Gemma went back to the paper, laid both side-by-side on the desk, and flipped on the lamp. She wasn’t a handwriting expert, but she’d watched enough CSI that she knew to look for unique loops and swirls. The slant of the words.
They looked like a match to her. He wrote at an angle, and the scratches of the letters resembled one another, which meant Hal had sat in a tent somewhere in Vietnam and written this report. No one left alive. Who had he been chasing? She and Dan had found that picture of Bill Jones, Dan’s father. Was that the man Hal had pursued through the Vietnamese countryside?
The front door of the building hit the bell she’d hung above it, with a loud clang. Hal hadn’t needed a bell, and there were probably legitimate questions going around town about who’d installed it but Gemma didn’t care. She had no key, so she couldn’t lock the place, and that would only invite more questions anyway.
Gemma ducked back into the hidden room and pushed the door shut. From the other side it would simply look like there was a wall here. She pulled the pepper spray Mei had given her from her back pocket and held her breath. It was probably nothing. Just Nadia Marie, or someone else feeling nostalgic and missing Hal, so they’d decided to come for a visit. The person would leave after a while, and she’d be able to open up the door again.
Not the person—whoever it had been—that had tapped on the wall like they were trying to find a hidden door all those months ago. Right?
Footsteps. She could hear them, though muted. That meant if she made too much noise they’d know she was here as well. Gemma backed up from the door. How thin were the walls? Could someone just punch through them? Maybe they wouldn’t even need a hammer.
“Okay, so you’re not in here,” the man’s voice was a low rumble. “This was a stupid idea.”
Dan?
“You’re probably at home sleeping, not rooting through papers at almost midnight. That would be crazy. Just because I can’t sleep a wink doesn’t mean—”
Gemma cracked the door.
Dan turned back to her, eyes wide.
She said, “Uh…hey.”
“Can I come in?”
Gemma opened the door wide enough he could enter, then said, “Open or shut?”
“No one knows we’re here, but open is probably better.”
Suit yourself. Like she cared about propriety. Maybe a torrid affair everyone talked about was just what she needed.
“How are you?”
Sigh. No torrid affairs today. Maybe next week. “I’m fine.”
Dan’s eyebrow rose.
“Okay, so I jumped out of my chair every time the door opened at the library. I nearly set off the pepper spray about six times and could have permanently damaged some old lady’s eyes, but I have it handled.”
“And now you’ve settled in for some… light reading?” He motioned to the papers.
She shrugged, which shifted her long sleeve shirt over the little bandages on her arm. “I’m going to try the tent tonight, see if I sleep better there. If I find anything good here, I’ll take it with me.”
He sat on the edge of the desk. “Is that tent even still standing?” Never mind that it hadn’t been her secret hideout since childhood. He still didn’t really get why she liked it so much.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been out there in years.” She tried to remember the last time. “I don’t think I’ve even thought about the place in forever. It could be rags, or some kind of animal habitat, by now.”
“Probably the deer.”
“Don’t say it.” She clapped her hands over her ears. “That deer doesn’t like me. I think she might be stalking me.”
Dan chuckled. She knew he didn’t believe all the superstition around town about the deer. He’d seen it so many times himself, which meant both of them were the walking dead. Or as good as. It was nothing but a dumb legend told by people who’d left their interesting lives and come to the most boring town in the world.
“Find anything good yet?”
Gemma handed him a pile. “Find something good yourself. Why should I do all the work?”
Dan was still laughing when he sat and started to read the first page. She didn’t even want to know what that was about. Yeah, so she was letting him in after telling him to leave. A woman could change her mind.
Fifteen pages later she came across something that might actually yield helpful information. “No way,” she breathed. “Bill Jones was working for the CIA. Maybe even as an agent. They called him ‘the asset.’” Gemma frowned. So who was “the target” she’d read about earlier?
“What does it say?”
Gemma scanned the paper. “The CIA was going to take heroin they’d seized and trade it back to a Vietnamese drug dealer, a rival to the one they’d confiscated it from. I’m not even going to try and pronounce his name. The asset’s job was to make the deal, but it went wrong. This report” —She checked the sticky note— “I think was written by Hal and says he was supposed to have been on surveillance for the Op. He turned up at the meeting location, a farm, but it was too late. The drugs were gone, the dealer and his crew were dead, and sixteen women and children who’d worked the farm had also been slaughtered.”
“So Bill Jones betrayed the oath he took with the CIA and became a killer?” He’d read that book on the history of American intelligence that she’d given him. This came straight from the pages of that book. They were reading real history, an operation. A killer.
His father.
“The bottom of the page has been written on by someone else. It says they determined the asset was a liability. They advise that the target should be killed on sight.”
Gemma looked up. Dan’s face was pale. She swallowed, “This was years ago.”
“He killed people. A lot of people.”
Gemma might’ve argued that what he’d done to Dan and his mother had been a whole lot more evil. Sometimes death was a mercy denied the living. But she didn’t figure he’d consider it mercy, considering everything his father had done to him.
“See what else you can find.”
Gemma looked at the next few pages. “One is a hospital report. Stab wound. Then I have a log where it looks like he was chasing Bill Jones. His handwriting is different, thicker pencil strokes like he’s pressing down really hard.”
“Frustrated.” Dan paused. “Though it could have been from some kind of injury.”
Her father had pursued his father through miles and miles of Vietnamese war zone? “This one indicates Bill Jones was captured. When Hal was sent to retrieve the asset, he wasn’t there anymore. Hal found bodies. Prisoners and guards, Americans and Vietnamese.” She blew out a breath. “Bill Jones—”
“My father.”
Gemma sighed. “He had no discretion, no sense of discrimination. He just killed.” Whether there was a reason, maybe they would never know. Hal had been tasked with bringing in Bill Jones, but “the target” had eluded him.
“And then they came here?” Dan shook his head. “This makes no sense. Why, years later, would he be a farmer living a normal life? He met my mom and got married.” Dan paused. “Why did Hal let him do that?”
“If he hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here. And your mom must have seen something in him.” Gemma didn’t want to think what the alternative was.
“She was my best friend.”
Gemma pressed her lips together. “I know.”
“And he took her away.”
Gemma wandered over and set her hand on his. “I know.”
Dan closed his eyes, and his head dropped forward onto her shoulder. She waited for him to pray through whatever was in his head. It was the way he lived his life.
If his faith enabled him to withstand everything that had been thrown at him, there had to be something to it. Some people might call it a crutch he leaned on, but it was more than that. It was everything to him. It was breath. What his father had done would have broken someone who didn’t have the connection with his Heavenly Father that Dan
had.
Maybe she should go to church on Sunday, hear him talk more about it.
“I told John and Matthias everything.”
That was huge. He’d told them everything, like… everything? Gemma opened her mouth to ask him how it went.
The bell clanged.
She swung around. Dan shifted beside her, and she reached for his hand. “Do you think it’s Nadia?”
Dan shut the door. “Less questions about us and the room would be good at this point. We can just wait them out.”
Gemma turned and went back to her papers. He wasn’t worried about her marring his reputation?
She handed a page to Dan so he could read about Hal’s fruitless search for what he was now referring to as “the target.” Things weren’t any better in this round of mission reports. The CIA agent had gone out of control, and Bill Jones was being hunted. Hal—and whoever he’d worked for—wanted him dead.
Footsteps crossed the radio room beyond the door. More than one—several people were out there. Someone tapped on the wall.
She swung her gaze back to Dan and mouthed, They know we’re in here. Dan nodded, but it wasn’t okay. There was no way out. No way to get past this but to confront whoever was there.
The door opened a crack. A fist-sized canister flew into the room, hit the floor like a firecracker and sent a flash of light and a great bang through the room.
Gemma fell backwards as booted feet rushed around them. The ceiling swam, the walls. Big black figures. Shouting. Her brain sputtered like strobe lighting, stunned and unable to do anything to stop them. Papa. They needed Him.
“No. Leave them alive.”
Dan grunted, then cried out in pain. The rubber tread of someone’s boot crushed her hand.
“Get everything.”
**
Mei strode through town toward the radio station. Yeah, she probably should tell them she was going to break in and look at all those papers Dan told her Gemma had found, but she wasn’t a people person. It wouldn’t help her tactic to stay disconnected from the ones who lived here, especially the ones she might actually like to be friends with if she “connected” with them.
They all thought she was Chinese, probably because of the lilt of her accent. Truth was, she was as American as most of them. She just hadn’t been in this country that much, until now.
Terrence had disappeared. Totally dropped off the grid—if this town had one. Now she needed to find the evidence that proved he killed Antonia, and this whole thing would be wrapped up. Would she be able to leave? The question of why she was even sent to this town passed through her thoughts again. There did seem to be more brewing here, and the mayor was quite likely in the middle of it.
The man played his part like a pro, but Mei had understood the rules of that game her entire life. She might be barely twenty-two but she’d travelled the world. Her mom hadn’t agreed with her choices, not when she found out what Mei was doing. But after all that had happened there was no way she could deny Mei anything—a fact Mei counted on, probably more than she should. Besides, it was the family business. What was she gonna do, get a real job?
But this wasn’t about her. Or her issues that tended to lead to people either dead or missing. This was a real assignment. He’d sent her on an honest-to-goodness real assignment! Sure, he sent work her way every now and then. After her mom found out she went ballistic. Mei should probably have told him to shove off and go fix Sanctuary himself.
Next time she would. For sure.
The deputy sheriff gig was kind of boring, but the job put her in the middle of everything relevant that was happening—that could not be denied. And neither could the fact it was slightly obvious that John didn’t believe she was some normal girl who happened to have excelled at deductive reasoning. He’d never have bought a military background, not that she had one anyway. Still, it would’ve been more straightforward to apply to that separatist group who enjoyed pillaging Eastern Europe. Not that they’d let her in, after…
Anyway. Mei sniffed and glanced around. At least none of her enemies could find her here. That was a plus. Sunshine, and people she enjoyed observing. The bakery had cream cheese wontons, and her mom couldn’t call her every day just to make sure she was alive.
A man dressed in black with a ski mask on his face—an oddity she had yet to see here—dumped a full box in the back of Dan’s truck. But it wasn’t Dan.
“Evening.” Mei tried to look not scary. The way his eyes narrowed, she didn’t think it worked.
“Walk away.”
She didn’t recognize his stance or voice. Left handed, scar on his forearm probably from a knife wound, but his boots were clean. Out of practice. “Make me.”
Another man walked out of the radio station in similar clothing.
Mei snorted. “Stealthy. Wow. Robberies generally go better if you try to hide the fact you’re stealing something. Just saying.”
The second man blanched and dropped his box. Both of them pulled guns.
“Don’t just stand there,” first man said. “Get her inside with Gemma and Dan.”
Mei pulled her gun. “Don’t think so.” Though she was going to go in and check on them. “Guns down, now.”
The first man fired. The shot hit her in the left shoulder. Mei fired back but hers went way wide.
Man that hurt. Like, hurt. It was like fire that blinked across her vision. Where did the other one…
She fell to one knee, and her gun skidded across the ground. Crap, this wasn’t going well.
The truck revved. Men ran past her, and gravel flew as they tore away from the radio station. Mei touched the wound on her shoulder. Ugh. She didn’t like to bleed, but blood on the buttons of her satellite phone was the least of her worries.
“Sheriff.” She let go of the button and moaned.
“I’ve asked you to call me John.” He paused. “Did you find Terrence yet?”
“That’s not why I’m calling.” Half the town was probably listening on police scanners. Normally it was way less, but with Antonia’s death, things were getting entertaining. “I need your help at the radio station. Now.”
He had better understand. She wasn’t going to spell it out.
“And get the doctor.” Gemma and Dan might need medical attention.
Mei forced her legs not to give out and made it to the radio room. The open door in the wall was probably the worst hidden room she’d even seen. She’d have found it. Blood ran from Dan’s mouth and he lay, out cold, on the floor. Gemma lay a few feet away, out as well, but with no visible injuries. A flash grenade lay discarded on the floor, probably what had incapacitated them.
Mei landed on her knees. A squeeze in the vicinity of her chest didn’t help the situation. Feelings were not her friend, and they did not help her do her job. Mostly she just ignored them, except that one time, with that Swedish guy… Don’t think about that.
She tapped Gemma’s cheek with her fingers. “Hey.”
Nothing.
“Gemma, its Mei.”
She wasn’t going to admit to anyone that she’d lied to the sheriff. Names were good. They told you who you were, and where you came from. A name was a gift, and she remembered every single one she’d ever heard.
Now she was in a town full of people whose names—new and old—indicated they’d been through the worst a person could endure. People like her, who had seen too much and had to live through it. Ugh, she was starting to care about them.
This might be the worst assignment ever.
Chapter 12
Gemma turned her head to watch Shelby walk in the medical center room. Sadness, grief. Not the face of a woman who had gotten married less than two days ago. Shelby stopped beside the bed. “It’s all gone. John said they cleared out the whole room.”
Gemma shut her eyes and turned away. Her headache was back, but other than that she’d been unharmed. Except for the blast of what John had called a “Flash-Bang.” But that wasn’t what filled her mind
at the moment, or for the whole day, as she lay here doing nothing just because Elliot said it would be good for her.
She’d heard the commotion, the moment when Dan had woken up. His shouting, then John’s shouting. The crash that came from his room down the hall.
“How is he?”
“Good now. Calm.” Shelby settled on the edge of the bed. “I don’t get why he would react like that.”
Gemma pressed her lips together for a second. “Pain plus disorientation. A man’s voice, or his touch. Doesn’t matter if Elliot just set his hand on Dan’s shoulder.” She paused. “Even I would be wary about getting close to him right when he woke up. He tends to do it swinging. He gave me a black eye the last time.”
“The last time, when? When did you have the opportunity to have Dan wake up beside you?”
“Okay, I know it sounds bizarre, but it was a long time ago. We were kids, and there was nothing weird about it.” Gemma sighed. “We’ve been close a long time; that’s just the way it is.”
“Hon.” When Gemma didn’t turn to her, Shelby touched her arm and said, “You don’t need to defend it to me. Yes, he’s my pastor, but I know you better than that. If you tell me it’s on the level, why would I question it?”
When it came to Dan, she went into defense mode. Ready to fight for him to the bitter end. The nearest she could figure was that since she couldn’t have everything she wanted with him, she would have the friendship part—and all of her feelings had concentrated there. It was love, but what had grown between them was a hefty dose of friendship-love, the tendency to jump up to bat for each other and a whole lot of unrequited feelings.
But there was nothing she could do about it now.
“What about Mei, is she okay?”
She’d heard Mei’s voice at the radio station before they were taken to the medical center, reassuring her that everything was going to be okay and not to worry about Dan. Gemma thought there might have been blood on her shoulder. “She was hurt, right?”
Sanctuary Forever WITSEC Town Series Book 5 Page 13