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  Dawson pulled to the curb in front of the neat Georgetown townhouse and cut his car’s engine. Raising his hips, he fished a small bottle of pills from the pocket of his jeans, shook out a tablet, and swallowed it with a gulp from the bottle of water in the console cup holder. After recapping the pill bottle and returning it to his pocket, he flipped down the sun visor and checked his reflection in the mirror.

  He did look like something a cat threw up. A very sick cat.

  But there was nothing to be done about it. He’d been sorting through all the mail that had piled up on his desk, when he got Headly’s text: Get over here. Now. Headly wasn’t that imperative unless something was up.

  Dawson had left the remainder of his mail unopened, and here he was.

  He got out and made his way up the flower-lined brick walk. Eva Headly answered the doorbell. “Hello, gorgeous.” He reached across the threshold and pulled her into a hug.

  A former Miss North Carolina, Eva Headly had aged admirably well. Now in her early sixties, she retained not only her beauty and shapeliness but also her dry wit and natural charm. She hugged him back, hard, then squirmed out of the embrace and slapped him none too gently on the shoulder.

  “Don’t ‘gorgeous’ me,” she said, rounding off the r to sound soft. “I’m mad at you. It’s been two weeks since you got back. Why are you just now getting around to seeing us?” Her expression was laced with concern as she took him in from head to toe. “You’re as thin as a rail. Didn’t they feed you over there?”

  “Nothing like your Brunswick stew. And they’ve never heard of banana pudding.”

  She motioned him into the foyer, saying, “That’s what I missed most while you were gone.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Your b.s.”

  He grinned, cupped her face between his hands, and kissed her on the forehead. “I missed you, too.” Then he released her and tilted his head in the direction of the den. Lowering his voice, he asked, “Is he getting used to the idea yet?”

  She matched his confidential tone. “Not even close. He’s been—”

  “I can hear the two of you whispering, you know. I’m not deaf.” The gruff shout came from the den.

  Eva mouthed, “Be afraid.”

  Dawson winked at her, then walked down the hallway in the direction of the den, where Gary Headly was waiting for him. When Dawson stepped into the familiar room, he felt an achy tug of nostalgia. Countless memories had been made here. He’d raced his Matchbox cars on the parquet floor, his mother warning him not to leave them for someone to trip over. His dad and Headly had patiently taught him how to play chess with the set on the table in the corner. Sitting with him on the sofa, Eva had coached him on how to win the attention of his sixth-grade crush. For the first time since leaving Afghanistan, he felt like he’d arrived home.

  The Headlys were his godparents and had forged a bond with him on the day he was christened. They’d taken to heart their pledge to assume guardianship of their best friends’ son should the need ever arise. When his mom and dad were killed together in an auto accident while he was in college, even though he was legally an adult, his relationship with the Headlys had taken on even greater significance.

  Headly was wearing a parental scowl of disapproval as he took in Dawson’s appearance. He was considerably shorter than Dawson’s six feet four inches, but he exuded confidence and authority. He still had all his hair, which was barely threaded with strands of gray. A daily three-mile run and Eva’s careful supervision of his diet had kept him trim. Most sixty-five-year-old men would covet the figure he cut.

  He said, “By the looks of you, it was a tough war.”

  “You could say,” Dawson replied. “I just had a skirmish with Harriet and barely survived it.”

  As Dawson took the offered seat, Headly said, “I was referring to Afghanistan.”

  “It was tough, yeah, but Harriet makes the Taliban look like pranksters.”

  “How about a drink?”

  Dawson covered his slight hesitation by consulting his wristwatch. “It’s a little early.”

  “Five o’clock somewhere. And anyway, this is a special occasion. The prodigal has returned.”

  Dawson caught the slight rebuke. “Sorry I haven’t gotten over here sooner. I’ve had a lot to catch up on. Still do. But your text had a ring of urgency.”

  “Did it?” At the built-in bar, Headly poured shots of bourbon into two glasses. He handed one of them to Dawson, then sat down facing him. He raised his glass in a toast before sipping from it. “I’m drinking more these days.”

  “It’s good for you.”

  “Stress reliever?”

  “So they say.”

  “Maybe,” Headly mumbled. “At least it gives me something to look forward to each day.”

  “You’ve got plenty to look forward to.”

  “Yeah. Old age and dying.”

  “Better not let Eva hear you talking like that.”

  Headly grumbled something unintelligible into his tumbler as he took another sip.

  Dawson said, “Don’t be so negative. Give yourself time to adjust. It’s been less than a month.”

  “Twenty-five days.”

  “And counting, obviously.” Dawson sipped the liquor. He wanted to chug it.

  “Hard to come to a dead stop after being in the Bureau all of my adult life.”

  Nodding sympathetically, Dawson felt the warmth of the bourbon curling through his gut, settling his nerves, which the pill hadn’t yet had time to do. “Your retirement doesn’t become official until…when?”

  “Four more weeks.”

  “You had that much vacation time saved up?”

  “Yep. And I’d have just as soon sacrificed it and stayed on the job for as long as possible.”

  “Use this time as a period of adjustment between your demanding career and a life of leisure.”

  “Leisure,” he said morosely. “Soon as my retirement is official, Eva’s got us booked on a two-week cruise. Alaska.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “I’d rather someone pull out my fingernails with pliers.”

  “It won’t be that bad.”

  “Easy to say when you don’t have to go. Eva’s ordered me a prescription of Viagra to take along.”

  “Hmm. She wants you to make up for all the nights you couldn’t come home?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What’s the downside? Knock yourself out.” Dawson raised his glass.

  Headly acknowledged the toast and, after a moment, asked, “So, how’d it go with Dragon Lady?”

  Dawson told him about the meeting and the story Harriet had assigned him.

  “Blind balloonists?”

  Dawson shrugged.

  Headly leaned against the back cushion of his chair and studied him for an uncomfortable length of time.

  Irritated by the scrutiny, Dawson said, “What? You got a comment about my hair, too?”

  “I’m more concerned about what’s going on inside your head than what’s growing out of it. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  Headly just looked at him, not having to say anything.

  Dawson left his chair and moved to the window, flipping open the shutters and looking out onto the well-manicured patch of lawn. “I talked to Sarah when I passed through London.”

  The Headlys’s daughter was older than he, but, while growing up, the two families had spent so much time together that they’d been much like brother and sister, grudgingly caring about each other. She and her husband lived in England, where they worked for an international bank.

  “She told us you’d ‘passed through’ without staying long enough to go see them.”

  “Flight schedule didn’t allow time.”

  Headly harrumphed as if he didn’t accept that as a plausible excuse to forgo a visit. And it wasn’t.

  “Begonias are thriving.”

  “They’re i
mpatiens.”

  “Oh. How’s the—”

  “I asked you a question,” Headly said with annoyance. “What’s the problem? And don’t tell me ‘nothing.’”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Like hell you are. I watched a zombie movie on TV last night. You’d fit right in.”

  Dawson sighed over his godfather’s tenacity. He didn’t turn around, but he propped his shoulder against the window frame. “I’m tired is all. Spend nine months in Afghanistan—trust me, it’ll wear you out. Hostile terrain. Temperature extremes. Bugs that bite. No booze. No women except for the service members, and hooking up with one of them is tricky. A good way for both partners to get into some seriously deep shit. Hardly makes getting laid worth the hassle.”

  “You’ve had time since you got back to find an obliging lady.”

  “Ah, but there’s a problem with that.” He closed the shutters, turned around, and grinned. “You got the last great girl.”

  The levity fell flat. The worry line between Headly’s thick eyebrows didn’t relax.

  Dropping the pretense, Dawson returned to the chair, spread his knees, and stared at the floor.

  Headly asked, “Are you sleeping?”

  “It’s getting better.”

  “In other words, you’re not.”

  Dawson raised his head and said testily, “It’s getting better. It’s not easy jumping back into the thick of things, returning to an ordinary schedule.”

  “Okay. I’ll buy that. What else?”

  Dawson pushed back his hair. “This Harriet thing. She’s gonna make my life miserable.”

  “Only if you let her.”

  “She’s sending me to Idaho, for chrissake.”

  “What have you got against Idaho?”

  “Not a damn thing. Nor do I have anything against the vision-impaired. Or hot-air balloonists. But it’s not my story. It’s not even my kind of story. So forgive me if I’m finding it a little hard to work up any enthusiasm for it.”

  “Think you could work up some for a better story?”

  Headly hadn’t asked that casually. There was substance behind the question. So, in spite of his dejection, Dawson felt a tingle of anticipation. Because Headly hadn’t been only his godfather and lifelong good friend, he’d also been his invaluable and unnamed source within the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  Taking his silence for interest, Headly continued. “Savannah, Georgia, and its environs. Marine Captain Jeremy Wesson, a decorated war veteran, one tour in Iraq, two in Afghanistan. After returning from his last deployment, he retired from the corps, and, by all accounts, went off the rails.

  “Fifteen months ago, give or take, he got tangled up in a messy affair with a married woman, one Darlene Strong. Husband Willard caught them, and it didn’t end well for the illicit lovers. Willard Strong goes on trial for murder the day after tomorrow. Chatham County Courthouse. You should be there to cover the trial.”

  Dawson was already shaking his head.

  “Why not?” Headly asked.

  “Summertime in Savannah.”

  “Look at your calendar. As of today, it’s September.”

  “Still, no thank you. It’s hot down there. Humid. I’d rather go to Idaho. Besides, crime isn’t my specialty. And frankly, I’ve had enough of the military for a while. I don’t want to write about a dead Marine. I’ve been doing that for the past nine months.

  “In fact, maybe Harriet’s assignment is a blessing in disguise. That feel-good story may be just the tonic I need. Something hopeful. Positive. Uplifting. No severed limbs, or blood-soaked fatigues, or flag-draped caskets involved.”

  “I haven’t told you the hook.”

  Sourly, Dawson asked, “What’s the hook?”

  “Police obtained Wesson’s semen off Darlene’s clothing. This, of course, to help make the prosecutor’s case against the cuckolded husband, Willard.”

  “Okay.”

  “So the RANC in Savannah is a Bureau buddy of mine, former New Yorker, big baseball fan named Cecil Knutz.”

  “‘Rank’?”

  “Resident Agent in Charge. Top dog in the resident agency there.”

  “Okay.”

  “Anyway, Knutz saw the report from CODIS. Wesson’s DNA got a hit, a match.”

  “He was already in the system?”

  “He was. Has been for a while, in fact.”

  Headly paused to take a sip of his drink. Realizing that was a tactic used to build suspense, Dawson said, “I’m on pins and needles.”

  He set down his glass and leaned toward Dawson. “Captain Jeremy Wesson’s DNA matched that which we retrieved off a baby blanket found inside the Golden Branch house.”

  That wasn’t a mere hook. It was a grappling hook that found purchase in the center of Dawson’s chest. Dumbfounded, he stared at Headly.

  Headly said, “Before you ask, there’s no possibility of mistake. The match was ninety-nine-point-nine-and-down-to-the-nth-degree identical. In other words, the recently obtained sample and the one from 1976 came from one and the same individual. We got Flora’s DNA that day, too. We know she mothered the child whose DNA was on the baby blanket. And Jeremy Wesson’s age fits. Indisputably, he was Flora and Carl’s son.”

  Dawson stood up, paced a few steps, then turned back to Headly. As though reading the myriad questions racing through Dawson’s mind, he said, “Judging by your expression, I see that I don’t need to spell out the significance of this to you.”

  Although Gary Headly had enjoyed a distinguished career, to his mind all his accomplishments had been overshadowed by what he perceived as his one failure—to bring Carl Wingert and Flora Stimel to justice. It had plagued his career, and now it was contaminating his retirement.

  That was a cruelty that his godfather didn’t deserve, and it made Dawson angry. “This Knutz, why’d he tip you to this?”

  “He knows my interest. Worked with me when I investigated one of their jobs in Tennessee in the late eighties. He’s aware of my impending retirement and notified me only as a courtesy to a colleague. He was careful not to divulge too much, but he did tell me that he’s been digging into Jeremy Wesson’s background looking for a link to Carl and Flora.”

  Dawson raised his brows in silent query.

  “Nothing. Jeremy Wesson’s birth certificate—a copy he used to enlist—is from Ohio. Says he was born to and reared by Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So Wesson. He graduated high school in the town where he grew up. Earned a degree at Texas Tech. Joined the Marines. His history looks commonplace until he wigged out and got mixed up with a redneck’s wife.”

  “No leanings toward domestic terrorism?”

  “None apparent.”

  “What’s Knutz’s take?”

  “He advised me to leave it alone. The Bureau has bigger fish to fry these days. Nobody really gives a shit about Carl and Flora anymore. The consensus is that they’re probably dead. That burglary at the armory in New Mexico was the last crime attributed to them. That was in ’96.”

  “Seventeen years ago. A lot can happen in that amount of time.”

  “Doesn’t mean they’re dead.”

  “But with no indication that they’re still alive, it’s logical to assume otherwise.”

  “Logic and assumption be damned. I want to know, don’t you?”

  “At this late date, what possible difference does it make?”

  “It makes a hell of a difference to me!”

  Dawson sliced the air with his hands. “Okay. I get that. But this decorated Marine, who might have been their son—”

  “He was. I know it.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “The DNA says he was.”

  “It isn’t foolproof.”

  “As good as.”

  “All right, even if he was their kid—”

  “Aren’t you curious to know what happened to him after Golden Branch, where he’s been?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “I don’t believe that.�
��

  “Believe it. What good would digging into it—”

  “I thought you’d want to.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then do it for me.”

  “Why? He’s dead. End of story.”

  “It could be the biggest story of your career.”

  “It’s certainly the biggest of yours!”

  Simultaneously, they realized they’d been shouting. Headly glanced toward the door as though expecting to see his wife there, coming to check on the commotion. Dawson brought his voice down to a more reasonable level. “If you want to know the rest of the story, why don’t you go to the trial in Savannah?”

  “Because Eva would divorce me,” he grumbled. “Besides, like I told you, I’m as good as out of the Bureau. If I went meddling down there, I’d look pathetic. Like a hanger-on who doesn’t know when his time is up.”

  Dawson ran his fingers through his hair and released a sigh of agitation. He loved Headly. He knew how badly his godfather wanted closure on the defining incident of his career. But he was asking too much. Dawson was exhausted and disheartened by his experiences overseas. Even on his good days, his nerves felt raw and exposed. The last thing he needed was additional aggravation, like dredging up this unfinished saga. What possible good could come of it? Whether or not Jeremy Wesson was Carl and Flora’s child, it didn’t make one iota of difference.

  Quietly he said, “I’m sorry. Even if there was no Harriet in my life sending me someplace else on another assignment, I wouldn’t go to Savannah. Your pal Knutz is right. Some things should be left alone.”

  Headly gave him a searching look, then his shoulders slumped with acceptance of Dawson’s mind being firmly made up. He tossed back the remainder of his drink and said no more about it. Shortly after that, Eva extended Dawson an invitation to stay for dinner. He declined, using as his excuse the need to pack for his trip to Idaho. Keeping eye contact with them to a minimum, he beat a hasty retreat.

  He was leaking anxious sweat by the time he got into his car. At the first traffic light, he took another pill, washing it down with the lukewarm water left in the bottle. Rush-hour traffic out of DC into Virginia didn’t improve his mood, making him really on edge by the time he let himself into his Alexandria apartment.