Deadline (Sandra Brown)

excessively secretive.”
    He got up and walked over to a bulletin board that was papered with Wanted posters, forming a collage of sinister faces. One poster stood out, however, because the wanted individual had the benign countenance of an angel framed by curly blond hair. Not yet thirty years old, she was wanted for armed robbery and murder. A twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward had been offered for information leading to her arrest. She was considered to be armed and dangerous.
    The criminal bent of one’s personality wasn’t always obvious.
    He turned back to Amelia. “I didn’t use Stef as a source of information on you. But maybe someone else did. Someone who wanted to keep track of you and your sons, who wanted to know where you were and who you were with. Someone having a great deal of personal interest in your activities, your daily routine, your comings and goings.”
    She took a deep, stuttering breath, indicating to Dawson that even though she didn’t respond, she understood all too well what he was leading up to.
    In a quiet voice, he said, “There’s the age factor.”
    “We don’t know how old this Dirk is.”
    “For the sake of argument, let’s say his age fits.”
    “Let’s not,” she said, coming to her feet. “The man Stef described to me sounds nothing like Jeremy.”
    “Tattoos are easily acquired. The beard might take a week or two. He’s been missing for fifteen months.”
    “You don’t think I’d recognize the man I was married to, even with a beard?”
    “You would, but the casual observer wouldn’t. Furthermore, nobody’s looking for Jeremy Wesson. The general consensus is that Willard Strong fed him to a pack of starving pit bulls.”
    She took a reflexive step away from him, but when the back of her knees touched the seat of the chair, she sat back down abruptly. He returned to his seat beside her. He wanted to caress her cheek, at the very least, take her hand. He refrained, largely because he feared a rebuff.
    “Something else has been nagging at me.”
    She shook her head as though to stave off whatever it was he was about to say, but he didn’t let it deter him. “I haven’t shared this with the detectives because I wanted to run it past you, first.” And Headly. Above anyone else, he would trust Gary Headly’s instincts on this.
    “When I ran into Stef in the general store, she was wearing a rain slicker. I teased her about the loud pattern. Red with bright-yellow-and-white daisies. She told me she’d taken it from the trunk of your car.”
    “It’s mine. Jeremy and I went to Charleston for a getaway weekend. The weather turned bad, and I needed a raincoat in a hurry. That was the first one I found. It’s not something I would typically choose, so I kept it at the beach house and never wore it except there on the island.”
    “Last I saw her, Stef was standing beside your car, wearing your slicker, with—”
    “No.”
    “—the hood up.”
    “Stop!”
    “Amelia—”
    “Don’t say anymore.”
    Just then the door adjacent to the reception window swung outward and Tucker and Wills walked through. “Well, Mr. Scott,” Tucker drawled. “Glad to see you’re still here. You saved us a trip.”
    “I ran into Ms. Nolan.”
    Tucker introduced his partner to her.
    “Thank you for coming in, Ms. Nolan,” Wills said. As tall and thin as Tucker was short and stout, he had the bearing and stooped posture of a tenured professor. He was also the more sensitive of the two, and noticed how shaken Amelia appeared. “Ma’am, are you all right?”
    “Yes, fine. It’s been a terrible day.”
    “Of course. We realize what an imposition it is to ask you to come down here this time of night.”
    “Not at all. If I can help, I want to.”
    “We’ll be with you directly,” he told her.
    “Right now, it’s Mr. Scott we want to talk to.” Tucker hiked up his belt, or tried, and grinned at Dawson. “We were on our way to come find you.”
    “Here I am.” Despite his wisecrack, Dawson got a bad feeling about the detective’s smirk.
    “Do you know a guy named Ray Dale Huffman?”
    “Never heard of him.”
    “Are you sure?” Wills asked in a kinder tone.
    “Positive. Who is he?”
    “Repeat offender,” Tucker said. “We’ve got him in lockup. He heard through the jailhouse grapevine—it’s the damnedest thing how that works, truly. Anyhow, he got wind of us questioning you in connection to Miss DeMarco’s murder, and he offered to make a