Sanctuary Forever WITSEC Town Series Book 5

by Lisa Phillips

  Dan’s life wasn’t fodder for gossip, either. Sure, he was their leader-guy for their church, but he had a right to the privacy he’d so carefully preserved all these years. He even managed to act normal around them, though she knew he would hit his limit after a few hours and need to recharge. All those women in that house were either members of his church or they attended sometimes. She was the odd one out. And not about to confront the fact she knew more about his faith, and what it meant to him, than any of them.

  It’s breath.

  How many times had she heard him say that? More than she remembered. She hadn’t understood it until the first time she’d seen him lose it. PTSD. Such a bland explanation for something that had rocked her world. She’d been so scared, and she wasn’t sure he even remembered what had happened.

  Gemma glanced down at the tattoos that covered her right arm, the ones Olympia insisted she cover up for the wedding. She ran her finger down the middle, where the scar lay underneath.

  A scar Dan had given her.

  **

  Dan muscled the wheelbarrow back into the barn. Sweat-equity he’d heard it called. This farm had been grown on his weeding, harvesting, tilling, and planting. A lot of that was his father’s relentless abuse: it had taken years, but he was able to call it what it was now. Still, even with all the hitting and shouting, and then more hitting, Dan saw life in those green shoots which peeked through the ground every spring and throughout the year in his green house.

  Creation. He saw God in everything around him. His father—even just his memory of the man—wasn’t able to take that away. Dan loved this earth. He’d bled for it, cried for it, begged for it, and survived it.

  “Caught you.”

  He spun to see Chase lean against the wall then cross one foot over the other. Dan’s manager grinned. If he’d had a piece of hay in his mouth it wouldn’t have looked out of place.

  Dan had figured one of them would corner him at some point today. It was safer if it was Chase and not Miranda.

  Dan exhaled. “You caught me?”

  “You’ve been avoiding me all day.”

  Dan pushed the wheelbarrow down the aisle. Bay nickered, and he clicked his tongue in reply. He should call over to the medical center and find out how Gemma had been doing when they released her. Or he could call her place. He had her number noted down somewhere. He could dig it out and ask how she was… over the phone. That wouldn’t be weird. At least not weirder than him asking after her around town.

  When he’d asked Papa what he should do, Dan heard only silence. He didn’t know what that meant but mostly figured it was his choice, and it wouldn’t have disastrous ramifications.

  But what if God wanted their relationship brought to light in some dramatic revelation? What if Papa didn’t approve? Dan didn’t know if he could swallow that.

  They didn’t see each other much, but when they did, it healed him. Gemma had been there through so much of what he had gone through. Placing her tiny hand in his. That soft squeeze of her fingers.

  He could barely think about his life and she wasn’t in it. Gemma was God’s gift to his sanity. Without her, the past would be a yawning chasm of darkness. She was His light to Dan, even if she didn’t believe.

  Chase’s voice turned sardonic. “Speaking of avoiding…”

  “Avoiding is such a negative word.” Dan pulled off one glove and scratched the itch on his forehead that had been there for an hour. “What’s up?”

  Chase pushed off the wall. “Need a hand?”

  “Nope.” He liked it better when he worked by himself. All his staff knew that, and they only occasionally forced the issue to make him connect with someone.

  “So we’re not going to address this giant gaping hole of an issue in the yard? Is that it?”

  “I’m thinking about it.” John had set Mei on the investigation into a possible security risk that depended on where the tunnels went, but he hadn’t seen her yet.

  “Think harder,” Chase said. “We need to know how far out we should walk to avoid stepping in a hole ourselves. We need someone who knows about this stuff to come and look at the property and figure out how to make it safe. The school is coming for a field trip in two weeks. They can’t bring kids here if there’s a risk one of them is going to fall in a hole like—”

  Papa.

  Chase’s hand settled on his shoulder. “Whoa. Set the fork down.”

  Dan lowered the tool.

  “Take a breath and push it out.”

  He wanted to push off Chase’s hand and take two steps back, but that was both unloving and defensive. Chase didn’t fully understand his aversion to having a bigger man touch him, especially when adrenaline flowed. He breathed. His friend only meant well.

  “I’m okay.” Dan waited another breath, while he debated how much to share. “I just keep seeing Gemma fall.”

  “How well did you sleep last night?”

  Dan shot him a look.

  “Okay.” Chase’s look darkened. “You know you’re supposed to use those supplements I gave you when you need to rest.”

  Drugs probably would have been better, if Dan were willing to go to Dr. Noel. Get something to make him pass out that also left him unable to dream. He was not adverse to medication, not when he trusted Elliot far more than any of the other doctors Sanctuary had suffered through over the years. Elliot was astute enough he’d noticed something was wrong and had offered to help him. It was Dan who was hesitating.

  He didn’t have a chemical imbalance in his brain that needed to be regulated. What he had was a crazy past, and Dan didn’t want to have to go through the process of discovering the right dose if it meant that past was going to rear its ugly head in the meantime.

  In an ideal world he’d have a professional counselor and a support system of professionals who knew exactly how to help him. But this wasn’t anything close to an ideal world—this was Sanctuary.

  He’d rather pray and read his Bible. Which was exactly what he’d done. “I got half my sermon outlined.”

  “That’s no good if you fall asleep during church tomorrow.”

  Dan motioned to his manager. “It’s only you guys who fall asleep at church, not me.”

  “Nice deflection. As if I’d do that.” Chase gave him a look. “Those supplements won’t do you any good if you don’t take them.”

  Dan acquiesced with a nod.

  “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to go in the house and take a look around. See what the damage is to the inside.” When Dan started to object, Chase said, “I know after the bomb went off you condemned it, but I think you did that without even going inside.”

  “The foundation is cracked.” That was obvious enough from the east side wall. He didn’t need to go inside. “The basement probably caved in. It could fall to a heap of wood scraps any minute.”

  “I’ll be careful. But if I can, I’d like to see if that tunnel Gemma fell into leads to the basement, or whether it’s connected to the house at all.” He glanced around the barn, like he suddenly wanted to be pacing out the distance between the walls and checking for false doors.

  “It doesn’t lead here. I’ve checked the whole barn.”

  “Did you know anything about it?” Chase’s eyes lit up. “An honest-to-goodness tunnel?”

  “I had no idea.” He hadn’t stepped foot in the house in fifteen years, so it wasn’t like he went exploring around the place. Before that? The basement had been off limits.

  “I’m going to look around in there. I’m also going to talk to the sheriff and see if he knows anyone who is a structural engineer, or whether we’ll have to request outside help.”

  They could have someone flown in. A person with the required security clearance. Before the town had voted to break away from the federal government, and gotten the president’s signature of approval on it, they would have simply put in a request and the military would have brought someone in. They had less help now, which was likely the government’s wa
y of punishing them for wanting their independence.

  Dan let him go. If Chase wanted to go inside the house, Dan wasn’t going to stop him. He didn’t want anything to do with the place, but it was embarrassing to think of someone else seeing the disaster that was probably in there. His dad hadn’t been the cleanest person in the world, which Dan knew first-hand since he’d had to clean up most of the messes.

  The last time he’d been in the house, his mom had been in there. But he didn’t want anything to do with that memory. Not even the good parts.

  **

  Night had fallen by the time Mei made it out to the farm. Chase met her at the rear of the house, skulking. The man wasn’t good at hiding. She could see his agitation from here.

  “Ready?”

  Chase nodded. “He thinks we’re going inside to see if it’s structurally sound.”

  Mei didn’t care what the reason was, or that they had a valid excuse. This town was a fishbowl, and the way the farm manager treaded around Dan Walden like he was made of glass was bizarre. She didn’t know how they coped living so close to each other. She liked open spaces.

  Chase used a key to get in the house, and Mei stood at the threshold of the door. “You realize you actually should have an engineer come in here, right?”

  He nodded and disappeared into the house. “I’m just worried about Dan. He needs help, but there’s next to nothing I can do if I don’t know the extent of what I’m dealing with. I’m hoping the house will shed some light on it.”

  Mei wasn’t worried about Dan. She rubbed her stomach and the left-over bruises from being lowered into that hole. She’d seen survivors before, many in way worse shape mentally than he was. He would be fine. Sometimes being left alone was the best medicine.

  Inside the house was a cloud of dust thick enough Chase coughed. Old furniture, frayed from back when it was in use, was now ready to fall apart. Pictures on the walls were yellowed with age. Chase wandered into the kitchen, and Mei followed her instincts. Living room. She looked at the space. Couches laid out like that, only a man would place the rug in that spot. A man who didn’t know a thing about interior design.

  She knelt and slowly lifted the corner of the rug, tilting her head to see the floor below. Her flashlight illuminated the wooden boards.

  With one glance to check Chase wasn’t looking, she switched her flashlight to emit a black light.

  Blood.

  She let the carpet drop back down and got out her satellite phone. The town had spared no expense in keeping their people safe, though she’d had to wrangle a connected phone of her own. The sheriff wanted to give her a two-way radio. Like that would do.

  Mei sent a message to her contact.

  Get me everything you can find on Dan Walden’s parents.

  Chapter 4

  “How is Mei settling in?”

  Sanctuary’s sheriff, Deputy Marshal John Mason, sat on the couch in his apartment, upstairs from the Main Street store front that was the sheriff’s office. He shrugged to the TV screen, where he’d connected the video call, and answered his brother’s question. “Seems to be doing fine.”

  His brother Grant was the former director of the US Marshals, so technically at one time his boss… but no longer. Now the town was unincorporated, and while he was still a marshal, John was more “on-loan” to this unique town. Full of federal witnesses, John was the law in a town of people with prices on their heads. And while he’d heard the story of the tiny witness protection town in Hawaii, from both Grant and Bolton, he was still sure that Sanctuary was the first—and the only—fully functioning witness protection town in the country.

  Two hundred people who were his to protect.

  “That’s good, I’m glad Mei is doing well,” Grant said, his voice tinny on the TV.

  The screen display was split between Grant, a congressman from Utah, a representative to the Secretary of Defense, John’s other brother Nate, and Dr. Elliot—Noel’s father. John had a third brother, Ben, but the man never participated in their Monday morning update meetings.

  John said, “Sure. Real good.”

  Nate actually snorted at this response. Grant knew just as well as Nate did how John felt about the timing of Mei’s arrival and the fact their brother Ben had done a lot of work in Asia. Nothing that involved Ben was ever coincidental, and he figured this wasn’t either. He just couldn’t figure the woman out. She wasn’t ex-military or CIA that he could tell. Black ops, maybe, given the way she moved. He’d read the file he was given. Whether it was true or not was a guess at best. John just couldn’t shake the feeling Ben had been involved in the woman’s coincidental arrival.

  Grant said, “Nate, is everything set with you and Cyan?”

  Nate had met and fallen in love with a woman who had lived in Sanctuary as a child and been signed out by her mother at eighteen. Still in danger, Nate had helped her through a hard time, and they’d fallen in love.

  Nate grinned. “We should be in Sanctuary in less than a month, after Cyan testifies for the last time. After that it’s all paperwork and packing.”

  John returned his smile. He’d be a father again by then. His son Pat was growing like a weed. The kid was best friends with the autistic young man who lived with them, Aaron. A new baby was just what they all needed, and this little one was going to change all of their lives. Not to mention his brothers would be uncles again, and his mom a grandma. It would be nice to have more extended family around full time.

  Ben would say that John had gone soft, but he was happy to be soft considering the alternative was being alone.

  “Now for business,” Grant said. “You all have the file I sent about the witness from Hawaii who identified himself as ‘Colt.’ This man has requested to be transferred to the protected witness town of Sanctuary.”

  John opened the file on his iPad and scanned the text. He gaped at what he read.

  Grant said, “Colt’s real name is Malachi Molotov—”

  “Absolutely not,” Elliot’s father said. His bushy beard moved as he mashed his lips together, his attention on the papers in his hands. “This man will not be going to Sanctuary, not now and not ever.”

  “I’m inclined to agree.” The assistant to the Secretary of Defense closed the file, not even turning past the first page.

  The words Russian hitman had stuck in John’s brain, eclipsing everything beyond that point. He sighed. Colt might have made a good addition to the town, but now they would never know. Not when the committee viewed the safety of residents and the integrity of its security as paramount. John didn’t disagree with that, not considering his wife was about to have a baby. But God’s love had filled him, and when it did the job it was supposed to do, it meant that John was filled with grace, hope, and forgiveness. He could let his fear get in the way or his pride, but the purity and all-encompassing nature of God’s love meant John viewed Colt with only possibility. An opportunity to love someone God had put in his path.

  He couldn’t do that if they didn’t even let the man into the town.

  The call wrapped up with everyone saying goodbye and clicking off until it was only Grant and John left talking. “Anything you need?” Grant asked.

  “A structural engineer.”

  Grant’s eyes bugged out. “I thought you were going to say ‘baby stuff.’”

  John told him about Dan’s house and the ground falling in.

  “Is Gemma okay?”

  “She seems fine now, just bruises. She lost consciousness, but they released her the next day.”

  “Yeah, because you guys don’t have an MRI machine.”

  John wasn’t going to disagree. “Elliot knows what he’s doing. He’s a good doctor.”

  Grant didn’t look convinced, but that only made John more convinced the man was worried about all of them, family or not, in the town. Sure, they’d had some crazy times lately, the last of which was a bomb going off in the mountain above the ranch. Then Nadia Marie and Bolton got lost outside town, and she
came home with a teenage boy who was Bolton’s son. Weeks later Bolton had shown up in a wheelchair.

  John blew out a breath. “Some quiet would be good.”

  Grant burst out laughing.

  “What?”

  “Brother, you’re about to have a baby. Kiss quiet goodbye.”

  “Oh yeah,” John frowned. “Forgot about that.”

  Grant just laughed harder, so John disconnected the call. He didn’t need that kind of negativity in his life. What he needed was to go check on Gemma but not because she’d fallen down a hole.

  Gemma hadn’t done anything with the radio station since John had explained both that Hal was her father—surprise—and that he’d given her everything he had. They didn’t know anything about Hal. John had checked his file and discovered the man was one of the first to enter the witness protection town of Sanctuary—maybe even the very first.

  According to his file, Hal had arrived with another man known only as Bill Jones. Neither of them had any file recorded anywhere. They either pre-dated John’s paper files, or they simply hadn’t existed before they entered witness protection. Not unheard of, but still rare. Whatever the reason, John was under the impression it was why Sanctuary had been founded in the first place. The secret that had built this town.

  And one which had the potential to destroy it.

  **

  Gemma set the book down and sighed. Gothic horror was all well and good until she actually had to fall asleep. It probably wasn’t a sustainable genre. The library was quiet, and the sun had fallen behind the mountains. Twenty more minutes and she could close up the library, head over to the radio station and do some more reading, figure out what all those Army division-something papers were all about.

  She’d almost been tempted to go to church on Sunday morning. Just as it had been tempting to pound on her mom’s door and ask why she wasn’t calling back, like the woman could hide in a town like this.