Page 150 of Deadline

He gave the nurse a sheepish smile. “I guess I do look lost. I just realized that I got off the elevator a floor too soon. My friend is on four.”

“The elevator usually doesn’t take too long.” Smiling, she bent down to sniff at the flowers he was carrying. “These should cheer up your friend.”

He’d bought the bouquet from a vendor in the first-floor lobby, then taken it into a stall in the men’s room. Now besides the flower stems inside the green tissue there was also a six-shot revolver, to be used in case the disguise wasn’t as deceiving as he thought. His index finger was on the trigger.

“I like the color combination,” he said.

“Very pretty.” She patted his shoulder. “Have a nice day.”

She was about to move away, when he forestalled her. “Say, isn’t that the magazine writer who’s been in the news?”

She followed the direction of his pointing chin. “Dawson Scott.” Leaning in, she whispered. “All us nurses think he’s hot.”

Carl chuckled. “I probably would too if I was your age. And a girl, of course.”

She laughed.

“What’s he doing here?”

“Did you hear about the FBI agent who got shot? Of course you did. Everybody has. Well, Dawson Scott is his godson.”

Everything inside Carl went perfectly still for several seconds. Then his heart began to race with excitement. So, that was it. That was the fishiness that Carl had sensed but couldn’t put his finger on. Ever since Dawson Scott had moved in next door to Amelia, he’d thought there was more to him than simply being a writer on the trail of a good story. He and fucking Headly were practically related!

In a stage whisper, he exclaimed, “You’d don’t say!”

The naive nurse fell for the act and was all too glad to elaborate. “I’ve been told that Mr. Scott wasn’t too far behind the ambulance that rushed Mr. Headly to the ER. He stayed late into the night, until Mr. Headly was out of surgery. I assumed he’d hung around as a courtesy, on account of he was with Mr. Headly when he was shot.

“But then he showed up last evening and visited for over an hour. After he left, I mentioned to Mrs. Headly—that’s her he’s talking to—how nice it was of him to follow up. That’s when she explained their relationship. They’ve known him since he was born.”

“Huh.” It appeared to Carl that the two were disagreeing. She was talking; Scott was shaking his head no. Then she reached out and touched his cheek. He pulled her hand away from his face and kissed the back of it.

The nurse said dreamily, “You can see how close they are.”

“Yes, I can. I certainly can. It must be a big comfort to her to have him here.”

“She told me as much, but don’t let her appearance fool you. She’s got a steel backbone. Keeps us all on our toes,” she told him around a giggle. “She sticks to Mr. Headly like glue and only leaves the hospital to shower and change clothes. When she leaves, two bodyguards go with her. Like she’s J. Lo or somebody.”

“Bodyguards?”

“In case the men who tried to kill her husband go after her. Well, man, now. It was a father and son, and the son died yesterday. Oh, there’s the elevator. Let me grab it for you.”

As he hobbled into it, Carl placed his hand at his crotch and winced. She asked if he was all right.

“They cut out my prostate a couple of weeks

ago. Still get twinges down there.”

Her lips formed a pucker of sympathy. “It gets better.”

As the door slid closed, he winked at her. “It already has. And you’ve been a huge help.”

* * *

While Dawson was out, the hotel housekeeper had serviced his room. She always turned up the AC thermostat when she left. Every time he came in, he cranked it down again as far as it would go.

He took a four-dollar bottle of water from the minibar and ordered a room-service sandwich. He’d been elevated from Harriet’s shit list to star status. The hotel desk had informed him that all his expenses were being covered by NewsFront. When he came in last night, a bottle of chilled champagne was waiting for him in his room. The unopened bubbly was turning warm in its bucket of melted ice.

CNN and all the major networks had covered the dramatic story that had unfolded in the ramshackle cabin on the edge of the salt marsh. Dawson had successfully eluded reporters. He’d disconnected his hotel-room phone this morning when the switchboard operator ignored his request and continued to put through calls from correspondents asking for just one sound bite.