Carl didn't have any patience for tears. Regret? Wasted energy. You did what you had to do. You moved on.

Like he was doing now.

He'd come to the trailer the night he left Saint Nelda's Island. He'd had another car parked in a long-term garage several blocks from where he'd left Bernie's car. At that point, no one was after him. The greatest danger he'd faced had been walking after dark in that part of town, where the crime rate was high. Bernie of the rickety hips would have been easy prey, but he reached the garage without being accosted.

It was an old facility. No cameras, no nosy attendant. He'd reconnected the battery cables, which he'd left disconnected so it wouldn't run down, and the car started without a hitch. He'd crossed the state line into South Carolina singing along with the car radio.

The fifties-era Airstream, sans trailer, was parked not too far as the crow flies from the cabin. It had been there since the day he'd bought it off a commercial fisherman who'd fallen on hard times and was moving to live with his in-laws somewhere in the Midwest.

He'd been happy to unload the Airsteam to the elderly man who had a hearing problem and walked with a cane. The story Carl had spun was that he was escaping the nursing home that his ungrateful children had consigned him to. The fisherman, resentful of Fate himself, sympathized, took his cash, gave him a bill of sale, and never looked back.

Over the years, the aluminum tube had sunk deep into the soil. A thick vine had grown up over the rounded rear of it and over one third of the top. That helped camouflage it, although someone would have had to have ventured deep into the boondocks to spot it in the first place.

What he feared most was that he would return to it after an absence to find that a homeless person, teenagers looking for a hangout, or meth cookers had made themselves at home.

But the trailer was derelict enough to discourage even the most desperate trespassers. The night he'd left Saint Nelda's, he'd found it empty, but musty-smelling. It had been so stifling inside, it was like being in a convection oven. But he'd spent almost twenty-four hours there before reuniting with Jeremy at the cabin.

During that time, he'd prepared his hideout for when it might be needed, which a gut instinct had told him would be soon.

His instinct had proven to be unfailing. Headly's presence in Savannah had represented a turning point in their forty-year-old rivalry. For the first time in their turbulent history together, they were in the same place at the same time.

It had been seventeen years since Carl had been credited with a crime, but the FBI agent hadn't given up the chase, retired, gotten slow and fat. No, Headly was here, and, according to news accounts, he was recovering well from the gunshot.

It seemed to Carl that a long-overdue showdown was inevitable. He looked forward to it. Last night, after bidding Jeremy a final good-bye, he'd come to his hideaway to plan and prepare for it.

He'd provisioned the Airstream with nonperishable food, bottled water, and paper goods. He had changes of clothing to fit various guises. He'd stockpiled items bought over time at hardware and variety stores. One never knew when something would come in handy.

This morning, he'd shaved every hair from his head, using several disposable razors and large amounts of shaving cream in order to make his scalp as slick as a billiard ball. He'd also shaved his eyebrows off. Eyelashes weren't a problem. He didn't have many left anyway.

To his face, he applied a moisturizer with a green tint. It was supposed to reduce ruddiness in a woman's complexion, but what it did for him was give his complexion a yellow-grayish cast.

He dressed himself in oversized clothes and put on a large baseball cap that virtually rocked on top of his skull each time he moved his head. Checking himself in the cracked mirror, he laughed.

He'd achieved the look he was after.

"I apologize for lying to you last night."

Dawson decided to get the apology out of the way first. They'd had their dinner-Amelia was a good cook-followed by ice-cream sundaes and two rounds of Chutes and Ladders. The boys had gone to bed reluctantly, but finally they were asleep.

He and Amelia had shared the last of the white wine. Since she'd been told to stay indoors, they couldn't go out on the porch, which they would have preferred. Instead they'd taken their wine into the living room and had made themselves comfortable in matching slipcovered chairs.

They'd kept the window shutters open, the lights off. The precaution of semidarkness was taken only in part because of security issues. Actually they were seeking at least the illusion of privacy.

"If you had told me what you had in mind, I would have stopped you."

"You would have tried," he said. "I didn't want to fight with you about it. I played it the way I thought best."

He took a sip of wine. She made several revolutions around the rim of her glass with her index finger. The delay tactics ran out.

Looking over at him, she said, "Tell me everything."

"Are you sure you want to know?"

"No," she admitted. "Not at all sure."

"Some of it will be painful for you to hear."

"I realize that. But if you don't tell me, I'll always wonder what he said, and I think that would be worse than knowing the full extent."

He started with how he'd found the property based on Glenda's discovery. "My little covert expedition could have resulted in nothing. But I guess I'll owe Glenda two boxes of candy this Christmas." He then described the cabin. "You knew nothing about it?"

"Nothing."

"Basically it was a dump. I thought at first that no one was there. Then Jeremy told me that he could shoot me through the door. Which turned out not to be true."

"Were you afraid?"

"I won't bullshit you. My heart was in my throat."

"You were crazy to go there. Alone. Unarmed. They could have killed you on sight."

"That crossed my mind," he said, grimly understating. "But I was relying on Carl's ego. I was reasonably sure he couldn't resist talking to me."

"Once before, he confided in a journalist, then killed him afterward."

"Headly told you about that?"

She nodded.

"He shouldn't have."

"He was preparing me for the worst."

He finished his wine and set the empty glass on the end table, signaling that he was getting to the heart of the matter. "He was almost dead when I got there." He described Jeremy's condition in clinical language that spared her the graphic ugliness.

"I called for help, then started asking him questions. He admitted that the house fire was deliberately set to kill the Wessons. He'd been very attached to them, but I guess their usefulness to Carl had expired. He confessed to killing Darlene Strong and Stef. He said to tell you that he was sorry."

"For mistaking her for me?"

"Sorry for wanting you dead." He repeated everything that Jeremy had told him about killing Stef on impulse. "He said that if he'd had time to think about killing you, he wouldn't have been able to."

She absorbed all that, then, her voice thick with emotion, asked, "Anything else?"

"He talked about Hunter and Grant." He related that exchange.

Choking back tears, she said, "He denied himself so much joy."

"His decision. He chose Carl over them. Over you."

"Yes, he made his decision. But unfortunately he's not the only person affected by it." She looked at him imploringly. "How will I tell my children about their father's crimes? About Carl? I must, I know that. But I'm afraid that once they know about their bloodline, it will haunt them and dictate how they live the rest of their lives."

"Yes, it sucks. And, no, it can't be undone. But it can dictate their lives in a positive way. They're made of good stuff, too. Their gene pool also includes you and your father."

Her nod of agreement was thoughtful, made absently, but he regained her attention when he took her wineglass from her hand and set it on the table beside his. Then he clasped both her hands. "Amelia, your dad didn't commit suicide. They killed him."

By the time he had finished telling her what Jeremy had confessed, tears were streaming from her eyes. The tracks of them reflected the meager light coming in through the open shutters, painting wet, silvery streaks on her cheeks.

She pulled her hands from his and placed them over her face, sobbing into them. "How horrible for him. Oh, God, how horrible."

He moved to sit on the arm of her chair and rubbed comforting circles on her back. "You had to be told, and I wanted to be the one to tell you. I knew it would break your heart, but also relieve your mind. Try to forget the horrible part. The last thing your father did was also the best thing he ever did. He demonstrated just how much he loved you."

"He spared my life."

He turned her head to face him and used his thumbs to wipe the tears off her cheeks. "Jeremy could have taken that secret to his grave. Much as I hate giving him credit for anything, that confession is proof that he did care for you. Even loved you, I think. He knew you had agonized over your father's supposed suicide and wanted you to know that he hadn't deserted you. I think Jeremy empathized."

"How so?"

"Floral Stimel is dead. She's buried out there beneath the cabin. They've got a forensic team working to exhume her body now."

He could see the understanding in her expression as she said quietly, "His mother."

"Yeah. For all her misdeeds, Flora was still his mother. It upset him to talk about her. I think he loved her, too."

"How did she die? When?"

"Jeremy's time ran out before he could tell me."

She stared into his eyes as though trying to see into his deepest being. Then her fingertips lightly stroked his eyebrows, his cheekbone, the side of his face down to his jawline. "You were kind to him, weren't you?"

"He was dying." He thought he would end it there, with that simple statement of fact, but she continued to look at him as though knowing there were ambiguities he needed to express.

"I thought if I ever got near him, I'd want to kill him for everything he'd done. Especially to you and those boys. I wanted to hate him. But he was a broken man, Amelia. And, yeah, I felt sorry for him. Because he was a victim, too. Left to the couple who reared him, he probably would have gone a different path.

"But Carl destroyed any chance Jeremy might have had to lead a normal, happy, and productive life. It all goes back to Carl. He's the villain. And I intend to tell him that to his face."

She flinched. "What do you mean?"

"I'm not going to give up on getting a one-on-one with him."

"Once he's captured, you mean."

He left her and, going to stand at the windows, peered through the slats of the shutters. "I wonder where the cowardly bastard scuttled to after leaving his son to slowly bleed to death."

He felt Amelia move up behind him, but he didn't turn around.

"You're not thinking of trying to run him to ground."

"I doubt I'd be that lucky twice."

"Lucky?" She took him by the arm and turned him around with a determination that surprised him. "Why would you consider it lucky to encounter him? Why would you take such a dangerous risk?"

He gnawed his lower lip, searching for words.

"Why, Dawson?" she demanded.

"Because I've been a basket case for long enough. I want to prove that I can hear a loud banging noise without ducking for cover. Or get through a night without pills and liquor, without waking up bathed in a cold sweat, a dying scream in my mouth."

"You want to test your bravery?"

"You could put it that way."

Her chin went up a notch. "Hogwash."

"Pardon me?"

"I don't believe that for a second. You don't need to prove your courage, even to yourself. If you hadn't reacted exactly as you did when Headly was shot, I'd be injured or dead, too. You didn't duck for cover. You took command of the situation.

"You registered the direction the shots came from, even as you pushed me to the ground and then went to attend Headly. You probably don't even remember, but you issued orders to the people who came running, and they did as you said because your response to the emergency was correct.

"So don't try to sell me on the idea that you went to slay a dragon in order to win a badge of courage. To win a Pulitzer maybe. Is that what this is about?"

"What if it is?"

"Would a prize be worth risking your life?"

He pushed his fingers through his hair. "This has nothing to do with a freakin' prize."

"Then what's worth risking your life for?"

He didn't say anything.

"Dawson?"

"What?"

"Tell me."

"What?"

"What is it that you want?"

They stood there, squared off, breathing hard, angry.

Then he pulled her against him and began kissing her with a need so fierce it alarmed him. But not enough to stop. Especially not when she responded in kind. As though pent-up fear, despair, and lust had been unleashed simultaneously and in equal proportions, they kissed ravenously.

But he didn't lose his head completely. Aware of the guards patrolling the beach and keeping a careful watch on the house, he lifted her against him and carried her into a short hallway that would prevent them from being seen. He set her down with her back against the wall and resumed the frantic kissing.