AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He made a few stops on the way home, following up on a few favors he had made with some of the townspeople, helping Mr. Wilcox mow his lawn—helping because although Mr. Wilcox was physically incapable of doing the task, he refused to accept his condition and barked orders to Reid the entire time. Then he changed Mrs. Hillmans’s tire so she could get to her doctor’s appointment in the morning.
He grabbed the to-go bag off his seat and slid out of his cruiser. He scanned the street for any unfamiliar vehicles, then the yard for anything out of the ordinary. When he came up empty on all accounts, he went inside. He locked the door, then dead bolted it before checking the window he had opened this morning to make sure he had locked it.
He'd been getting too comfortable lately, but he couldn’t be careless anymore, not with Louie out on the streets again. He put his to-go bag on the counter and moved to the fridge. In a cookie jar on top of the fridge, he fished out the burner phone he had hidden, and dialed the only number he ever called on it.
The phone rang a couple of times before a familiar voice came over the line. “Hey. I was wondering when I’d be hearing from you,” Angel Garcia, his old partner from Boston, said.
“I’ve been busy,” Reid said. “I would’ve called sooner.”
“I’m guessing you heard.”
“How’d he get out? He was supposed to be doing a forty-year sentence. He’s served fifteen.”
“Word on the street is he worked with the feds to take down Big Danny Kearney.”
“Idiots. They release a fucking monster just to take down a coward.”
“That coward pulls the strings. Ever since—”
“I know. But Louie the Screwy Higgins back on the street is dangerous for everyone. He’s a loose cannon.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, bud.”
Reid thrust his hand through his hair. “It’s fucking frustrating.”
“Tell me about it, but there’s nothing we can do. It’s out of our hands with the higher ups who are using him for leverage.”
“He’s going to strike again. It’s only a matter of time. Prison doesn’t change someone like that.”
“That’s the feds problem now. If anyone gets killed, the blood will be on their hands, not ours.”
“I just wish there wouldn’t be blood on anyone’s hands,” Reid said, knowing how naïve that sounded.
“We all do, but unfortunately, they know what they’re getting into when they join. You, of all people, know that.”
Reid inhaled, thinking of all those he loved and lost as a kid. How one day they’d be there and the next no one talked about them as if they never existed. It was a cutthroat life, and it was why he did what he did to get away, but with Louie on the streets, he feared he might find him and rope him back in.
“You don’t think he’ll come for me, do you?”
“Luckily, you’ve pretty much stayed under the radar the last ten years. You have no online presence. You call me from a burner phone, for crying out loud.”
“Louie is old school. I doubt he’d even know how to use a damn computer. He’d find me the old-fashioned way.”
“You have no paper trail. And you don’t go by your given name. Nobody knows where you are, Connor. And I doubt Louie would be able to find you. Honestly, I don’t even think he’ll try. With your dad dead now, and the possibility of Big Danny Kearney getting pinched, the mob is scrambling, fighting over power. Goddamn civil war amongst them. No one will think twice about you.”
Except Louie was a vindictive son of a bitch who didn’t let his enemies get away for long. With him on the streets, it was only a matter of time before he revisited his old hit list—a list Reid had no doubt he was at the top of.
“Besides, if it’s true about Louie. If he sold out Big Danny Kearney to get out, he’ll have to go into hiding himself, until shit blows over. I wouldn’t worry about him. At least not yet.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“When have I ever not been right?” Angel said in his most arrogant tone.
“Still a cocky fuck, I see.”
“Always.”
Cocky, but a good fucking guy who’d had Reid’s back from the very beginning, all the way back to their days at the academy when they were two twenty-two-year-old kids ready to change the world.
