Deadline (Sandra Brown)

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