Сандра Браун - Thick as Thieves

“I realize that.” She didn’t dare tell Lisa about Ledge’s being in the supermarket or of his unorthodox visit to her house last night. Once again, she found herself staving off her own misgivings and, rather, defending him, even to herself. “But nor does it make him guilty.”

“Have you accused him?”

“I inquired. He denied it.”

“But he would, wouldn’t he?”

Arden gave a noncommittal shrug.

“Have you reported it to the police?” Lisa asked.

“I’ve been reluctant to.”

“Why?”

“ Because it could be, and probably is, someone who routinely drives that road and slows down to gape out of curiosity. Because I don’t have a description of the car, or the person, and I’m disinclined to sit on the roadside and wait for him to come by so I can get a description.”

Nor was she prepared to camouflage herself as Ledge had.

“ Because the individual has never stopped or posed any overt threat. And because if I did report it, it would create another brouhaha, and I don’t want to draw any more attention to myself.” Softly she added, “Mainly that.”

“Why mainly that?”

Arden sat back in her chair, leaned her head back, and glanced over at the expansive bookcase. Most of the shelves held leather-bound, signed limited editions and museum-worthy artifacts. On one of the shelves, in a five-by-seven silver frame, was a picture of the Maxwell family. It was a posed portrait that their mother, Marjorie, had insisted on having made. Before you girls get any older , she’d told them.

In the picture, they were dressed in their Sunday best. The four of them were smiling and appeared happy, both individually and as a unit. None of them had an inkling of how terribly wrong things would go.

“Do you suppose he’s still alive?” Arden asked quietly.

Lisa left her chair quickly and went over to the wall of windows, keeping her back to Arden for at least a full minute. When she came back around, her hands were tented in front of her mouth. There were tears in her eyes.

Slowly she lowered her hands but kept them clasped at chest level. “The day after you lost the baby, when we were talking there in the kitchen, you asked me why I hadn’t sold the house. All the reasons I gave you were valid. But what I didn’t add, because it seemed—and is—so ridiculous and immature, is that I thought he might come back one day.”

She blotted a tear and shook her head. “Not for good, not to stay, or to reunite with us, but just to…” Frustrated with her inability to find the right words, she raised her arms at her sides. “I held out the faint hope that if we kept the house, it would be an irresistible draw for him.”

Arden got up, went to Lisa, and the two of them hugged, rocking each other. With that embrace, all their differences ceased to matter. When they eventually broke apart, they linked their little fingers.

“Not so ridiculous or immature,” Arden whispered. “That faint hope has been lurking in the back of my mind, too. Could Dad be the person monitoring me? Do you think that there’s any possibility?”

Lisa hugged her close again. “Don’t break your heart, don’t break mine, by counting on it.”

Chapter 13

That night in 2000—Rusty

Sitting on his bed in his room at home, Rusty gingerly rubbed his bruised wrist.

Goddamn Burnet.

Rusty’s taunt as he was getting out of the car with their haul had struck a nerve in Ledge, and his reaction had been swift and scary. Rusty was rarely taken by surprise like that, but Ledge had attacked with such ferocity, speed, and strength, he’d been too astounded to defend himself or counterattack. Ledge’s grip had felt powerful enough to crush his bones. Rusty supposed he should be relieved that he hadn’t.

That Ledge had that ability and advantage over him grated like an iron file. In hindsight, he should have arranged to have the bastard killed tonight. His only deterrent, which he hated to admit even to himself, was the fear that if he attempted it and failed, it was likely that he would have been the one to die.

When Ledge had told him that if anything went awry with Henry, he would hunt him down and kill him, he had believed it right down to the toes of his steel-tipped boots.

If somebody else had threatened him that way, he’d have gotten a good laugh out of it and then annihilated the reckless fool. But there was something about Burnet that induced a deep-seated and unremitting terror. Maybe it was that steely blue stare of his. It could be downright eerie, calculating, cold-blooded, like he had resolved to mess you up bad, but in his own good time.

Whatever Ledge’s fearsome quality was, it had intimidated Rusty into making other plans for him tonight, and he celebrated that decision now, because the alternate scheme had been executed without a hitch.

Several days earlier, he’d driven over into Louisiana and bought the marijuana himself. He had then intercepted the wetback who tended his mother’s flower beds as he was piling his tools into the bed of his piece-of-shit pickup and threatened to sic immigration on him if he didn’t grant Rusty one small favor.

The marijuana got planted in Ledge’s car. To demonstrate what a nice guy he was, Rusty had given the Mexican a doobie for his trouble.

Tonight, immediately after he and Ledge had parted company, using a burner phone he’d called the sheriff’s office with an anonymous tip that Ledge Burnet was selling weed out of his car on the parking lot of his uncle’s bar.

“There were some people with him in his car. I didn’t see who. Anyhow, he drove out alone, headed toward town.”

That’s all it had taken.

Ledge was in lockup. It was unlikely he would be granted bail. If his case went to trial, conviction would be a slam-dunk. Even if Ledge made a plea bargain to avoid trial, both his immediate and long-range futures included incarceration. He had been removed, if not permanently, then for a good, long time.

Rusty could now proceed to his next chore of the night.

He rotated his wrist a few times to work out some of the soreness and keep it flexible, then reached for his phone and made one of the most important calls he would ever make.

“Foster? It’s Rusty. Are you still awake?”

“Are you kidding? Who could sleep? I was about to—”

“Listen,” he interrupted, almost breathless with urgency. “Whatever you were about to do, forget it.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

“It’s Burnet. He’s been hauled in.”

“To jail?”

“Yes to jail! Where’d you think?”

“Oh, God! How did they catch him? Was it his car? Somebody saw his car behind the store?”

Rusty pictured him peeing his pants.

“No. His arrest didn’t have anything to do with the burglary. The dumbass was stopped for a busted taillight, something stupid like that. While the deputies had him pulled over, they searched his car. Guess what they found.”

He told Foster the rest of it. He spoke in a rushed whisper, not only to convey urgency but to keep from waking up his parents in their bedroom down the hall. His daddy was a class-A crook, but it wouldn’t go down well with him that Rusty had stolen roughly half a million dollars.

That was, not unless Mervin got a hefty chunk of it.

Rusty freely acknowledged that he’d been spoiled rotten. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d demanded something that he didn’t ultimately get. His mother was sweet and doting and thought the sun rose and set on her boy. She was also clueless to a laughable extent. He manipulated her unmercifully.

His dad had a loud bark, but he hailed from the school of Boys Will Be Boys. Not so secretly, he got a kick out of Rusty’s misbehavior. The more unsavory the misdeed, the more it tickled his dad. Rusty’s shenanigans, the more outlandish the better, showed a creative streak that his dad took pride in.