Thick as Thieves(93)

A drum roll of thunder shook the house. Fat raindrops began to slap against the window above the sink. His wristwatch ticked loudly, reminding him that he should be well on his way to Marshall. But he couldn’t just drop this on her and bail. She deserved time to absorb his revelation and grasp the pervasive dishonesty it represented. She deserved an opportunity to vent her rage.

Whatever form it took would be lighter than he deserved.

Eventually she turned on the faucet and scooped several handfuls of cold water into her mouth. Her movements angry and abrupt, she ripped a paper towel off the roll, blotted her mouth, and dried her hands. She left the towel balled up on the counter, came over and dragged a chair from beneath the table, and sat down across from him.

“You ingratiated yourself into my life.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To protect you from Rusty.”

She spurted a harsh laugh. “When you were the one I needed protection from.”

He shook his head. “Rusty’s been a monkey on my back for decades, and vice versa. We could have rocked along forever with our issues unresolved, and probably would have. That changed when you came back.”

“So this is on me?”

“Not intentionally, but circumstantially. You showed up out of the clear blue, and it reminded Rusty that he still had a bone to pick with your dad. Joe had outsmarted him. Big time. It was like you were thumbing your nose—”

“I didn’t even know—”

“Doesn’t matter. That’s how Rusty saw it. He doesn’t let things like that slide.”

She digested that but continued to simmer. “What about you? What did you think when I moved back?”

“When I first heard, I wondered what had prompted it, but I intended to keep my distance.”

“You’ve admitted that you followed me into the supermarket.”

“Yeah. That was bizarre. Fate dumped on both of us that day. But you didn’t know me, so I thought no harm had been done. Two months pass, and then I get a freaking voice mail from you. I couldn’t believe it, but I wasn’t going to call you back.

“The next day, you’re in my workshop. God, you looked great. Knocked me for a loop, but…Like I told you last night, I couldn’t let it lead anywhere. I figured that if I acted like enough of an asshole, you for sure wouldn’t want anything to do with me.”

He paused, sighed. “Later that evening, Rusty came into the bar. He’d sought me out there.” He gave her a bullet-point briefing of that conversation. “He’d been keeping tabs on you. I was afraid you would be a soft target for his retribution on Joe. Turns out, I was right.”

She turned her head aside, rolled her lips inward as she thought on everything he’d told her. When she came back to him, she said, “You were here the following morning. When I told you about the car driving past, why didn’t you warn me of Rusty? Why didn’t you come clean then? Afraid I would turn you in as a thief?”

“Afraid you would turn me out,” he said with a heat that matched hers. “And then you would have been completely defenseless.”

“Instead, you deceived me into thinking…” She covered her face with both hands and spoke from behind them. “All sorts of things.”

“Not everything was a lie.”

She lowered her hands. “No? Which part was honest?”

“You know which part.”

“Don’t you dare mention last night.” Her voice cracked on the last two words. She shot from her chair and headed for the room she slept in. “You know your way out.”

He went after her, putting his shoulder to the door she tried to slam in his face.

“Get out of here! I’ve had it with you and your infernal cold war with Rusty Dyle. In my opinion, you two were made for each other.”

“Will you please calm down for a minute and listen to me?”

“What for?”

“Because Rusty isn’t done yet. Ask yourself why he all but admitted to killing Hawkins and threatened to implicate us? Hear me out. Please.”

She hesitated, then backed up to the bed and sat down.

Ledge looked down at the floor and ran his hand around the back of his neck. “Several weeks before Easter of 2000, on a Saturday morning, Rusty cornered me in a diner. He laid out his plan to rob the store. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and basically told him he was crazy and to fuck off. I was on the verge of leaving when he threatened me with reprisal if I didn’t go along.

“He was sly, subtle, but his message hit me like a hammer. For all my badass attitude, I was convinced that if I told him no soap, he would punish me for it, and I would have to live with knowing that I had caused destruction or death to something or someone I cared about.

“So, weighed against my uncle’s bar, his life, I chose instead to commit a felony crime. That doesn’t excuse what I did, but that’s the reason I did it. I wish I could undo it. I can’t.”

She looked in the area of his upper arm where she knew the tattoo to be. “Infinity.”

“That’s right. It’s forever.”

She assimilated all that, then sharpened her gaze on him. “How did my dad get away with the money?”

“I swear on my uncle’s head, I don’t know.” He told her about Rusty’s appointing himself keeper of the cash for six months, when they would divide it. “Minutes after we split up, I was arrested.