The one who came to the driver’s side shone a flashlight in his face. “Hey there, Ledge.” He kept the beam of his flashlight on Ledge’s face, while the other, on the passenger side, swept his over the interior of the car. Ledge wondered if there was mud from the ditch on the floorboard. Shit!

“Keep your hands where I can see them, Ledge,” the deputy instructed. “Open the door slow, and get out.”

“What did you stop me for?”

“Get out,” he repeated.

Ledge did as ordered. “Why’d you stop me?”

“Assume the position.”

“You gotta be kidding.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

“I wasn’t even speeding.”

“Assume the position!” the officer shouted.

Ledge turned and placed his hands on the roof of the car and set his feet wide apart. While the deputy was patting him down, the other was rifling through his glove box. “There’s nothing in there,” Ledge said.

“Where are you keeping your stash these days?”

“I don’t have a stash.”

“What? You gave up smoking dope for Lent?”

“I gave it up after being put in jail only for sharing a joint with friends at a party.”

“Every druggie has a sob story.” The deputy said to his partner, “Pop the trunk.”

Ledge said, “There’s nothing in there but a tire iron and a spare.”

“You wouldn’t lie to us, would you?”

“No.”

“Well, we got a tip saying you were selling out of your car on the parking lot of your uncle’s bar.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Somebody saw you chatting with a group of people inside your car.”

Ledge broke a cold sweat.

“Have you graduated from using to dealing, Ledge? Were you having a get-together with customers, or competitors?”

He knew not to say anything more. Some lessons learned in juvie were valuable.

“Give us names, Ledge. Who were you meeting with?”

My accomplices.

The deputy prodded him in the spine. “Cat got your tongue? What have you been up to tonight, Ledge?”

From the opened trunk, the second deputy chortled. “Unless he can come up with a real good alibi, it’s back to jail he goes for dealing.”

“I’m not dealing.”

“Then you must be planning on staying high every day for the rest of your life.”

The deputy frisking him whistled. “I hope you have a good lawyer and a better alibi.”

Ledge dropped his head forward and snorted a bitter laugh.

The deputy jabbed his backbone again. “You think that’s funny?”

No, there was nothing funny about it. But, at the very least, it was ironic.

He had a killer of an alibi.

He’d been stealing half a million dollars.

Chapter 7

In reply to Arden’s question about his criminal history, Ledge was accurate, if not quite truthful. She had asked what crime he’d committed. It wasn’t the one he’d been arrested for.

“A lot of smoke was found in a bag in the trunk of my car. More than one would have on hand for personal use. I was booked for possession with the intention to sell.”

“A more serious offense,” she said.

“And I was two years older. Not quite eighteen, but charged as an adult.”

“Were you guilty?”

“I was set up.”

“Isn’t that what all criminals say?”

“I’m not all criminals. It happens to be the truth.”

Gazing up at him were wide eyes the color of a smooth, expensive bourbon, the kind that warmed the belly. Only a few minutes ago, her eyes had been sparking with anger. Now he saw in them only apprehension.

Small but telling, involuntary, feminine motions—hooking her hair behind her ear, shifting her weight from one foot to another, wetting her lips—were indications of her uneasiness. He made a lot of people uneasy. But usually it didn’t bother him. With her, it did.

“Are you afraid of me?”

Without equivocating, she said, “I haven’t made up my mind.”

“If you’re that unsure, it means you are. I sensed it the minute I darkened the door. You’ve been on edge the whole time I’ve been here. How come?”

“Well,” she said around a mirthless laugh, “because somebody is coming past my house every night, and that’s creepy.”

“I ask again, why would I do that?”

“I can’t come up with a single reason.”

“Then why have you singled me out as a suspect?”

“Because before we had exchanged two sentences yesterday, you treated me with hostility.”

“I wasn’t hostile. Inhospitable, maybe.”

“Why?”

“Not many people just show up at my house.” Especially not Joe Maxwell’s kid. Joe Maxwell’s kid all grown up and…and filled out.

“I had called.”

“Not to say that you were coming. And when you got there, you admitted that I was your last resort.”

“Which should have made you want to win me over.”

“Not my style.”

“You’ve made that apparent.” She studied him, her brow furrowed. “What did you do in the military?”

“How’d you know about that?”

“The man I called for a reference told me. He said you fought in the Middle East.”

“That’s right.”

“What branch of the service?”

“Army. Special Forces.”

“What was your specialty?”

“Killing the enemy.”

She took a swift breath. “I see.”

“No, you don’t. And if I tried to describe the warfare I engaged in, it would scare the living daylights out of you.” Realizing that his heavy-handed tone was probably doing that already, he modulated it. “I apologize for yesterday. Sometimes I come across as rude when I don’t mean to be.” She gave him a look, and he added, “Okay, and sometimes I mean to be.

“But you don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m not the creep driving past every night. If I was, and up to no good, why haven’t I attacked you in the hour I’ve been here?”

When she failed to respond, he became annoyed. “Look, if you can’t get past this, I don’t want to work for you. I’m not going to sign on to do the project and then be constantly on guard for fear of spooking you.”

“Like slamming a door.”

He raked his fingers through his hair. “Sorry about that. I reacted too quick. Comes from soldiering in a war zone when your ass could get capped at any second.”

He took a wider stance and was about to say that he was over having to defend himself, but reasoned that belligerence would only increase her apprehension. He needed her to hire him so he could keep an eye on her. He needed to act as a buffer between her and Rusty, at least until Rusty backed off the notion that she had stacks of stolen cash lying around.

He changed tactics. “I can do the job. There’s a lot here to work with, and the job would be a welcome change from mending sagging porches and getting closet doors to hang straight. So? What’s it to be?”

She looked down at the floor. He stared at the crown of her head while she deliberated for what seemed like ages.

When she raised her head, she said, “I’ll sleep on it.”

That pissed him off. He figured she was now being either coy or stubborn.

“You’ve got until noon tomorrow to let me know.” He reached for the doorknob, then halted, and with exaggerated slowness, turned it gently and pulled open the door.

Looking piqued, she asked, “What happens at noon?”

“I start accepting the jobs I’ve put on hold.”

She gave a curt nod.

Straddling the threshold, he reached into his back pocket for his wallet and took a business card from it, passing it to her. “Sometimes I don’t hear the shop phone. Call the second number. That’s my cell. It’ll vibrate.”

He stepped out onto the porch and slid on his sunglasses.

“Ledge?”

He came back around and saw that she had read his name aloud off the business card. Looking up at him, she said, “Until now, I didn’t know what the ell stood for.”

“Ledge Burnet? Where did you dredge up that name?”

“I met him yesterday.”

“How did that come about?”

“I went in search of him at his place of business.”

“The pool hall?”

“Pool hall?”

Lisa laughed shortly. “Let’s back up and start over.”

After seeing Ledge Burnet off, Arden had replayed his visit in her mind several times and concluded that, although fear might have been an overreaction on her part, she did have reason to be leery of him.

He’d lied about learning through the grapevine that she had moved here from Houston. The only person who knew that was the OB to whom she had been referred by her doctor in Houston. His practice wasn’t even in Penton, but in the nearest larger city of Marshall. Neither he nor anyone on his staff would have disclosed patient information.

Someone else was Ledge Burnet’s informant. But who? And why would he be reluctant to identify him or her?

Then there was the matter of the door locks. He’d paid a lot of attention to their insufficiency.

That sudden move when he’d slammed the door behind her had been startling, but even when he was sitting perfectly still, his sheer physicality was intimidating.

On the flip side, she couldn’t think of a reason why he would be cruising nightly past her house. It had seemed to trouble him that someone had been. When he’d started his pickup truck as he’d left, the rumble of its engine wasn’t the one she heard each night.