BLOOD TIES (Decklan Jennings Thriller Book 1) by Philip Duncan (book recommendations for young adults txt) 📕

a logical answer to his burning question. He was done with his coffee but his head was still pounding from the night before. Hangovers have a way of hanging around. He decided he needed rest. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep in his bed that he once shared with his wife.

The couch looks good enough.

He slowly made his way over to the couch, where he fell face first onto one of the cushions. He was so exhausted that he was asleep the second he hit the couch.

“Deck. Wake up. I need you to wake up,” a familiar voice said. “We may have a lead.”

He slowly opened his eyes, rubbing them to clear his blurry vision.

“Parker? What the hell are you doing here?” Decklan said.

“I have been trying to get hold of you for over an hour but you haven’t been picking up your phone, so I decided to come check on you and make sure everything was okay,” Parker said.

“What time is it?” Deck asked.

“It’s two in the afternoon,” Parker replied.

Holy shit, I’ve been asleep for twelve hours.

“Did you hear what I said?” Parker stressed. “We have a break in the case.”

This was the second time in as many minutes that he mentioned this, but Decklan was too out of it the first time to comprehend what was being said. This time, he jumped up off the couch like a fire had just been lit under his ass.

“What’s the lead?” Decklan said, now wide awake.

“Someone made an anonymous call to the station saying they know who murdered your family.”

Decklan could feel the inside of his chest pounding, like someone was beating a drum. “Are you serious? Who was it? Who made the call? Who did they say it was?” he asked.

“We don’t know who made the call, but they did give us an address to meet them at,” Parker replied.

“What’s the address?” Decklan asked quickly.

“I can’t tell you that, Deck; you know that. I just wanted to let you know that we are going to use all of our resources on this one to make sure we get something promising.”

“Jesus, Parker. You can’t honestly expect me to just sit here in this empty house wasting away while you and the goon squad go meet my family's potential killer?” Decklan snapped back.

“I know, Deck. Trust me, I get it. But I am the chief of police and it’s my job to follow the law and make sure private citizens do the same.”

“Okay, little brother. You win. I’ll stay home and wait for you to call, but you better not let this son of a bitch get away.”

“You have my word. I will call you when I can.”

Decklan sat back down on his couch, both pissed off that he couldn’t go and hopeful since this was the first break in the case. Despite telling Parker that he would sit back and let the police handle this, he had no intentions of doing so. Even if he wasn’t going to interfere, he was going to at least be there when they met this guy. All he needed to do was follow Parker to the meeting without being seen.

CHAPTER 7

There was only one problem, Parker didn’t say when this was going down. Decklan was so hung up on the tiny bit of good news that he didn’t realize that he had no clue when this meeting was going to happen, and he couldn’t just follow his brother around like a relentless stalker tailing an ex-girlfriend.

He needed to figure out a way to get the time and day of this meeting. So he decided to go for a Hail Mary. He had to call his brother and somehow get him to say it without raising suspicion.

“Hey Parker, I just got a call for an out-of-town job so I am going to be gone for a few days. When can I expect an update on this anonymous source? I want to make sure to have my phone on me so I don’t miss your call,” Decklan said.

“A job. Now? Are you sure that’s a good idea, Deck?” Parker said.

“Probably not, but I need something to get my mind off everything for a little while and since I can’t help here, I might as well take it,” Decklan replied.

“Okay, if you say so,” Parker said. “It’s going down tonight, actually, at eight. I will call you as soon as I can afterwards.”

He took the bait.

“Thanks, talk soon,” Decklan said as he hung up.

This gave him about six hours to kill before he needed to leave. He had nothing to do and nowhere to go so he just sat there and waited. The hours seemed to be rolling by slower than a sniper in a perch waiting for his target. It was only five o’clock so he still had two hours before he needed to be at the station so he could follow his brother to the meeting.

Finally, time to go. He headed straight for the station, where he parked and waited for his brother to leave. He could see his brother's unmarked police car parked about thirty yards from the front door. There was no way he was going to miss him.

There he is, game time.

It looked like they were only going with a few officers. Parker got in his car with a young female officer while the other two officers followed separately. Decklan knew he had to be careful not to be seen or his brother would pull the plug on the whole operation.

They rolled through red light after red light, and finally arrived.

Where the hell are we? This looks like an abandoned warehouse.

Despite living here for the past several years, Decklan had never seen this place before. It appeared to be an old factory or warehouse, just like the kind you would see in a movie where only sketchy meetings and drug deals happen. He watched as Parker and the female officer cautiously made their way inside while the other two cops