Dwayne didn’t move, but his eyes cut to her. “That her?”
“Did he tell you why he wanted—”
“No, no,” he sputtered. “He said turn the dogs on y’all. That’s all I know.”
“Y’all? Both of us?”
“He said you two’d be together.”
“How did he know that?”
“No clue. He said that sooner or later y’all’d show up at the house behind the beauty parlor and for me to be waitin’. I didn’t mean to—”
“Sure you did, Dwayne. You meant for us to be chewed to pieces.”
“I got nuthin’ against you,” he repeated. “Her, either.”
“Well, I’ve got something against you now.” Ledge’s voice had the quality of an icicle. “Do you know what I did in the army?”
“Heard you was in the war, but—”
“Sniper.”
Dwayne whimpered. His Adam’s apple slid up and down.
“That’s right, Dwayne. I could target your eye socket from a mile away. Any. Time. I. Want. And I swear to God I will if you don’t disappear.”
“Disappear? Run off, you mean?”
“That’s what I mean.”
“I cain’t. Dyle said if I double-crossed him, he’d kill me.”
“Then you’re up shit creek, Dwayne.”
“Dyle’s got Mex’cans with cartel experience.”
“And I’ve got a sniper rifle with a telescopic sight. If it’s any comfort to you, you’ll be dead before you hear the report. When you look at it that way, you’re probably better off sticking around and sucking up to Dyle until—well, until I take a notion.”
Hawkins hiccupped a sob, and snot trickled from his nostril.
Ledge hitched his head back toward the cages. “I ought to shoot you right now for animal abuse. But if you stay in the neighborhood, in the state, you’re on borrowed time.”
Ledge lifted the muzzle off Hawkins’s forehead, walked over to the shotgun, and removed the shells. He put them in the breast pocket of his shirt. Giving Arden a fearsome look, he nodded her toward the truck.
She walked to it quickly. Ledge walked backward, keeping a bead on Hawkins as he picked up the empty shell casings. When he reached the truck, he got in, replaced the rifle on the floorboard, and put the pickup in reverse.
He said, “Rusty put him up to it. You heard th
at, right?”
“I heard.”
“Do you believe me now? He killed Brian Foster.” He thumped the steering wheel with his fist. “I goddamn know it.”
Chapter 32
That night in 2000—Rusty