Page 50 of Thick as Thieves

Tonight, immediately after he and Ledge had parted company, using a burner phone he’d called the sheriff’s office with an anonymous tip that Ledge Burnet was selling weed out of his car on the parking lot of his uncle’s bar.

“There were some people with him in his car. I didn’t see who. Anyhow, he drove out alone, headed toward town.”

That’s all it had taken.

Ledge was in lockup. It was unlikely he would be granted bail. If his case went to trial, conviction would be a slam-dunk. Even if Ledge made a plea bargain to avoid trial, both his immediate and long-range futures included incarceration. He had been removed, if not permanently, then for a good, long time.

Rusty could now proceed to his next chore of the night.

He rotated his wrist a few times to work out some of the soreness and keep it flexible, then reached for his phone and made one of the most important calls he would ever make.

“Foster? It’s Rusty. Are you still awake?”

“Are you kidding? Who could sleep? I was about to—”

“Listen,” he interrupted, almost breathless with urgency. “Whatever you were about to do, forget it.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

“It’s Burnet. He’s been hauled in.”

“To jail?”

“Yes to jail! Where’d you think?”

“Oh, God! How did they catch him? Was it his car? Somebody saw his car behind the store?”

Rusty pictured him peeing his pants.

“No. His arrest didn’t have anything to do with the burglary. The dumbass was stopped for a busted taillight, something stupid like that. While the deputies had him pulled over, they searched his car. Guess what they found.”

He told Foster the rest of it. He spoke in a rushed whisper, not only to convey urgency but to keep from waking up his parents in their bedroom down the hall. His daddy was a class-A crook, but it wouldn’t go down well with him that Rusty had stolen roughly half a million dollars.

That was, not unless Mervin got a hefty chunk of it.

Rusty freely acknowledged that he’d been spoiled rotten. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d demanded something that he didn’t ultimately get. His mother was sweet and doting and thought the sun rose and set on her boy. She was also clueless to a laughable extent. He manipulated her unmercifully.

His dad had a loud bark, but he hailed from the school of Boys Will Be Boys. Not so secretly, he got a kick out of Rusty’s misbehavior. The more unsavory the misdeed, the more it tickled his dad. Rusty’s shenanigans, the more outlandish the better, showed a creative streak that his dad took pride in.

However, Rusty had no delusions about the depth of Sheriff Mervin Dyle’s affect

ion and indulgence. It wasn’t bottomless. It wasn’t even skin-deep. If it came down to protecting Rusty or preserving his own position of power, his dad would give him over without hesitation and not waste an instant of regret over it.

Cutting Mervin a large slice of the pie would be Rusty’s only bargaining chip. He wouldn’t use it unless it became absolutely necessary, of course, and, if all went according to plan, it wouldn’t. He would be able to keep the Welch’s take all to himself, and neither parent would be the wiser.

If all went according to plan. There were still hindrances to success that must be eliminated. Which brought him back to Brian Foster. “What concerns me,” Rusty said, “is what Burnet will do or say.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’ll try to cut a deal. I’m afraid he’ll rat us out in exchange for a lighter drug charge.”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

“In a heartbeat.”

“The four of us made a pact.”

“Pact,” Rusty snickered. “You think a promise matters to that guy? You don’t know him like I do. He’s surly. Resentful. Believe me, he would betray us.”