Rook to Bishop - Paul Garvey - Bog

When the Maguire siblings find themselves at odds with a local Drug Lord named John Bishop events escalate quickly. After Bishop's crew pick up Liam Maguire, his sister Penny will stop at nothing to get him back. She enlists Nick McNulty, an ageing enforcer with a reputation for brute force to help their cause. McNulty sees helping two innocents escape the grips of the Boston underworld as his last attempt for salvation. But what price is he willing to pay? A PROLOGUE The grey sky turned black as Billy Carson drove south towards the Massachusetts - New Hampshire border. Throughout the entire drive his conscience didn't so much chip away at his resolve as it did take shark bites out of it. By the time he approached the New Hampshire liquor store, he knew he was turning around. He pulled into the parking lot first and sat there for five minutes. He had memories of being a young man with McNulty, driving up to that very store on Sundays to pick up booze in the days before Massachusetts relaxed the ban of liquor sales on the Lord's day. The memories weren't necessarily of 'good ole days', since it was those wild and feckless good ole days he'd been paying for ever since. The realization of just how long he and McNulty had been friends however, that hit him like a ton of bricks. How many times had Nick McNulty been there for him? Sacrificed himself, his family, his everything, for him? How often had he put his life on the line to support the one, the only Billy Carson? It was too many times to count. He'd asked a lot of McNulty over the years they'd known each other and very rarely gave as much in return. He now felt the weight of his decision to let McNulty go it alone and it was unbearable. He felt akin to Peter on those steps in Jerusalem. 'But there's still time' he said out loud to himself. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, then pulled the gear stick down to 'drive' and stomped on the gas pedal. The old Buick's tires screamed over the pavement and kicked up sandy gravel as he tore from the parking lot and grabbed the highway, this time heading north.