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

Tom about this place. About the cabin. He’d have been aware of it, because of his brother. Peter came out here often enough, with the rest of the council.

They’re ready for him, though. They’re waiting for him. They’ve got the cabin as fortified as they can get it. They’re expecting him.

Linda is getting antsy. She paces the floors, watches out the windows. “How long we gotta be here for?” she says.

“You know exactly how long, Linda,” Michael says. “As long as it takes.”

“Yeah, but that ain’t exactly an answer, is it?”

“I don’t have an exact answer. We’re here until we kill this son of a bitch, and we ain’t gonna get a chance to kill him until he turns up.”

Linda stops pacing. Her body is turned toward the door, her arms folded, like she expects Tom Rollins to come bursting through at any second. “He could’ve been lying, y’know,” she says. “Steve. He could’ve been lying about it just being one guy. You really believe one guy could’ve done all this?”

Harry reclines in the corner of the room, letting them talk. He’s armed, has a rifle resting across his lap. His head turns from the two of them to the window, keeping an eye out. He looks surprisingly relaxed. Michael wishes he felt how Harry looks.

“Frankly, no,” Michael says. “I don’t. I don’t believe that one guy alone could take down Peter Reid and all his buddies. But Steve wasn’t lying. If Rollins has friends, he’s kept them secret, kept them hidden from Steve. Steve didn’t know about them.”

“And you’re sure about that?” Linda says, looking at him now.

“Oh, we’re sure,” Harry says from behind her. “We’re very, very sure.”

She chews her lip, rocks back and forth on her heels.

Michael stands, goes to her, holds her by the elbows. “Try to calm down,” he says. “You walking up the walls like this ain’t helping anything. It’s just putting me on edge. Take a seat.”

Linda nods, does as he says. She goes to the table where, in the past, the victorious hunters have eaten their roasted kills. Michael can hear the laughter still, resounding through the room, victorious men celebrating after a successful hunt.

He goes to Harry. “I’d feel better if we had more men here,” he says.

Harry grunts agreement.

“Four ain’t any kind of number.”

“It’ll be enough,” Harry says. “These are good men. Plus, there’s us. He shows up, the first sign of him, we’ll blow his fuckin’ head off.”

“A lot of guys didn’t even respond when I put the message out.”

Harry nods. “They were freaked out about their friends being picked off so easily, being killed,” he says. “They’re scared, I reckon. Rollins knew what he was doing, taking out Peter first. Sent a message, and a lot of our boys heard that message loud and clear. We’re here feeling the consequences of that. Well, ain’t nothin’ we can do about it now.”

Michael sucks his teeth. “We’ll deal with them later,” he says. “The treacherous, cowardly sons of bitches. Right now, we gotta deal with this bastard.”

Harry nods along. Together, the two of them look out the window, into the woods, searching for the man they know is coming for them.

58

Gerry didn’t stay home for long.

Ben dropped him off, stared him long and hard in the eyes, impressed upon him once again the urgency and importance of what they were doing, made him swear to secrecy once more, then went off.

Gerry sat in the dark for ten minutes, thinking, deliberating, sweating and breathing hard.

It was no good. He couldn’t just leave it at that. Couldn’t leave Ben alone to go off half-cocked on a mission he had no hope of accomplishing alone. He was putting himself in too much danger and, more than that, he was putting the lives of thousands of other people in danger, too. If Ben were to get himself killed, which was very likely, and everything went ahead as it was planned on Carly’s laptop, Gerry would be complicit.

He couldn’t have all those lives on his conscience.

So now he’s back on the bus, heading back to the office, because despite swearing to Ben he will keep silent, support him in this way, Gerry can’t simply sit at home and do nothing.

Returned, he goes straight to the office of Supervisory Special Agent Jake Lofton. He tells him everything.

“It’s ridiculous,” Gerry says, wrapping up, “and it’s dangerous, and he’s putting more people than just himself at risk. I don’t know what he’s thinking, going off on a one-man mission. I don’t know if he’s got visions of glory in his head or what, but he’s going to get himself and a lot of other people killed.”

Jake listens to the story in silence, one hand cupped around his chin. He watches Gerry unblinkingly, taking it all in. When Gerry finishes, he raises his eyebrows. “That was a lot to take in,” he says.

“I understand that, sir,” Gerry says. “I apologize for the info dump, but I didn’t want to take a risk of forgetting anything.”

“I need to clarify a few things,” Jake says. “Agent Carly Hogan was the mole? She leaked the information on our informants and our undercovers to the various white supremacist groups?”

“That’s right, sir.” Gerry nods.

“And where is she now? Have you seen her?”

“No, sir. And, to be quite frank, the way Ben was acting, I have a bad feeling she’s either being held captive somewhere, or she’s dead.”

“And Ben has sworn you to secrecy regarding all of this? He’s going to try to deal with it himself?”

Gerry pauses. “He said he had a friend,” he says, remembering. “Someone who could help him out, from outside the bureau. Someone he thinks he can trust.”

Jake’s eyes narrow. “He give a name?”

“No, sir. And to be honest, it all happened in such a blur, I was so stunned by everything I was hearing, I don’t recall if I even asked.”

“Okay. Well, Gerry, you did the right thing bringing this to me.”

Gerry looks relieved. Like a weight that