Deadline (Sandra Brown)

him if Amelia was safe.
    “Soon as our call ended last night, I talked to Knutz. He’s got people he occasionally uses for surveillance, sorta freelancers. He put somebody on Amelia. A gal actually, but she’s one of the best, he says.
    “Anyway, she followed Amelia when she left the sheriff’s office. She went straight to her apartment, spent the night there without incident. She left it this morning at eight o’clock.” He checked his wristwatch. “About ten minutes ago.”
    “So she’s okay?”
    “Didn’t I indicate that?”
    “What about the boys?”
    “They weren’t with her.”
    “She must have left them with the museum guy and his wife. She said she might. It was probably for the best. But somebody should be guarding that house, too. They—” He caught Headly looking at him curiously. “What?”
    “For a jailbird, you’re awfully concerned about the welfare of a widow and her two kids.”
    “If something happens to them, it’ll be on your head for not telling the locals about the possibility of Jeremy’s resurrection.”
    Querulously, Headly said, “Another one of Knutz’s freelancers is watching the museum guy’s house. Okay?”
    “Why didn’t you just say so?”
    “Well, I’ve been a little busy lately getting your ass out of jail.”
    “Thanks, by the way.”
    Headly merely snorted.
    Dawson said, “I wasn’t worried about being formally charged.” He’d spent an uncomfortable night in jail—fortunately not in the same cell with Ray Dale Huffman, whom, had he gotten close to, he might have strangled. “It was only a matter of time before they had to let me go.”
    Headly motioned him toward the rental car he’d picked up at the Savannah airport.
    “How do you figure?”
    “They didn’t have any evidence.”
    Headly used the remote key to unlock the car doors. They got in on opposite sides, and Headly started the engine immediately. “Of illegal drug possession or homicide?”
    “Certainly no evidence tying me to Stef’s murder.”
    Headly just sat there with his hand on the gearshift, looking at him, silently asking about the other possible criminal charge.
    “All right, I’d bought some pills from Ray Dale. Yesterday, a rookie deputy was sent upstairs with me while I changed clothes. He was green, easily distracted with jabber. I snatched the bottle of them off my nightstand, and when he allowed me to go to the john, I flushed them.”
    “Clever you.” Headly backed out of the parking slot, muttering angrily under his breath.
    “Will you relax?” Dawson said. “They were—”
    “I know what they were. I found your stash in your apartment.”
    “Excuse me? You broke into my apartment?”
    “Don’t go all righteously indignant on me. I’m not the drug addict.”
    “I’m hardly an addict.”
    “No? Then why are your hands shaking?”
    He’d hoped no one would notice. “Look, I only needed something to take the edge off.”
    “Off what?”
    Dawson clammed up, then said, “I wasn’t taking anything you can’t get from a doctor.”
    “Then why aren’t you getting them from one, instead of buying them off guys on the street with names like Ray Dale? God only knows what they’re laced with.”
    Dawson was about to argue that, but truth be told, he couldn’t vouch for the pharmaceutical integrity of the pills he’d been taking. His only criterion for quality control had been that they worked. Their numbing effect was swift and short-term, but even a moment away from the nightmare was worth the risk of taking compounds of dubious origin.
    “I was careful,” he mumbled.
    “Buying only from reliable, upstanding illegal drug dealers.”
    Dawson didn’t address his godfather’s sarcasm, knowing it was justified. His recklessness was indefensible, so he didn’t even attempt to excuse it. “Take the next right, then the hotel is up one block on the left.”
    When he’d relocated to Saint Nelda’s, he’d taken only what he thought he would need at the beach and hadn’t checked out of the hotel, a decision he was glad of now. He left Headly in the lobby while he went upstairs to shower and change clothes. He was back down in five minutes. In less than ten more, they were entering the courthouse.

Chapter 14
    C ourt convened shortly after nine o’clock. The judge said she hoped everyone had enjoyed the holiday weekend, then asked Willard Strong’s defense attorney if he was ready to cross-examine the witness.
    Mike Gleason stood. “Ready,