"Definitely. I'll call Knutz first thing tomorrow morning. Have him start putting together a task force."

"Any chance you can get here tonight?"

"Tonight?"

"For a couple of urgent reasons. First and foremost, Amelia needs someone watching her back."

"I thought that was your detail. What's the other urgency?"

"I need you to bail me out."

Even before thanking Headly for picking him up, as they walked from the jail, Dawson asked him if Amelia was safe.

"Soon as our call ended last night, I talked to Knutz. He's got people he occasionally uses for surveillance, sorta freelancers. He put somebody on Amelia. A gal actually, but she's one of the best, he says.

"Anyway, she followed Amelia when she left the sheriff's office. She went straight to her apartment, spent the night there without incident. She left it this morning at eight o'clock." He checked his wristwatch. "About ten minutes ago."

"So she's okay?"

"Didn't I indicate that?"

"What about the boys?"

"They weren't with her."

"She must have left them with the museum guy and his wife. She said she might. It was probably for the best. But somebody should be guarding that house, too. They-" He caught Headly looking at him curiously. "What?"

"For a jailbird, you're awfully concerned about the welfare of a widow and her two kids."

"If something happens to them, it'll be on your head for not telling the locals about the possibility of Jeremy's resurrection."

Querulously, Headly said, "Another one of Knutz's freelancers is watching the museum guy's house. Okay?"

"Why didn't you just say so?"

"Well, I've been a little busy lately getting your ass out of jail."

"Thanks, by the way."

Headly merely snorted.

Dawson said, "I wasn't worried about being formally charged." He'd spent an uncomfortable night in jail-fortunately not in the same cell with Ray Dale Huffman, whom, had he gotten close to, he might have strangled. "It was only a matter of time before they had to let me go."

Headly motioned him toward the rental car he'd picked up at the Savannah airport.

"How do you figure?"

"They didn't have any evidence."

Headly used the remote key to unlock the car doors. They got in on opposite sides, and Headly started the engine immediately. "Of illegal drug possession or homicide?"

"Certainly no evidence tying me to Stef's murder."

Headly just sat there with his hand on the gearshift, looking at him, silently asking about the other possible criminal charge.

"All right, I'd bought some pills from Ray Dale. Yesterday, a rookie deputy was sent upstairs with me while I changed clothes. He was green, easily distracted with jabber. I snatched the bottle of them off my nightstand, and when he allowed me to go to the john, I flushed them."

"Clever you." Headly backed out of the parking slot, muttering angrily under his breath.

"Will you relax?" Dawson said. "They were-"

"I know what they were. I found your stash in your apartment."

"Excuse me? You broke into my apartment?"

"Don't go all righteously indignant on me. I'm not the drug addict."

"I'm hardly an addict."

"No? Then why are your hands shaking?"

He'd hoped no one would notice. "Look, I only needed something to take the edge off."

"Off what?"

Dawson clammed up, then said, "I wasn't taking anything you can't get from a doctor."

"Then why aren't you getting them from one, instead of buying them off guys on the street with names like Ray Dale? God only knows what they're laced with."

Dawson was about to argue that, but truth be told, he couldn't vouch for the pharmaceutical integrity of the pills he'd been taking. His only criterion for quality control had been that they worked. Their numbing effect was swift and short-term, but even a moment away from the nightmare was worth the risk of taking compounds of dubious origin.

"I was careful," he mumbled.

"Buying only from reliable, upstanding illegal drug dealers."

Dawson didn't address his godfather's sarcasm, knowing it was justified. His recklessness was indefensible, so he didn't even attempt to excuse it. "Take the next right, then the hotel is up one block on the left."

When he'd relocated to Saint Nelda's, he'd taken only what he thought he would need at the beach and hadn't checked out of the hotel, a decision he was glad of now. He left Headly in the lobby while he went upstairs to shower and change clothes. He was back down in five minutes. In less than ten more, they were entering the courthouse.

Chapter 14.

Court convened shortly after nine o'clock. The judge said she hoped everyone had enjoyed the holiday weekend, then asked Willard Strong's defense attorney if he was ready to cross-examine the witness.

Mike Gleason stood. "Ready, Your Honor."

Amelia was escorted in. As she took her seat in the witness box, she was reminded that she was still under oath.

Sitting beside Dawson in the gallery, Headly harrumphed. "What did you notice first, her intelligence, her modesty, or her self-control?"

Dawson didn't answer. Mike Gleason had already fired the first volley by asking Amelia if she had formed an opinion of Willard Strong even before meeting him.

"I don't understand what you mean."

"What I mean is this, Ms. Nolan. Your husband returns from war. He's obviously suffering from PTSD. What do you do? Encourage him? Nurture him? Exercise patient, loving kindness? No. You leave him and rob him of his sons."

Jackson was on his feet immediately. "Objection."

"In fact, Ms. Nolan, isn't it true that your first reaction to anything that diverted your husband's attention away from you, including and especially his friendship with Mr. Strong, was-"

"Your Honor-"

"Spiteful jealousy?"

The judge banged her gavel several times and sustained Jackson's objection.

Many more were to come. Despite them, Gleason tried his hardest to chisel away at Amelia's loyalty and integrity. Merciless and selfish were words he used to describe her efforts to get out of the marriage.

He grilled her about the two times she'd been with the defendant, at Hunter's birthday party, and then the day he had come to the townhouse looking for Jeremy. He tried to discredit her accounts of these incidents, to put a spin on them that would make her out to be a woman prone to either hysterics or malice.

It was an ill-chosen strategy. Amelia remained calm. She didn't get flustered, even as she stressed the immediate threat that Willard Strong had posed to her and her children.

Eventually the lawyer must have sensed that her composure was more persuasive than his theatrics and that all he was accomplishing was to irritate the jurors and make them more, not less, sympathetic toward her. After an hour of getting nowhere, he wrapped up rather quickly and told the judge that he had no further questions for her.

She stepped down, and the bailiff led her out through the same side exit as before. Dawson whispered, "Let's go," and together he and Headly left through the door at the back of the courtroom.

They intercepted Amelia in the corridor. Cell phone in hand, she was punching in a number when she noticed them walking toward her. Her hands dropped to her sides. "They let you out of jail?"

"You sound disappointed."

Headly stepped forward and extended his right hand. "Ms. Nolan. Gary Headly."

She shook his hand, but with a notable lack of warmth. "Are you his lawyer?"

"Second-generation family friend. Also his godfather. But please don't hold that against me." His friendly smile wasn't returned.

Dawson tilted his head toward the courtroom. "You did great in there."

"It wasn't a talent show."

"I know that," he shot back, matching her ire. "All I meant was that your reason was effective against his ranting."

"I'm just grateful to have it over and done with. Now, if you'll excuse me." She made to go around them, but Dawson sidestepped and blocked her path.

"Where are you going?"

"To pick up my children."

"Are they all right?"

"No. They're not all right." She pushed back her hair, hooking a strand behind her ear, which was a sure signal that the composure she'd exhibited in the courtroom was about to desert her. "They keep asking where I am and when I'm coming to get them. They sense that something is wrong, but they don't know what, and not knowing is frightening to them, especially to Hunter, who is remarkably perceptive for his age. At some point I must tell them that their adored nanny is dead." Her voice cracked, which she tried to cover by clearing her throat. "I have to go."

This time Dawson didn't physically try to stop her, but he spoke her name with appeal.

She turned back, but her body language remained hostile. "If you're still after a good story, why don't you write one about yourself?"

"I'm not interesting."

She gave a caustic laugh. "Oh, but you are. You're secretive, mercurial, a study in contradictions. Beyond that, you're..."

"What?"

"Just so I'm clear, those pills you were taking weren't doctor prescribed, were they?"

He wouldn't admit it out loud, not inside the courthouse. But he gave one shake of his head.

Softly, but bitterly, she said, "Right." As she turned to go, her cell phone, still in her hand, vibrated. She looked at the LED and answered immediately. "Deputy Tucker?" She listened for a moment, her face going pale. "Where did you find him?"

Dawson was beside her in an instant, whispering, "Dirk?"

She looked up at him and nodded. "I see," she said into the phone. "Well, please keep me-"

"Excuse me, Ms. Nolan." Headly took the phone from her hand and raised it to his ear. As he started walking purposefully toward the elevator bank, Dawson heard him say, "Deputy? My name is Gary Headly. I'm a friend of Ms. Nolan's. Also an agent with the FBI. We're on our way. Please be there to meet us."

Amelia felt disoriented from the shock waves that just kept coming.

She had spent a virtually sleepless night, alternately pacing the floor and tossing in bed, sometimes sobbing over what had happened to Stef, then trembling in fear that she had been the intended victim. Off and on she prayed fervently for the safety of her children, bargaining with God to preserve them.

And at any given time, she was despising Dawson Scott for his multiple deceptions and half truths and omissions, even as her body betrayed her with stirring recollections of his nakedness, his blatant arousal, the sheer carnality of his kisses, and her responses to them.

At dawn, she'd had to shelve all the emotional turmoil and pull herself together for her court appearance. Actually, it hadn't been as terrible as she had anticipated. Mike Gleason had raked her over the coals, but she, like everyone in the courtroom, realized that it was desperation, not conviction, that had fueled his fiery attack on her character. She almost felt sorry for Willard Strong, who'd had to sit by and watch his case being damaged rather than strengthened.

But it was over, and she didn't have to think about it anymore. She wanted to collect her children and return to the beach house, splash in the surf, feel the sea breeze in her hair, and taste the salt air. She wanted to laugh and romp in the sand with her sons. But even as she visualized such playful abandon, her heart felt anything but carefree.

The specter of Stef's murder clouded her happiness over having the trial behind her. She must figure out how to explain the nanny's sudden absence to her sons, how to tell them in a way that was honest but that wouldn't leave them with an acute fear of death.

She hoped that by now they would have forgotten about Dawson altogether so she wouldn't be required to talk about him.