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

“A travelling salesman, huh? You go door to door?”

He laughs. “No, no, nothing so archaic. I sell to businesses. Office supplies, mostly. Paper, pens, all that basic kind of stuff.”

“You don’t look like the idea I have in my head of a travelling salesman.”

“No? What should I look like?”

“Well, I mean, you’re just more in shape than I would’ve guessed. I’d expect someone who travels so much to be overweight from eating junk from fast-food restaurants.”

“I work out in my room.”

“That’s commendable. But also, don’t take this the wrong way, but with the shaved head and the stubble, you don’t look like you’re making an effort to impress anyone.”

“I scrub up well. When I have to.”

“I’m sure. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think you look really –” she cringes, backing herself up into a corner “– nice.” She looks like she wants to kick herself.

“Nice, huh? Well, thank you; I appreciate that. You look very nice yourself.”

“Anyway,” Beth says, eager to move the conversation along, “you like it? Sales, I mean.”

“It’s all right. It gets me out. I see the country. And I get to meet a lot of interesting new people.” He smiles at her, like he’s talking about her and only her.

She smiles back, then realizes something. “Oh, we were talking about something else, weren’t we? You said you’d heard something about the bar that burned down?”

“Yeah. Kinda troubling, I’ve gotta admit.”

“Oh?”

“I heard it was a Nazi bar?”

Beth sucks air through her teeth, stretches her arms out in front of her. “Well, I ain’t gonna sugarcoat it. That’s exactly what it was.”

While she talks, Tom checks the few tattoos he can see on her. Checks for Nazi imagery, symbols. He doesn’t spot any. There’s a small bird, a swallow, on the inside of her left wrist. A black rose on her upper right arm, poking out under her sleeve.

He goes on: “And people were …” He leans closer, glances around, acting conspiratorial, like he’s being careful not to upset anyone nearby who might overhear. “People were okay with that? It didn’t bother them?”

“Honestly, there’s people I went to school with have grown up and joined Nazi cells, or run off with white militias. Y’know, like living on those communes out in the woods, that sort of thing. Doomsday preppers, that kind of shit.”

“I don’t think all those kinds of communities are solely for whites.” He knows for a fact they’re not. The one his father lives in, for instance.

“Yeah, but the ones I’m talking about are.”

“You still in touch with any of those people?” He thinks about Harry. Seeing her going in and out of his house.

“Yeah, sure, I see them around. It’s hard not to. Harrow’s a big town, but it ain’t that big.”

Their conversation takes a pause as their food is brought over. After the waitress leaves, Tom says, “I’ve seen a lot of black people around, though. Seen some Latinos, too.” He thinks of Alejandra. “It’s not like they’re being chased off, right?”

“Not exactly, but they know where they’re not supposed to go.” She sticks her fork in the melt, raises some to her mouth. “How come you’re so interested, anyway?”

Tom shrugs like it’s no big deal. “Guess I’ve just never been to a place like this before where people knew there was a Nazi group, that’s all. I’m just wondering what it’s like.”

He leaves it at that for the moment, starts eating his burger.

“How much longer you in town for?” Beth says.

“I’m not sure yet,” Tom says. “Just until I get a call from head office and they tell me to move on, and to where.”

“That how it works?”

He has no idea how it works, but he’s guessing neither does Beth. “Sometimes,” he says. “In this instance, yes. Sometimes I’m waiting around for them to call me for up to two weeks. I don’t mind so much, though. It gives me some time to myself, to come to diners and eat with pretty ladies.”

“You pick up that charm on the road?”

“No, it comes naturally.”

“I guess some cynical people would say it’s part of the job.”

“They can say that, but for me, it just helps me in what I do. I’ve always been this way. I find someone interesting, I talk to them. I see a pretty face, I tell them so. I find someone who’s a combination of both, well, that’s someone I wanna get to know.”

Beth chews, grins. She shakes her head at him.

“You got a boyfriend, Beth?”

She doesn’t answer straight away. Thinks about what she’s going to say. “I wouldn’t exactly call him a boyfriend,” she says. She hesitates, and Tom picks up on this, feels like there’s more to the story than she’s willing to tell. “It’s one of those things where it’s easier to just spend some time together rather than trying to find someone new in a town with such minimal prospects. We’ve known each other a long, long time – most of our lives, in fact – but to be honest, by now we don’t have all that much in common anymore.”

“How come?”

“He runs with a crowd that I don’t want any part of.”

Tom raises his eyebrows. “Nazis?” he says, almost a whisper.

Beth looks like she doesn’t want to affirm, but she finally nods. “Try not to hold that against me. Like I said, some of the people I grew up with in this town, that’s what they’re like now. I know how that makes us sound, but it ain’t like that. Harrow ain’t all bad. It just takes a few rotten apples to spoil the barrel, right? And some of those apples, I still talk to them, y’know? It’s hard not to. Like with – with him. I’ve known him forever. Since … before.”

“Do they do bad things?”

“I … I don’t know. I don’t ask. I don’t want to know.”

“What’s he do for a living?”

“He’s … he’s out of work right now.”

Tom figures this is a polite way of saying that