Page 85 of Out to Get Her
Not because she didn’t trust herself. She’d come far enough in the last week to shake off most of the damage to her confidence Nathan had done.
She was trusting that Erin knew Zach best. If he had a weakness, Erin would know how to exploit it.
Samantha didn’t have anything to prove here. All she had to do was trust in this woman who’d won her heart over the last few days. The person who’d helped her see and trust in herself.
The least she could do to return that favor was trust in Erin and her plan.
Samantha held her ground and gave a quick nod.
ChapterTwenty-Eight
“Tick-tock, Erin.”
“I’m going, I’m going.” She stared at the floor in front of her and the space between where they stood and the wall. “Just trying to remember which board it was.”
“Thought you didn’t know where the notes were,” Zach said. “No funny shit. Remember—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don’t want to shoot me. I get it.” She kept her voice light and sarcastic, squashing her rage. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen this side of Zach before now. How had she missed it? “I still don’t know if the notes are here, but I know where he kept some stuff from my parents. Sentimental shit. Maybe he put them there.”
That shut Zach up. Maybe he had killed her grandfather, but they did share the same dead-parents-wound.
That wound was his soft spot. Maybe the only one.
It was his weakness.
“Good,” he said, somber now. “Let’s see if they’re in there.”
Erin found the loose board and pried it up, revealing an open box her grandfather had cut into and secured beneath the subfloor. She hadn’t been lying to Zach. She really had forgotten about this spot until just a few moments ago. And why would she remember? It was filled with things she’d been trying most of her life to forget.
A quick look didn’t reveal a notebook. But knowing her grandfather, he would have hidden something like that beneath the more mundane things like her mother’s favorite t-shirt folded neatly on top of everything else.
Erin froze. She’d forgotten all about that shirt.
She reached into the box and held up the worn black t-shirt with all four Golden Girls smiling on the front. Erin felt her eyes tearing up and blinked them back as she remembered her mother wearing this shirt every weekend. It was one of the only memories she had of her.
“Cut out the memory lane stuff or move out of the way,” an impatient Zach growled behind her.
Erin dropped the t-shirt to the side of the hole and dug a little deeper inside. One hand palmed exactly what she’d been looking for, while the other hand came up with something else.
“I think this might be it.”
She really hadn’t expected the notes to be in here, but there they were. On a yellow legal pad. Every visit her grandfather took to that pill mill. Dates and times. Records of every call he made to the pharmacy, too. Along with notes asking about the safety of refilling such heavy doses so soon.
“Let me see.”
Erin held the legal pad in her lap, forcing Zach to lean over her shoulder. His attention was captured by that all-caps handwriting on the paper, but he still held the gun behind her.
This was her only chance. Their only chance.
As he leaned down even further and reached for the pad with his free hand, Erin made one swift move, twisting and bringing up the treasure in her other hand to connect with his eye.
Zach screamed out in pain as the metal sank into his eyeball with a sickening squish. Erin dropped her weapon, then spun around to face him, grabbing the gun now dangling loosely from his fingers.
Samantha appeared beside her a second later and grabbed Zach. She held his arms behind his back as he screamed and blood poured down his face.
“Zachary Hebert, you are under arrest for threatening with a firearm, assault, and kidnapping an officer of the law. And a whole bunch of other stuff I’m sure the DA will love to add to the list.”
Erin was frozen, still stunned at what she’d just had to do. She felt hot tears of relief spilling down her cheeks.
