no. I’m staying put. I want to hear why you said that, too.”

Headly scowled, but she didn’t budge or show any signs of relenting. Headly sighed and looked at Dawson. “Neither of us is getting any younger.”

“Meaning you and Carl?”

He nodded. “Always before, when he felt us closing in—even if we weren’t—he hightailed it. He’s jumped states in a matter of days.”

“You think old age has slowed him down?”

“In a manner of speaking. He always had this ragtag bunch of outlaws to aid and abet him. Gun dealers, drug dealers, or petty crooks who were hero worshipers, disciples of his twisted dogma. All willing to do his bidding. Most have either been caught and are serving long sentences, or they’ve been killed by one of their ilk, or simply died off. By the way, they found the guy who owns the boat.”

“The CandyCane?”

“He’s living in the Keys. But barely. Stage-four lung cancer. He’ll die in captivity, but even knowing that, he wouldn’t give up any information about Carl.” He stared down at his right hand where it lay on his chest and wiggled the fingers experimentally.

Dawson noticed. “The doctor was right.”

Headly sneered. “Just to prove how smart he is, last night he stuck a needle, which I’m sure is used to stitch saddles, into my thumb. Hurt like bloody hell.”

Eva rolled her eyes. “It was a prick with a straight pin. He howled a profanity that could be heard back in DC. But he’s only trying to get off the subject until you two are alone, and I’m not going to let him. Continue, Gary.”

He looked at her with exasperation. “Point is, Carl’s run out of admirers. Even Jeremy’s gone. Carl Wingert is passé, of another era, history that few even know about. He wanted to live in infamy like Bonnie and Clyde, Oswald, Jim Jones, David Koresh. He never achieved those heights. He knows he’s a has-been, and that’ll eat at him.”

“What do you think he’ll do?” Dawson asked.

“Stage a spectacular exit for himself. He’s got little to lose now except for his inflated self-esteem. He won’t care if he doesn’t survive, so long as he leaves the rest of us with a lasting impression.” He paused. “Knutz has already alerted Homeland Security.”

* * *

“Excuse me, sir. Can I help you?”

The nurse was young and pretty and eager to be of assistance to such a decrepit older gentleman. Her scrubs were purple. A UGA bulldog snarled from the patch affixed to her breast pocket.

Carl adjusted his baseball cap, as though conscious of his hairlessness, when actually he was tugging down the bill of the cap in order to conceal his face from Dawson Scott, who was at the end of the hallway, talking to an attractive middle-aged woman. Carl assumed she was Headly’s wife.

He’d come to scout out the hospital, commit to memory how it was laid out, note where the fire alarms and emergency exits were, plan how he was going to get to Headly and finish their feud once and for all.

Lo and behold, the moment he stepped off the elevator on this floor, the first person he spotted was Dawson Scott. He’d been about to duck back into the elevator and get the hell out of there, but in a millisecond he changed his mind.

He was no longer Bernie. Unless Dawson looked very closely, it was doubtful he would recognize the man who, only a week ago, had been spry enough to fly a kite on the beach. His altered appearance was so realistic, he almost had himself convinced that he was a cancer patient whose prognosis wasn’t good.

It was a perfect disguise. After one glance at someone so obviously terminally ill, people tended to look the other way, sometimes out of pity or respect for privacy, often because of an irrational fear of contagion, but always, always with avoidance. In a hospital environment, he would be practically invisible.