Minutes passed. All they found were a few items of clothing, some grocery receipts, and a picture frame on the nightstand.
“Should we call it?” O’Reilly asked.
“Not yet.”
He stepped onto the porch as Erica exited the SUV. She lit the uneven ground with her phone as she came toward him.
“You didn’t find it,” she said, not a question.
“No.”
“It’s here,” she said, no second-guessing, and climbed the stairs.
His instinct was to refuse. But the cabin was secure. They had a warrant. And he wanted leverage over Gruzinsky.
Inside, he handed her gloves. “Don’t touch anything without these.”
She slipped them on. They were loose, the fingertips too long. Then she stood in the center of the room, perfectly still, as though getting her bearings. Her eyes cut to the desk beneath the window and crossed to it.
“We already searched there,” O’Reilly advised as she slid open the shallow center drawer.
She nodded and reached inside anyway. After a moment of sifting and crinkling paper, she withdrew a small brass key.
Coop moved in and took it from her. “What’s it to?”
She glanced toward the bedroom. “Remember Cheyenne’s hiding spot?”
“The rug under the bed,” he murmured, squeezing her shoulder.
He and O’Reilly flipped the bed on end, rolled up the threadbare rug, exposing a cut hatch in the floor secured with a padlock.
“I’ll be damned,” O’Reilly muttered.
Coop crouched and inserted the key. It turned clean. He lifted the hatch. Not a cellar, just a dirt pit, and inside it, a reinforced trunk. He reached for it.
“Wait.” O’Reilly pulled out his phone. “Document first.”
Time-stamped photos taken, they each grabbed a leather strap and hauled it up. It was heavy and awkward, but between them, plus some colorful cursing from O’Reilly, they lifted it out onto the floor.
It wasn’t locked, and he flipped up the lid. The contents included stacks of vacuum-sealed cash and oil-wrapped weapons, enough to bury Gruzinsky.
O’Reilly whistled low. He looked at Erica, who had stayed in the main room but moved to the door to watch. “I take back every joke and wise-ass remark.”
She tilted her head. “I don’t recall any remarks.”
“Not out loud,” he admitted. “I’m not that big of an ass. But believe me, there were a lot of them.”
She shrugged, a hint of amusement breaking through. “It’s not much of a gift. But it has its uses. I’d still prefer kitchen gadgets.”
O’Reilly’s mouth kicked up in a quick grin.
Coop heard it all, but his focus was on the cache as he processed what it all meant. He stood, eyes cutting to the nightstand and the photo.
He crossed the room and picked it up. A woman, with dark hair streaming from under a knit hat, stood with two boys bundled in winter coats. There was at least a foot of snow on the ground. Definitely not Texas.
Everything she saw. Well… not the stash, but she’d led them to it.
“Erica?”
