Page 76 of Out to Get Her
“To stall you?” Trey asked. “Where were you going after that?”
“Nowhere.” Erin thought back to Friday. Three days felt like a lifetime ago. “Home. I was on my way back home.”
Trey’s expression was grim. “So he wanted to stall you. Who else had access to your house, Erin?”
“Just Zach.” Erin shook her head. “You can’t be suggesting he had something to do with any of this. Why would Zach not want me home?”
“I don’t know. Same thing everyone else was looking for?”
The prescriptions. Could Zach have been involved with that somehow?
“No,” she said adamantly. “He was at work. I had to wait for him to get off so he could give me a ride home.”
Trey only raised an eyebrow in silence.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
But the thought was in her head now. She didn’t know how or why, but it was possible, she supposed. Zach had said he and Dustin graduated together. He’d introduced her to Dustin when he came for the evidence.
But that was a long way from whatever Trey was hinting at here.
“Hesaidhe was at work,” Trey added. “Do you know that for sure? Or could Dustin have been helping him by stalling you?”
“To look for the prescriptions himself? Why?”
“I don’t know.” Trey’s face was tight.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I don’t know anything,” he said. “But I heard some stuff a while back. It wasn’t a big deal, but now that we’re talking about Dustin, I can’t get it out of my mind.”
Erin took a step backward and leaned against the wall for support. Whatever he was about to tell her, she had a feeling she wouldn’t like it. “Spill it.”
“You know how Zach has a record?”
“Yeah, but it was some minor bullshit drug possession years ago. He and some friends were in a bar fight in New Orleans, and he got busted with weed. That doesn’t make him some criminal mastermind or whatever you’re insinuating.”
“No, it doesn’t. I think the arrest was bullshit, and the drugs don’t matter,” Trey said. “But the word around here was it wasn’t all his. He took the rap for Dustin because Dustin couldn’t be a cop with a record. So Zach insisted it was all his.”
“Zach’s a good friend. That’s hardly a crime.” Quite the opposite. In fact, it went along with everything she already knew about him. He was kind and loyal. Of course, he’d have his friend’s back.
“I’m just saying Dustin owed him.”
Erin ran all the information in her head. Connected the dots. Put together the ridiculous theory Trey was implying. “Are you trying to tell me you think Dustin slashed my tire because Zach asked him to? To stall me so he could try to find those prescriptions himself?”
None of this made sense.
And yet, so far, it was the only thing that did make sense. Logically, at least.
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you.”
Trey’s voice was calm and even. This wasn’t some wild, excited half-baked theory. He’d thought this through. He’d considered carefully whether to tell her.
“Why?”
Trey shrugged. “That I don’t know.”
She blinked at him in silence. Processing. Debating.
