Blood Line (A Tom Rollins Thriller Book 1) by Paul Heatley (book recommendations based on other books .txt) 📗

Looks back up at Tom. His face is impassive. “Are you going to kill me?” he says.

He sounds calm. He’s resigned to this.

Tom puts the knife away. “Do you want out of this life? For good?”

“I never wanted any part of it to begin with.”

“Tomorrow morning, you’re going to find a burner phone at your front door. It’ll have one number on it. That number will put you in touch with me. You keep me updated on anything the Right Arm are doing, anything they have planned, and I will get you out of here.”

“You trust me?”

“I don’t trust many people, and I haven’t known you anywhere near long enough for you to make the list. But you saved my brother, and you tried to save Alejandra, whether you knew it or not, and that counts for something.”

“I’ll try my best,” Steve says. “But like I already told you, they don’t exactly keep me up to date. I’m not their first port of call when they have news to share.”

“Your brother’s just died. There’s an opening on the council. Show some initiative, some will. It might impress them.”

Steve nods, understanding.

“I’ll be in touch,” Tom says; then he leaves.

33

Ben keeps an eye on the news out of Harrow. He’s set up alerts on his personal laptop. It’s a new laptop. Recently purchased. He hasn’t used the other one since it was hacked. He’s put it to the back of his closet, handles it like a poisonous snake.

He gets a notification about the fire at the bar and the eight men killed inside. Names haven’t been released, but Ben can guess at least one of them. He knows which bar it was without even checking. He’s the one who told Tom about it.

Shortly after he reads about this incident, he receives a call from Tom. “I assume the fire is your handiwork?” he says.

“You’re asking something you already know the answer to,” Tom says. “And one you’re complicit in.”

“I’m aware.”

“Then don’t waste my time with stupid questions. I haven’t been able to get any information yet. Nothing about the mole, nothing about the attack.”

“Then why are you calling?”

“Because I have a man on the inside now.”

Ben is surprised to hear this. “Really? Who?”

“Steve Reid.”

“Peter’s brother?”

“Yes. They weren’t close.”

“You trust him?”

“He saved my brother. I trust him as much as I need to. And if I can’t, I’ll kill him. He’s not a great threat.”

“You asked him about the mole, the attack?”

“Yes. He didn’t know anything, but I’ve pressed him to dig deeper. He was surprised to hear about the attack. Said he couldn’t imagine the Right Arm plotting something like it.”

“Yeah, well, all the evidence we’ve got suggests otherwise. Anything else?”

“No.”

“Keep me updated.”

Tom hangs up. Ben looks at the phone in his hand. He puts it away, thinks to himself how Anthony must be the more talkative of the two. He at least got a goodbye out of him at the end of their conversations.

34

Michael can feel himself reeling from the death of Peter, and looking at Harry and Ronald, he knows they feel it too. The news was unexpected. It shakes them to their core.

More than that, they lost four other members of the Arm and three men they considered friends and allies. Three men they knew they could call upon if they needed them. Close friends of Peter, and so by proxy, friends of theirs.

“The cops are keeping it quiet,” Harry says, “’cause they don’t wanna tip off the killer, but those burned bodies were already dead. Bullet holes and knife wounds.” He shakes his head. “Someone took them out, then burned down the bar.”

“They think the killer was trying to cover up what he did?” Michael says. They’re sitting in his basement, around their table. Michael is trying to avoid looking at the empty seat where Peter should be. They all are.

“Could be,” Harry says. “They didn’t find any discharged casings from the bullets, so they must’ve been picked up before the fire was started. At the same time, maybe whoever it was just wanted to burn the bar down, too.”

“Sending a message,” Ronald says.

“What do you mean by that?” Michael says.

“Killing off eight of our men and friends,” Ronald says, “killing Peter, that don’t sound like retaliation to y’all? We just gonna rule out that maybe this don’t have something to do with Anthony Rollins?”

Michael and Harry exchange glances. The thought had crossed Michael’s mind, and he’s pretty sure it will have crossed Harry’s, too.

“It can’t be Anthony directly,” Michael says. “There’s no way he’s healed yet. He’s still laid up somewhere. He’s not going anywhere for a while yet, and he’s sure as hell not coming back here. He ain’t the one who did this.”

“But he could still be responsible for it,” Ronald says.

“It would be fitting for an undercover pussy to send someone else to fight his battle for him,” Harry says.

Michael nods. “True.”

“Only question, really,” Harry says, “is how many of them are there? How many has he sent? This is the work of a team. In one fell swoop, we’ve lost a lot of men – a lot of our heaviest hitters – they didn’t go down without a fight.”

“Knowing Peter,” Ronald says, “he got his pound of flesh. You can guarantee that. Whoever it was got lucky and took him out, but they know they were in a fight. He’d have hurt them.”

“True, true,” Michael says. “You spoke to Steve?”

“Yeah,” Ronald says.

“How was he?”

“He sounded pretty cut up. He was in tears.”

“Spoke to him since?”

“No.”

“Anyone seen him? Heard anything from him since?”

Neither responds.

“So nothing?”

“I’ll go check in on him,” Harry says. “See how things are going.”

“I wanna know how he is,” Michael says. “How he’s acting. How he’s handling this.”

“You’re still suspicious.”

“Of course I am.”

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t be.”

“Yeah. Watch him closely.”

Ronald looks like he has his doubts about this. “His brother just died,” he says.

“All the more reason to see how he’s handling it,” Michael says. “We already had