Page 151 of Thick as Thieves

One of the retired Rangers noticed Ledge and brushed the brim of his hat with his fingertips. Ledge bobbed his chin in acknowledgment but didn’t join the group. He stayed on the steps at the back door.

Soon, Rusty was carted out of the bedroom, through the kitchen, and out the door where Ledge had been waiting.

The .357 had blown Rusty’s right shoulder joint to smithereens. The medics had stanched the hemorrhaging blood vessels, but Ledge knew it hurt like a mother. It wouldn’t kill him. Ledge hadn’t meant it to.

He hadn’t been looking Rusty in the eye.

Rusty was cursing the paramedics who carried his gurney. When he spotted Ledge, he tried to sit up, straining against the straps holding him down. “Fuck you, Burnet. You crippled me.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m not done with you.”

“Oh, you’re done, Rusty.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

Ledge did something he never thought he would do in the presence of Rusty Dyle. He smiled. “I don’t think so.”

Epilogue

A pair of headlights swept across the living room windows before going off. A door was shut. Footsteps sounded on the porch, then the new lock on the front door was unlatched with a decisive snap, and the door swung open.

Ledge stood silhouetted against a twilit sky.

Arden stayed as she was, seated on the second step of the staircase, bare toes curled over the edge of the next tread down. Her high-heeled pumps lay on the floor where she had stepped out of them. The darkness inside was relieved only by two candles, which she’d placed on either end of the mantel.

“Hi.”

“Where did you get a key?”

“I bribed the locksmith.” He said it with no sign of embarrassment or remorse.

She let it go. “How did you know I would be here?”

“Just figured.”

It had been four days since Lisa was pronounced DOA at the hospital. During that time, there had been formalities, legal and otherwise, that had kept Ledge and her apart. She hadn’t sought him out. He’d made no attempt to see her. They hadn’t even spoken by phone.

He must have been sensitive to her need for time and distance away from him in order to contend with everything that had been disclosed in the final hour of Lisa’s life.

The crime scene tape had been removed from the house today. She’d been cleared to return, and she’d felt that she must go back. But after getting the candles from a kitchen drawer, she had gone into the living area, even though it was the least comfortable room without a place to sit.

She would never go into the catch-all room again.

When she’d left with Lisa in the ambulance, she’d taken nothing with her except her handbag. Everything she was wearing, she’d had to buy. The new black dress was appropriately funereal.

Ledge closed the front door and walked toward her. As he got closer, she caught him looking at her legs. Her hem rode several inches above her bent knees, but she didn’t want to tug it down and call further attention.

He lowered himself onto the step beside her. They didn’t look at each other or speak for a full minute; then he said, “You buried her today?”

“You heard?”

“You can’t keep a secret in this town.”

“You can. You did. Lisa certainly did.”

He exhaled a breath laden with regret. “I heard about the worst secret she’d kept. God, I’m sorry, Arden.”