Page 16 of Cruel Debts (Killers of Port Wylde #4)

THIRTEEN

LIAM

“Yes, Mrs. McCoy, we found her. And I’ll have her on the first train back to you today, just as soon as I can buy the ticket.”

Trinity’s mother snorted down the line. “I’m not an idiot, Liam. You can’t make that girl do anything she doesn’t want to do. Unless you chain her to the seat and put a guard on her a foot away, she’s going to be off that train and back to wherever she’s been holing up before you make it home.”

I sighed in exasperation. “She’s promised to behave.”

“Let me remind you who you’re talking about,” she said cooly, the humor seeping through the line.

“If she won’t come home, she won’t come home, as much as her father wants her to.

But I will send a guard to the station to await her possible arrival.

Just send me the details.” She chuckled as I swore, spotting Trinity hurrying her way across the kitchen again, a bottle of water in one hand, a skillet in the other. “Good luck, Liam.”

The line went dead and I dropped my phone on the couch, standing with a quickness when I realized what the fucking pan was for.

She was headed straight for Hawke.

For a split second, I almost wanted to let her connect with the back of his thick skull. Almost. But unlike her, I had to live with him for the long run. And letting him get injured wasn’t viewed as polite, even between murderers.

“Trinity, put the pan down,” I commanded, unsurprised that she wasn’t listening. She never had, not even when we’d first known her. She did and said exactly what she pleased, nothing else, and heaven help the person who tried to stop her.

It was one of the things that made her so dangerous.

How did you protect someone from themselves?

“Aww, come on, Liam,” she pouted as I took the pan out of her hands, seconds away from Hawke’s worst headache in years. “He deserved it!”

She’d been here three days now, and after thwarting a plane ticket, a greyhound, and an escort, I was beginning to think her mother was right.

She was going to do what she wanted, when she wanted.

And I didn’t have the capacity to babysit her all the way home.

Not that she’d hesitate to knock me out and let me ride the whole way there alone while she came back here and caused who knew what kind of havoc.

I would try one last time to send her back where she belonged, and then call it a wash.

Or maybe tell Hawke he had to find a way to get rid of her. He couldn’t stand her presence in the place. It set him on edge. And when Hawke wanted to make something happen, it happened. People might die, but the devil was in the details, really.

She bounced away with a pout, and I had to swallow the sigh that built up inside me. Trinity McCoy was more of a handful now that she was grown, and had I known what I was signing up for back then, I would have told Keehn to take his blood oath and stick it up his ass.

Trinity was borderline infuriating on a good day.

I couldn’t imagine putting up with her long-term.

Today was my day to watch her, as it were, and I was already tired of the whole thing. I had a real job to be doing, a job that she put in jeopardy with her mere presence. A job I couldn’t take her along for.

A job that would essentially keep her safe, should I ever get around to completing it.

“I have to work tonight,” she said with a sigh, holding her bag of paints and brushes up to dangle them in my face. Maybe she thought that would make me sympathetic to her. It did the opposite. I had no desire to let her drag me into the sex club as a fucking assistant and bodyguard.

“I’m not taking you.”

She stomped her foot, and I had to choke back a laugh.

“You have to. You promised my employer, who is technically your employer as well, that you would see to it I could attend work again, on my nights, if I wanted.” She stuck her tongue out at me as I rolled my eyes skyward and groaned. “And I want.”

“You want to give me a headache is what you want to do.” Still, a deal was a deal, and I couldn’t really argue the point. We signed a deal with Minnie, just like we’d signed a contract with St. Clair. Honoring it was the bare minimum.

I wouldn’t let a little discomfort tarnish my good name.

“Fine,” I sighed, wincing when she threw her hands around my neck excitedly.

“But you need to do as I say. If I think there’s a danger to your life, you’re out of there, I don’t care what you’re doing.

” I looked her up and down, realizing there was no way this was what she planned to wear at that club.

We had all seen her on paint night. As much as I’d like to pretend I hadn’t.

“What are you planning to wear?”

A cute blush worked its way up her cheeks. “I don’t get dressed until I’m at the club.” She glared daggers at me, and I realized I was staring at her tits, hidden beneath a thick hoodie she’d swiped from who knew which one of the others. “You see something you like?”

Unfortunately. “No.”

What a smooth liar.

Denying Trinity was hot was like saying the ocean was dry.

That birds couldn’t fly. It was obvious to anyone with eyes.

It’d be a miracle if I could keep mine off her long enough to do this job.

Because there was no way in hell I was going there.

Not with my best friend’s sister. My dead best friend’s little sister.

No fucking way.

“Get ready, then. When do you have to be there?”

She shook that fucking bag again. “I am ready. And I go on in an hour.”

I rolled my eyes and grabbed the keys from the hook on the wall. “Let’s get this over with.”

If I thought watching Trinity work was going to be hard, it was nothing compared to actually seeing men and women ogle her like a piece of meat.

She strutted around in that skimpy little lingerie set, her assets on display for all to see, as she wound her brush around yet another man’s dick, turning his tiny pecker into a serpent coiled.

As if that would help him look bigger or more impressive when he took his pants off.

As if a woman would want that thing between her legs just because of a fancy design.

Women liked cars, jewelery, fancy things—they didn’t go for mediocre men like the one standing on the dais now, his hands in his hair, flexing like his muscled torso made up for what steroids had done to his Johnson.

I, on the other hand, built my muscles the hard way—with unending work, dedication, and perseverance inside a gym every day of the week, without breaks, even when I was sick or weak or feeling lazy.

You couldn’t attain perfection without some sacrifice.

And I’d sacrificed a lot.

“Okay, who’s next?”

Her voice rang out over the room, and I watched several men swarm forward, thankfully stopped by the club’s security.

I could have trusted these goons to protect her.

Until now, they’d been doing a damn good job.

But the problem with that was they weren’t trained like I was.

They weren’t as competent as I was. Their eyes weren’t as sharp, their minds not as clear.

They could be distracted by naked bodies and the atmosphere, believing themselves to be safe in their little club.

But there was no such thing as safety here, not when all your clients were strangers, unnamed nobodies who wore masks to hide their true identities.

“How about you, Miss?” the bodyguard-slash-organizer at the front of the line said, pointing to a woman along the back wall wearing a satin black number and a dark, face-covering mask. “Care to give it a go?”

The way she moved felt like trouble. I couldn’t pin one specific aspect of her person down as the thing that made alarm bells ring in my head, but I knew immediately that this one was trouble. So, being the professional I was, I moved forward, stepping closer to the dais with intent.

Her legs were toned beneath the sheer pants she wore, her shoes sensible and flat—not like the other women here wearing skyscraper heels to make their legs longer and asses plumper.

Her hands, at her sides at first, lifted to take her coat off, and I held my breath as something shiny glinted in the light of the room.

Gun.

She’s got a gun!

In a second, I was racing across the room, locking eyes with Trinity, who looked to me like she’d been watching my every move this whole time as well.

The understanding in her gaze was a second too late, though, and I watched her look toward the threat in the room just as the woman dodged the security guard and made a lunge at Trinity, the gun I’d previously suspected actually a blade—and a gnarly one, at that.

“Trinity, get down!”

She dropped to the floor like she’d been shot, and I thanked my lucky stars that for once, she’d listened, as I slammed into the woman with the knife, taking the blade straight in the meat of my arm as we tussled on the ground.

Security at the club didn’t even bother to help. Their concern was the crowd control, getting their customers out of the way and to safety.

They couldn’t give a fuck about Trinity. Or maybe they were in on it.

I rolled on the floor with the attacker, coming to a stop at the edge of the dais with a grunt.

Before I could react, she was on her feet and blending into the crowd, abandoning her outer layer for something red as she ditched her full mask and switched to a half mask of a different color.

I grabbed my arm to stem the flow of blood and made to go after her, but then Trinity was at my side, her hands on my bicep, feeling the edges of my wound, a worried thread in her voice she fought hard to hide.

“Liam, you’re hurt!” Her face was pale, and she looked from the wound to me, no doubt worried it was serious.

I shook off her touch, feeling very uncomfortable in all the wrong regions all of a sudden. “I’ll be fine. Just a scratch, really.” I pulled my hand away and watched the blood well back up, swearing when I realized I’d need stitches. Not many, but more than I’d like.

“You could have been killed,” she whispered, her hands moving to my shoulders as I tried to stand. “You need medical attention; stop moving?—”

“Trinity,” I sighed, shaking her off again so I could stand. “I’m a grown ass man who’s had worse than this. I’ll be fine.” I shook off the urge to cup her jaw when I saw her bottom lip quiver just a little. “Now, we have to get you out of here.”

She didn’t argue, bless her. She just moved methodically over to where her bag sat and started to put the caps on the tubes of paint, shaking out brushes like she hadn’t just had an attempt made on her life.

“Trinity,” I said firmly, hoping she’d get the idea, but it was like she couldn’t hear me.

“I’ll just be a minute,” she muttered, stacking her shit in that stupid ass bag one by one. Slowly, achingly so.

If she kept putting her shit away at that speed, I’d bleed out on the floor. “Trin,” I tried again, using her brother’s pet name for her in the hopes it’d snap her out of this shit. “Come on.”

She ignored me still, a million miles away at this moment, and I was well past entertaining a breakdown.

“McCoy!”

Her back went ramrod straight, and she snapped to attention, turning on a dime to face me like she’d been shocked. “Don’t call me like your dog,” she spat, her eyes narrowed as she threw that bag over her shoulder and moved toward me with purpose. “I hate that.”

“Is your last name not McCoy?” I asked in confusion, perhaps letting a little bit of scorn and contempt leak into my words. When she didn’t answer, I put my good hand on her shoulder and forced her to stop a few feet in front of me.

Her eyes remained glued to the floor. “McCoy was what you guys called Keehn,” she whispered, a hitch in her voice that I didn’t like that I put there. “You can’t call me that, because that’s his name.”

I didn’t bother arguing the fact that he was most likely dead.

“Let’s go, Trin,” I muttered, humbled by the visceral reminder that we’d just abandoned Keehn in his time of need. When he struggled, we were nowhere to be found. We were nothing more than distant ex-bunkies, pretending the one phone call a month or an email here and there was enough.

It was an embarrassment.

And we lacked a good excuse to justify it.

Maybe we were just shit human beings. And now, this little girl in a big, bad city was determined to show us how we should have acted. What we should have done.

I led her out the back, shooting off a text to Asher on the way to the hidden car, my senses on high alert.

Assassination attempt tonight. Need stitches. Heading 2 you.