"Or something he knows I want to hear," Dawson said. "I asked him why he didn't tell the cops about this conversation when they were searching kingdom come for Jeremy or his remains. He said he did tell them, but, to his knowledge, nobody acted on the information. They were searching the marsh for a decomposing body, not a shack with a living Jeremy inside."

Headly dragged his hand down his face, stretching the skin. "A shack that may or may not exist, and if it does, it could be anywhere in the forty-eight contiguous states."

"South Carolina."

Dawson and Headly looked at Amelia, who'd spoken as though thinking out loud. Realizing that she had their attention, she said, "I found a speeding ticket on our closet floor. It must have fallen out of a pocket when he hung up his clothes. I noticed it had been issued in South Carolina, so I asked him about it."

"When was this?"

"Shortly before we separated. He'd already made Willard's acquaintance, and even then I wasn't keen on this new friendship. I hoped he'd gone to Beaufort to visit some of his old friends from Parris Island and the naval air station.

"When I showed him the ticket, he became irrationally furious. That's why I remember it. He took it from me, tore it into pieces, and threw them away. He cursed me for meddling and told me to mind my own business. Obviously I'd hit on something he didn't want me to know about. I suspected it was another woman. But perhaps..." She trailed off to let them draw their own conclusion.

Dawson looked at Headly and shrugged. "It's something."

Energized, they started toward the exit. Headly said, "With Jeremy's Social Security number, the DMV over there should be able to look up the ticket. Once we know where it was issued, we'll have a starting point to begin a search. I'll get Knutz on that."

He punched a number into his phone. Dawson held the door and allowed Amelia and Headly to precede him. They emerged into the bright sunlight and headed toward the parking lot.

Headly, phone to his ear, turned his head to say something to Dawson from over his shoulder when suddenly a strange expression came over his face. Then his eyes went completely blank.

Dawson's brain processed instantly what that vacant look signified, even as Headly's knees folded beneath him and he toppled forward. Dawson gave a shout of horror and outrage as he pushed Amelia to the sidewalk and followed her down.

The second bullet missed her by a hairbreadth.

The one intended for Headly had found its mark.

Chapter 22.

Carl Wingert was one of the few criminals in American history who had the gall to bring the fight to the authorities.

He and Jeremy had spent hours on the roof of a seven-story office building that, due to the recession, had run out of renters. The management company had gone bankrupt, and after being foreclosed upon, the building had stood empty and neglected.

Situated in an industrial park where other businesses had similarly succumbed to the bad economy, it was a quarter mile away from the jail complex. In between was a four-lane thoroughfare divided by a wide median planted with crepe myrtle trees.

Trees presented a problem in general, but from that roof, one of the tallest in the whole area, Jeremy could have taken several clear shots. Partially obscured by a ventilation shaft, they'd waited for an opportunity to strike FBI agent Gary Headly where and when he would least expect it.

The playing field had changed for Carl the instant he saw Headly in the photograph. The only reason the veteran agent would be here in Savannah working in conjunction with the sheriff's office to solve the Stephanie DeMarco murder case was because Jeremy had been linked to the homicide and, even more damning, to Carl Wingert.

The authorities hadn't publicly declared that Jeremy was indeed alive and the suspected culprit, or that he had a direct bloodline to a notorious fugitive from justice, but Carl knew that those dots of information had been connected. That was the only explanation for Headly's involvement.

Whether or not Headly had linked him to Bernie Clarkson, he didn't know. But even if he hadn't, he would still be hot on Jeremy's trail if only because he was Carl's son. Either way, Carl resolved not to wait on the agent to find him. No, by God. The guy wanted him, the guy was going to get him. Just not in the way he planned on it.

Carl had reasoned that sooner or later Headly would show up at the sheriff's office to confer with the blubber-gutted deputy and that when he did, Jeremy could pick him off, even from that distance.

The assassination of an FBI agent on the campus of the sheriff's office and jail complex would create chaos. Panic and confusion would ensue. Before anyone figured out from which direction the fatal bullet had come, he and Jeremy would be long gone.

The plan had the stamp of Carl Wingert all over it. It was just audacious enough to work. Certainly there was an element of risk, but it was low enough that Carl was willing to take it in order to rid himself of his nemesis. By doing so, he would also let the rotten American society know that Carl wasn't done with it quite yet. He may be old, but he was still a fear-worthy entity, a force to be reckoned with.

He regretted not having taken a bold action such as this decades ago, and blamed Flora and her whining for his years of inactivity. So his resentment toward Headly had had decades in which to ferment, and it now made his revenge even sweeter.

The hours they'd spent waiting on the roof for Headly to appear had given Jeremy time to assess the conditions, do his calculations, and practice his aim on uniformed personnel and visitors to the sheriff's office and jail who entered and exited the various buildings on their various errands, little knowing that they were in his crosshairs.

Jeremy needed no coaching, but Carl kept up a stream of instruction. "You'll have one chance to take him out, possibly two, but no more before they hear the report. Within seconds, we need to be on the fire stairs."

When the time came, Jeremy was mentally primed. All he had to do was make the shot. Carl, who'd been watching the complex through binoculars, recognized Amelia's car when it wheeled up to the entrance of the visitation center. He reported this to Jeremy. "See her?"

"On the car," Jeremy said, his voice tense with concentration.

"This could be it."

But it wasn't. Dawson Scott alighted and went into the building alone, and while Jeremy would have loved nothing better than to blow him away, he hadn't had a clear shot, and besides, Dawson Scott wasn't today's target.

Amelia drove away. They waited, ate energy bars, drank from water bottles. Going on two hours later, Amelia returned and parked. This time she and "Guess-fucking-who," Carl chuckled, parked and went inside. "Got to come out sometime. Set up, son."

This time the wait was short. Amelia was the first one out. Headly right behind her, his phone to his ear.

"Got him?" Carl asked Jeremy.

"Roger Dodger."

But just as Jeremy squeezed the trigger, the agent turned to speak over his shoulder. Carl, who was expecting to see the agent's head explode, cursed when he collapsed and fell, cranium intact. "Not a head shot, but he's down. Let's go!"

The binoculars hung from his neck by a cord, so his hands were free to grab the tripod as choreographed. Jeremy retrieved two shell casings. The shots had come in such rapid succession, Carl hadn't realized Jeremy had fired a second time. "Amelia?"

"Missed her."

Carl didn't waste time on disappointment. There would be another occasion for Amelia. As for Headly, if he wasn't dead, he was ruined.

The two of them jogged across the gravel roof and squeezed through the heavy metal door that had given them access to it. Their footsteps echoed loudly in the enclosed stairwell, but there was no one to hear them as they descended through the deserted building. Jeremy was carrying the rifle, but he could still move with more speed and alacrity than Carl, whose hips pained him with every tread.

Jeremy asked if he needed to take a sec to rest. Carl shoved him aside and went past him. "You'll have trouble keeping up with me, sonny."

As though to underscore their need for haste, the wail of sirens reached them through the exterior walls.

"Christ, that was fast," Jeremy said.

"Don't think about them. Just keep moving."

By the time they reached the ground floor, both were laboring to catch their breath. They left the building through the back door by which they'd entered after destroying the lock. Jeremy opened the rear door of his car and was carefully placing the rifle in the floorboard behind the driver's seat when a patrol car, running hot, lights flashing, turned into the alley between the abandoned building and its vacant neighbor. It screeched to a halt about ten yards away from them.

"Stay calm," Carl said, instantly adapting the persona of Bernie Clarkson.

The officer behind the wheel was middle-aged, which told Carl a lot about him, namely that he wasn't the sharpest of cops or he wouldn't still be on routine patrol. He clambered out while unsnapping the holster on his right hip.

"Put your hands where I can see them!" He worked the pistol out of the holster and aimed it at them in turn.

"What's going on, officer?" Carl asked in Bernie's age-rusty voice.

He shouted, "Come out from behind that door! Hands up!"

Jeremy eased away from the open door of the backseat and, along with Carl, raised his hands shoulder high. "What are all the sirens-"

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"As of this morning, we've leased this building for our medical supply company," Jeremy said. "Came to check it out, see if the utilities had been turned on yet. We were just about to leave when those sirens started screaming."

Carl asked, "Was there a robbery in the area?"

The officer's eyes sawed between them. "Stay where you are." He reached for the transmitter clipped to his shoulder.

"Daddy?" Jeremy said.

"Got him." Carl yanked a pistol from his waistband at the small of his back and pulled the trigger only once. The cop went down. "They never learn."

Shooting a cop hadn't been part of their plan. Jeremy said, "We need to get out of here now." He turned to close the car's rear door.

Carl hobbled around the front of the car to the passenger side and was halfway in when he heard the crack. It was still several seconds before he realized that the policeman, lying crumpled on the pavement with a pool of blood forming beneath him, had managed to get off a shot.

That infuriated Carl. He walked over to him, bent down, and jammed the barrel of his pistol against the officer's temple. Looking into his fear-stricken eyes, he smiled. "Impress the devil. Tell him you got killed by Carl Wingert."

He left the body and the car where they were, but made note of the name on the tag pinned to the officer's uniform and yanked the squawking police radio from off his belt.

Jeremy was behind the steering wheel with the motor running by the time Carl slid into the passenger seat. "Drive toward the bridge. Easy like."

He jacked up the volume of the radio and had listened for several minutes before anyone tried to contact the officer he'd killed. Muffling his voice, he said, "Nothing moving over here." The dispatcher gave the officer new instructions, which Carl acknowledged, then switched off. "We should be miles away before they start looking for him." When Jeremy didn't respond, he looked over at him. He was sweaty and grim-faced, focused on his driving.

Then Carl noticed that his hand was flattened against his right side. Blood was leaking between his fingers. "Jesus! He hit you with that shot?"

Jeremy peeled his lips back to form a parody of a grin. "Just a scratch, Daddy."

"We, uh, found an SPD officer and his unit behind an abandoned building. He'd been shot twice. Once in the abdomen, once..." Tucker glanced at Amelia, who was sitting beside Dawson on a short sofa in the trauma center waiting room. The deputy amended whatever he had been about to say. "He was dead."

Dawson felt Amelia flinch. He was too shocked by what had happened to Headly to react.

Deputy Wills cleared his throat, his prominent Adam's apple sliding up and down his long, wrinkled neck. Dawson thought he looked like a turtle with his small head poking out of his shirt collar, which was too large.

Entertaining such nonsensical thoughts was the only thing keeping him sane. If he started thinking about the reality he found himself in, about Headly inexorably dying while he stood futilely by, he'd go crazy, destroy something, kill somebody.

He was only barely holding on to his reason, and he was able to do that only because Headly hadn't been pronounced dead at the scene. Perhaps he had died in transit to the hospital, or on the operating table, but no one had had the courage to tell Dawson yet. That was a distinct possibility, because the deputies were regarding him as though mistrustful of his outward stoicism and in fear of an eruption of violent fury at any moment. They were justifiably afraid.

Wills cleared his throat again. "You were right about the direction the shots came from."

"I didn't spend nine months in a war zone for nothing."

"Well, anyway, on account of you, we knew where to start looking for the shooter. They were on the roof."

Dawson fixed him with a stare. "They?"

"We found two sets of shoe prints in the gravel. And Jeremy Wesson's fingerprints on the doorknobs."

"Carl was with him."

"We don't know that," Tucker said.

"I do." Dawson closed his hand into a tight fist. "Carl would want to take credit for killing Headly."

After a taut silence, Wills said, "We don't know who pulled the trigger, but-"

"Jeremy was a sniper, for chrissake."

Wills nodded. "From that vantage point, with a fancy scope, a skilled shooter..." He didn't take that thought any further. "The fingerprints-"

"Weren't an oversight," Dawson said. "They don't care who knows it was them."

"Look," Tucker said, "you're making assumptions that-"

Wills nudged Tucker hard enough to shut him up. He, the good cop, realized that every contrary word out of his partner's mouth was riling Dawson. Like jerking a sleeping tiger's tail.

After a moment, he continued. "The downed officer had been on patrol over in that industrial park where some vandalism had recently been reported." He shrugged his bony shoulders. "Must've intercepted them as they were fleeing. His radio was missing. Which explains how they eluded us. They could follow our communications and keep track of our movements."

Tucker said, "Plus, we don't know what they're driving. The car Bernie-Carl-left in that parking lot is still there."

Dawson shot him a baleful look. "You've finally come around to accepting that Bernie is Carl Wingert?"

Tucker had the grace to look abashed.

Amelia slid her hand beneath Dawson's arm and rested it on his thigh, which served to keep him from lunging at the deputy who'd questioned Headly's superior knowledge. His muttered epithets toward Tucker were heard by her alone.

He'd tried to persuade her to return to the beach house and take advantage of the protection she'd be afforded there, but she had refused to budge from his side, and secretly he was glad. Over the course of the last few tumultuous hours, her invisible steeliness had manifested itself in quiet but emphatic ways.

She'd spent ten minutes talking on her cell phone to the deputy who'd been watching Hunter and Grant all day. She later told Dawson that they'd been thoroughly entertained until, after a pizza dinner, they'd been tucked safely into bed and were now fast asleep.

She'd also been assured that they were unaware of the personnel, which had been doubled in number, to guard them. Satisfied that her children were being well attended, she'd declared that she would stay with Dawson, at least until they knew the extent of Headly's injury and the status of his condition.

Several times she had tried to thank him for saving her life, but was unable to complete the sentence without becoming too emotional to speak. He'd told her that thanks were unnecessary, that he understood the depth of what she was feeling. She seemed to understand how he felt as well.

When fear of the worst had caused him to lapse into brooding silences, she hadn't filled them with mindless promises that all would be well, when the possibility of catastrophe loomed. When he felt like talking, she had listened as though absorbing each word into her skin. She was a soft but stalwart presence he was grateful to have.