"Who else has heard that story?"

"No one."

"Headly?"

"No one."

"But you entrusted me with it. That makes me special."

"You were already special," he said gruffly.

"Don't push me away again."

He rubbed his face against her breasts. "I don't want to, God knows."

She tipped his head up. "Then why do you? The reason this time."

Before he could speak, there was a knock on the door.

She threw a glance toward it. "Room service."

"About bloody time."

Another knock. "Mr. Scott?"

She sighed. "Bad bloody time, but I don't think he's going away."

Dawson made to get up, but she told him to stay put. She walked the short hallway, released the bolt, and opened the door. Anticipating a room-service waiter bearing a tray, she was momentarily puzzled by the funny-looking man holding a wilting bouquet of flowers.

Which he immediately threw to the floor, leaving only a pistol in his hand. He jammed it against her ribs as he pushed her backward into the room.

She turned and cried out to Dawson. He bounded off the bed, but drew up short when Carl caught her around the throat from behind and placed the barrel of the handgun against her temple.

"Well, how about this? A little reunion with my beach friends."

Dawson's hands balled into fists at his sides. Enunciating each word, he said, "Let her go."

"Now, why would I do that?"

"Because if you hurt her, I'll kill you."

"You've got it wrong. I'm killing you." He swung the pistol away from her and aimed it at Dawson.

Chapter 28.

I'm about done for the day. Before I sign you over to the evening shift, is there anything I can get you?"

The nurse was one of Headly's favorites. Even so, he replied grumpily. "Cheeseburger and fries."

"Don't ask for what I can't deliver. You're still on a restricted diet."

"He knows," Eva said from the chair where she was thumbing through a magazine. "He's just being ornery."

The nurse wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his biceps. "How about some skim milk?"

"How about a stiff bourbon?"

She swatted his arm. "BP's lowered. That's good." As she noted it on the chart, she asked Eva if she was staying overnight again. "That foldout can't be comfortable."

"It's not bad. The patient, however, is a pain in the butt."

"Stop talking about me like I'm not here."

The nurse chuckled. "I know what a grouch he can be, so I think it's sweet of you to stay with him, Mrs. Headly. In fact, your ears should have been burning earlier today."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"I was bragging on you."

"To whom?"

"This little old man who was waiting on the elevator. He saw you in the hall talking to Mr. Scott and recognized him. I confess the conversation got gossipy. I told him how y'all had known Mr. Scott since birth, that he was your godson, but mostly I bragged on you for staying here in Mr. Headly's room, taking very few breaks. Like everyone else, he was impressed." She made one final adjustment to Headly's IV drip. "Changed your mind about the milk?"

"No, thanks."

"Well then, I'm out of here. Rest easy. See y'all tomorrow."

As the door closed behind her, Eva remarked, "Sweet girl."

"Hmm." Headly worked his head deeper into the pillow and closed his eyes. He was more tired than he let on. A physical therapist had been in earlier doling out wisecracks, bonhomie, and sheer torture. By the time the fifteen minutes was up, Headly's hands and arms were tingling. Which was a relief, but still.

As though reading his mind, Eva said, "You should be doing the exercises the therapist showed you."

"Give me ten minutes' rest."

"He said-"

"Ten minutes and I will."

"Gary."

"Eva. Just because you're the most popular girl on the third floor, don't think you can boss me."

"I do have my admirers, it seems."

"A little old man? Humph. You've already got one."

She sighed. "You're right. I guess I'm stuck with you. Besides, it sounded like he was as interested in Dawson as he was in me."

Headly was about to make a wisecrack about that when suddenly it felt as though an electrical charge had shot through him, jolting his brain and body out of lassitude. "Eva!"

She tossed her magazine aside, lunged from her chair, and was at his side in a blink. "What? Are you in pain?"

"Get her back."

"What?"

"The nurse, get her back in here!"

She didn't waste time on questions but dashed from the room and, within seconds, was propelling the startled young woman back through the door. Headly said, "What did he look like?"

She just gaped at him.

"The man. The little old man you were talking to about Eva and Dawson. He asked questions about them?"

She nodded, swallowed. "He recognized Mr. Scott."

"What did he look like? Describe him."

"He was a little old man," she said in a helpless tone. "A cancer patient."

To Eva, Headly said, "Get Knutz on the phone." Going back to the nurse, he asked her the man's approximate height and weight, age, what he'd been wearing. By the time Knutz answered, Headly had a description.

Eva held the phone to his ear as he rattled off information. "Carl's disguised himself as a cancer patient. Shaved head. No eyebrows. Baggy clothes and a blue baseball cap. He was in the hospital, on this floor, around ten thirty or eleven this morning. Check the security cameras."

Knutz began putting up a reasonable argument, but Headly cut him off. "Goddammit, of course it could've been a little old man with cancer," he shouted. "But this is like something Carl Wingert would do, and I fucking know it was him. It feels like him. Yeah, yeah, I'll hold."

He secured the phone between his ear and shoulder and said to Eva, "Call Dawson. You have his new number?" She fished her phone from her handbag and called the number Dawson himself had programmed into her speed dial. Headly added, "Tell him to take this as a serious threat. Not to be macho and blow it off."

The nurse was crying and wringing her hands. "If I did something wrong, I'm sorry. We were just talking."

"Don't be sorry," Headly said. She was about to lose it, and he knew that if he applied the pressure he wanted to, she would probably collapse and he'd get nothing more from her. Gentling his tone, he said, "Did you get his name?"

She shook her head.

"Did he tell you where he lived?"

"No."

"Where he was going?"

"He...he was taking flowers to a sick friend and had gotten off on the wrong floor."

Like hell a sick friend, Headly thought. He'd been reconnoitering the hospital. "You're doing great, sweetheart. Now, start at the beginning and tell me exactly what you said, what he said, as best as you can remember."

She recounted the conversation in stops and starts but without folding completely. "He...I don't know how to describe it."

Headly pounced on her hesitancy. "Describe what? He what?"

"He perked up some when I told him that Dawson Scott was your godson. You know? Like a light came on."

Headly shot a glance toward Eva, who was holding out her phone, looking as gut sick and every bit as fearful as Headly felt. "Straight to voice mail."

"What a disappointment." As Dawson spoke, he was looking into Amelia's face, wanting it to be the last thing he saw before he died, not Carl Wingert's gloating sneer.

But Carl didn't pull the trigger. Dawson's remark had piqued his curiosity just as he'd hoped it would. "Disappointment?"

Dawson shifted his gaze to the criminal. "I'm not sure you're worth writing about, after all."

"That's why you went to the cabin? Hoping to get an interview with me?"

Dawson could tell the idea appealed to him. "With the famed Carl Wingert. I had to settle for an interview with Jeremy instead. Now I'm thinking maybe he was the better subject."

"Awww. You're hurting my feelings."

"You're just not that glamorous anymore, Carl. Killing me, killing Amelia. That's your grand finale? Hate to tell you, but that's a lame ending to your illustrious outlaw career."

Without his white hair and bushy eyebrows to give him a benign mien, Carl's smile was one of unmitigated evil. "Who says killing you will be my finale?"

"You think you'll be able to shoot both of us, then waltz out of here?"

"Yep. The same way I waltzed in, while her guards were chatting up the girls working the desk. Nobody pays attention to an ailing senior citizen."

"Clever disguise."

"Don't I know it."

"But hardly razzle-dazzle."

"I have other plans that don't include you."

"Hunter and Grant?" Speaking for the first time, Amelia asked tearfully, "Will you take them?"

"Hell, no. What would I want with a pair of kids?"

"But...but I thought that's what all this was about. You and Jeremy staged his death so you could get the boys and no one would ever dream that their father had taken them."

"That was Jeremy's goal, not mine."