Page 104 of Deadline

“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 bad hips, too, in all likelihood,” Dawson remarked sourly. “Nice touch, though.” He hitched his chin in the direction of the house Bernie had occupied. “What about that?”

“Techies are still gathering evidence, but so far it hasn’t yielded anything substantive. Full of fingerprints, of course, but I doubt any of them will be Carl’s.”

“He didn’t walk around wearing rubber gloves.”

“I’d bet my left nut—excuse me, Amelia—that we don’t find a print that matches. Don’t forget, all we have is a print for the middle finger, left hand.”