“I know what you’re going to ask. Why enlist me? Well, see, Lisa, I need you to verify information provided by Foster. You know Brian Foster? The schmuck your dad tangled with the day he got fired? Him. The pussy.

“Don’t get me wrong. Foster’s smart with numbers, and he’s sincere enough, but I need a guarantee that he’s not feeding me faulty information. It would be awkward if alarm bells went off while we were hauling bales of cash out of there.”

She had listened in disbelief. In spite of herself, she was amazed by his audacity and amused by his conceit. “You’re talking madness. It’s cold out here. I’m leaving. Don’t ever bother me again.”

When she stood up to leave, despite her earlier warning about him touching her, he grabbed her hand and yanked her back down onto the bleacher.

“You’ll go along, Lisa. Want to know why you will?”

With that, he had produced copies of overdue invoices owed by her father. She’d sorted through them with mounting dismay, and with another emotion that was foreign to her: humiliation. Her spring semester tuition was two months in arrears.

“One of these days your daddy is going to fall down in a gutter and not get up again,” Rusty had said. “Where’s that going to leave you?”

Whether knowingly or not, he had stoked her worst fear. Unless Joe had a miraculous turnaround, which there had been no signs of his doing or even attempting to do, she soon would have to support herself and assume sole responsibility for Arden.

That would mean sacrificing any hope of completing her education and fulfilling the ambition she’d had to leave this nowhere town and make something noteworthy of her life.

But burglary? “If I commit a crime, where will that leave me, Rusty? In prison.”

“We won’t get caught.”

“You’re delusional. Your scheme is preposterous. As desperate as my situation is, I want no part of it, and no part of you or those other two creeps. I’ll figure out another way, an honest way, to pay our bills.”

“Not so fast, whistle britches. You’re in now, whether you want to be or not. You know the plan, you gotta do the deed.” Then he’d given her a beatific smile and said, “Don’t just think about yourself. Think about sweet little Arden.”

Again, his tone, with its undercurrent of pedophilia, had sickened her. It also had frightened her. Obviously, he had been keeping track of her schedule. He’d followed them today to the library. Otherwise he wouldn’t have known they were there and for how long.

She’d told him that she would think it over. But as she’d driven away from the football field, she knew her destiny had taken a steep, downward turn. She had made an irreversible pact with the devil.

Now here she was, in the parking lot of Burnet’s pool hall, no less, the rubber soles of her blue sneakers crunching gravel and collecting mud as she left behind her three accomplices. As well as the money.

If Rusty thought she was going to sit by quietly for six months while he played watchdog over it, he had another think coming. Foster and that sullen Burnet boy might be gullible enough to believe in Rusty’s integrity, but she sure as hell wasn’t.

She didn’t allow herself to dwell on the fact that she was now a felon. Even her righteous mother would have sanctioned the drastic action she’d taken. She had done what she’d had to in order to make a better life for herself and Arden.

In any case, it was done. Now, she must somehow figure out a way to best the psychopathic Rusty Dyle without tripping herself up. Having just left him, she was already trying to devise a way to beat him at his own game and reclaim her share of the take.

When her house came into view, she could tell even from a distance that it was dark inside, just as she’d left it. No cop cars in sight. When she got closer, she turned off her headlights, steered carefully into the driveway, and made the incline at a snail’s pace.

The door on the detached garage was up. With relief, she saw that her father’s car was still there. She’d had to wait until he returned from the cemetery before she could leave and keep her date with the other three crooks. She’d made it with little time to spare.

As she’d sneaked out of the house, it had occurred to her that her dad might run out of liquor and leave the house in search of a bottle, in which case Arden would have been left alone. That had been a risk she’d had to take, but she’d banked on the cemetery visit leaving her dad depressed enough to drink himself into a stupor before passing out.

The back door was locked, as she’d left it. That, too, boded well. She used her key and slipped inside. She smiled at the basket of dyed Easter eggs in the center of the table. She’d promised Arden that tomorrow they would bake a layered coconut cake using the recipe written in their mother’s hand.

Please, God, for Arden’s sake, let Dad go one day without drinking.

With that prayer, she silently climbed the stairs and went into her bedroom. It couldn’t have gone any better, even taking into account that stupid confab Rusty had conducted in the ditch. She had left the house undetected, and had returned undetected.

She would figure out a way to get her money from Rusty sooner rather than later, but so far, so good.

Chapter 39

By the time Lisa had finished, Arden’s knuckles had turned white, and she had to pry her fingers open in order to let go of the chair back. She looked over at Ledge. Throughout Lisa’s account, he hadn’t moved, either.

Her voice husky with emotion, she said to him, “You should have told me.”

“She should have told you.”

“But since she hadn’t—”

“God knows I wanted to.”

“But you couldn’t without giving yourself away.”

“That’s not why,” he said, looking pained that she would think that. “You had lost your baby. You have no other family. I didn’t want to be the one who messed up what you have with her.”

She held his steady blue gaze, then looked at Lisa, who sat with head bent. If she’d heard their exchange, she gave no sign of it. Arden said, “Lisa, what were you thinking?”

Lisa pushed the fingers of both hands up through her hair and held it back for several seconds before letting it go. It resettled like a curtain framing her face. The hardness of her expression defied them to censure her.

“I was thinking how badly we could use that money to get us out of the red. I was thinking how helpful it would be to have that cash squirreled away when you became my responsibility, which was inevitable, considering the rate of Dad’s decline. I was thinking that I was protecting you from Rusty’s clutches as well as securing a better future for you.”

“And you.”

“All right, and me!” she shouted. “And why not?”

Then, reining in her temper and her tone, she said, “Dad wasn’t providing. I was a college student with no income. The state could have taken you away. Would you have rather been placed in foster care?”

Arden rounded the chair and sat down. “Did you make up the part about Foster’s phone call, catching Dad with the money bag?”

“No,” she exclaimed. “My encounter with him here in the kitchen happened exactly as I described it. Everything Dad did after that phone call from Foster was just as I’ve told you, except that he was doing damage control for me, not for himself.

“Having recovered the money, he urged me to turn myself in. Giving back the money and turning state’s witness against my accomplices might prevent me from being charged. Besides, that would be the right and moral thing to do, he said. Also, as a witness to Foster’s death, he had an obligation to report it to the authorities.

“Of course, he was right on all scores. But in all honesty, his appeal to my conscience didn’t affect my decision as much as learning that Rusty had had a hand in Foster’s dying, whether or not he’d killed him outright. That shook me because it gave backbone to his threats toward you. He wasn’t just a smarmy, spoiled brat. He was sick. Psycho. Evil. My worst transgression, even above the theft, was my na?veté regarding his depravity.

“So I agreed with Dad. However, he and I knew better than to call the sheriff’s department. Dad told me that he would call the Texas Rangers, maybe even the FBI. But he suggested that we wait until daylight. He wanted to clean himself up, get cold sober and clear-headed. He said we had to place ourselves in the best possible bargaining position for my clemency.

“He told me to go upstairs and try to sleep. He held my face between his hands and apologized for all his shortcomings. He blamed himself for driving me to commit a crime, and told me he would make certain the authorities understood that desperation had led me to do it. He kissed my forehead.

“Obediently I went to my room. I was nervous and frightened. Even if I surrendered and threw myself on the mercy of the law, there was still a chance I would go to prison.”