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

the warehouse. Three other men are sitting around. It looks like they’ve been playing cards, but they’ve gotten bored of it. They’re all looking at her now. She feels the same level of discomfort under their gaze as she did under Chuck’s.

Carly keeps her back straight, her jaw set, defiant. She doesn’t care that they’re undressing her with their eyes, that it’s probably been a long time since any of them were with a woman. She doesn’t care about the awful thoughts that must be running through their heads. She won’t be cowed by them.

“Show me,” she says.

“Of course,” Chuck says. He walks away and she follows. She knows the eyes of the other three will still be upon her, will be watching her ass.

The warehouse is cold. She notices some of the windows have been smashed. Likely by kids with rocks during its years of emptiness. Chuck leads her to the back of the building. There is a van, and next to it are boxes. They are under a tarp, likely to keep them dry.

“Eric sends you down here to check in on us, huh?” Chuck says. “He don’t trust us, that what it is?”

“Eric is cautious. You should know that by now,” Carly says. “And he’s a control freak. He doesn’t like things being out of his hands like this, doesn’t like having to rely on other people.”

“Man from his background, I’d expect he’s used to having other folk do things for him.”

“I didn’t come here to make conversation about Eric,” Carly says. “I came here to see the goods.”

Chuck smirks. “Sure thing, sweetheart.” He steps over to the corner of the tarp, pulls it back. “What exactly is it you want to check? All the fertilizer? You can probably smell it already.”

“I can,” Carly says. She’s avoided wrinkling her nose so far. In all honesty, she just thought it was the smell of five men in close quarters together. “You know what I came to see.”

Chuck smirks again, and she wishes she could slap that look right off his face. He picks up the nearest box, brings it over to her. He opens it up. There is ammonium nitrate inside.

“Plenty more like this,” Chuck says, tilting his head back toward the other boxes. “We ain’t mixed it in with the fertilizer yet.”

“I thought it was already inside the fertilizer,” Carly says.

“Not enough for the size explosion y’all are asking for.”

Carly’s mouth fills up with spit suddenly. She has to swallow it before she can speak again. “You’re not nervous, being around all this?”

Chuck puts the lid back down, shrugs. “Ain’t the first time,” he says. He puts the box back with the others. “You wanna check them all individually?”

“No,” she says. “One is enough.”

“Well,” Chuck says, coming back over to her, “there it is, in all its glory.”

Carly feels uncomfortable being so close to so much explosive material. It must show, as Chuck starts to laugh. She asks, “How much damage will this all do?”

“A lot,” Chuck says. “Just like you wanted.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Oh, He don’t have nothin’ to do with it. Way I understand it, they don’t even believe in Him, ain’t that right?”

Carly says nothing to this. Her eyes are fixed on the boxes. Now that she’s seen the contents, they make her nervous. The hard surface she was determined to wear while she was in here, with these men, is beginning to crack.

“Everything to your liking?” Chuck says. He’s enjoying this, how uncomfortable she looks. It sounds like he’s mocking her. “You gonna report back to Eric, tell him how hunky-dory everything is on our end, how we’ve done it all exactly how he told us, and how we’ve been worth every dime?”

Carly looks him in the eyes. “I’ll tell him just that.”

“Great. Satisfied with what you’ve seen here?”

Carly spares another quick glance at the boxes. Thinks about the damage they are going to cause. How many buildings they are going to destroy. How many people they are going to kill. She thinks about one person in particular. “Very.”

45

It takes a moment for Ronald to get his bearings. He knows he’s in his kitchen, but this is an angle he hasn’t seen it from before. He has to raise his head a little to look around. He’s on the kitchen table, flat on his back.

Then he realizes he can’t move. He’s tied down.

And he’s not alone.

Tom watches him wake. In his hands are a towel and a watering can. It’s the same damp towel Tom spotted earlier in the bathroom. He found the watering can in the garage. It’s perfect. It’s old and hasn’t been used in a while and looks like the last thing it had in it was oil. Tom has filled it up with water from the tap. It’s ready to go.

Ronald’s eyes settle on him. They blink, narrow, widen. “Who the fuck are you?”

Tom holds up the items in his hands. “Are you familiar with waterboarding?” he says.

Ronald looks confused. “Huh? What?”

“It’s an old practice. It goes back to the 1500s, to the Spanish Inquisition. It’s called an interrogation technique, but let’s be realistic here: It’s a form of torture. Most recently, you might have heard about its use at Guantanamo Bay. There was a lot of controversy about that, right? I bet you were one of those guys who was all for it. Fuck the A-rabs, right?”

Ronald stares at him, slowly comprehending why he is being told this.

“But you ever seen it done? You ever done it? You ever had it done to you?” Tom raises his eyebrows, cocks his head, like he’s waiting for an answer. There is none forthcoming. “Basically, this wet rag here, it goes over the person’s mouth and nose. And then, the water in this can here, it gets poured over the rag. The water gets in your mouth, it gets in your throat, and your gag reflex kicks in. You know what it feels like? It feels like there’s a fire in your