Blood Line (A Tom Rollins Thriller Book 1) by Paul Heatley (korean ebook reader txt) 📕

through woodland. This isn’t where Jeffrey Rollins has always lived. Before this, when Tom and Anthony were growing up, his home had been in an area more desert than green. He’d raised his boys alone, after the death of his wife, their mother, Mary. Cervical cancer took her. It hit Jeffrey and his boys hard, but he persevered. Did the best he could.

Tom and Anthony continued to go to school, but on evenings and weekends, Jeffrey would teach them other skills – how to hunt, fish, track, camp. How to load and fire guns. How to properly hold a knife, how to cut with it, and how to stab. They hoarded tinned food, lived off it, only rarely venturing to the grocery store to purchase things they couldn’t hunt for themselves or get for free in the wild.

Survivalist skills.

Doomsday prepping.

Jeffrey didn’t leave that home until after his boys had moved out, and he met Sylvia. They got in touch through a like-minded message board. They married a couple of years later, and Jeffrey left his fortified home and moved into the commune where she lived.

Now Tom makes his way to it down a dirt road. He takes his time, the car bouncing up and down and side to side, throwing him around a little. His hands are tight on the steering wheel. As he approaches, the sickly feeling he’s carried all the way from Arizona is beginning to fade a little, with the knowledge that soon, very soon, he will have the answers to all his questions.

The road is wide enough for only one car at a time. If anything comes from the other direction, he’s not sure what they’re supposed to do. In the woods, out of the corner of his eye, he spots movement. He slows the car more, but not enough to be suspicious. Watches without turning toward it directly. There’s a man there, behind a tree, behind some bushes, almost invisible in his camouflage. The man is armed. He watches Tom pass by. He raises an arm, a walkie-talkie, speaks into it. Warns the commune that someone is headed their way.

Tom remembers what his father said about people being jumpy. In all his worry over Anthony and Alejandra, he forgot about this statement, has spent no time wondering why they might be so.

At the end of the dirt road, the commune comes into sight. Before he can pull out from the trees, three men emerge from the bushes, waving him down. They’re armed, dressed similarly to the man hidden in the trees. Their automatic weapons are raised. They motion for him to get out of the car.

Tom keeps his hands in view. He gets out of the car, raises his arms. “Calm down, boys,” he says. “I was invited here.”

The man in the middle steps forward, gun still raised, pointed at Tom’s chest. “Who are you?” he says, jabbing with the rifle to punctuate his words. He’s short, heavy in the middle, has a thick red beard, and his hair is likely the same, though it’s concealed by a camouflage cap. “And what’re you doin’ out here?”

“You didn’t hear me the first time?” Tom says. “I was invited. My dad called me. Jeffrey Rollins. Since when did this kind of welcome become standard practice with y’all? This is the first time I’ve been held at gunpoint when I’ve come to visit.”

The two men behind the one asking all the questions don’t point their guns at Tom, but they hold them close, their fingers on the triggers. One of them is white; the other is black. The black one clears his throat, says, “Jeffrey did say his oldest son was on the way.”

The other agrees. “Said we oughtta just wave him straight on through.”

The leader shouts back at them over his shoulder without ever taking his eyes off Tom. “Either of y’all ever seen Jeff’s oldest kid? ’Cause I ain’t. What’s there to say this is even him?”

Tom looks the leader over. He’s being purposefully belligerent. Tom knows the type. He has a little bit of power – in this instance, being in charge of the entrance to the commune – and he’s loath to relinquish it, wants to shake his dick around a bit first. Tom smiles, is polite, respectful. “I’ll wait right here while you go and get him,” he says. “That shouldn’t take too long.”

The leader continues to be difficult. “We oughtta look the car over,” he says. “Check it. See if he’s got anything hidden.” He steps closer to Tom, raises the gun so it’s pointing in his face now. “You got anything in there you don’t want us seeing?”

Tom looks down into the barrel of the gun, then back at him. He can feel his patience evaporating. He has driven a long way to get here. His back is aching, and he’s worried about Anthony and Alejandra. “If you don’t lower this gun and calm yourself down, I’m gonna take it from you and stick it up your ass.” He stares into the man’s eyes. “This is the only time I’m gonna warn you. I’m done being polite.”

The leader’s eyes blaze. “Who the hell’d you think you are, talkin’ to me like that?”

Tom doesn’t answer him. He’s had his one warning. Tom disarms him, shoves the rifle out of his face while snatching it out of the man’s hands, spins him around and clamps an arm around his neck, pulls him close to use him as a shield. “You two,” he says to the men staring, dumbfounded, amazed at how fast he moved. “Go and get my dad. Me and your buddy will be waiting right here.”

Conscious of the guard he saw further back in the woods, Tom presses himself up against the car to protect his back, still holding onto the leader. He places the rifle he took from him down into the footwell, then gives him a little choke, just to hear him make a noise. Tom grins, puts his