Chapter 33

Ledge backed his pickup off Hawkins’s property and out onto the road.

Dwayne hadn’t moved. He still lay spread-eagled in the dirt under the glare of the floodlights.

As Arden got her last look at him, she said, “You won’t really shoot him, will you?”

“I won’t have to.” He turned to her to make his point. “It’s enough that he believes I will.”

They’d gone only a short distance before Ledge placed a call to Don, who answered immediately. “Tell me you’re okay.”

“I’m okay.”

“Hawkins?”

“Sniffling, but unhurt and grateful to be alive. But listen, the lowlife has dozens of dogs penned up out here. The conditions are criminal. I expect him to clear out tonight and, more than likely, abandon them. It would be dangerous to release them. Do you know anybody who’s actively involved with the Humane Society or ASPCA?”

“Several people.”

“Report it. Hawkins will probably be long gone by the time officials get out here, but those animals need rescuing.”

“On it.”

“Thanks, Don. Later.”

“Hold it. Where are you? What are you doing?”

“Going home.”

“Watch your back. Hawkins has brothers, don’t forget.”

“He won’t breathe a word of this.”

“You’re sure?”

“Oh, yeah. I put a good scare into him.”

He clicked off.

The drizzle that had begun to speckle the windshield as they left Hawkins’s place had become a moderate rain. Lost in thought, Ledge hadn’t even noticed until Arden suggested he turn on the wipers.

“What are you thinking about, Ledge?”

“Rusty and what I’m going to do about him.”

“I’ve been wondering the same. His surveillance of me is creepy, but it’s not illegal. If he was made to answer for it, he would harken back to my father, and I don’t want that can of worms reopened.”

“Unavoidable, Arden.”

“I’m afraid you’re right.” She sighed. “Any questions raised about Brian Foster’s death will lead straight to Joe Maxwell.”

“You can count on Rusty to exploit that.”

“So we do nothing?”

“I’m thinking of taking it directly to the attorney general’s office.” He sensed the look of surprise she gave him, but he kept his eyes forward. “Rusty has got to be put out of commission, and it won’t happen on a local level.”

“That’s a big step, though. What about starting with another agency, outside the county?”

“Troopers, Texas Rangers? I’ve thought of that, of course. But they have their own cold cases. Foster’s death wasn’t officially deemed a murder. It wouldn’t have priority. By the time somebody got around to looking into it, Rusty would have covered his tracks. I can’t sit around and give him a chance to do that.”

He looked over at her, adding, “He must be feeling pressure, because he amped things up tonight. That wasn’t mischief, it was attempted murder. The time for fiddling around is passed.”

“My moving back really stirred things up, didn’t it?”

“I think you were the match that lit his fuse.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hell, don’t be. I’m not. For years, my fight with him has needed to come to a head. I’m glad it has.”

He came to a crossroads, braked, and looked over at her. “I’m not taking you to your house. You shouldn’t be out there alone. So back to Crystal’s for the night?”

“Do you still have that bottle of whiskey?”

He was at a crossroads in the figurative sense, too. Being alone with her in a place with multiple horizontal surfaces, he didn’t think he could resist the temptation to have her.

But his conscience wouldn’t allow him to touch her again until he told her that he was a thief as well as a liar.

“One drink.” He made a left turn onto the road that would lead to his house. A whiskey might make his confession go down a little smoother, but he seriously doubted it.

Dwayne lay there in the dirt, unmoving, until he could no longer hear Burnet’s truck, then he got up and ran into his house. Dyle could give you pause, but he was a lot of swagger and not much substance, and everybody knew it. He got other people to do his dirty work.

Burnet, though. That guy you did not want to cross swords with. If Dwayne ever had thought otherwise, Burnet had shown him the light. He was a convert. To stay alive, he had to get gone. Like right now.

He scrounged around in the junk inside the house until he found the duffel bag he’d carried out of Huntsville packed with his meager belongings.

As he tramped through the rooms, he gathered up pieces of clothing that were strewn everywhere, and, regardless of which body part the article covered or its state of cleanliness, he crammed it into the duffel. He shoved his bare feet into a pair of boots, castoffs that the twins had given him when he made parole.

The waistband of his jeans was too loose to hold his pistol, so he poked it into one of the front pockets. He pried up a plank in the closet floor that gave him access to the crawl space where he kept mason jars full of cash. They were the last items to go into the duffel before he zipped it.

He was almost to the front door when his cell phone began playing the riff to “Bat Out of Hell.”

He dropped the duffel at his feet and pulled the phone from his other jeans pocket. There was no caller ID, but he had a fair idea of who it was, and it weakened his knees. “Jesus.”

If he didn’t answer, Dyle would know something was up. So he swiped his sweating forehead with his forearm, then clicked on. Acting like he was put out over being disturbed, he said, “Who’s this?”

“How’d it go, Dwayne?”

He forced his voice to sound laid-back. “Oh, hey. It went good.”

“You found them all right?”

“Right where you said.”

“Were they hurt?”

“Don’t know. The dogs attacked, but during the fray, the girl managed to get back into his pickup. She leaned on the horn. Sounded like a damn freight train was coming. So I called the dogs off and got away from there before anybody could see me.