Deadline (Sandra Brown)

area, Dawson joined Headly at the table and assessed the doughnut inventory. “Any with Bavarian-cream filling?”
    “Sorry, no.”
    “Then this will have to do.” He selected a plain glazed.
    “How’d it go last night?”
    The question immediately put Dawson on the defensive. “How’d what go?”
    “Did you get the shakes?”
    “I told you. I’m not a damn addict.”
    “Any nightmares?”
    He rolled his shoulders in a gesture that could have meant anything or nothing.
    “Only because you didn’t sleep at all.”
    Dawson silently endured Headly’s appraisal of his haggard face and the dark circles under his eyes.
    “If she ever sees you looking normal, she might not be attracted. It may be the zombie effect she finds appealing.”
    Dawson finished the rest of the doughnut, asking around the last bite, “Haven’t you got more important things to do than to try and piss me off?”
    “What’s giving you nightmares?”
    “I don’t recall telling you I had nightmares.”
    “You didn’t deny it, either.”
    Dawson folded his arms over his chest, letting his body language speak for itself.
    But Headly wasn’t through with him. “When are you going to tell me what happened to you over there? Why are you afraid to fall asleep?”
    Dawson mentally counted to ten, then repositioned himself in his chair to signal a change in topic. “Have you talked to Eva?”
    “This morning.”
    “How is she?”
    “Worried.”
    “She knows you don’t eat right when she’s not around.”
    “Not about me, about you.”
    “Then she’s worrying for nothing. How many times do I have to tell the two of you that I’m all right?”
    Headly took a deep breath, blew it out. “I shouldn’t have sent you down here.”
    Dawson snorted a laugh. “Too effing late.”
    “I know.” Headly looked at him meaningfully, then glanced over his shoulder toward the living room where the boys could be heard arguing over which movie they would watch. “How is she?”
    “She slept alone, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    “It isn’t.”
    Dawson knew the more defensive he was, the more Headly would browbeat him, so he addressed his question about Amelia without reading a subtext into it. “She’s brave. Tougher at the core, I think, than she appears on the surface. Steelier.”
    “I’m afraid that before this is over, she’ll need to be.”
    Before Dawson could ask what that remark portended, Amelia rejoined them, expelling a breath as she sat down. “Be concise, Mr. Headly. Buzz Lightyear will pacify them for only so long. I promised them playtime after the movie.”
    “Can’t blame them for wanting to play outside.”
    “They want to play with Dawson.”
    Headly turned and looked at him expectantly, obviously waiting for a comment. All he said was, “You’d better get started. You’re wasting valuable time.”
    Headly snuffled as though to say that Dawson was dodging an issue, but that for the moment it had to wait. “Okay, here’s where we are. Bernie was conveyed to the mainland on the ferry late yesterday evening.”
    “He said he was driving to Charleston.”
    “Well, he didn’t. Not in that car, anyway. They found it parked in a public lot just a few blocks from the ferry pier. No sign of him. We’ll keep an eye on the car, but my guess is that he abandoned it.”
    “Why do you think that?” Amelia asked. “He doesn’t know his true identity has been discovered.”
    “The car’s license plate was bogus. It’s been a few years since Michigan used that design, but few people down here would notice. Carl did such a good job of altering the year of expiration that it was undetectable from a distance. Plus, the VIN number has been scratched out so that it’s unreadable. No prints inside the car. None on the door handles. He wiped it clean.”
    “Is the parking lot attended?” Dawson asked.
    “No. Only monitored by meter maids. You park, feed bills into a metal box or use a credit card. The box spits out a receipt you leave on the inside of your windshield. His was good for twenty-four hours, and, from the time stamp, we know he was back on the mainland for forty-seven minutes before our band of brothers launched our raid on this house last night. He got a good head start.”
    “Security cameras?”
    “Several on the pier. We have him driving off the ferry. That’s it. The bags and boxes you saw him loading into the trunk?” he said to Amelia. “All empty. They were for show.”
    “The