Page 6 of Cruel Debts (Killers of Port Wylde #4)

FIVE

LIAM

“She hasn’t been home in weeks. She hasn’t even called. Her phone goes straight to voicemail, and has for a month now. We’re worried something happened to her.”

A voice I never thought I’d hear again cracked on the other end of the line, soft sobs swallowing her words like a black hole of despair.

Mrs. McCoy and I had never really liked each other, but we had an understanding.

I’d covered her son’s back when we were deployed.

And when we got out, I crashed at her house until I found a place to stay.

I was like the errant son she never wanted.

And to me, she was a grouch ass who never left me alone.

But now, she was asking for our help. A group of thugs she’d never wanted her son to associate with in the first place.

Well, aside from Asher. She really liked him, for some reason.

“Why is she even in Nocturna Beach?” Trinity seemed like the kind of girl whose father would have had her married off to one of his cronies’ sons by now, having cute little rich boys’ babies and jet-setting off to rich locales for summer vacations.

“We’re not even sure she’s there anymore. Last we heard, she planned to look for Keehn there.”

It was no surprise to me that Keehn was missing. We’d known for a while now that his identity had been stolen. But the man who now wore that identity hadn’t been behind his disappearance. And the dead body he’d lifted the ID off of wasn’t our fallen comrade.

Keehn McCoy had just vanished without a trace.

And we never bothered to look for him.

Apparently, though we were busy with other things, his sister, Trinity, had been carrying a torch we should have kept lit ourselves. And now, it might’ve cost her, too.

I couldn’t bear to see her hurt because of this.

“We don’t usually take freelance work, you know?—”

“I don’t know what it is you all do now, but I do know that if anyone can find her, it’s you guys. So please, just—just find our daughter.”

I could hear her husband in the background, chatting noisily with someone else in the room. Perhaps it was a police officer, from the tone. Not that the cops were any good at finding people who went missing around here.

They weren’t worth shit on a sidewalk, to be honest.

“No, I’m telling you, she’s supposed to be in Nocturna Beach. She said she was staying with a friend there while she hunted for her brother.” A pause, some muttering, and then?—

“I don’t care how much money it takes, just do your damn jobs!”

And there it was. The crux of the matter.

Money, when applied correctly, could solve pretty much everything.

But the part he didn’t understand was that in Port Wylde, or towns and cities like it, money could only get you so far.

It wasn’t about how much of it you could throw around; it was whether you could throw it at the right people to make results happen.

And the cops weren’t the people to throw money at if you wanted results.

“Tell your husband I’ll do it. But I’ll need a few things to get started.”

Mrs. McCoy breathed a sigh of relief, her voice trembling as she thanked me over and over.

It wasn’t the thanks I wanted.

What she—and maybe the others—didn’t know was that it was her daughter I wanted.

Trinity McCoy.

But she was the one person I couldn’t have.

I managed to gather a fair bit of detail about Trinity before she went missing. Last her mother heard, she was staying with a girl named Mary in Nocturna Beach, and she even had her contact information. But one quick call to Mary proved what I already suspected—Trinity had never gone there.

She’d never been in Nocturna Beach at all.

Mary, once she realized what was happening, was more than forthcoming.

Trinity’s search for her brother had apparently led her here, to our city—the worst place in the world for her to have gone missing in.

And there was no telling what the fuck kind of people she might’ve run into, or what trouble she might’ve found.

According to her parents, she’d been supporting herself, which meant a job. And minimum wage wouldn’t cut it here.

She didn’t have many transferable skills.

Trinity had, for as long as I’d known her, been a very sheltered, stuck-up girl.

She was spoiled, a little brat who always got her way, and it was all Keehn’s fault, too.

If she said she wanted a pony, he’d pick up shifts after high school classes let out so he could buy it for her.

If their parents wouldn’t entertain her demands and wishes, Keehn found a way around it, ensuring the girl never wanted for a single thing in her life.

Growing up in the lap of luxury wasn’t a hardship, but Keehn acted like being told no wasn’t something his little sister should ever have to deal with.

So when we’d promised him we’d watch out for her if anything ever happened to him, we just all sort of expected he’d always be around, and we’d never have to deal with it.

And then Keehn went missing a few years back. And we were scouted by a woman who was married to a cop wearing our dead brethren’s identity.

Now, that cop worked for us, and his ex-wife didn’t even know it.

Talk about a plot twist.

We had that bastard eating out of the palm of our hands, and it wasn’t even hard. Hell, he’d rolled over and played dead when he realized whose driver’s license and name he was wearing these days.

Keehn McCoy, detective with Port Wylde PD. What a joke.

More like Danny Mistwood, abused and molested runaway teen with a chip on his shoulder that weighed two tons.

Maybe three.

And the man owed us some favors. Maybe it was time to cash in on some new ones.

I flipped open my phone, dialing the burner number he’d given us for when we needed police intervention or some resources to help on a case.

Now, I had a case of my own I needed his help with. And that fucker was about to make good on his promise to me ten years ago.

I pulled into the old warehouse parking lot, careful to kill the lights. There wasn’t another car in sight, which meant either I was the first one here, or Danny hadn’t driven here to the meeting.

When I walked into the empty, dark warehouse, I had my answer.

A bat swung at the back of my head before the door was even closed, and had he waited a millisecond more, he might’ve actually taken me out successfully.

However, it was obvious that baseball was not Mistwood’s sport.

The steel bat missed me by a mile, slamming into the nearby wall of cinderblocks with a ping I could feel all the way up my own arms.

I laughed at his failed attempt to kill me and shrugged it off. Wasn’t the first time we’d come to blows, and I was certain it wouldn’t be the last.

I shoved him up against the wall and cut off his airway, grinning like a loon as he started to sputter and claw at my arm.

“You seem like you’re ready to die today, Detective,” I lashed out, refusing to call him by my former best friend’s name.

“Luckily for you, you’re of more use to me alive than dead. ”

“When the fuck is all this going to stop? When is enough enough?” He struggled against my grip, trying desperately to shake me, but I was no weakling. Compared to his stature, I was a god, and he a mere mortal.

Heavens help him if I ever decided to actually kill him. He’d never see it coming.

I released him with a pointed look, shoving across the room in a single move. Before he even had time to double over and catch his breath, I was pulling up a chair, the only one in the room, with a stern look in my eyes I knew he couldn’t escape.

I crossed my legs and waited for him to recover, my anger simmering that I even had to be here right now.

But this bastard could get places I couldn’t, and right now, he had more men at his disposal than we did.

Besides, until I knew what the fuck we were dealing with, I didn’t want to tell the others about the side job I’d taken on for the McCoys.

Hawke hated her guts. He hated Keehn from the start, only taking the blood oath because the rest of us did. Eventually, Keehn grew on him, if only because Hawke was constantly getting into trouble that Keehn would bail him out of. But Trin?

Oh, he never liked Trin.

They were like oil and water, those two.

He was a spitfire, and so was she, always at each other’s throats over something stupid whenever we had a chance to get together as a unit after we came home.

When one got riled up, so did the other, and they fed off that energy, grating against each other whenever they were within striking distance.

One time, Trin might’ve taken a bat to him, for shits and giggles.

I wasn’t there to see it, but I believed it.

So if I told him Trinity was AWOL, he’d probably throw a party. And then invite her parents.

“Trinity McCoy is missing.” I watched the man who called himself Keehn process the words I’d just said, slower than usual. His eyes bugged out when the last name finally hit home.

“McCoy? Like your dead comrade McCoy?” He jerked his thumb into his chest. “Like the guy whose identity I’ve assumed McCoy?”

I nodded. “The same one. His sister. We promised the man we’d protect her and look out for her if there ever came a time when he couldn’t.

And since he’d been missing, presumed dead, for years now, I think that qualifies as his inability in this situation.

” My eyes narrowed dangerously. “And since she’s here looking for her brother, you need her to be found and sent home just as much as we do. ”

I thought Danny was going to have a heart attack on the spot. “So you want me to use the police force to find this missing girl.”

“She told her parents she was going to Nocturna Beach. The friend she was supposed to stay with was her cover. But she’s kindly informed us Trinity came here instead.

And now, who knows where she is? She’s been unreachable for weeks, maybe longer.

Very unlike her.” A shiver ran down my spine as any number of scenarios of things that could have gone wrong played across my mind.

“The sooner we find her, the better for all of us. I don’t think I need to remind you what kind of people she could have run into in this town, what kind of trouble could have found a sheltered rich girl in Port Wylde. ”

“And what, exactly, do you expect me to do?”

I snarled at him, my teeth gnashing together menacingly.

“I expect you to find her. The hows of it don’t concern me.

” The manila folder I’d had rolled up and tucked into the back pocket of my jeans suddenly fell into his lap, and he stared at it like he’d never seen one before.

“All the intel I have on her is there. You should be able to do plenty with that.”

He flipped through the pages, brows drawing together slowly. “What if she doesn’t want to be found?”

“I don’t care what she wants,” I growled. “I told her parents I’d find her. And that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

“You mean you’re going to make me find her.” He shoved the folder into the back of his pants with a grimace. “Fine. I’ll do your dirty work again, Sentry. But this is the last time?—”

“You don’t get to tell me when you’re done working for us.

You fucked up when you took the identity of the man who served alongside three of the most dangerous motherfuckers in this town.

And if you think going to St. Clair will save you, I have news for you.

She’s even more likely to gut you and throw you to the river puppies than we are if your little secret gets out. ”

His ex-wife, our boss, had no idea he’d been living his life under an assumed name.

She’d only ever known him as Keehn McCoy.

She had no idea the man she’d married was actually Danny Mistwood, rich boy extraordinaire on the run from his own past. That he never needed to be a suffering little street urchin.

That he’d always been different from the rest of us, though he pretended to be otherwise.

And if she found out the one person she’d bothered to trust in this short life was a liar, she might go off the deep end.

Lilly was always a little wonky to begin with.

She didn’t let many people see it, but I’d been privy to one too many episodes of her manic breaks to let her pull the wool over my eyes.

Our boss was possibly the most volatile person in the entire Guild. And perhaps the most dangerous, as well.

“Go on, then, McCoy. Do what you do best, and figure out where the fuck this girl is. The clock is ticking.”

I let him disappear into the darkness first, sitting alone for a moment to collect my thoughts. As much as I hoped he’d find Trinity soon, something inside me felt off. Like there was something about her disappearance that wasn’t so simple.

When she finally did turn up, all hell would likely break loose.

And we would all get caught in that inevitable crossfire, for better or worse.