Page 7 of Cruel Debts (Killers of Port Wylde #4)

SIX

HAWKE

Back at the fucking sex club again.

Asher and Liam let me drag them here every week, but lately, there’d been no time to actually enjoy myself.

After that one incident a month or so ago where Asher got himself painted up by the pretty blonde in the skyscraper heels and body paint, he’d insisted we come on my least favorite nights.

He’d scour the crowd, skim the program at the door, and then deflate like a leaking balloon when we finally got around to the feature presentations.

I had begun to suspect the painter girl had done something to him, bewitched him somehow, and now he couldn’t get her out of his head.

He was looking for her, seeking her out.

Unhealthy, for a man who viewed sex as a transaction.

And very out of character for the usually calculating, calm, and collected man who led our ragtag little group.

It was behavior more in line with me, or even Liam.

Not Asher.

I was losing my mind watching him break apart little by little every time she wasn’t here. This shit was pathetic, and it had begun to affect his performance on the job.

Tonight, though, we weren’t just here for his little whim. We were here to touch base with Minnie, the owner, and see what she’d procured in terms of intel for us.

Our current target was a high-value man from old money who had been rumored to procure women for clients. Women from places like this. Women who were down on their luck, or maybe too trusting of a stranger.

Tennecent Frye. A fucking precocious name if ever there was one.

I bet he was bullied in school. Hell, I’d bully him myself if we ever found him.

Asher had been in Minnie’s office for an hour now, the door closed and guarded by some big, burly fellow who side-eyed our leader every time he showed up or looked in his direction. There was a bit of fear in those eyes, as there should be.

He might not know what was capable of, but Asher carried a certain deadly aura with him wherever he went that lent itself well to intimidation.

Hell, it even scared me sometimes, and I’d lived with the guy for years now.

The bartender eyed the ice at the bottom of my glass and sighed. “Are you going to actually drink something, or just nurse sodas all night?”

“I don’t drink,” I replied coolly, shoving the glass across the bar. “Another. And maybe chill with the judgy shit. You ever hear of a designated driver?”

“Designated driver, my ass,” he muttered, lifting the soda gun to refill my drink. “Where’s your boyfriend tonight?”

I was pretty sure he was talking about Liam, who was currently bent over a table of cards, a girl on his lap wearing barely anything, no doubt transferring enough body glitter onto his clothes to have us all sparkling for weeks to come.

As I watched, he slammed down his hand and grinned at the other players, like he’d already won, no matter what was in their hands.

His hoot of excitement was audible even over the low din of the crowd and the music they constantly blared in this place.

“Playing cards, it would seem,” I mumbled to myself, “and hopefully winning, too.”

“Looks like you’ve been replaced, buddy.” The bartender wandered off to deal with customers drinking actual booze, and I shrugged off his assumption.

Wouldn’t be the first time I’d been mistaken for gay.

As I watched, Liam must’ve gotten a call, because he set the girl off to the side of him and reached inside his jacket for his phone, glancing at it for like a second, if that, before excusing himself and rushing out the back of the room.

The only thing down that hallway was an emergency escape, so, intrigued, I followed him, my soda forgotten on the bartop behind me.

Shouts from the bartender about my tab and squaring up were swallowed by the music as I slipped into the crowd and hurriedly followed Liam’s fast-moving form.

I caught up with him in the back hallway, just as he slipped into the men’s restroom with his phone to his ear. I waited at the door, counting slowly back from ten, then cracked the fucker and prepared to eavesdrop on a one-sided conversation.

“What do you mean you can’t find her?”

Her? I leaned against the door and strained, wishing I could hear what was being said on the other end of the line. Or that I’d brought some of my equipment with me.

I should be out there on the floor having fun. Enjoying myself. Getting my dick sucked or whatever. Not eavesdropping on my partner in crime.

But here we were.

I could hear him packing the room, his heeled boots clacking rhythmically against the tiles as he continued his increasingly heated conversation.

“If you want to keep your little secret quiet, you know what you have to do. I don’t care how many people you have to pull to work this case. Find her, or I’ll wreck you from the ground up, detective.”

He was talking to our police contact. McCoy—or, rather, not McCoy, just a man wearing his name.

“Listen, Mistwood. You’ve got two options. Either you make this happen and find the McCoy girl, or I won’t even need to bother exposing you. Her case will make sure it happens regardless.”

The McCoy girl.

Find the McCoy girl.

Trinity McCoy.

Why was he looking for Trinity McCoy? What case was he talking about?

Clearly, there wasn’t much I’d get out of him, because it was clear he had no intention of telling me. I wondered if he’d bothered to trust Asher with whatever news this was. That left me with only one solution.

I had to corner the detective and figure out what was going on behind my back.

Especially since it concerned Trinity McCoy.

A girl I’d sworn to protect.

By the time Liam emerged from the bathroom and reappeared in the main hall, I was already back at the table like I’d never left, dealing a new hand with a lethal grin and a pretty girl on my lap, her fingers trailing down the side of my neck, nails scratching my skin in that way that usually would make my cock twitch.

But now, there were other things on my mind. Namely, one Trinity McCoy.

Liam didn’t even look my way when he sat at the bar, and I let him play his little games, getting a little rowdy to remind him of my presence, playing up the drunkenness that I wasn’t feeling because every drink I’d ordered tonight was a virgin.

I didn’t drink, not after watching my father slip into a debilitating alcoholism that led to my mother’s suicide.

Coming back from the war to find out your own mother took her life and the man responsible didn’t have to suffer any consequences for driving her to it—that took a toll on my mental health.

If Asher hadn’t dragged me out of the South End and forced me to remember what it was like to be a civilized human, I might still be there, living under a bridge or in some back alley in an abandoned building, stealing from people and sucking dick to survive.

Anything was possible when you were stuck in the South End with no means of survival.

People did things they never thought they’d do to stay alive there.

I witnessed more than my fair share of it.

I almost became a casualty of it myself.

It’d been almost three hours since we first walked into this place when Asher finally walked out of the office, Minnie trailing behind him in the most precocious getup I’d ever seen her wear.

They exchanged a curt handshake, and Asher turned to the room, marching in Liam’s direction with a scowl on that perpetually pissed-off face. I thanked my stars that he wasn’t

I didn’t question it when they came over to the card table and tapped me twice on the shoulder as they passed—our signal that it was time to go. Sure, I could stay and have more fun, and they wouldn’t stop me, but I knew when it was time to call it a night.

Besides, I had better things to do.

Like undermine whatever it was Liam was hiding.

The Guild was never silent at night, as most of us preferred to operate in the dark, hiding in the shadows to keep from drawing attention to the illegal activities we participated in.

Some of us were just nocturnal by nature, like the Scots used to be.

I swore they were vampires, the way they hid from the sunlight.

Others, like our group, could operate in whatever manner we pleased. The Skeleton Crew, those brothers who were busy these days with their newest member—their stepsister—they didn’t hide from the daylight, so much as preferred the night for other reasons.

But the Guild was our safe space, the asylum we called home our protection, like political asylum from the law. And as such, when we rolled in at around three in the morning, there was no lack of activity in the common areas.

Unfortunately, the kitchen was filled with degenerates, making a quick and quiet meal impossible. We had the capabilities to cook in our rooms, but St. Clair had outfitted the communal kitchen with top-of-the-line appliances and tools, and I was nothing if not a sucker for a well-outfitted kitchen.

Cooking was what kept me sane some days.

Asher nudged me as he walked by, heading for the cabinet that held a plethora of snack foods that St. Clair kept on hand for whoever might need them.

I knew already what he planned to bring back out with him, and my suspicions were confirmed when he emerged seconds later with a bag of mixed nuts in hand.

I raised an eyebrow at him but said nothing, letting the smirk on my lips do all the talking for me. He simply rolled his eyes and made a beeline for the back staircase that led to our floor.

Liam hadn’t even stopped when he set foot in the door. He avoided the others in this place whenever possible. Unfortunately, as the resident medical expert on hand, Asher was frequently called upon to handle this or that injury to another member. He didn’t get the luxury of hiding.

And I knew quite a bit of these fuckers simply because during our brief encounters, they pissed me off.

Namely, the motherfucker who’d just walked in the room, arm in arm with his fiery bitch of a girlfriend. Apparently, she’d been their former stalker and kidnapper. Now, she was their woman, and from the looks of it, their fucking leader.

If you had told me there was a woman out there who could force Jackal to put a fucking collar on and let himself be led around by a leash, I would have called you insane. That fucker’d always been one card short of a full deck. But to let himself be degraded like that?

Holy fucking shit, man.

She walked him like the dog he was, and he loved every minute of it.

They called her the Hyena.

She was crazier than the three Neon Dogs she shacked up with, that was for sure.

As if on cue, she glanced up and offered me a lopsided smile and a wave, a complete contrast to the death glare her pet sent my way.

Ah, yes, Jackal and I had a little bit of a blood feud these days.

It wasn’t that I’d ever done anything to him, or vice versa. He just rubbed me the wrong way. And every time we were forced into the same room, that aversion to his personality only intensified.

“Oh, hey there, Ghost,” she murmured cheerily, blood spatter decorating the side of her face. No telling what they’d been up to tonight. “Busy night, huh?”

I gestured to her war paint and grunted. “For some of us.”

Jackal tilted his head, looking for all the world like the fucking dog he claimed to be. “What’s a matter, the Gunners out of work these days?”

“Even if we were, we’d still be better off than your dumb ass,” I snapped back, reaching for the top of the fridge to liberate the last cherry and cheese danish hiding there. “You let your bitch do all your work for you these days?”

He fucking snarled at me, snapping his sharpened teeth in warning.

“I let my bitch do whatever the hell she wants, because I can. Maybe if you could find someone to put up with your insufferable ass, you’d know what that’s like.

” His lips curled into a grin as my frown deepened.

The subtle snaking of his arm around his girl’s waist, the little tug he gave her until they were pressed together, he way he stuck his tongue out of his mouth and licked some of the blood off her neck as she moaned, it was a power play.

One I didn’t want to admit got to me more than it should.

“Get a room, fuckwit,” I snapped, turning my back on him to leave the fucking kitchen. “Nobody wants to see that.”

His laughter followed me out of the room as I wondered if there was some truth to his cruel, casual words.

Was there anyone out there who could tolerate me long enough to love?