Deadline (Sandra Brown)

None too gently, Dawson prodded Carl’s elevated bandaged leg. Groaning, he opened his eyes to slits. They flared wide when he saw the two of them.
    Being this close to him again, Dawson suddenly felt claustrophobic. The sound of a thousand bees buzzed inside his head, their racket underscoring the blips and beeps of the various machines and IV drips that Carl was hooked up to. Their tubing created the same tangle at the side of the bed that Dawson had remarked on in Headly’s room.
    Carl was the first to speak. “Well, well,” he said to Headly. “At last we meet.” He took note of the wheelchair. “In the flesh, you don’t look so tough.”
    “You don’t either.”
    “I’ve had better days.”
    Headly shot him a grin. “I haven’t.”
    “Chalk one up for you. You figured me out today.”
    “You’re getting old, Carl. No longer as smart as you think.”
    “Oh, I don’t know about that.” He spoke in a musical, disarming tone reminiscent of Bernie.
    “Do you hurt?”
    “All over.”
    “Good.”
    “Why didn’t they kill me?”
    “Because I ordered them not to.”
    “I wonder why?” Again, another sly smile, then he focused on Dawson. “Tell me, boy, how does it feel?”
    Dawson had been following their exchange, but also studying the nest of plastic tubing at Carl’s bedside. Now he looked at the man. “How does what feel?”
    “Fucking your dead brother’s wife.”
    It took incredible control for him not to lunge at the man and wrap his fingers around his throat. Instead, he leaned down until his face was within inches of Carl’s. “You left me to die.”
    “Well, I sure as hell didn’t want you. You were an ugly little monkey, and I’d been up all night trying to squeeze you out of her. I hated you before I ever laid eyes on you. Flora was carrying on like a madwoman.”
    “You took her newborn from her.”
    “Wrong. I told her you were born dead, told her it would be better if she never even saw you. I just scooped you up like so much fish guts and dumped you down that hole in the floor, hoping to hell you wouldn’t take a breath and start crying.”
    Even now, knowing everything he did about this man, it was inconceivable to Dawson how any human being could be that cold and heartless. “How could you do that?”
    “How could I?” His low chuckle was rife with menace. “You said today that Headly would get the last laugh on me, but you’re wrong. The last laugh is on you .” He looked Dawson up and down with scorn. “You’re no kid of mine.”
    Dawson stopped breathing for several seconds, then he wheezed, “What?”
    “You heard me. You came from someone else’s slime. Don’t know whose. Could’ve been any number of men.”
    “You’re lying,” Headly said. “I studied Flora as thoroughly as I studied you. For whatever warped reason, she loved you and would have followed you into hell. She would never have slept with another man.”
    “Not unless I told her to.”
    The two of them stared at him, stunned by the flippant statement and its significance. “Jesus,” Headly hissed.
    Dawson had no words. Reeling from the shock, he wasn’t sure if he should feel elation or revulsion, if he should shout with joy or weep over the misery and humiliation that the woman who’d borne him had been forced to endure.
    “Sometimes I let guys use her to blow off steam. Or as a reward. She got pregnant with you on just such an occasion when three or four of them—”
    “Shut up.”
    Dawson’s wrath seemed only to amuse him. “Maybe Flora knew which one took , but I doubt it. If she did, maybe she wrote his name down in that diary of hers.”
    Dawson flinched. “Diary?”
    “The sneaky bitch,” he snarled. “I guess she’d been writing in it for years. She died with it clutched to her bosom. You’re digging her up, right?” he asked of Headly. “I tossed the book in with her. Should be a real entertaining read. Or maybe not. She was so damned ignorant.”
    It was obvious that Carl was enjoying himself. He was deliberately goading them, watching closely and hoping for a volatile reaction. Dawson refused to gratify him.
    Instead, he looked down at Headly. “I’ve heard all I can stomach. You?”
    “He was too much for me to stomach at Golden Branch.”
    Dawson had been fiddling with the network of tubes and had isolated one from the rest. “You have enough control to do it?”
    “Left hand. Thumb and index finger.”
    Dawson carefully looped a section of the