"I didn't."

"-you're too late." He pulled his hand away from a bloody, festering mess on the side of his lower abdomen. "I'm already a dead man."

Chapter 24.

Dawson was kneeling beside the ratty sofa before he even realized he'd moved. He pushed Jeremy's hand aside and raised the hem of his dirty shirt. Under it was a putrefying wound. The tissue was puckered, pussy, and red around the dark bullet hole, which was clotted with dried blood. "Jesus. This looks bad, but it's stopped bleeding."

Jeremy gave an ironic grin. "I've run dry."

Dawson feared he was right. Most of the bleeding must have been internal and considerable. Beneath his bushy mustache, his lips were gray. He let go of the pistol. It landed on the floor inches from Dawson's knee.

"I lied about shooting you through the door. It's not loaded."

Dawson yanked his cell phone from his belt.

"Don't bother."

Ignoring Jeremy's weak protest, he punched in 911. When the operator answered, he said, "Listen carefully." He told her his general location, then the geographical coordinates of the tract. "I need medical care for a seriously wounded man."

"What's the nature-"

"He's been shot in the gut."

"Is he-"

"We're in a cabin, but there's no road to it. Send a search-and-rescue chopper. They won't be able to set down. Tell them to come prepared for that and to look for smoke."

"Smoke?"

"That'll help them find us. And my phone will be on."

"What's your name?"

"Dawson Scott."

"The Dawson Scott everyone's looking for?"

"They're looking for me?"

"All over the place."

"Well, they can find me here. I'm with Jeremy Wesson. Got it? Jeremy Wesson. Tell them not to come in shooting. It's just the two of us, we're unarmed, and he's in a bad way."

"Okay, stay on the line, Mr.-"

"You do your job. I'm gonna do mine."

He disconnected and didn't answer when his cell phone rang almost immediately. Moving quickly, he dragged the overflowing trash can outside and upended it to dump the nauseating contents. He gathered up sticks and dead brush and crammed them into the can, then went back into the cabin. "Matches?"

Jeremy motioned feebly. "Shelf above the sink."

The rickety dining table was piled with newspapers. Dawson took them and the box of matches out to the trash can, stuffed the newspapers down among the kindling, struck matches to them, and left them to burn.

Jeremy was looking worse by the moment. Dawson steeled himself against the compassion welling inside him. Slipping on his professional objectivity, he started the video recorder on his cell phone. He didn't care about the quality of the picture, but anything Jeremy said could be very important later. "Who shot you?"

"The cop."

"The one you killed?"

"Daddy did."

"Carl Wingert. He's your father?"

"That's right. How did you find out?"

"Never mind that now. Where is Carl?"

"I told you. He left."

"How long ago?"

"Last night sometime."

"You've been here all night alone? Why didn't you call for help?"

Jeremy gave another dry laugh, which caused a fit of coughing. Gasping, he said, "I'd rather bleed out here than die in prison."

"Carl left you here to bleed out? Why didn't he take you to an ER?"

Jeremy looked down at the wound and when he raised his gaze back to Dawson, there were tears in his eyes. "He knows a lost cause when he sees one."

Dawson ran his fingers though his hair. "Christ. Doesn't the man have a heart?"

"You know about him? Beyond Bernie, I mean. You know about his past?"

"Yeah, I know. Much more than I want to."

"He's had to leave people behind before."

"He chose to leave them behind."

"Heroes are forced to make hard decisions."

"Hero?" Dawson sneered. "He's a chickenshit."

Jeremy said nothing, but he took a swipe at his eyes to brush the tears away. "He left me with one bullet. I knew what he expected me to do with it, so after he'd been gone for sixty seconds or so, I fired it." Dawson followed his gaze to the ceiling where the wood was splintered around a bullet hole.

Jeremy said, "Daddy hasn't made many mistakes, but he made one last night. He didn't come back to see that I'd really done it." He leaned back against the soiled sofa cushion and closed his eyes. A tear leaked from beneath his eyelid, rolled down his cheek, and was absorbed by his beard. "I didn't want to blow my own brains out, but I hoped to die before anybody got here."

"No such luck, Jeremy. I need you to clear up a couple of things."

Eyes still closed, he asked, "Are you going to write about me?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"Well, if it's deathbed confessions you're after, you'd better be quick."

"Willard Strong's version of Darlene's murder. True?"

"Close enough. Main thing, he didn't do it. I did."

Dawson looked down at his phone to make sure he'd got that. "The Wessons."

Jeremy opened his eyes as they filled with more tears. He struggled not to cry. "Randy and Patricia."

"Was their last name really Wesson?"

"No, but I don't know what their real names were. I lived with them for thirteen years and they took good care of me. They believed in Daddy and his crusade, as they called it."

"What about the fire?"

"Daddy said it was necessary. He called it martyring them for the cause." Jeremy wiped his eyes again.

It was a struggle for Dawson to maintain his objectivity as he asked the next question. "Amelia's father. Suicide, or not?"

He stared hard into Jeremy's eyes, demanding the truth. Slowly Jeremy gave a small shake of his head, then let it sink deeper into the cushion. "From the time we met, especially after we married, he would ask questions about the Wessons and other things I'd told him that didn't add up. Daddy was afraid he'd really start snooping after the divorce. I wasn't the congressman's favorite person."

"You'd hit Amelia."

He winced, but he didn't defend the abuse. "Daddy was afraid the old man would be out to get me. He said we needed to nip it in the bud."

"So you nipped it."

"I knew his schedule, knew when he would be in the house alone."

"How'd you coerce him into taking the pills?"

"Daddy gave him a choice. Take the lethal dosage, or stand by and watch Amelia die slowly and in agony. He was going to die, no matter what, but if he wanted her to live, he would fake his suicide. The old man tried to reason, then to bargain. He wound up pleading, but in the end he swallowed the pills. We waited there until we were sure his heart had stopped."

"And left him for Amelia to find." Dawson wanted to strike him, to beat him senseless for the grief he had caused her, not just over her father's death but over everything he'd done for a stupid, fanatical, baseless "cause."

"'Cause,' my ass," he muttered. Carl Wingert's treachery was propelled only by his ego, his sick, sociopathic delusions of grandeur. Dawson was suddenly consumed by rage. He grabbed Jeremy's hand as though he would arm wrestle him right there atop Jeremy's chest. "You also need to answer for killing Stef."

"Stupid move. I acted without thinking."

"That's not going to hack it as a defense."

As though he hadn't heard Dawson's remark, he continued. "I'd been cooped up here for so long, to get out of here and actually do something felt good."

"It felt good to kill a young woman?"

"I thought she was Amelia."

"You wanted to kill the mother of your children."

He turned away from Dawson's accusatory glare, and his chest deflated as he expelled a long sigh. "If I had to think about it, I couldn't have done it. So when I saw her-the woman I thought was her-it was like Providence. A sign. Something. If I acted on impulse and did it right then, I'd be done with it and not have to think about it anymore. That's what went through my mind."

"Fucking twisted mind, Jeremy."

"Tell her that I'm sorry."

"I doubt she'll believe that."

"Probably not. Not after everything I've put her through." His gaze turned introspective. "My boys will be ashamed of who their daddy was, won't they?"

The answer was so obvious that Dawson didn't need to state it.

"I was jealous of you for playing with them on the beach," Jeremy continued. "I watched from the boat. Where'd you get the football?"

"Found a bag of beach toys in the rental house."

"Grant's got a good right arm for a kid his age."

"For a kid of any age."

"Hunter's better at soccer."

"He's got some moves."

"They're good boys, right?"

"They're great boys."

"Do they ever talk about me?"

This man didn't deserve his pity, his compassion, not even one of those magnanimous white lies. But to tell the harsh truth to a dying man..."All the time," he heard himself say. "They're proud of your service to your country."

Jeremy knew he was being lied to, and looked at Dawson in a way that silently thanked him for the mercy. Then he closed his eyes and Dawson feared that he'd lost consciousness or soon would. He shook his shoulder. "Don't pass out yet. Tell me where Carl went."

"I don't know."