Page 50 of Cruel Debts
"Who the fuck drops something like that just because someone tells them not to worry about it? He's mybrother,Asher. Myblood!"
"He was my best friend, too, Pretty Bird," he muttered, his words holding a razor-sharp edge. "He didn't just belong to you. He belonged to all of us, and we all hurt when he disappeared."
"But you gave up. I never did."
There it was, in black and white. Whereas they took the easy answer and ran with it, I hadn't believed for a second my brother would just walk out of our lives. He'd find a way to let us know what happened. He'd say something.
Wouldn't he?
"We gave up because he's dead, Trinity," Asher exploded, causing a bunch of curious heads to turn our way. I hated the attention, but he didn't share the same reservations, because he continued as if he didn't even see them. Didn't care. "We gave up because there's no way Keehn is still out there. If you think he'd leave you, leave us, and not come back, then you don't know your brother as well as you think you do. The KeehnIknew would have clawed his way through hell to get back to you. He would have slaughtered an entire battlefield of people to make sure he could be there for you." He gripped my shoulders, his ice cream discarded on the ground. "He'sgone,Trinity. Let his ghostgo."
I couldn't take it. Couldn't take the look of anger and pity in his stare. I turned on my heel, and before he could stop me, I ran.
Never mind that I ran in the direction we'd come from, or that I knew he'd catch up eventually. I didn't care to escape him. I just wanted to escape the thoughts in my head now.
He was wrong. Hehad to bewrong. Something happened to Keehn that kept him from coming home. He wouldn't let himself be killed off like that, wouldn't leave us like that. If he were dead, his ghost would haunt us. I was sure of it.
Or maybe this whole time, I was living a lie, deluding myself in an attempt to regain control in my spiraling life. Because without my brother to keep me safe, to protect me, to shield me from our parents, my life was not my own.
And it hadn't been for a long ass time.
Was I just projecting the need for freedom onto the situation with Keehn and using it as an escape?
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 dogood,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 waseasy.Not because you wanted to do good with it. You stole it because youcould,because it was better than what youhad."
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."
"Yourex-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.
