Deadline (12 page)

F
or several seconds she was too stunned to move, then she bolted from her chair and marched across the room. He caught her just as she stepped onto the bottom stair. Hooking her upper arm with his hand, he brought her around to face him.

“Let go of me!”

“Calm down.”

“Go to hell!”

“Keep your voice down. You’ll wake up the boys.”

“You bet I’ll wake up the boys.” She jerked her arm free. “I’m taking my sons and getting far away from you, and I don’t care if we have to wade to Savannah tonight!”

She shoved his chest and pushed herself out of his grip, then turned and started up the stairs. But on the third one, her socks caused her to slip. She fell forward, catching herself on the step above her, but knocking one knee hard against the edge of the tread. She clasped her knee and sat down on the step, rocking in pain.

“Dammit! Are you okay?”

He sat down on the step beneath her, bringing his face level with hers. His concern looked genuine, which only made her more furious. She placed her elbows on her knees and lowered her face to her hands. “Get away from me.”

He didn’t, of course. He just sat there, silent and unmoving, for as long as she did. Finally, when she had composed herself, she lowered her hands and wiped her tear-dampened palms on the legs of her pajamas. Looking anywhere except at him, she noticed the overturned tumbler in front of the chair where she’d been sitting.

“I dropped my glass. The bourbon spilled.”

“Who gives a fuck?”

The vulgarity was unexpected, and she realized immediately that he’d used it intentionally to shock her out of her anger. It worked. She laughed, or choked out a laugh.

He motioned toward her knee. “I’ll be happy to kiss it and make it well.”

His genial smile completely defused her anger. She gave another involuntary laugh, then shook her head with chagrin. “Ah, Dawson.”

“What?”

“I didn’t want to like you.”

“Then we’re even. I didn’t want to like you, either.” The admission surprised her, and it must have shown. Leaning back, he rested his elbows on the step on which she sat and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “I resented this story being thrust on me.”

“Was it thrust?”

“Yes. In the sense that I couldn’t say no.”

“Why?”

He closed one eye in a grimace. “That’s complicated.” He didn’t divulge why.

Absently she rubbed her sore knee. “From a layman’s standpoint, Jeremy’s story has a lot of intriguing elements. Why weren’t you interested?”

He stared at a spot in the distance for a long time, and when he answered, it was in a soft voice. “I saw guys blown to bits. Saw men risking their lives to save a wounded buddy whose odds of making it were nonexistent. Watched men and women putting themselves in harm’s way to save a stranger. A hostile, even.

“Having witnessed incredible acts of bravery, I was disgusted by a decorated Marine who came home after surviving all that and then let his life—a damn good life, it seemed to me—go into the sewer. I didn’t know Jeremy Wesson, but I didn’t like him. Still don’t.” He looked at her then. “But I can relate to him. And that’s what really disgusts me.”

“The post-traumatic stress?”

He raised his shoulders in a small shrug.

Since that was the first time he had acknowledged that he suffered it to any degree, suspicion crept in, and she angled away from him. “Is this an I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours?”

“Your what and my what?”

“Vulnerability. You’ve revealed yours. Now you expect me to reveal mine?”

“Your vulnerability being your father.” When she didn’t answer, he asked, “Do you really think I’m that manipulative?”

“If not, why did you refer to his death as a suicide? The coroner ruled it an unintentional overdose of medication.”

“I’m aware of that. But there were rumors and speculation.”

“Which I squelched under threat of suing for libel if they were printed or broadcast. They were never made public, not even by the most jaundiced media. So how did you—” She stopped. “Oh. Glenda again.”

“She has a ferret in her gene pool.”

“So now I’m trapped into talking to you about it.”

“No you’re not.”

“Sure I am. How can I dispel your misconceptions about my father’s death without talking about it?”

“You can leave me with my misconceptions.”

That wasn’t a desirable option, and he knew it. “Do I at least have your word that anything I say is off the record?”

“Yes.”

Perhaps she was swayed by the intimacy of the situation, or his masculine appeal, or the sincerity in his eyes. But, for whatever reason, in that moment she accepted him as trustworthy. “I’ll never believe Daddy did it on purpose, especially knowing that I—the boys and I—would be the ones to find him.”

“Christ.”

“We were expected at his house at three o’clock, after I had picked them up from preschool. His time of death was placed at somewhere around two. He wouldn’t have done that to me. I know it. The boys rushing in, seeing him slumped at his desk?” She shook her head adamantly.

“Never in a million years would he have deliberately left us with that memory. And that’s assuming that he had a reason to take his life, when there was no evidence of any. He embraced life and lived it to the fullest.”

“Incurable cancer? Financial troubles? Woman problems? A political scandal about to come to light?”

“Nothing. I swear to you, Dawson. I would know.”

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

“Fathers don’t tell their daughters everything, especially ugly things.”

“I would have known if something were terribly wrong.”

“Okay.”

“You say okay, but I feel your skepticism.” She continued trying to convince him. “It was his housekeeper’s afternoon off. Which explains how he could have overdosed. She’d been with us for years, even long before Mother died. She adored him, as everyone did.

“She nagged him about diet, exercise, and taking his various medications. She knew which were to be taken with or without food. She kept track of all that. So it’s conceivable to me that he simply made a mistake, and she wasn’t there to prevent it.”

He frowned doubtfully. “It was a lot of pills to swallow by mistake.”

“Says one who takes a lot.”

“Exactly,” he said with matching curtness. “And I know better than to eat a whole damn bottle full.”

She put her hand to her forehead and rubbed it with her fingertips, noting that they were chilled. “He loved me and the boys to distraction. He was devoted to us. I’ll go to my own grave believing that his death was a tragic accident, not a suicide. Jeremy…” She waved her hand. “Everything associated with him was terrible, including the way he died.”

She glanced at him, thinking he might dispute that point. He didn’t. “But I would gladly go through the whole Jeremy episode of my life again, I would endure anything, if I could have my father back. If only for long enough to ask him if he did it intentionally, and if he did,
why
? I’d ask him how he could have abandoned me so cruelly?”

Dawson’s eyes seemed to be lit by an internal fire that burned through her. After a long moment, he relaxed his intensity, stood up, and extended his hand to help her up. “It’s late, and you must be exhausted.” He left her only long enough to get a drinking glass from the kitchen, then they climbed the stairs together.

“How’s the knee?”

“I’ll have a bruise tomorrow.”

“You need some skid-proof socks.”

“I’ll put them on my Christmas list.”

When they reached the bedroom where the boys slept, she opened the door and peeked inside. “I don’t think they’ve moved.”

“You’re a good mother, Amelia.”

His tone had the ring of unmitigated sincerity, and when she came back around to face him, she saw that his expression was just as serious.

“Thank you.”

“You would never abandon them, would you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“What about him? Would he?”

Jeremy.
His murder would have orphaned Hunter and Grant. Faking his death would be abandonment of another sort entirely. As cruel as a suicide.

Gruffly, she said, “I appreciate your hospitality. Good night.”

Dawson went into his bedroom, closed the door, and leaned back, gently knocking his head against it as though trying to beat some sense into it. If the door had had a lock, he would have locked himself in. Tonight he’d protected Amelia and her family from the storm, as well as from any unknown perils.

But who or what was going to protect her from him?

Her heartbreak over her father’s death had almost broken his determination not to touch her again. He didn’t trust himself to lay a hand on her, even in a comforting gesture.

He moved to the window. The wind still howled, the rainfall was torrential, and occasional lightning revealed the thick cloud cover. The storm hadn’t yet blown itself out. He looked toward Amelia’s house. No car. No Stef.

While Amelia had been preparing the boys for bed, he’d slipped back down to the kitchen and retrieved his pills and a bottle of bourbon. Now he sat down on the side of the bed and self-medicated with two tablets and two slugs of whiskey. He undressed and got into bed.

Lightning flickered across the ceiling. Thunder rumbled. It was a menacing night, but he didn’t have to worry about Amelia, Hunter, and Grant. Tonight they were safe. Which was probably why he was able to fall asleep faster than usual.

The nightmare left him in peace for the better part of the night. But it was merely stalking the perimeter of his subconscious, biding its time as it gathered momentum, because when it pounced, it did so with renewed ferocity.

“Dawson! Hey, man, up here!”

He turned toward the direction of the voice. The sun was blinding, silhouetting one of the soldiers against its glare on the crest of the ridge. Dawson raised his hand to shield his eyes and, making out Hawkins, waved.

“Dawson?”

“Dawson, get up here.”

“Be right there.”

“I ain’t gonna wait forever. You want a story, haul your ass up here.”

“Let me grab my laptop.”

“Fucking now, man!”

“Dawson.”

As he made his way up the unforgiving incline, time and again he lost his footing in the loose sand and rock. It seemed an endless climb. Hawkins became increasingly impatient, urging him to hurry. He was out of breath by the time he reached the ridge. Sweat was dripping into his eyes, stinging them. He tried to wipe it away, but the salty film remained, so it was through blurred vision that he saw Hawkins grinning at him.

Then—“No!”

“Dawson.”

As always the noise ricocheting inside his skull woke him. He sat bolt upright, drenched in sweat, futilely trying to wipe it from his eyes with a hand that was bathed in the brine of his own terror, his mouth still open around the scream that invariably came too late.

This was like every other time he was jolted out of the nightmare, except now Amelia was here, her hand resting on his shoulder, and he realized that she’d been here for a while, her voice mingling with that of the smiling young soldier from rural North Dakota.

Dawson drew up his knees and placed his elbows on them, holding his head in his hands as he gasped for breath. The terror gradually receded, but not the humiliation, made even worse when Amelia sat down on the edge of the bed. He was as sharply aware of her pity as he was of her nearness.

“You were calling out.”

“Sorry I woke you. Go back to bed.”

She removed her hand from his shoulder, but stayed. Knowing what a frightful and pathetic sight he must be, he shook back his hair and used the hem of the sheet bunched around his waist to wipe the sweat off his face, neck, and chest.

She asked, “Is it always the same dream?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to—”

“No.”

“It might help if you—”

“I’m not going to talk about it.”

“Not with me or not with anyone?”

“Anyone.”

“No one would think less of you if—”

“I would.”

“You’ll never get rid of it until—”

“I’ll work it out, okay?”

“How?”

“Leave me alone.”

“To do what? Take more pills?”

“Maybe.”

“You have a problem, Dawson.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. And drugs and alcohol aren’t the solution.”

He whipped his head toward her and snapped, “What the fuck do you know about it?”

She recoiled as though he’d struck her.

Realizing what he’d said, he muttered an expletive and reached for her, catching her hand as she shot off the bed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Applying only light pressure so as not to frighten her, he brought her around to face him. He looked directly into her eyes, silently appealing for forgiveness and, short of that, understanding. She remained unmoving.

“Please don’t look at me like that.” Then he closed his eyes and raised her hand to his mouth. He kissed the inside of her wrist, whispering repeatedly against her pulse, “I’m sorry.” Bending his head low over her hand, he kissed the base of her thumb, and finally pressed his lips into her palm, hoarsely whispering, “Don’t be afraid of me. Please.” He touched his tongue to the hollow of her hand.

She made a small sound that brought his head up. Her expression had turned into one of confusion and indecision. She was breathing lightly and rapidly through her lips.

Caution and conscience kept him from dragging her down to him.

Caution and conscience be damned.

He pulled on her hand, gently but inexorably, until she was again sitting on the edge of the bed. Wide-eyed, she watched him as his fingertips explored the features of her face. Brows, cheekbones, nose, lips, jawline, and chin. He memorized them by touch.

Since she allowed that, he brushed her hair aside and nuzzled her neck until he felt the warmth of her skin against his lips. “I wouldn’t…I
couldn’t
ever hurt you. Believe that.” He planted a tender kiss on the side of her neck. Then another.