Deadline (Sandra Brown)

at his raised voice. He had a lot to make up to them.
    Soon he would.
    After all these years, the goal was days away from being achieved. Willard Strong would be convicted of killing Darlene, and, by extension, Jeremy Wesson. After that, he could wage his private war with impunity. He could wreak havoc in all fifty states, and nobody would be looking for a dead man.
    There was one hitch that needed to be ironed out.
    He’d been shocked to learn that the woman found dead behind Mickey’s wasn’t Amelia. Jesus, he still couldn’t believe he’d mistaken another woman for her.
    The day of the storm, the ocean had become so choppy, he’d decided against going all the way back to Savannah, and instead had docked the boat on Saint Nelda’s. He hadn’t been to the island that much, so he wasn’t concerned about being recognized.
    If he happened to cross paths with someone who’d known Jeremy Wesson, it was still unlikely they’d see through the thick beard that covered the lower third of his face, or beyond the cap he wore to cover the patch of missing scalp he’d sliced off himself and tossed into that dog pen. In the fifteen months he’d been in hiding, he’d also put on thirty pounds.
    So when he tied up at Saint Nelda’s pier during the downpour, he hadn’t felt in danger of being discovered. He’d been standing inside the wheelhouse of the boat, drinking a cup of coffee and staring out at the water-logged village, when he spotted her.
    The rain had been like a curtain, and it was well past dark. She might have gone unnoticed if not for the raincoat. That loud, ugly rain slicker Amelia had bought in Charleston was hard to miss, even in the feeble glow of light coming through the windows of the general store.
    For the four hundred and eighty-something days since he’d left those damn dogs fighting over Darlene’s remains, he’d been biding his time until he could remove Amelia and reclaim his sons. It would have been lunacy to attempt anything as bold as kidnapping Hunter and Grant while Amelia remained a key factor in Willard’s trial and was frequently the subject of news stories. Besides, he knew that her testimony would help convict Willard, and he hadn’t wanted to hamper that.
    But over those boring days and lonely nights, he’d contemplated several scenarios, thinking hard about how he would bring about her removal when the time was right. He searched for an option other than death, because…Well, just because.
    There was such a thing as overplanning, however. Sometimes one could miss an opportunity while strategizing. When a plum was dropped into your lap, it was practically obligatory to accept the gift from Fate, wasn’t it?
    Reclaiming his sons would be more easily accomplished with their mother permanently out of the picture. The unfairness of that could be contemplated later. But at that moment in time, he had to act.
    He’d set his coffee aside, secured a ball-peen hammer from the toolbox, and tucked it inside his own slicker. A man making a mad dash through pelting rain wouldn’t arouse suspicion. But it didn’t matter, because he made it to the parking lot behind Mickey’s without anyone seeing him.
    He’d hunkered behind the Dumpster to wait.
    But— damn it all —when she emerged from the store, the guy was with her, the one who’d been playing on the beach with his kids, the tall, rangy stranger with whom Amelia had sat on her porch the night before, in side-by-side rocking chairs, drinking wine.
    Heads down, they ran to her car. He could hear them laughing as they dodged puddles. The guy opened the car’s rear door and stowed her purchases in the footwell. She opened the passenger door and tossed her purse onto the seat. They exchanged a brief good-bye, then he jogged away, back toward the store.
    As she was making her way around the rear of the car, she dropped her keys. She bent down to pick them up. He seized the moment. He didn’t think of her face, her eyes, the body he’d made love to. He didn’t think of her kind nature, her musical laugh, or her cute frown of concentration. He thought nothing of her humanity. She was a target, like the dozens he’d taken out in Iraq and Afghanistan from hundreds of yards away. She had to go. That’s all there was to it.
    He heard the sound, felt the give, when the hammer breached her skull, only fractionally impeded by the hood of the slicker.
    Never knowing what hit her, she fell face-first into the mud. He took her by the