Blood Line (A Tom Rollins Thriller Book 1) Paul Heatley (10 best novels of all time .txt) 📖

mouth close to his ear and says, “Warned you, didn’t I? You caught me on a good day – you keep struggling, and I’ll follow through on that promise to stick your gun where the sun don’t shine.”

The leader goes very still.

Jeffrey arrives shortly after with the other guards. He grins at the predicament he finds his son in, shakes his head. “Put that asshole down and get over here,” he says. “Come give your old man a hug.”

11

Tom drives along to his father’s home, Jeffrey in the passenger seat beside him. Jeffrey and Sylvia’s place is deep in, toward the rear of the commune’s layout. Tom observes the houses as they go. It’s grown since he was here last. A lot of the homes look like they’ve been thrown together, hastily erected. Gives the place an almost shanty-town quality.

There’s another new addition. Encircling the commune, closing it in, is a chain-link fence, barbed wire atop it. Tom points it out to his father, who chuckles. “That ain’t the half of it,” he says. “There are claymores around the perimeter. No one’s getting in here who shouldn’t.”

“There a reason for all this?” Tom says, slowing as some children run across in front of him. “I ain’t seen it like this before.”

Jeffrey nods. “There’s a lot of folk here get jumpy. They wanna keep this place quiet, on the down low. They don’t want anyone to know they’re here ’cause they ain’t supposed to be here.”

“Yeah? Where they supposed to be?”

“Behind bars, a lot of the time. We got bail jumpers and fugitives hiding out here, and I suppose that gives them a right to be jumpy.”

“Guys like the one on the gate?”

“He’s always been an asshole.”

Tom changes the subject. “What’s happened to Anthony?”

“Got himself in some trouble.”

“Shit. It bad?”

“Yeah.” Jeffrey’s voice is solemn. Tom doesn’t like the sound of it.

“How bad?”

Jeffrey doesn’t answer. He grits his teeth.

12

Anthony is in the back room of the house. He lies on the bed, his head wrapped in bandages, a cast on his left arm. Sylvia is with him, sitting on a chair by the side of the bed, tending to him. She presses a moist towel to his face, rests it on his forehead. Anthony is unconscious. He whimpers in his sleep.

“Jesus,” Tom says, looking down at his brother.

Sylvia stands when she realizes they have entered the room. She leaves her post, comes over and embraces Tom. “It’s good to see you,” she says. “How’ve you been?”

“Better than Anthony,” Tom says, unable to take his eyes from him.

“He’ll pull through,” she says. “He’s got a fever right now, but it’ll break.”

“He looks like he ought to be in a hospital.”

“He should,” Jeffrey says.

Tom turns back to him. “Then why ain’t he?”

Jeffrey and Sylvia exchange a look.

“You ain’t told him yet?” Sylvia says.

“It’s a short drive from the entrance to here,” Jeffrey says. “Ain’t like I had the time.”

Sylvia returns to the chair, the bed, her moist cloth. Jeffrey beckons Tom to join him outside the room, where they can talk.

“He’s got a broken arm and a fractured skull,” he says, by way of beginning. “The skull’s got him knocked out, like he can’t focus. Says he can barely see, when he ain’t sleeping.”

“Then why ain’t he in the hospital?” Tom says.

“I’m getting to it,” Jeffrey says. He motions for Tom to take a chair, but Tom doesn’t want to sit. He was sitting a long damn time to get here. He remains standing.

“Suit yourself,” Jeffrey says, then lowers himself into a wooden chair. The house is made of wood, with corrugated steel on the roof. All the furniture in the house is made of wood, too.

“One morning I wake up, and there’s a box on my doorstep,” Jeffrey says. Tom folds his arms, listens. “I open the box, and you know what I find inside? A phone. I pick it up, and before I can even tell Sylvia what it is, it starts ringing. So I answer, and there’s this voice on the other end, a voice I don’t recognize, telling me that Anthony is in danger, that he’s in hospital, that he’s a sitting duck. I try to interrupt, try to ask questions, but the voice just keeps going, like it’s sticking to a schedule. It tells me which hospital he’s in – all the way in Texas – and then it tells me, If they find him, they’ll kill him.”

“You don’t know who it was?”

“Not a damn clue. Anyway, I try to call Anthony. I don’t get any answer. I don’t hang around. I haul ass down to Texas, to the hospital the voice told me. Sure enough, Anthony is there. Told me he’d been in a car crash. A bad one. I check him out, bring him back here with me. While I was gone, Sylvia told the commune about the phone, how it got here. How someone must’ve snuck in during the night, past the guards, and left the box there for me to find. The folks around here, they weren’t happy about that, that someone got in undetected. They ramped up security. By the time I got back, the commune had become what you see now. We’re still on high alert.”

“Who’s Anthony at risk from?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your caller didn’t say?”

“No.”

“What about Anthony?”

“He’s only said one thing since I got him here.”

“What’s that?”

“Where’s Alejandra? Same thing you asked me on the phone, ain’t it?”

Tom feels everything begin to spin. His feet sink into the ground, a hole opening up beneath him. He grits his teeth. “And? Where is she?”

Jeffrey holds out his hands. “I don’t know who Alejandra is.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Well? What is she? A friend? A girlfriend? A fiancée? A wife? The two of you go off and do your own thing, and I hear from you every couple of years if I’m lucky. If you were with someone, would you have gone out of your way to tell me? No, you wouldn’t. You think