Сандра Браун - Thick as Thieves

To this day. To this moment.

Crystal covered his hand resting on her knee with her own. “Memory lane is a dangerous neighborhood, Ledge. Why don’t you stay out of it?”

“I wish I could. I can’t.”

“What’s happened? What’s the matter?”

He pulled his hand from beneath hers. “The night I got arrested for the second time, when all that weed was found in my car? Remember?”

Caution clouded her eyes. “What about it?”

“Was Rusty with you that night?”

Her expression became guarded. “That was twenty years ago.”

“I know exactly how long ago it was, Crystal. Please answer the fucking question.”

She hesitated, then left the sofa, went over to a bar cart, and uncapped a bottle of bourbon.

“I don’t want a drink.”

“It’s not for you, it’s for me.” She poured and carried the glass of neat whiskey over to him. “But you’ll probably need one, too.”

He took the glass from her but didn’t drink from it. She returned to the bar and poured another for herself. “Yes, Rusty came to my house that night. My old house. Mother was asleep. He knocked on my bedroom window and threatened to raise a ruckus that would wake the dead if I didn’t let him in.”

“What time was that?”

“Lord, Ledge, I don’t remember.”

“Try.”

“Why is it so important?”

“What time ?”

“Late. One, one-thirty. Thereabout. And I couldn’t swear to that. I was too astonished by the condition he was in.”

“What condition?”

She gave him a withering look. “Like you don’t know.”

Matching her pique, he thumped his untouched drink onto the coffee table. “Please stop making me repeat my questions. Describe his condition .”

She took a quick sip of her whiskey. “He was all banged up. His jaw had a fist-sized bruise. Here.” She pressed her knuckles against her jawline in front of her ear. “His lower lip was split open. His left arm was black-and-blue, swollen twice its normal size. I assumed that it was broken. An assumption that was later confirmed. He was in a lot of pain. Anxious. Sweating profusely.”

The more she told him, the more incredulous Ledge became. She wasn’t describing Rusty as Ledge had last seen him that night, getting out of his car and taking the canvas bag of cash with him. He hadn’t been battered and bruised. He’d been his whole and healthy, arrogant, asshole self.

“Did he tell you what had happened to him?”

Her eyes remaining on him, she said softly and with empathy, “Yes, Ledge, he did. There’s no need for you to pretend anymore. I know what you two did that night.”

Chapter 20

That night in 2000—Crystal

What in God’s name happened to you?”

After letting Rusty in through her bedroom window, Crystal spoke in a stage whisper out of fear of waking up her mother. Morg was gone for good, but her mother still slept fitfully.

Rusty shouldered Crystal aside and went to sit on her bed, cradling his arm against his abdomen. “Get me something to drink.”

“I don’t have any alcohol.”

“Nothing? None?”

“Nothing. None.”

“Who doesn’t keep a bottle for emergencies?”

“Since Morg was put away, Mother’s gone apostolic.”

Rusty swore under his breath. “Percocet?”

She shook her head. “Nothing like that. Your arm looks broken. You need a doctor.”

“No.”

“But—”

“Not now! Okay?” He grimaced with pain. “You must have aspirin. Advil?”

“I’ll drive you to the ER.”

“For godsake, Crystal, will you give it up? I can’t go right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t.”

“What happened?”

“Your boyfriend happened, that’s what.”

“Ledge?”

“Ledge,” he repeated, mimicking her astonishment. “You gotta have a fucking aspirin.”

“Shh! All right.”

She left the room and slipped down the hallway, moving as silently as possible past her mother’s closed bedroom door. Using only the nightlight in the bathroom, she took a bottle of Advil from the medicine cabinet and rinsed out the toothbrush glass. She made it back to her bedroom without being detected.

In her absence, Rusty had switched on the bedside lamp. In its dim glow, he looked ghastly. He had smeared the blood dripping from his mouth across his chin. Drops of blood speckled the front of his shirt. He continued to hold his left forearm against his middle.

With his uninjured hand, he lifted his shirttail and inspected the damage done to his midsection. There were abrasions. A large, dark bruise had blossomed between the bottom of his rib cage and his pelvic bone.

“Rusty, you need to go to the emergency room.”

He dropped his shirttail and reached for the bottle of Advil. He popped off the top with his thumb and shook several tablets into his mouth. Crystal passed him the glass of water. He drank it all and set the empty glass on the nightstand, where there was a framed school picture of Ledge.

“Sweet,” Rusty said, glowering up at her.

She had always tried her best to avoid Rusty and the sly manner in which he looked at her, implying an intimacy that had never existed. Gossip about her sexual escapades had been started by him. He had boasted of encounters that had never occurred.

All of that now made her self-conscious of her dishabille. She pulled a cotton housecoat on over the short pajama bottoms and t-shirt she’d been sleeping in. She clutched the robe to her, arms folded over her torso. “What did Ledge have to do with this?”

“Everything. The bastard.” He looked at her with mad, feverish eyes. “But I can’t report his assault on me without incriminating myself. So he’ll get away with it and only be charged with selling weed.”

“He doesn’t sell weed.”

“And the pope doesn’t wear a beanie.”

“Ledge smoked that one time and got caught. That’s it.”

“You believe that? He only tells you what you want to hear so you’ll fuck him.”

“That’s not true.”

He snorted a dismissal of her incensed denial. “Tonight, he was dealing out of his car on the parking lot of his uncle’s shitty bar. I…I…” He looked aside, then came back to her. “I had supplied him some of the goods.”

Her lips parted in dismay.

“Surprise!” he said. “The sheriff’s kid peddling pot. Who’d’ve thunk it?” He shifted his arm slightly, winced, swore, took several stabilizing breaths. “Anyhow, Burnet and I got into a dispute over the division of our profit. When we couldn’t reach a fair and reasonable agreement, he came at me with fists flying. I guess it comes from being raised in a pool parlor, but he doesn’t fight fair.”

“You’re saying Ledge did this to you?”

“Haven’t you been listening?”

“I don’t believe you.”

But despite her assertion, she did. She believed him, and that made her apprehensive and afraid for Ledge. She sat down on the same side of the bed as Rusty but kept her distance.

She thought back to what Morg had looked like the night she and her mother were summoned to the hospital and informed that he’d undergone emergency surgery to repair a ruptured spleen. Their assumption was that he’d been in a terrible car wreck, but when told that he’d been attacked on the parking lot of Burnet’s Bar and Billiards, she’d known who had thrashed him.

Only a few hours earlier she had told Ledge about Morg’s abuse. Ledge hadn’t ranted, hadn’t taken an oath of vengeance for her, hadn’t pledged he would put a stop to it.

Rather, he’d remained motionless and silent, simply staring into the near distance, his eyes radiating an intense, white heat. Then he had come to his feet and offered to walk her as far as the corner near the school where Morg was due to pick her up.