Blood Line (A Tom Rollins Thriller Book 1)

by Paul Heatley

Ben thinks he sees something in Tom’s face as he asks this last part, about Alejandra, but he doesn’t question it. He’s not in any position to do so. “Yes,” he says.

  Tom doesn’t dwell on that. He’s quick with his follow-up question. “All right. Now tell me the why.”

  “Have you seen your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is he?”

  “He’s alive. I told you, I’ll be the one asking questions.”

  “Well, how much has he told you already?”

  “Nothing.”

  Ben frowns. “Two of you ain’t close?”

  Tom looks like he’s getting annoyed. “Tell me why, Agent Fitzgerald.”

  Ben takes a deep breath. He tells Tom how they got Anthony for drug dealing. The way Anthony told it, it was because the only job he could get was in a grocery store stocking shelves, he wasn’t qualified for anything else, and with a child on the way, this wasn’t enough to support his coming family. Apparently, Alejandra had been unaware of his dealings. He kept her in the dark, told her each night that he was going to work, to stock shelves after hours.

  Due to prior convictions, Anthony was facing a long prison sentence. He’d miss the birth of his child, miss most of the kid’s life. Enter Ben Fitzgerald, who saw an opportunity to recruit him into going undercover in exchange for making it look like this most recent arrest had never happened. Anthony accepted the offer. He didn’t have a choice.

  “You blackmailed him,” Tom says.

  “I did what I had to do,” Ben says. “You haven’t heard the why yet.”

  Ben had to get him undercover fast. It was unofficial, off the books. He’d heard from various contacts that something was being planned, something big, and it would happen on American soil. In Texas. Kept hearing a reference to Oklahoma City. One of his informants had said, “Way I hear it, it’s gonna make OK City look like a bonfire.”

  Ben started pressing on contacts. The consensus was it was being planned by Nazis, though no one knew the target. Ben got a list of all the white supremacist groups in Texas, no matter how big- or small-time they may have been. He tried to narrow it down, get as many undercovers, informants, and contacts into them as possible.

  Then he got some more news that helped him narrow it down. It came right before he met Anthony. The timing was serendipitous. FBI analysts were bringing up online search histories. The servers used had been scrambled, but they’d narrowed it down to a town called Harrow. Whoever it was, they were looking up how to build a bomb. Searching through pages and pages of stuff on the dark web. Querying in message boards.

  Ben checked for active groups in Harrow. There was one. The Right Arm Of The Republic.

  Then Anthony got himself arrested. In Harrow.

  “He was dealing drugs,” Ben says. “Chances were some of them were their drugs. To my mind, he could’ve known some of them already. He maybe already had an in.”

  “And did he?” Tom says.

  “No,” Ben says. “But that didn’t stop him from quickly ingratiating himself. He worked fast. I was impressed.”

  “He had a prison sentence breathing down the back of his neck,” Tom says. “You really so surprised?”

  “I didn’t have time to wait around. Whatever they were planning, I needed to know about it. I needed to know as soon as possible. They had to be stopped. I didn’t have time to do things the right way. I still don’t.”

  “And did Anthony find out what you needed to know?”

  Ben shakes his head. “Not unless he heard anything on his final night. I haven’t spoken to him since then. I doubt it, though.”

  “And have you heard anything more about the Right Arm Of The Republic? Any more leads?”

  Ben thinks that Tom looks curious. His interest has gotten the better of him. He was in the army – perhaps his patriotism is coming to the fore. “One thing,” Ben says. “It’s recent. Whatever they’re going to do, it seems the ball is moving on it now. Couple of days ago, there was a robbery of a warehouse. You know what was stolen? A whole hell of a lot of fertilizer. The men who raided the place were all wearing masks, so we didn’t get any positive IDs, but one of them was in short sleeves. The security camera picked out a swastika tattoo.”

  “You think it’s them?”

  “They’re the only lead I’ve got.”

  “What does the rest of your department think?”

  “They don’t know about the Right Arm.”

  Tom cocks his head.

  “Do you know your brother wasn’t the only person attacked that night?”

  “I’ve heard about it. I’ve looked into things recently.”

  “I’m not surprised. You strike me as thorough. I reckon you’re probably smart enough to guess now why I haven’t told them yet.”

  “There’s a mole.”

  “There’s a potential mole,” Ben says. “There’s a leak, or there’s a hacker. I’m not sure. But I can’t take a risk on what I know getting out. Not unless it can stop them, and I don’t believe spooking either the mole or the Right Arm at this point will stop them in their tracks – if anything, it’s more likely to speed them up, to rush things forward. They do that, there’s a chance more people are going to get hurt.”

  Tom thinks about this. His next question is unrelated. “Did you get the phone to my father?”

  Ben nods.

  “How’d you manage that? The commune is off-grid.”

  Ben smirks. “You really think we don’t know where they all are?”

  Tom returns the smirk. “You really don’t. There are more than you can imagine.”

  Ben doesn’t know what to say to this, so he doesn’t respond.

  Tom lowers the gun.

  Ben raises an eyebrow. “This mean you trust me?”

  “I don’t trust you,” Tom says. “I think you’re a piece of shit. But I think we can be mutually beneficial to one another.”

  Ben had been considering the same thing.

  “I’m going to Harrow,” Tom says.

  “I’d figured as much. Riding off to avenge your brother, huh?”

  “It’s not just for him.”

  Ben thinks of Alejandra.

  “How much do you know about the Right Arm?”

  “I don’t know who was directly responsible,” Ben says.

  “That doesn’t matter. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all responsible.”

  “If I had to take a guess, I’d say it was the council. The guys who run the thing.”

  “I want the names. All the names you have.”

  “And you can have them. But I want something in return.”

  Tom looks at him.

  “I want any information you can find. If there’s a mole, I want to know who it is. I’m sure that’s information you’d like to know, too.”

  “Fine,” Tom says.

  “Then okay,” Ben says. “It sounds like we have a deal.”

  The two men look at each other in silence, each waiting for the other to either say something more or to make a move.

  Ben is first. “What’re you going to do when you reach Harrow, when you find them?” He already has a suspicion.

  “I’m going to kill them all.”

  Ben mulls this over. The deaths of the Right Arm are no skin off his nose. The more of them Tom kills, the less likely they are to carry out whatever it is they have planned. It’s not an ideal way of doing things, and again, it’s not the right way of doing things, but that has never stopped Ben before.

  Right now, his priority is stopping them from carrying out their attack, by any means necessary.

  And finding the mole.

  And right now, his best chance of doing either of those things seems to be Tom Rollins.

  Ben doesn’t say any of this aloud. He just nods his head, a silent blessing.

  25

  Tom drives through the night, straight to Harrow. He knows the way. It’s not his first time.

  In his bag, stuffed into the passenge
r footwell, is all the information Ben gave him. The names of the Right Arm. Where they live. Where they meet. Their haunts. This information, Tom knows, would have been gathered by Anthony.

  He wonders how much Alejandra knew, in the end. Was she aware Anthony was undercover, or did she meet her end in confusion, unaware of what he had been getting up to, the trouble he had gotten them in?

  It’s better not to think about such things.

  It’s still dark by the time Tom arrives. He goes straight to a motel, checks in. The girl on the desk looks like she’s been here all night. She looks tired, but she forces a smile. Her auburn hair is tied back, and she wears makeup to hide the tired darkness under her eyes. She’s pretty, though, and her smile lights up her face. Her name tag reads BETH.

  Tom pulls the car down to his room. He unlocks the door, leaves it wide. Checks there’s no one around, then goes to the trunk. He has another bag here. It’s full of gifts from his father.

  He gets the bag inside, locks the car, locks the door to his room. He gives the room a quick look over, checking escape routes. Other than the front door and the window next to it, there is only one. At the back, in the bathroom, out the window. He opens the window up and leans out, gets a good look. It leads out onto a patch of dead land. In the dark, he can make out the shape of an abandoned, rusting tricycle.

  Tom empties the bag from his father onto the bed, laying out the contents. There are night-vision goggles, binoculars, flash-bang grenades, a gas mask, an M4 Carbine and the ammunition to go with it, as well as his Beretta and KA-BAR still in his regular travelling bag. Tom examines each item, making sure everything is in working order. He checked them before he left his father’s, but he has since driven for a long time.

  Satisfied, he packs them back up into the bag, hides it under the bed. He leaves out the binoculars. From his regular pack, he takes the folded piece of paper with the names and locations of the higher-ranking members of the Right Arm that Ben gave him. He goes to the desk in the corner of the room, next to the television. On the map, he marks down where each member lives, as well as known haunts.

  Peter Reid, aka ‘Terminator’, is closest to him. His workplace is a bar known as a regular hangout for other Nazis, and it’s theorized that the Right Arm launders their money through it. There is a note next to Peter’s name that his younger brother, Steve, is also a member of the Right Arm and is the one Anthony spent most of his time with.

  Tom doesn’t let this knowledge affect him. He’s here to do what needs to be done. He’s treating it like a job. He’s a professional. Stays cool, stays calm, thinks things through.

  The map is marked. He folds it back up, puts it in his pocket. He takes his Beretta and KA-BAR, grabs the binoculars from the bed, and he heads out into the night, back to his car.

  He’s going to get to know his enemy. He’s going to do some recon.

  26

  Anthony wakes from another fitful sleep. Heavily drugged, it takes him a moment to work out where he is.

  The same place he keeps finding himself every time he opens his eyes. His father’s home. Anthony remembers that Tom was here. In the chair next to the bed, talking to him. He talked to him for a long time. Anthony blinks, trying to remember. The painkillers fog his brain, make him forgetful.

  Either that, or the fracture.

  No matter how many pills they give him, the pain never leaves. It barely numbs. It’s in his arm, in his skull, and in his heart. Even when he’s confused, not fully aware, he knows that something is wrong. That he has suffered a great loss.

  And then it all comes back, the same way it always does. A tidal wave of remembrance, an ocean of loss, grief, of despair. It brings nausea, too, roiling within him. He grits his teeth. With his good hand, he grabs the edge of the bed, squeezes it, closes his eyes tight until a tear runs from one corner.

  He calls for his father.

  Jeffrey is quick to arrive. Anthony doesn’t give him a chance to say anything. “Where’s Tom?”

  “He’s gone,” Jeffrey says.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Anthony can tell he’s lying. “He’s gone to Harrow, hasn’t he? He’s gone after them.”

  Jeffrey holds out his hands, hesitates before he speaks. “Someone has to.”

  Anthony is annoyed. “That someone is me! Damn it, I told him not to do this! And I told you –” he jabs a finger at Jeffrey “– that I didn’t want him called! I didn’t want him to know. I knew this is what he’d do, exactly what he’d do.”

  “We didn’t know if you were going to survive, Anthony,” Jeffrey says. “Your brother deserved to know.”

  “Bullshit,” Anthony says, glaring. “You knew someone was responsible, and you wanted them to pay. Tom’s a bullet – you got him here, you pointed him in the right direction, and you fired. This isn’t Tom’s fight.”

  “You’re his brother, Anthony. Of course it’s his fight. He cares about you. He loves you.”

  Anthony laughs, though it’s without humor. “Sure, it’s for me. That’s exactly who he’s doing this for.” Anthony shakes his head, but it gives him a splitting pain, feels like he’s taken an axe to the skull. “It’s my fight,” he says. “What happened was for me to resolve, not Tom. It was for me to deal with, and I don’t care how long it takes me to recover, you don’t have the right to take that decision away.”

  Anthony tries to get up, to swing his legs over the side of the bed and get to his feet, to make a point, but he can’t. The room starts spinning as soon as he’s sitting up. It feels like his skin is tearing under the bandages, like his bones are going to break through the surface. He has to lie back down, defeated, impotent.

  “Calm down, Anthony,” Jeffrey says. “You’re just gonna hurt yourself more. You need to rest.”

  “I’ve done nothing but rest,” Anthony says. “And I don’t feel any better.”

  “It’ll take time. These are severe injuries you’ve got. You’ve broken bones. You fractured your skull, for Christ’s sake. That’s not gonna just heal overnight.”

  Anthony stares up at the ceiling, angry. “Just go,” he says. He puts his good arm over his eyes, obscures his vision, blocks everything out.

  His father doesn’t leave, though. He hears him take a seat. Hears it creak as he leans forward.

  Anthony raises his arm a little, peers out at him.

  “Tell me about Alejandra,” Jeffrey says.

  27

  The last time Ben read anything about Tom Rollins, it was only in passing. Now, in his office, he looks him up, reads the file properly. The first thing that catches his eye, catches him off guard, is the fact he’s wanted. He went AWOL from the CIA, though the details are sketchy.

  Ben peers over the top of his computer, makes sure no one is approaching. If anyone finds him reading this, they’ll have a lot of questions, and he doesn’t want to answer any of them. He chews the inside of his cheek, peeling at the strips of already ragged flesh from the last time he was biting on it. Lately, his cheeks aren’t getting a chance to heal.

  Ben goes to the beginning. Tom joined the army at twenty-one, served three tours of Afghanistan. He never rose above infantry, but it’s noted that he never strove to. However, during his third tour, he was commended for bravery when he rescued two fellow soldiers, one of whom was wounded, from behind enemy lines – their unit was attacked; they got separated. Tom kept them alive out in the desert for five days and nights, returned them to camp. This feat caught the attention of the CIA, who recruited him, though it’s not clear what they had him doing.

  Ben is able to infer what this means. He was off the books. Doing the dirty work. Black ops. All the stuff they won’t keep a record of.

  He worked for the CIA for five years before abruptly going AWOL. His current age is thirty, though Ben can’t help thinking to himself how he looked older. Wonders at the kind of things he has seen, that he has done.

  Ben closes the report on his computer, dele
tes it from his history. As he finishes, there’s a knock at his door. It’s Carly. “How you doing?” she says.

  “I’m good,” he says.

  “Hope you didn’t miss me too much last night,” she says.

  “No, I … I kept myself busy.” He thinks of Tom Rollins.

  “That’s good to hear. Anything interesting?”

  “Not particularly. TV, read a book, y’know.”

  She tilts her head toward his computer, as if she knows exactly what he’s just been looking at. “How’s the investigation going?”

  “Not great,” Ben says. He sighs. “I’ve got Jake breathing down my neck. He wants results on it yesterday.”

  “But you’ve got nothing?”

  “Nothing worthwhile.”

  She nods once, looking solemn. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to bail on you again tonight.”

  “Something up?”

  “I have to go out of town. It’s my dad’s birthday, so I’m off to see the folks.”

  “Oh, really? Where do they live?”

  “Fort Worth.”

  “Planned for a while?”

  “No, it’s a last-minute thing. I was talking to them last night, called to say happy birthday in advance, and we thought, what the hell? Why don’t I go visit? I’ve got the time.”

  “Well, have a good one.” Ben smiles at her. “I’d say tell them happy birthday from me, but I’m pretty sure they don’t know who I am.”

  She laughs. “No, not yet. I’ll be sure to tell him a friend passed on his regards.”

  “A friend, huh? I feel so special.”

  She winks at him. “I’ll make up for it when I get back. Then you’ll feel special.”

  28

  Senior Special Agent Eric Thompson has checked into a motel room under a different name. He messaged the room number to Carly, told her to come straight to the door, and to make sure she’s dressed casual.

  She knocks, and when he answers, she says, “Is this casual enough for you?” She wears jeans, a plain white blouse tucked into them.