Liam: Branded Brothers
father,” Charla muttered. Dotti opened her
mouth about to spew more hatred but Charla cut her off. “Go back to rehab,
Dotti.”
    She clamped her mouth shut and furrowed her eyebrows down. “I
don’t need some sniveling little girl who is too good for her mama to tell me
what to do.”
    “I can call for you,” Charla offered. “But I’m not paying
for it again.”
    Dotti clucked and raised her hand as if she were going to
strike her. Charla took a step back and turned to her trunk just as the
attendant reappeared next to her. Dotti cleared her throat and put down her
hand.
    “Well, I have a ton to do.” Charla grabbed a box. She
wouldn’t stand here and waste her breath on the woman she was supposed to call
her mother. “Hope you have a nice day.”
    Dotti didn’t reply. Charla could still feel her standing
behind her as she handed the box to the attendant. Then she heard the fast,
hard clicks of Dotti’s stripper heels against the sidewalk disappear behind
her.

 
    Chapter 4
     
    Liam parked on the opposite side of
the street and killed the dull rumble of his decade-old white cargo van. It was
his runner van, the one he used during his collections. The Audi wasn’t exactly
the type of car to blend into the places and neighborhoods where he found his
clientele. Plus, he didn’t want any of the clientele messing up his Audi. So he
bought the old GMC for five grand, stripped the inside and built a custom steel
barrier between the cargo area and front seats before he went on his first job.
The other start-up costs were his collections of guns, although Jerry argued
that he only really needed one. Liam owned six.
    He double checked the address in the text from Jerry, his
bondsman. N756 Hill Street. The faded yellow house with crooked shutters across
the street had most of the same numbers. It was missing the seven, but he was
sure this was it. He’d been to this house before. He’d brought in Rich Horton almost
a year ago. Rich hadn’t gone down easily the first time around, so Liam
expected this second-go-around to be worse. But the cool grand and the thrill
of the hunt outweighed the risks. Some of the other bounty hunters Jerry
contracted relied heavily on disguises or ridiculous measures to get close to
their clientele. Liam relied on his presence and his ability to coerce.
    These whacked-out nut jobs were a piece of cake compared to
his tours in Afghanistan. Terrorists and road-side bombs had that effect on
people. The Marine Corps called it desensitization to violence. He had that
whole psychology bullshit covered after participating in ground-level combat
for two days straight. Nothing can quite wipe the memory of shooting a man.
    Rich Horton was most likely getting high inside the house or
maybe coming down from an all-night bender. Either way, he wasn’t going to be
fit for a rational conversation, not that most of them were. Liam would have to
go in around the back and take him down with force. This wasn’t something he
minded doing. After leaving the Marine Corps, he struggled to find something
that made him feel alive like the days back in the sweltering heat of the
desert. The Dirty Leprechaun was great, but it didn’t satisfy his need to live
on the edge. He needed a little more danger in his life. So when Jerry landed
in the Dirty Leprechaun over eighteen months ago with woes about the latest
hunter he stopped contracting with, it was a match made in heaven. Liam had
found a new day job.
    Bounty hunting in Clark County turned out to be more
profitable than he would have imagined. He had no idea how many criminals were
jumping bail in his hometown of Blackwell. The police department was overworked
and short staffed to handle the city’s population of 30,000. City officials
blamed it on the Chicago “creep.” The influence of criminal activity leaked
into the surrounding communities, according to them. Either way, it gave Liam
something to do during the day to keep his mind off his ex-wife

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