Deadline

“Of course not.” Dawson took the tube from Headly’s left hand and, slowly winding it around his fist, pulled the other end free from the tangle of tubes on the floor. “It’s not attached to anything. See?” He dangled the two loose ends inches away from Carl’s face. “They really should remove these once they’re no longer in use. What if somebody pulled out your chest tube by mistake?”

Carl looked in stunned horror at Headly, who smiled. “Carl, Carl, did you actually think I came in here to kill you? And by doing so deny myself the pleasure of watching you rot in chains for the rest of your goddamned life?” Headly shook his head. “No way in hell, Carl. No way in hell.”

Epilogue

He drove with the car windows down. The salt air was soft, the surf calm as it sometimes was just after daybreak. As he neared Amelia’s beach house, his eyes were inexorably drawn to the one where Carl Wingert had spent summers as Bernie.

That was the only thought Dawson gave the man, and it was more consideration than the reprobate deserved.

He didn’t expect Amelia or the boys to be up yet, but as he alighted, he spotted her on the beach. She was walking near the waterline, a pair of flip-flops dangling from her fingers. She was dressed in roomy, thin cotton pants and a tank top, which she’d probably slept in. Her hair was in a messy topknot. She’d never looked so good to him.

He had covered over half the distance between them before she saw him. She dropped her sandals and met him at a full run. He caught her against him and they kissed hungrily. They didn’t come up for air for several minutes, and when they did, they continued to hold each other as though to assure themselves that they were together again after a ten-day separation.

She leaned back into the firm circle of his arms so she could look up into his face. “How was it?”

“North Dakota can be cold even in September. Around freezing one morning I was there.”

She brushed a windblown strand of hair off his scruffy cheek, then laid both palms on his chest. In a softer voice, she asked, “How was it?”

“It was good,” he replied, matching her serious tone. “They’re wonderful people. Salt of the earth. American flag flying proudly from the eaves of the house. Pot roast for dinner. There were pictures of Hawkins all over the house. They wanted to hear everything.”

Shortly after Dawson’s return from Afghanistan, he’d received a letter from Corporal Hawkins’s parents, asking him to please call them. They expressed an earnest wish to talk to him about their son and his last few days. They repeated the request in voice mails, e-mails, and additional letters. “He thought so highly of you, Mr. Scott. Please call us.”

He hadn’t been able to bring himself to make that call.

But talking through the incident with Amelia had been the catharsis he’d needed. Once the ban on the topic of Hawkins had been lifted, he could think about him without cringing inside. As soon as he had accompanied Headly home to DC, he booked a flight to North Dakota.

“They told me everything about him. I met his brother, two sisters, six nieces and nephews. I was shown his baseball trophies and high school prom pictures. Our talks were heartrending, but healing for them as well as for me.”

“I want to hear all about it whenever you’re ready to tell me.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “Sleeping better?”

“Two nights in a row without the nightmare.”

“Definite progress.”

“Thanks to you.”

Several sessions with a therapist in DC had helped enormously, too, although he still gave more credit to Amelia than to the man with all the framed degrees on his office wall.

“How are Headly and Eva?” she asked.

“He gets better every day. The Bureau urged him to reactivate until Carl’s case is closed. But that’ll take a while, so he declined.”

“I’m surprised by that.”

“I was, too. But he explained that nothing could top that dramatic ending in the hospital, with Carl screaming invectives and begging for somebody to kill him.”

She dropped her forehead against his chest. “When I woke up, and you weren’t there, I thought—”

“Carl thought so, too. That was the point. But no such luck for him. Headly wanted a face-off. I helped because I knew how important it was for him to confront his enemy. He would never have been satisfied with less.”

“Nor would you.”

“You know me well.”

She pressed a kiss to his throat, and when she pulled away, she said, “So, it was easy for Headly to turn down the Bureau’s request that he stay on?”

“Made much easier by Eva. She told him if he returned to work, she was going to grind up Viagra in his food and then withhold sexual favors.”