Page 26 of Cruel Debts (Killers of Port Wylde #4)

TWENTY-TWO

LIAM

"Listen, Mistwood—McCoy—whatever you wanna be called these days," I spat, putting my fist through the wall beside his head. "The job is simple. You either get with it, or give up the cushy benefits that come with that borrowed badge of yours."

"You three are nothing but bullies," he swore, shaking my attitude right off. "I took this badge to do good, not to play vigilante in the shadows and clean up your messes."

"Let's get one thing straight, Mistwood," I snarled, putting my hand around his throat in my blind rage. "You stole that dead man's identity because it was easy. Not because you wanted to do good with it. You stole it because you could, because it was better than what you had."

He knew I was right. We both knew it. Didn't make it any easier to swallow the reality of it all.

I pitied him, just a little. I imagined he had lost a fair bit of the man he used to be before he stole my friend's identity day by day and would continue to do so until he couldn't even remember who he used to be.

It was a shame. Deep down, there was probably a lot to like about the original Danny Mistwood. But not anymore. Now, he was just a shell, a man forgotten beneath a forgery.

The fake Detective Keehn McCoy.

"What do you want me to do now? Kill someone? Stalk someone? Break more laws for you assholes?"

"Oh, get off that high horse, Mistwood." He wasn't fooling anyone with that high-and-mighty attitude. He'd bend any number of laws for his ex-wife. Just because I wasn't fucking him, didn't mean he couldn't do the same for me. "You break more laws than I do, and that's just for Lilly."

"Keep my wife's name out of your filthy mouth," he snapped, his brows furrowed, eyes narrowed. Rage. Jealousy. Emotions I knew well. "She's got nothing to do with this."

"Your ex- wife is my boss, so I'll invoke her damn name wherever and whenever I please.

He'd better get with the program, and fast. "As for you, well, you'd better figure yourself out.

Because like I warned you on the phone the other day, if she figures out what you have going on with us, it'll all be over, and you can kiss your ass goodbye. "

His following words were a mistake, one he was fortunate to live to see the error of.

"I could just have her erased. Solves all our problems."

"You suggest something like that again and I'll be the one to end you myself.

I'll choke the life out of you and watch the light in your eyes snuff out by the second, until there's nothing left but a limp bag of blood and organs.

" I squeeze my hand in warning, reminding him I'm just crazy enough to do it.

"I'll kill you with my bare fucking hands, you ignorant prick. "

I hear footsteps coming round the corner, and fast—two pairs of them. With a last warning squeeze, I let the fucker go and stepped back, dusting my jacket off like I'd accumulated dust during the tenure of our conversation.

"It might be time for me to go," Mistwood started to say, but when the two owners of the footsteps rounded the corner, we froze.

There was nowhere to go.

Trin and Asher pulled up short, spotting us against the wall easily. My scowl set in, and I realized there was no getting away from this. I might as well settle in for the ride I was about to be taken on.

So I crossed my arms and leaned back, watching them as they approached us, Asher's eyes wide, his chest heaving.

"Where have you two been?" I ask suddenly, the knowledge sinking in that the only reason for them to be running down here, and have come from the direction they did, was that they were out, and were just now returning.

A dangerous decision, all things considered.

"Were you out in public in the daylight? "

Trinity scowled at me, her arms crossed as she hid her winded status behind a wall of anger. "Who the hell are you to ask me anything? What does it matter to you if I'm running around in public?"

I turned to Asher, who looked like he'd rather just disappear than have this conversation. "? What the fuck, man?"

Asher's face turns cold, and he glares at me. "I don't answer to you. We're a team, not a unit anymore. And even if we were, you sonofabitch, I'd outrank you."

He wasn't lying. But damned if it mattered here, now. "What's that got to do with anything? I thought we agreed?—"

"What we did was lock up a human being and deprive her of sunlight. Of life."

Oh no. Oh, no, she got to him. "Did she put you up to this? You're usually so reasonable?—"

"Nobody put me up to anything. I just did some thinking on my own and decided that maybe she needed to get out of this damn place for a few minutes?—"

While we argued, Mistwood worked on inching himself away from the situation. He nearly made it to the corner, when I realized two things simultaneously.

My gun was conveniently missing from the back of my spine. And Trin was nowhere to be found.

"Shit, where'd she go?"

I glanced around, but didn't spot her—until, that was, I looked in Mistwood's direction again, and saw the flash of metal beside his head.

Fuck me, she was going to kill our informant.

"Trin, put the gun down." My hands were in the air, and I'd never panicked harder than right now. Did she even know how to shoot one of those? "Let him go."

"Why? So he can keep running around, pretending to be Keehn?"

My heart sank. I turned to Asher, but he wore a twin look of defeat to Mistwood's. "How does she know?"

"She's known for a while," he admitted, putting his hands up in self-defense.

"He's right," she said, laughing a little as she shoved Mistwood back toward us, the gun still on his temple.

"I met him months ago, in Nocturna Beach.

He didn't get my name, though, but he gave me his.

Or, well, he gave me the name he goes by.

" Her eyes were angry, narrowed damn near to slits, as she shoved him to his knees and pulled out her phone.

"The same name that used to belong to the man in this picture. "

She flashed him a shot of Keehn after discharge, when he joined the force.

His smile was genuine, fresh, and so happy you could feel the sunshine radiating out of him.

I watched with confusion as Trin lowered the phone and angrily shook it at him, brandishing the gun at her side as she waited for—something.

His eyes scrunched up in confusion. "Who's that?"

"He's my brother," she nearly screamed. The pistol fell forgotten on the ground, and I rushed to grab it as she sank to her knees and gripped Mistwood by the collar. "The man you took the ID off of."

"I hate to break it to you, girl, but that's not the body I pulled this badge off of."

I blinked in surprise. So did Asher, and Trinity, too. I couldn't believe, in all the time that we'd known about Mistwood masquerading as Keehn, we never thought to ask him to identify the body he stole the badge off of. The body of our dead friend.

Did that make us traitors? Were we really as loyal as we pretended to be if we missed such an easy mark? If we skimmed past the most obvious way to confirm the reality we bought so easily into?

"You mean—you mean the dead guy the ID was on isn't the same guy in the picture?" Trinity looked almost hopeful, but just because he wasn't the body Mistwood yanked the persona off of, didn't mean the man holding his life in a wallet hadn't ended him beforehand to get it.

"The guy I took this ID off of didn't look anything like the guy in your picture.

Not even close." Mistwood inched away from her, turning to me with a frown.

"I'm out of here. I'll send along the details you asked for in the morning.

You just make sure this—" he gestured at Trinity, who still knelt on the ground, phone in hand, "—doesn't blow up in our faces. "

"I'll take care of it," I told him, and with a nod, he disappeared around the corner, running the second he was out of sight, if he knew what was good for him.

Asher already knelt at Trinity's side, but she wasn't entertaining his attention. In fact, she looked downright outraged at him. I hated to know how much of that was for me, too.

"So if you knew, then why didn't you say anything?

" It wasn't like her to hide her knowledge of the truth.

Any time we'd ever lied to her before, she took great pleasure in goading us, in proving she couldn't be lied to.

That we weren't as sneaky as we thought.

But this time? She'd acted in the shadows.

She hadn't trusted us to know she knew. Either she thought we didn't know, or she wanted us to come clean on our own.

Either way, we blew it in spectacular fashion.

"Why didn't you?" she countered, her eyes burning with unshed tears. "You didn't trust me."

"It didn't concern you," Asher tried, but that only made things worse. Trinity stood, her hands moving from her sides to land squarely on his pecs, which she shoved him back with.

"It concerned me most of all, Asher! You knew why I was here.

You knew he knew something. And now, to find out you never even thought to ask him to identify the body he pulled it off of?

" Her tears fell, trailing down her cheeks as a flush of pink tinted them in her anger. "You wasted all this time?—"

"There's no guarantee he's still alive," I pointed out, hating myself for it. But I couldn't let her spiral like this. It wasn't safe, even with the gun safely out of her hands. "There's no guarantee?—"

"There's never a guarantee, Liam, but that doesn't mean you stop trying."

She was right. And I'd never felt shittier than I did in that moment. What kind of friend was I? All these resources at my fingertips, and I'd just let him down. Let us all down.

"It means you try harder."

As she stormed off, Asher on her tail, I stood there wondering why I'd never really bothered to look deeper. To look closer, for the truth. Why I'd let the assumed truths speak volumes, when a single question might've changed the whole trajectory of this situation.

Maybe I didn't want to know the truth. Because knowing the truth would make it real, and that meant admitting we'd been shitty friends to Keehn the minute we left the military. That we'd only shown up when it was too late.

We didn't deserve Tank. And we sure as shit didn't deserve Trinity McCoy.

The thought was sobering.