Page 54 of Cruel Debts (Killers of Port Wylde #4)

The headaches were getting worse. Every day, I woke up feeling slightly sick to my stomach. Something was happening to me, but I wasn't sure what.

Min from across the way had stopped coming home a week or two ago, and nobody knew where she went. I worried for her, but in the end, I had to worry about myself, so there was no room to worry about her anymore.

I lost my job two days ago, thanks to my inability to think straight for more than ten minutes at a time. The doctor said I was fine; this was just my mind adjusting to a high-stress situation, but what stress? Nothing had changed. I was still the same as I'd always been.

Well, except for the dreams.

The dreams started a week or so ago, and it was always the same one: a blonde girl in pigtails, running down the sidewalk, turning back to see if someone was following her with a radiant smile.

When I looked around, I was always the only other one on that sidewalk with her.

Or, the same girl at a football game, sitting with three other men whose faces were always too blurry to see properly.

She sat on one's lap, and teased the other two as they fucked with her braids and toyed with her pompoms. Her wave when she spotted me was warm and inviting.

I couldn't make heads or tails of it. Whoever she was, I'd never seen her before in my life. Or if I had, I couldn't remember it.

I needed to figure this out, and fast, before I lost my damn mind entirely.

Ending up at the local mall wasn't in my plans, but the chaos of the crowd oddly helped to soothe my racing thoughts.

I stumbled around like a lost vagrant, well aware of the hesitant glances and worried, hushed whispers behind hands as I meandered like some sickly psycho.

The way I looked, they probably thought I belonged in the psych ward, but that place had long-ago been converted to some kind of cult.

The Guild.

Everyone knew about them. Few lived to tell tales from the inside.

Time ticked by slowly as I stumbled into a nearby abandoned storefront and watched more people pass by, faces blurred, just like my dreams. I didn't register anything until a voice so familiar it tugged at my heart echoed out and reached my ears.

And that's when I saw her.

She looked older than in my dreams, not by much, but by enough. She wasn't a teenager anymore, and her hair wasn't in pigtails, but it was her. It had to be her. There was no other explanation.

I had to figure out who she was.

Discretion was the furthest thing from my mind as I struggled to stay upright.

I stumbled down the street after her as she wandered obliviously, her eyes tracking things in the windows around her, hands clasped behind her back, pure joy in her eyes.

It was like the darkness of life hadn't touched her soul, like she'd been kept carefully locked away like some fairytale princess in a safe castle parapet high above the world.

I followed her blindly, like a man possessed, my head hurting more and more with every step I took after her.

But I couldn't stop. Stopping wasn't an option that my body would recognize, no matter how much pain it was in.

No matter how blinding the headaches became with every step I took in her direction.

She stopped before a window display, and I wondered if this was it. If this was the moment where I'd reach out and touch her shoulder, and say?—

Say what, exactly? Hi, I'm Johnny, you don't know me, and I don't know you, but I've been dreaming about a younger you for a week or so now, and I need to know why?—

"I don't know who the hell you are, buddy, but I wanna know why the fuck you're following my girl."

Strong hands grabbed me and dragged me around the corner into a dark alley, where the girl stood with two other men, both of whom wore murderous expressions as they put their hands on her shoulders and tucked her between them.

The third, his hands on my shoulders, shoved me roughly against the wall, and I cried out when the brick knocked the wind out of me.

My head bounced against the hard surface, and a searing pain shot through my skull as flashes of those dreams morphed and surfaced in broad daylight.

"Come on, don't tease me like that!"

"You're just jealous that mom and dad like me better."

"Who wants a brother like you? You're too bossy."

"World's most annoying sister award goes to you, Tee."

"Keehn, don't intimidate the boys at school. At this rate, I'll never get a date."

Tee. Keehn.

Who were those people? Why did I know their names, but not know what they looked like?

"I asked you a question, you sick fuck?—"

The man in front of me pulled back his fist and prepared to swing, and my mind broke, splintering into a million little pieces. I scrambled to pick them all up, but it was futile. Like picking up every piece of straw in a hay barn in winter.

Pointless. Because no matter how much you picked up, no matter how much you grabbed, there would always be more slipping free while your back was turned.

"Tee," I muttered, struggling to figure out what was was up and what was down. "Tee, I?—"

"What did you just say?"

The man with his fist up lowered it a fraction, pausing to stare into my eyes. The girl shot out like a bolt of lightning, and as I slipped to my knees, she followed, her hands reaching for my face as I flinched away.

But one look in her eyes, and the sound of a name I'd not heard outside of my dreams and memories, snapped everything into place.

"Keehn?"

"Shut the fuck up," fist man said with a snarl, "there's no fucking way, Trinity?—"

"I know you," I mumbled, my hand reaching up to cup the side of her jaw.

"You're her. The girl in my dreams." I shook my head, frowning as my jumbled thoughts righted themselves.

Things slowly trickled in, things I didn't remember until now.

A hammer to the side of my head for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A headache that felt like it went on forever until finally, it stopped.

As did the memories. A police precinct and a badge with the name McCoy on it. My name.

Keehn McCoy.

"Tee," I whispered, staring into the eyes of my sister. My fucking baby sister, who'd followed me everywhere. "What are you doing here?—"

I glanced around, and that's when the rest of the pieces fell into place.

Standing around us were none other than my three closest friends, brothers out of blood, the guys from the unit I'd served in the military. The three guys from my memories, my dreams. The men I'd made swear a blood oath to protect my sister if I ever couldn't do the job.

". Sentry. Ghost."

"Tank," one of them whispered, and that felt familiar, too. It felt right.

It would take some getting used to, this new set of memories, because until now, all I knew was the life of Johnny. I didn't know this Keehn person, and I was afraid I wouldn't be the same person I used to be.

They didn't seem to care, though.

Trinity threw her arms around me and sobbed while the others watched in awe.

Her shoulders shook with a force I'd never thought possible from her tiny body, and as more and more memories fell into place in my mind, I held her close to me, relishing the feeling of something familiar, something mine, finally where it belonged.

I had a past. I had a life before this blankness in my head. And here it was, the most important part of it, on her knees in a dingy alleyway as she sobbed into my shoulder.

"I knew you were still out there," she mumbled into my shirt, her words garbled but no less meaningful. "I knew you were still alive."

"You looked for me?" I glance around the group of men I called brothers, their looks of matching reluctance, embarrassment, and regret a confusing thing to bear. "What?—"

"Maybe we should take this reunion somewhere a little safer and private," Asher said with a frown. "There's some things you need to know."

"And some things we need to know, too," Hawke said as he tugged Trinity to her feet.

Years of military training took over. "Lead the way."

"When you said private and safe, I didn't expect you to take us to a police station.

" It wasn't a problem, per se, because I felt at home here.

At one point in my life, I was one of these men and women, cleaning up the streets for regular citizens.

But now? It felt off. Like I didn't belong here anymore.

Like there was something I regretted about the place and its limitations.

An animosity for the structure and red tape surrounding this building, and all of those who worked in it.

"Well, there's someone here that we're gonna need to talk to, about you," Liam hedged, his eyes glued to my sister. I'd deal with that later. I didn't like the way he looked at her. How any of them looked at her. But at least they'd been protecting her, so there was that.

I hadn't been able to, especially not after being almost murdered and then losing my memories.

Trinity sat beside me, her hands on mine between us, her eyes soft as she asked small, easy questions. Where had I been? Why did I leave town? What happened to keep me from coming back? How did I recognize her? Where had I been living?

It was my squadmates who asked the difficult questions.

What were you doing in Port Wylde?

Who did you cross that you shouldn't have?

Why didn't you ever reach out to us for help?

What were you working on that got you involved in this whole thing?

Hawke sat across from me and frowned. That scowl was beginning to look like a permanent part of his anatomy. "I managed to track down your last few open cases, and I put together what led you here." He set his hands on the table and shoved a phone across the surface at me.

I took it hesitantly, staring at the screen as shock registered on my face.

"You found the cold cases I reopened?"

I thought I'd eliminated all traces of myself. That I'd covered my tracks. But I hadn't, because otherwise, Hawke wouldn't have been able to trace my movements. And if I had done a good job of covering my tracks, whoever tried to kill me wouldn't have even known who I was. That I existed.

"It was hard work, but you know me. If I wanna know something, I'll find a way.

" He shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Trinity showed up on our doorstep in some trouble.

She came here to Port Wylde looking for you.

And when she realized we'd given up, she put us through the wringer, until we reopened your case, so to speak, and started looking again. "

I turned to Trinity with tears in my eyes. "You shouldn't have come here. You should be at home, preparing to marry into a good family and have babies and live a quiet life?—"

"Uh, I don't think the Trinity you left behind is the same Trinity you've got in front of you now, bud.

" Asher put a hand on my shoulder, grounding me.

Reassuring me. "She's done a lot of growing up while you've been missing.

And if not for her, we would have never even taken another look.

We would have just written you off for dead and gone on with our lives. "

He looks ashamed. I don't blame him. "So if she came here looking for me, then how?—"

"Your parents called Liam and asked him to take on her contract. Find her and bring her back."

Liam grinned. "She's like a cockroach, though. You can't get rid of her that easily."

"Hey!" Trinity reached across the table and swatted at him, and he shot her a wink before brushing off her tiny, soft smacks. "You're an asshole, Liam."

"And you're a brat."

"We've established this," she snorted, turning her back on him. "Hawke?—"

Just then, the door to the interrogation room opened, and in walked a man I knew I must've seen at least once or twice in my time in Port Wylde, though I couldn't place where.

"What's the big idea?" the new guy in the room asked. "How come, knowing the arrangement we have, you three and your side piece would wander into my precinct and demand to speak with me with some vagrant in tow?"

Asher stepped around me, his hand still on my shoulder, his grip tight. "Mistwood, we'd like you to meet the real Keehn McCoy."