**
Dan left the barn door open because he was raised in it, and touched Bay’s wiry nose on the way past. Everyone had gone home for the day. It was Friday, and those who lived in town didn’t have any reason to hang around when they could be elsewhere. He employed six people, but only two full time—a husband and wife, Megan and Chase, who were in their forties, no kids, and worked as his managers.
Dan’s farm produced thirty-six different kinds of produce, four varieties of raw milk, and the best honey ever—in his opinion. His greenhouses kept the town in vegetables three-hundred sixty-five days out of the year. Nothing that was flown in could compare.
It was almost an empire. Of vegetables. If he wasn’t constantly half a step from losing his mind he might even take a moment to think on all he’d accomplished.
The last time he’d had an “episode” his manager, Megan—not Chase, thankfully—had gotten him back to his room before he could wig out all over the place in front of everyone. He’d actually punched Chase on one occasion. Thank You, Papa, it wasn’t Megan. They knew enough to be careful around him, to not bring up anything about his family, the history of the farm, or the past in general. He had to live in the present. He couldn’t even read one of Gemma’s books because it would take him out of his life and the mental struts he’d erected around his memories. If they slipped and it all crumbled, Dan would…
He didn’t even want to think about it, but it would probably involve a prolonged hospital stay in a padded white room where he couldn’t hurt himself.
From the town of Sanctuary, I will cry to You. When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me back to You.
Dan flipped the latch and stepped inside the storage room at the back of the barn. He’d slept for years in one of the horse stalls because his father insisted. And as he’d had no intention of stepping one foot in that house, he’d moved into the storage room at the back of the barn after the old man dropped dead on the lettuce when Dan was sixteen. The romaine had never grown right since.
Dan had a tiny closet for his clothes, a three-drawer dresser, a bed his feet hung off the end of, and a desk with a wooden chair. The bathroom was a tiny room beyond that. His books were scattered across every available surface. Commentaries, devotionals, old works of Oswald Chambers he’d had Gemma find used online and shipped in.
Because they were all in witness protection, the town didn’t have any phone contact with the outside world. Their landline phones only dialed internally, except for the sheriff’s satellite phone which was separate. They had two hours of scheduled internet access each week per person via the library computers, but he mostly didn’t use it. Mail could be sent in and out, and was delivered each week on Fridays now, along with supplies.
He stripped off his shirt and the T-shirt he wore underneath, washed up real quick since Gemma was waiting, and pulled on a clean tee.
Gemma.
Dan had heard the sheriff, John Mason, say many times that he had no clue what his wife was thinking. Matthias, whose wife ran the bakery, said the same thing. Like women were a great mystery they were trying to solve.
Dan wasn’t trying. Gemma showed up when he needed company. They talked, and he felt better after he saw her. When she didn’t come by for a few weeks, he sought her out. They hung out, talked, and he got her to a place where he could elicit a laugh from her if she was having a rough time. Not that she’d tell him what was up with her.
There wasn’t much to figure out about Gemma. They were friends, and they made each other’s lives better. It had always been that way, even back at school as kids. Through the dark and the light, Gemma had been there with him when he’d needed someone tangible. As adults they saw each other infrequently, but when they did there was something about her that…settled him. If he could figure out an adequate way to say thank you, he’d do it. But he didn’t possess anything that immense which he could give her.
Only the knowledge of the Gospel.
He’d shared his faith with her a thousand times over in the years since he’d come to understand the enormity of what God had done. She knew what Papa had done, what He did every day for Dan, yet she didn’t believe. She’d made no profession of faith for herself.
Now Dan was a pastor, and Gemma was his unbelieving best friend. He knew the others would frown on their relationship if it ever became public knowledge. Not out of judgment, but out of concern for him. It was why Dan had never told them, and why he and Gemma had decided to keep their friendship a secret.
Fifteen years, and not a day went by he didn’t think of it. When he didn’t remember the sound of that gunfire. The flash, the jolt. His mom…disappeared. His father, same old dad. He didn’t want to think about himself, or he would end up in a head-funk he couldn’t get out of.
Dan buttoned his shirt as he walked, then reached back and fingered the Bible in his pocket. He shut the door to his room and strode out. No point in locking his door. Not in a small town when he had nothing of note worth stealing anyway. Besides, any thief would have to get past Bay first.
Dan blew the horse a kiss, and she nickered back to him. He latched the barn door shut and scanned the trees for Gemma. She emerged with a canvas bag swinging from her hand that he didn’t have to guess held two plastic cups, a bottle of Coke, and cherry syrup. It was what they did.
She walked with that loose-legged stride. Her milk-white skin with those freckles and her fire-red hair that flashed in the sunset’s orange glow made her seem almost like some creature from a fantasy novel. He’d seen one of the covers once, at the library.
She grinned as she walked, and he kept his gaze on her so that it didn’t stray to the house. She called out, “How about the lake?”
The town had elected to turn the hole the bomb blast had left into a man-made lake and stock it with fish. Dan never caught anything, though. He liked to dangle his tired feet in the water and lay back and stare at the stars while he prayed. Would it bother her if he took his boots off?
“Sure. That sounds great. Hey, you wanna take the horses?” He’d have to go back in the barn and saddle them.
She lit up. “Yes!”
Dan turned back to the barn. Out the corner of his eye, still a good fifteen feet from him, Gemma’s footsteps faltered. She hesitated for half a second and a weird look shadowed over her face, but she kept walking.
The ground tremored. A branch cracked, and Gemma yelled, “Dan.” Her voice laced with worry.
“Don’t—”
The ground between them caved in and Gemma fell into it.
Chapter 2
Gemma had never seen a semi-truck in real life, but she got the expression anyway, because it felt like she’d been hit by one. She’d lived her whole life inside this ring of mountains with no cell phones, no vehicles except a Jeep, two designated pickup trucks, some golf carts, and a couple of ATVs to clear snow. The sky swam above her, inside the hole she’d fallen through.
The juts of rocks and uneven dirt were a painful bed beneath where she lay. She blinked and tried to move. Fingers, toes, her head. Pain sliced through her, and a feral moan emerged from deep in her throat. She was down, far down. Dan.
Gemma fought the pain and managed to turn her head to the side. What she saw made no sense, but the light revealed only the truth in all its ugly glory.
A tunnel.
She shifted again and everything went black.
**
Lord… Dan’s thoughts drifted like smoke. He couldn’t even say it. Papa. You know what I can’t say. She can’t be dead. I can’t handle that. God knew if she was still alive, even if Dan couldn’t form the words out loud.
She’d been swallowed up by the ground.
“Gemma!” He took two steps. The ground started to cave in so he jumped back.
No response.
“Gemma! Can you hear me? Are you okay?”
The closest phone was back in the barn. He could barely stomach the idea of leaving her, but if he was going to get medical help, that
was his only shot. Dan raced back to it.
Ring. “Deputy Ling.”
“Gemma—” He pushed out a breath and gripped the handset so hard it was about to crack. “It’s Dan, at the farm. Gemma fell in a sink hole.”
The new deputy was quick with the questions, her voice steady enough it enabled him to get a handle on the derby race of thoughts in his head. Dan pulled in a breath and pushed it out slowly. “I can’t help her.”
“I’ll be there in minutes, and I’ll get the doctor.”
Dan hung up. He ran over toward the hole, but couldn’t do anything except stand there and watch, yell her name, and then listen for any sound that indicated she might be alive. Waiting. I have to be patient, Papa. Don’t let her die. You incline to me and hear my cry. They’d get her out of that horrible pit, out of the miry clay. Set her feet upon the rock. Establish her steps. A new song in her mouth. Psalms of deliverance and His faithfulness ran through Dan’s head. I’m trusting You, Papa.
Dan got rope from the barn just in case. He secured it with a carabiner to the barn door and threw it as far as he could. When the end landed in the hole, he called her name. Nothing. He pulled the end of the rope back and tied it around his waist.
The sheriff’s Jeep sped down the road that stretched from town, west of his farm. It was maybe half a mile of pitted concrete, but it gave him a sense of privacy and an escape from getting overloaded with being around too many people. If more than a handful knew how fragile his mental state was they’d never have let him be pastor. This town needed someone steady, someone who knew what he was doing. Instead they got Dan, who was a hair from falling apart nearly every second. He could barely get out of bed in the morning without Papa coaxing him into the light.
Dan lowered to his belly on the grass and started to crawl forward.
The Jeep door slammed. “Dan!” She called his name like a warning. “What are you doing?”
He didn’t look back. “We have to get her out somehow. You have a better idea, Mei?”
“Let me do it.”
That was actually a good idea. The deputy sheriff was five-three and weighed maybe one-ten all compacted into a tiny body. Still, she had this air about her, like she could bench-press his truck if she wanted to. That was exaggerating, but she was just one of those people who was more than what you saw. And people misjudged her. She knew it, and she used it.
He backed up and untied the rope.
When her fingers wrapped around it, Dan looked down into her almond eyes and didn’t let go. “Get her out, but don’t get hurt. I don’t know how I’ll get both of you out.” It wasn’t like they had a crane.
“Dr. Noel will be here in a couple of minutes.”
Dan nodded and let go to watch her tie the rope and then crawl the same path he had. No one knew where the Chinese woman had come to Sanctuary from. She was maybe twenty-one, but looked like she could be years younger. Acted like she was thirty, had seen everything, done most of it, and lived to tell the tale. No one dared ask her who she’d been before she was sent to their witness protection town. Two months, and no one even had the guts to find out if Mei Ling was her real name.
Their last deputy had left a path of destruction behind him, and they’d gone without for more than a year. But John’s baby was due any day. His family was growing and the marshal’s chest was puffed out all the time, everything right in the world. Dan wanted to know what that would look like for him. A wife, a family. They weren’t going to live in the barn with him, so it wouldn’t work. Papa. He needed to give up that dream.
John had told them all that Mei was qualified for the job of deputy sheriff, and that she came highly recommended. John should know. He was a deputy marshal, and his brother was the former director of the entire US Marshal Service.
The tiny woman crawled on while the ground shifted around her. “Whoa.” The American phrase came from her lips effortlessly, though he’d heard her mutter in Chinese—he guessed—plenty of times.
“Be careful,” he called out.
As if she wasn’t? But he had to say it anyway, just as he had to pray. He barely took one step without praying, and now Gemma could be hurt. Was hurt. So he prayed it wasn’t too bad. He prayed Elliot could help. He prayed Shelby—Gemma’s best friend and the doctor’s fiancé, a nurse herself—would come soon. That they all would help get her out of the ground.
“Almost there.” Now it was her turn to say the obvious.
“Do you see her?”
Mei crawled another few inches, her body flat on the ground. He gripped the rope, keeping it taut between them so she didn’t fall.
“I see her!”
Dan pushed out the breath he’d been holding. A golf cart sped down the road. “Elliot and Shelby are almost here.”
Mei nodded.
When they pulled up, Elliot slid a backboard out. Shelby raced over and stood by him. “She’ll be okay.”
Dan nodded. He didn’t know what Gemma had told her about the two of them and their longstanding friendship. The way she stared at him, he figured he looked sick so she just knew he cared.
The ground rumbled. “She’s too far down to reach,” Mei yelled, glancing over her shoulder at him. “Six feet, maybe seven. You’ll have to lower me.” She turned back to the hole. “Gemma, wake up!”
Did he want to ask if she looked okay? Maybe Gemma should stay unconscious, maybe that was better. She could have snapped her neck. She could be bleeding, or…
Shelby touched his arm. “Take a deep breath through your nose.” She spoke the same way he talked to the mama goat when she got riled. Soft and slow. “Now blow it out slowly from your mouth.”
The clean air settled his stomach.
“Again.”
Dan held the rope and breathed.
“Okay, lower me down!”
Elliot crawled from the opposite direction with the backboard at an angle, toward where Mei lay on the dirt. She disappeared into the hole.
Elliot reached the edge of the hole and lowered the board. “Get her secure with the rope. Dan can haul her up, and I’ll pull her out.”
The doctor glanced at his wife, who stood beside Dan on the balls of her feet waiting for news about her friend. The look on Elliot’s face said it all.
It wasn’t good.
**
Gemma’s head pounded. She pushed up from the bed. Dan.
“Lay back down!” Shelby was hovering like a mama cat that would bite the kitten to get it to comply.
“I want to know if he saw.”
Gemma had been in here once before, when she broke her wrist at the age of twelve. But that was the other medical center, the one that had blown up. This one was new, though they’d used the same basic design.
Mei stared at her from the far side of the room. It made Gemma uncomfortable enough to wonder if she should write a spy thriller instead of just reading them. Mei might be able to help her with the details of interrogation. Maybe that was why she was so right for the deputy sheriff’s job. Things did have a tendency to get a little crazy in the town of Sanctuary.
“Just concentrate on you, Gem.” Shelby’s nose crinkled. “Dan was shaken up, but he’s fine.”
“Are you sure?” She was giving too much away, but apparently having a concussion meant she had no filter. The cut on her head had stopped bleeding, and she was going to have a nasty gash—if not a full on scar—under her hair. Had Dan seen the blood? If he had, there was no telling where he was or how he was doing. “You need to send Elliot to check.” She glanced at Mei. “Or John. Someone needs to make sure he’s okay.”
“I’m sure he’s fine.”
Gemma clenched her fists. “You don’t understand!”
Shelby frowned. “If you can’t calm down, Elliot will have to give you something to make you sleep, Gem.” She glared at her friend, but Shelby stood her ground. “I’ll do it. And I won’t feel guilty at all. You’re going to hurt yourself. You fell in a hole.”
Mei pushed off t
he wall and strode to the other side of the bed but looked at Shelby. “Why don’t you get the patient a soda or something?”
Shelby glanced between them, then her gaze settled on Gemma. “No caffeine.”
She whined. “Why do you hate me?”
Shelby actually laughed before she reached the door. As soon as she was out of the room, Gemma said, “John needs to see to Dan.”
Mei lifted her radio. “Sheriff, do you copy?”
His voice cut in, “I did say you can call me John.”
Mei didn’t even smile at his response. She just asked him if he’d find the pastor and make sure he was okay. “Sure thing. Deputy.”
That made Mei smile, though it was more of a slight twitch of her lips. Mei perched with her hip on the end of the bed and pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil. “Feel like answering some questions?”
Gemma settled back against the pillows and shrugged. “I dunno, my head hurts pretty bad.” It was true. Her body ached, and she’d bruised a kidney landing on a rock. But that wasn’t why she didn’t want to talk.
“What brought you to the pastor’s house?”
Not Dan. The pastor. Gemma should remember that. “We hang out sometimes.”
“So you’re sleeping with each other.”
“What? No!”
“Wow. That might actually be true.” Mei tipped her head to the side and stared at her like Gemma was a zoo animal. “Huh.” She blinked those long gorgeous black eyelashes. “Okay, so you hang out. What does that entail?”
“Talking?” Gemma didn’t know what the right answer was. Mei thought they were having a romantic entanglement? Not that she’d all the way object. It was Dan, and he was her best friend, but he’d never been like that. Gemma had seen too many problems arise from sharing that with someone when there wasn’t one hundred percent trust. Plus, those thousand books she’d read in her rouge period, before the steampunk novels. So much drama. Sex and drama. It seemed like the whole world turned on sex and drama.
Sanctuary Forever WITSEC Town Series Book 5 Page 2