Page 81 of Out to Get Her
Since she didn’t come home after he died, she never heard from anyone directly on that. She’d never pressed for an autopsy. There’d been no need to. He was old. He didn’t have any enemies, and he didn’t have anything valuable besides the house and Marty and his collectibles, which weren’t worth much to anyone but him.
Or so they’d all thought.
“You killed him.”
It came out in a whisper.
Everything came out of Erin loud and blunt. It was who she was and everyone around her had to get used to it or get out of the way.
But this particular truth was hard to breathe life into. She didn’t want them to be true words. Didn’t want them spoken. They slipped out of her mouth anyway.
Zach rolled his eyes and shook the gun beside Sam’s head. “Of course, I did. It’s why we’re all here, right?”
“No.” The words came out louder now, and she pushed each one out with the rage simmering in her gut, threatening to boil over. “You killedGrandpa.”
Zach at least had the decency to allow a brief flash of guilt to reach his eyes. But he quickly blinked it away. “Man was old. People die, Erin. You should know that.”
She flinched. It wasn’t the statement itself that stung. The knowledge that anyone she loved could be taken from her at any moment was a fact she learned early on and clutched like a blanket of certainty. She didn’t need a reminder from him.
But thathe,of all people, was trying to weaponize that fact against her right now cut deep.
“So if I have the coroner take another look at the body, they won’t find anything unusual. No strange marks? No injection points?”
He stared at her blankly. “You won’t be doing anything like that.”
“Are you going to kill me, too? Me and Sam? Everyone knows you were here with us. A whole lot of bodies piling up around you would look pretty suspicious.” She forcibly relaxed the muscles in her face, trying to give the appearance of concern. “If we figured this out, other people will eventually.”
He aimed the gun at her now and shouted, “Think I don’t know that?”
“Then how are you going to get out of this, Zach? What’s the plan? I don’t even understand why you did all of this.”
“It’s not brain surgery, Erin.”
“Money?”
“Bingo.”
She thought back to the cash on the bookshelf. “But Grandpa didn’t have any. We found his stash. He didn’t have enough money tokill himfor.”
“Not his money,” Zach said. “He was getting in the way. Should have minded his own business.”
“The pills. You were in on it.”
“I just told people where they could get their pills easy. All I had to do was go to clubs around New Orleans, talk to people, and get paid. Easy money. Hell of a lot more than I get cleaning from surgeries and picking up literal shit at work. Wouldn’t you jump on that? Money like that’s a ticket out of here. You of all people aren’t gonna judge me for cashing in my ticket.”
No, she wouldn’t judge him for that part. “That’s a long way from murder.”
“Like I said, should have minded his own business. And Paul shouldn’t have gotten greedy. Could have gotten what he wanted from the doc, but he thought he was gonna scoop up a free stash in here.”
“He walked in on you.”
“No.” Zach looked offended. “Asked me to let him in the place. With you back in town, he wanted to grab whatever was here before you cleared it out. Offeredmea cut of whatever pills we found. Was running his mouth about seeing your grandpa at the doctor and never at the pharmacy, but the idiot didn’t put together that meant there weren’t any pills. We had to shut him up.”
She didn’t miss thatwe.
“This is too much,” she said.
“What’s too much is living in this dead-end town. Even more too much was doing odd jobs around this place and taking care of that old man fornothingwhileyouwere off living it up in New Orleans.” Venom dripped from his words. “Don’t pretend like you cared about him now. Be smart, Erin.”
