Page 52 of Brazen Criminals

We don’t talk while we eat, but it’s not a weird silence. Everyone is hungry, and we’ll all make more sense if we’re fully awake. Clara and Trips face off over the last piece of bacon, and surprisingly, Trips lets Clara have it. She cackles, her eyes glowing in victory.

Suddenly, I realize I’m not anxious and worried about what to say to Clara. Apparently, being furious and terrified can cure my “oh I like you so I can’t talk to you” problem. Good to know, I guess?

Clara gulps down the rest of the bacon, taking control of the room like a natural. “So I’m starting at square one, guys.” She wheels on Trips. “Trips—what the fuck is your real name? Because that cop made me feel like an idiot when I kept calling you Trips. I had to resort to ‘Mr. Westerhouse,’ which was…weird.”

Trips grimaces, while the rest of us laugh. I can almost imagine the cop’s face, and I wonder if he thought she was being uncooperative or disrespectful. That knocks the smile off my face. I’m glad I wasn’t awake for that part of the morning. I’m sure my black face would make us look extra suspicious to the cops.

“I have the worst name ever,” Trips says, cutting off the laughter. “I’m named after my grandfather. And my father. And somehow my lucky-ass brother got to skip it, leaving me to be cursed. My name is Archibald. Archibald Clarence Westerhouse the Third.”

“Archibald? Archibald Clarence?” Clara snickers, and after a second, she snorts. This sends Jansen into a giggle fit, Walker joining them. Trips tries to get mad, but I catch the hint of a grin as he watches them laugh. It takes a minute, but eventually Clara wipes her eyes, and after taking a few deep breaths says, “Well, that was unexpected, Archie.” She winks at Trips, and his grin wars with his frustration.

“Don’t you dare, Clara. I’m Trips here.”

“Okay, I’ll call you Trips, but that’s weird too, you know.”

“It’s Trips, like, I’m the third, triple, Trips,” he explains, before quickly shutting his mouth, realizing that explaining your own nickname is pathetic.

Clara grins, but as I watch, her smile fades. “I guess we need to get to the real stuff now, right?” She looks down at her lap.

“Where should we start?” I ask her. She looks at me, those chestnut-brown eyes locking with mine, and my heart skips a beat. It always seems to stop when she looks at me. I clear my throat, and she looks back at the coffee table.

Tugging on the bottom of her shirt with her good hand, she swallows, not looking at any of us. “I guess we should start with the cops. I assumed that with Bryce assaulting me, we’d be okay. Yeah, Trips lost it a bit.” She glances at him, but he’s glaring across the room, not wanting to make eye contact with any of us. Trips hates it when he loses control, and he’ll be a mess for a while after last night.

Clara realizes Trips isn’t going to look at her, so she braves on. “But even so, Bryce started it, and Trips was defending me. I thought the cops would be happy to have an easy case. Instead, they seem super suspicious, and Bryce was too, so I’m thinking that I’m missing part of the story.”

At this, all of us look away. Because she’s right. She is missing part of the story, and none of us want to give it to her. Jansen clears his throat but stays quiet. I’m working up my own courage, but Trips cuts in, saving the rest of us.

He swallows, still staring at the wall. “Sophomore year, we were at a party, we got a little hammered, and were coming back to the house. There was this guy, he was beating up his girlfriend.” He runs his hands through his hair, and I know he’s seeing the blood on the sidewalk, hearing the screams, living through what happened next.

He shakes his head a bit, loosening the memories. “I jumped in. I didn’t think. And the guy, well, I hear he’s never gone back to normal. Like constant migraines from the concussion I gave him. He didn’t walk for months.”

He pauses, running his fingers over the broken backs of his knuckles. “We all freaked out when I realized what I’d done. The girl was weeping, terrified. We ran. The two of them gave statements, but there are so many people on campus, the cops couldn’t figure it out. But they have sketches. Officer Reed must have been on that case, because he took one look at me and played hardball.”

I breathe deep, trying to keep my hands from shaking. That night was the worst night of my life. I’ve never been that scared. We all holed up here, only leaving to go to class. We watched the front of the house, waiting for the cops to knock.

They didn’t and eventually, we believed we were safe. And if I’m being honest, that was the point we all became a team, not just a bunch of guys with gray morals and sketchy ways of making money living together. We started watching out for each other, tapping each other’s skills as we covered our tracks as best we could. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to remember that night and not feel sick.

Clara has been watching Trips, only I can’t read her face. I wish to God I could, because while she stayed last night, this will be the real test. Trips almost killed a guy, and instead of turning him in, we hid him. We continue to hide him, to try our best to make sure he’s never in a situation where that could happen again.

We failed. Last night he lost it. But, I think weallwould have stood by and let Trips kill Bryce. I’m not sure any of us would have stopped him. Bryce hurt Clara, and my own rage had flamed. If Trips hadn’t gotten there first, I would be the one with bloody knuckles right now. Even Jansen didn’t try to cut in, to pull Trips off, to calm him down. Clara did what we didn’t want to do. She’d protected Trips, gotten him away, calm and home, all with a totally useless left arm. Does she think helping us was a mistake?

Chapter 29

Clara

Notoneoftheguys will look at me after Trips explains what he did, what they all did two years ago. I’m sick to my stomach. Trips almost killed someone, and they all just covered it up, while keeping him leashed so he can’t do it again.

I think back to that first confrontation with Bryce, how RJ cut in and dislocated Bryce’s thumb, how he’d said that was the better option than having Trips lose his temper. I just thought they were being intimidating, but RJ was telling the truth. I remember how Jansen followed Trips to his room that night, how Walker made sure Emma didn’t get in Trips’ way.

This is crazy. Trips isn’t just a jerk. He’s dangerous—possibly lethal.

I’m living with a man who can kill with his bare hands.

I stare at the rug, the fear rolling over me. Risking a glance at Trips, it’s obvious how upset he is, his jaw clenched, his hands clasped together so tightly his fingers are turning white. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to live with that. To know you can lose yourself in a fight and not know if you’ll come out of it in time. What must it be like to know that you ruined someone’s life, that because of you, someone will never walk again without pain?

It would ache every minute of every day if you had a heart. And looking over at Trips, I see that heart in the tightness around his eyes, the shallowness of his breathing. He’s trying not to cry.

He fought last night to protect me, just like he fought to protect some random girl he didn’t even know two years ago.

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