Thick as Thieves

by Sandra Brown

  “I wonder how he explained his injuries to the medical staff. His parents.”

  “He’s fluent in lying,” Ledge said as he refolded the forms and returned them to his pocket. “Making up an excuse wouldn’t have been a problem for him.”

  He glanced toward the lake, then reached across Arden’s knees, popped open the glove box, and took out a large flashlight. “You want to come, or stay here?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “After reading the investigation report the other day, I came out here in daylight to do some exploring. But this is how Brian Foster would have seen it. In the dark.”

  “Maybe it was a full moon that night.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  She gave him an inquisitive look.

  “I remember from when those deputies made me get out of my car. As I was being frisked, I looked up at the sky, like ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ It was overcast. No moon to speak of. Drizzly off and on. Pretty much like tonight.”

  She looked through the windshield at the eerie surroundings, then gamely opened the door and hopped down out of the truck. However, she got no farther than the grill before Ledge took her hand. Aiming the flashlight onto the ground, he said, “I don’t know if cottonmouths come out at night. Just in case, be careful where you step.”

  She hesitated, but then fell into step beside him, close enough that their hips bumped as they walked. “Why would Foster or anyone venture out here alone?”

  “I don’t think he did.”

  “But the report said that his vehicle was discovered on the highway.”

  “On the shoulder, near the turnoff.”

  “His were the only fingerprints found inside or out of his car. No other footprints to indicate a passenger.”

  “He came alone, but met someone here.”

  “Inspectors were able to cast only one shoe impression near the water. They determined that it was Foster’s size shoe.”

  “The water is shallow enough for someone to have waded here and ambushed him.”

  “Defying water moccasins?”

  “And alligators,” he added grimly. “Someone was determined to make that meeting.”

  “My dad?”

  “I saw in the report that you and Lisa were questioned about a boat.”

  “It was older than he was. A tub. He had stopped taking it out after Mother died, so I’m not sure it was still floatable.”

  “Did he know the lake well?”

  She gave a soft laugh. “Like the back of his hand. He grew up on it. In his younger years, he was often called upon to help find people who’d gotten lost.” Looking troubled by the implications of that, she said, “But he was no longer young and robust. The drinking had taken a toll on his stamina. I can’t see him paddling a boat any distance, wading ashore, overpowering a much younger man, and then drowning him.”

  “It doesn’t seem likely, does it? Rusty’s injuries indicate quite a struggle.” He shone the flashlight on the rough trunk of a nearby tree. “Splinters.”

  They had gone as far as they could go without having to navigate through the viscous water and around cypress knees poking up through the surface. “A hard fall on one of those knobs could break your arm in two places and bruise your spleen. I think Rusty was here with Foster.”

  Arden tugged on his hand, bringing him around to face her. “How did you make that connection? Injured spleen notwithstanding, it’s a giant leap to conclude that Rusty was involved.”

  “I checked the county records. There was only one death over the three-day Easter weekend. Brian Foster’s. Rusty had one hell of a fight with someone, like someone who was fighting for his very life.”

  “His body, enough of it, was retrieved from the animal for the medical examiner to rule it a death by drowning.”

  “That was the cause of death,” Ledge said. “Foster could have drowned, or been drowned, before the gators got to him. They drag their prey down. He could’ve still been alive then, but not for long.”

  Arden placed her fingertips against her lips. “Lord, that’s ghastly.”

  “Yeah.” The horror of Foster’s death was worse than some of the things he’d witnessed or heard about during battles that often lasted for days. “His parents left disposing of his remains up to the county. Nice folks, huh?” he said. “However he died, the guy deserves for it to be explained.”

  “I need it explained,” she said. “How did the two of them even know each other?”

  “Rusty makes it his business to know everybody.”

  “Yes. I sensed that today. He plays the role of hail-fellow-well-met.”

  “Right.”

  “Did you know Foster?”

  “Not well. I’d met him. Couple of times.”

  “At the store?”

  On the edge of quicksand here, he made a motion with his shoulder that indicated a semi yes. “Welch’s was the kind of place where every time you’d go in, you’d bump into a dozen people you knew or recognized.”

  “Why did it go out of business?”

  “The kids and grandkids didn’t have the competitive spirit of old man Welch. When he died, so did the store. It happened while I was overseas.”

  “My dad wouldn’t have had much of a future there even if circumstances had been different.”

  “Guess not.”

  “What was Brian Foster like?”

  “He was a nerd. Timid. The anti-Rusty. Which I’m sure is why Rusty picked on him.” He soothed his conscience by asserting that none of what he’d told her was an outright lie. She was thinking it over. He hoped her frown was one of concentration, not doubt.

  He continued. “I don’t how, or to what extent, Rusty was instrumental in Foster’s death. I can’t prove anything. But on the night Foster died a grisly death, Rusty, the walking wounded, showed up at Crystal’s house in more urgent need of an alibi than emergency medical treatment.”

  “It’s broadly circumstantial, Ledge.”

  “So is everything they had on your dad.”

  “All right, but circling back to motive, I understand Rusty being a bully who picked on a nerd for fun. But what would have provoked Rusty to kill him?”

  Damn it. She’d given him another perfect opening to tell her why. But if she had knowledge of the burglary, and Rusty’s motive to get rid of Foster, she would pose a real threat to Rusty. Bad things happened to people whom Rusty perceived as a threat. “Maybe Foster got sick of his bullying and fought back. Or, knowing Rusty as I do, he wouldn’t have needed a motive. He would kill somebody just to see if he could get away with it.”

  “Based on the way he struck me today, I can almost believe that. Almost.” As she looked out across the watery landscape, she blindly reached for Ledge’s flashlight, and he relinquished it. She moved the beam across the panorama of the wetland. “The monotony of it has always frightened me. It all looks the same. How does one find his way? But Dad was never lost on the lake. He always knew exactly where he was.”

  Ledge didn’t say anything.

  “He had a boat. He also had a motive. Half a million of them, in fact.”

  Her extended arm dropped to her side as though the flashlight had become weighted. Slowly, Ledge took it from her listless hand. She turned and started walking quickly back toward the truck, stumbling over natural obstacles.

  “Arden.” He followed and reached for her, but she shook off his hand and kept walking.

  He outdistanced her and arrived at the pickup first. He opened the passenger door. She reached for the handhold above the door, but he splayed his hand over her bottom and boosted her up. He went around, and, as soon as he slid into the driver’s seat and cranked the engine, she said, “Please take me back to my car.”

  He turned the truck around and headed back toward the highway. “Don’t jump to a wrong conclusion, Arden.”

  “Then why did you bring me out here? To see for myself how logical it is that my father killed that man? I would rather you have continued
to delude, evade, and invent.”

  “Invent?”

  “That crap about the district attorney.”

  “It’s not crap. You saw the medical chart.”

  “All that means is that as a hotheaded young man, Rusty Dyle got into a fight.”

  “With Foster.”

  “You want it to be Rusty because of your silly feud.”

  “What would my silly feud have to do with Rusty’s interest in you? Explain that.”

  “Explain yours.”

  “My what?”

  “Your interest in that night. Your obsession with Rusty, Foster, my dad, the whole thing. If anyone has unexplained motives for his actions, it’s you.”

  The truck bumped off the dirt road and lurched onto the highway. When it hit the blacktop, Ledge floorboarded the accelerator. He sped back to town without a word passing between them. Main thoroughfares, such as they were in Penton, were more heavily patrolled, so he stayed off them and took a backstreet route to Crystal’s house.

  With a short distance still to go, he pulled over to a curb that bordered a vacant lot, cut the engine, and turned off the headlights.

  “Why are you stopping?” she said. “Where are we?”

  “A couple of blocks from Crystal’s house.”

  “Take me to my car, Ledge. Now.”

  “We can’t do this in front of Crystal’s house.”

  “Do what?”

  “Either fight or fuck. Which?”

  Chapter 30

  Then we fight,” she said.

  “Okay. You go first.”

  She blinked. She took a swift little breath. She waited too long.

  He leaned across the console and captured her mouth with his.

  She remained stiff and unresponsive for a couple of heartbeats, then her lips became pliant, and her tongue engaged with his, and her hot, sweet body seemed to melt into the car seat.

  He curved his right arm around her shoulders, and his left around her waist, and pulled her as close as the console between them would allow. She tunneled all ten fingers through his hair, angled her head, and held his fast as they continued a kiss erotic and evocative, a kiss that was a mind-blowing preview of what sex with this woman would be like.

  She didn’t kiss with the timidity of inexperience. But she also didn’t kiss with the near boredom of a woman who had frequent lovers. She wasn’t just going through the motions before moving on to the next step. She was into it, with an unabashed combination of pleasure in the kiss alone and a yearning for more.

  He raised his head, looked into her face, pulled his arm from around her shoulders, and swept his thumb across her full, wet lower lip. “You want to know about my interest in you? It has a lot to do with this.”

  “Actions speak louder than words.”

  Holding her gaze, he slipped his left hand beneath the hem of her top, pressed his palm against her midriff, then moved it up to squeeze her breast and keep it plumped above the cup of her bra while lowering his head to nuzzle her.

  He rubbed his face against those tantalizing breasts that for days—seemed like a lifetime—he had wanted to put his mouth to. His tongue dabbed at her nipple through her clothes.

  She sighed his name. Her grip on his hair became tighter.

  His mouth returned to hers while his thumb took up the brushing caresses that caused little catches in her breath. His mouth had left damp patches on her top like stamps of possession. They stirred the male in him to claim more.

  He slid his hand from her breast to her waist, then between her thighs. Her slight, undulating shift in position granted permission and access. He pressed, stroked. She murmured something unintelligible, but whatever she said had desire behind it. She wanted to be felt, deep.

  Her pants were made of stretchy denim that fit her like a second skin. Earlier he’d appreciated how the things molded to her incredible ass, but now he was frustrated by their tight fit. “How do I get into these?”

  “Here, let me—”

  The jangle of a cell phone froze them.

  It rang a second time. “Mine’s on vibrate,” he said. “Must be yours.”

  Appearing as frustrated as he, her head flopped back against the seat. “It’s in the outside pocket of my purse. Can you see who it is?”

  He fumbled around on the floorboard until he located her purse, the outside pocket, her phone. He brought it up to where he could see it and, just as the phone stopped ringing, he read the caller’s name.

  He eased himself back across the console and resumed his place in the driver’s seat. As she struggled to sit up straight, he extended the phone to her. “Somebody named Jacob.”

  “Oh.” She held his gaze for several seconds, then reached for her phone and turned to face the windshield. “I’ll call him later.”

  Seething, Ledge turned on the ignition and put the truck in gear.

  “That sounds like Ledge’s truck.” Crystal picked up the TV remote and turned down the volume. “He must be returning Arden to her car.”

  Marty left the sofa and went over to one of the front windows.

  “Don’t spy on them,” Crystal said. “They’re not teenagers.”

  “I’m not spying. Just taking a peek.” Marty raised one of the louvers of the blinds. “Yep, it’s his monster truck. She’s getting out on her own.” Looking over her shoulder at Crystal, she reported, “No good night kiss.”

  “Hmm. I’m disappointed. I thought for sure there were banked fires smoldering.”

  “In the half minute that I was with them, I got that impression, too. Maybe they kissed in the truck. Maybe they did more than kiss, and a kiss would be anticlimactic. So to speak.”

  “But it’s not like Ledge to—”

  Marty interrupted her. “What the…?”

  “What?”

  “Crystal?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, my God.”

  Responding to the sudden alarm in Marty’s tone, Crystal bounded off the sofa, and rushed to join her at the window. “What is it?”

  “Are those dogs?”

  They had covered the two blocks to Crystal’s house without Arden offering a word of explanation, from which Ledge inferred that Jacob couldn’t be identified with nonchalance, such as that he was the octogenarian who’d lived across the street from her in Houston, or her first cousin, or her best friend’s adolescent son hawking tickets for a fund-raising raffle.

  By the time he pulled up behind her car, he was steaming. He put the truck in park but left it running, draped his wrists over the top of the steering wheel, and stared out the windshield, being a jerk and knowing it, but he was a guy with a three-day-old hard-on and he was fuck-all furious.

  He said, “Jacob?”

  “Is none of your concern.”

  “No?” He turned his head to look at her. “My stiff dick would disagree. It wishes we’d stuck to fighting.”

  She shot him a drop-dead look as she opened the door of the truck. She shut it with force and rounded the hood. The headlights spotlighted her as she dug into her purse, probably searching for her key fob.

  Catching motion out the corner of his left eye, he turned his head. Two shadowy figures came streaking across the lawn across the street, a third not far behind.

  He registered almost immediately what they were, what they signified, and, shoving open the driver’s door, he burst out of it, yelling, “Arden, get back in the truck. Get in the truck!”

  He’d telegraphed his panic, because she stopped in her tracks and looked toward him, but she was blinded by the headlights. She raised her hand to shield her eyes just as one of the dogs took a flying leap at him.

  He jumped backward onto the hood and jerked his legs up in the nick of time. The dog hit the side panel with a loud thump and enough momentum to rock the vehicle.

  Arden screamed.

  “Go around, go around. Get in the truck!” Ledge crab-walked across the hood to the front of it, then jumped down. He grabbed Arden�
��s hand, yanking hard, placing her behind him as another of the animals charged. Ledge kicked at it.

  “Get in!” He let go of her hand and pushed her toward the passenger side, hoping to God she would do as he said.

  He clambered back up onto the hood. The dogs continued to attack, trying to launch themselves high enough to reach him. They were snarling, barking a cacophony. Slobber flew from their maws in globs. His boot heel caught one in the muzzle and sent it backward. It landed hard on the pavement, stunning it, but only momentarily. Then it was up and throwing itself against the pickup again and again, maddened, frenzied.

  He glanced behind him to see that Arden had made it into the cab, but one of the animals had targeted her and was repeatedly launching itself at the passenger door, its wide jaws snapping.

  The front door of Crystal’s house flew open. She and Marty came running down the steps. Crystal was screaming his name. He shouted for them to get back inside.

  Then a blast of the truck’s horn stunned him, the dogs, Marty and Crystal into silence.

  Its ear-shattering blare continued. Then, above it, Ledge heard a shrill whistle.

  So did the dogs. As one unit, they took off, racing in the direction from which they’d come.

  Ledge gave no thought to pursuing them, or to anything else except Arden. Without even pausing to catch his breath, he slid off the hood and rushed around to the passenger door, where the window was streaked and gummy with canine saliva. He yanked open the door.

  She was leaning across the console, her back to him. He didn’t shout above the racket. Instead, he spoke quietly. “Arden, you can let up now. They’re gone.”

  She turned and looked at him with a stunned gaze, but his words registered. She pulled her hand away from the horn activator on the steering wheel. The sudden, resultant silence was almost as deafening as the blare had been.

  Her eyes still fixed on his, she sat upright in the passenger seat. He placed a hand on her knee. It was trembling. “Are you all right?”