Nadia was shaking her head before he even finished. “No, I don’t believe that. I have to be able to go back. Everything I have is there. My life, my friends.”
“Your brother?”
“I knew the price I’d have to pay when I chose Sanctuary. I knew it meant I would never see Shadrach, ever again. So we wrote to each other. Then he showed up in town, and it was a gift. But it isn’t my life.” He reached for her again, and she backed up. “I have to be there. Not here.”
“What is your danger?”
She flinched.
Bolton grasped both of her elbows. “Nadia, why were you in Sanctuary? I asked before, and I’m still waiting for you to tell me.”
“They won’t come after me.”
“You were sent to Sanctuary. There has to be a reason why you couldn’t live out here. Why you were put in witness protection?”
It was time to tell him. “There’s no threat. Not to me. It’s over.”
Bolton’s head jerked back. “You’re in no danger at all?”
“It was over years ago when Manuel died in prison.”
“I’m confused. Why were you living there if no one is trying to kill you now?”
“Where else would I go?”
He frowned. “You could have gotten out.”
“I didn’t want to.”
Bolton blanched. He pushed her into the car, one hand on her head, and then shut the door. When he got in, he turned to her. Said nothing.
She didn’t know what to make of that look. “What?”
“Every day I was stuck in that town I wished I could get out.” They’d been friends in Sanctuary—it had even been moving toward more than that. “I hated every second of it.”
“But…your friends.” Matthias would be crushed if he heard this.
“Sure, I’ll miss them. But that rancher wasn’t me.” He started the car. “This is me.”
Bolton peeled out of the alley with one hand on the wheel and the other—the one that man had twisted—in his lap. He gunned it down the street until the car caught up with how fast he wanted to go. “There are bad people hunting me. Powerful people with some serious connections. This isn’t some mishap. They are trying to kill us, and they will if we don’t kill them first.”
“So I’m supposed to…what? Live on the run with you the rest of my life.” How she felt was made plain by those words, and Nadia didn’t miss Bolton’s reaction. “Or you drop me off and I walk away, find some kind of life for myself. Is that it?” She waved at the window. “Maybe you should let me out here.”
“Is that what you want?”
Nadia let the question hang between them. She stared out the window and blinked back tears. He could never know that the biggest part of why she’d stayed in Sanctuary was him. Or that her feelings had been enough to convince her that life in that town, with no possibility of ever leaving, was worth not seeing her mother or brother ever again.
They pulled onto the street where she worked.
“Dante knows there’s a woman with me. It won’t be long before he figures out it’s you. I’m sorry to say it, but you’re stuck with me until I know you’re safe.”
The salon came into view.
Bolton sighed. “I know that’s not what you—”
She grabbed his arm. “Pull over.”
Bolton gritted his teeth. “Easy.”
She’d hurt him. “Sorry.”
But he did as she’d said.
The front window of the salon had been smashed. Police milled around, blue and red lights flashing bright enough to make the whole street strobe like a night light. EMTs wheeled someone out through the front door. A woman.
Nadia gasped. “Melanie.”
She grabbed for the door handle, but before she could get out, Bolton gunned the engine and they were off again. “What did you do that for? I need to find out what happened to her. Now we can’t know unless we go to the hospital later.” He was going to disagree. “We should go to the hospital later.”
“We aren’t going to do that.” Bolton’s lips pressed into a thin line. “We’re on the run, Nadia. We have no help, nothing but the two of us against an army of men trying to kill us.”
“Unless we kill them first.” She shot back.
“Exactly.”
“I wasn’t agreeing with you.” Nadia shifted in her seat. “Am I supposed to be okay with this? Because I’m not. I nearly died the last time I was on the run from a man trying to kill me. Now he’s dead, and Shadrach isn’t here to help fix my problem this time.”
Bolton’s lips twitched. “Your brother killed him?”
“Manuel died in prison. I told you that. Shadrach protected me.” Unlike what Bolton was doing. “That’s not the point. The point is that we need help.”
“No one’s going to help us.”
“We have to try. We have to ask. That’s why I called the marshals’ office, but they said Grant doesn’t work there anymore.”
“He retired.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“It was in the newspaper, Nadia.” He tapped the steering wheel. “Do you realize what you did?”
Nadia shrugged. “What? What did I do?”
“You exposed us.”
This wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t the one who’d hurt Melanie. “I’ve been along for the ride this whole time. Doing what you asked because what other choice do I have?” She was done.
“You know I’d change that if I could.”
Because he didn’t want her there with him? Nadia folded her arms. She’d only been trying to help, and he didn’t even want her around. She should have been at the hospital with him, there when he woke up from surgery and then on her way back to Sanctuary. Instead the helicopter had exploded, and all this happened.
“Your phone call to the marshals is what did this.” From the corner of her eye, he glanced at her, then said, “You’re the reason Dante’s man found us at the doctor’s house. The reason he sent that man to kill us. The reason the doctor is dead, and why your boss is hurt.”
“I didn’t—”
“You don’t get how serious this is, Nadia. You never have.”
“You think I don’t get being in danger?”
“Sure, some artsy guy was trying to kill you for messing up his hair or whatever.” Bolton huffed. “This is an army of men. You don’t want to know what they’ll do to you before they kill you.”
Bolton hit the brake pedal.
“What is it?” She peered out. All she could see was a mess of lights.
“It’s a road block. They’re trying to catch us.”
Chapter 5
Sanctuary
John Mason, sheriff of the WITSEC town of Sanctuary, sat back in his chair and sipped his coffee. He’d long since gotten over the need to get up and be out and about in the morning. This was the season where he could read the paper and enjoy his third cup. Years of field work as a marshal had ingrained in him a rush of adrenaline. But these days he was married, and his son was happy with their new life. John had a car in a town of pedestrians—a town of almost two hundred protected witnesses who lived peaceably…for the most part.
He set the coffee down and turned the page of the week-old newspaper that had been delivered the day before. Sure he could get news in real-time on the internet, but there was nothing like the feel of newspaper in his hands.
Nothing.
No word on Bolton or Nadia Marie. They were out in the world—two residents he was supposed to be protecting—and he was stuck within the ring of mountains that hid Sanctuary from the outside, trusting his brothers to keep his own people safe.
Ben, the international man of mystery. John still wanted to know what Ben had done to the mayor of Sanctuary to make the old man mad enough to demand John arrest Ben the last time he had been there. But Ben had slipped away. His brother was better put to use applying his skills and substantial resources to finding Bolton and Nadia Marie. From their last conversation he was ge
tting somewhere. Ben never shared, and he always hid stuff up his sleeve. But so long as they were found and returned to safety, Ben could utilize whatever methods he wanted.
Footsteps pounded down from the apartment upstairs, and Pat raced in. The eleven year old still hadn’t lost all of that little-kid exuberance, something John’s brother, Nate—who’d been the Dolphin’s quarterback—never lost in his life. Though at times Pat showed Ben’s more quiet, watchful way of observing things. John had also been forced to contemplate the idea his son might have a girlfriend. There were clues. Ones they were going to talk about when they went fishing at the lake Saturday morning.
It was more of a pond, but after an explosive device had taken out half the hill and most of the ranch, leaving a big hole, what else was there to do except fill it with water and spend ten percent of the year’s budget stocking it with rainbow trout?
“Dad, Andra’s going to walk me to school.”
“Okay.” John hugged his son, who raced to the door, while Andra stepped into the room from upstairs. Her cheeks were flushed, and her hairline was damp.
“Didn’t go so well this morning?”
“The walk will do me good, and I’ll leave the door open so it doesn’t smell like coffee in here when I get back. That okay?”
“It’s not coffee,” John said. “That’s my new cologne. Eau de Java.”
Andra cracked a smile.
“There you are.”
“Yeah, yeah. Morning sickness is not my friend.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her forehead. Pat’s mother hadn’t suffered any morning sickness when she’d been pregnant with him, but John didn’t think Andra wanted that tidbit of information about a woman she’d never met and still managed to dislike.
He could feel the bump under her sweater and smiled, his lips still against her forehead. They’d have to start thinking about cribs and nursery colors soon. He’d have to wear a tool belt, and Andra would watch him with those dark eyes, and then—
“Can we go already?” Pat rolled his eyes. “You guys are gross. Get a room.”
John chuckled. “Pretty sure I have one upstairs.”
Andra smiled. “Let’s revisit that, later.”
“Deal.”
Her shoulders shook, and he felt the amusement deep in his chest as his son disappeared through the door. “Will I ever get over him being so big?”
“No.” Andra leaned back. “But he’ll have a little brother on his heels, so you can marvel that this one is so small.”
John smiled and leaned in for a kiss.
“Eau de Java.” She looked green.
John’s satellite phone rang. He leaned far enough back he could see the screen without letting her go. “It’s Grant.”
“Don’t just talk business. Actually ask him if he’s okay.”
John nodded. He said bye to his wife and then grabbed the phone from the desk. “Did you ever give up coffee when Genevieve was pregnant?”
“Dude that was like twenty years ago. I can barely remember the girls being in middle school at this point. Now I’m forking out college tuition like it’s going out of style.” He grumbled, but John knew how much Grant loved those girls. Divorce was just hard, and Grant’s had been final a few months ago.
“So what’s up?”
Grant had “retired” from the US Marshals, while John—as the sheriff of their witness protection town—was technically still a deputy inspector. Though the town was now managed by a private consortium of investors and no longer subject to federal oversight, John had kept his job. Grant, however, served as some kind of freelance liaison between the government connections he’d retained—basically everyone in D.C.—and Ben’s company. Which meant Grant was now a domestic man of mystery. John didn’t even want to know.
“Couple things. But first, you should know about Remy.” Grant filled him in on the man who’d broken into her house. “We were right, it’s Dante. We think they might be in Seattle. Shadrach and Ben are both headed there now.”
John blew out a breath. “I don’t like being benched on this one. Not with a DEA agent after them. Every corrupt federal agent and cop in the country is going to get a BOLO to keep their eyes peeled, with Nadia and Bolton’s descriptions on it.”
But he couldn’t help. John had people to protect here. The safeguards kept Sanctuary protected, and they were in a lull. While John was used to the problems being here, what he wasn’t used to was being removed from a problem that was out there. Especially when his wife’s best friend and a man he called friend were both in danger.
“It gets worse,” Grant said. “Dante escaped from federal prison a week ago. He’s in the wind, probably has an army of friends helping him stay in the shadows.”
“That wasn’t in the paper.”
“The feds are keeping it under wraps. They don’t want the press coverage. They just want to get him back in prison and avoid a PR nightmare.”
“Nadia had better not get caught in the crossfire,” John said. “Anything else?”
“The marshal over Bolton’s case was found dead in his house. Beaten badly, we think they interrogated him for information. Maybe they thought he’s been in contact with Bolton. Maybe he is. We’ll probably never know.”
John sighed. “Right.” Someone had to be helping the couple, given how effectively they’d slipped from everyone’s reach. But if it kept them safe, John didn’t care who it was.
“Then the other thing.”
“There’s more?”
Grant coughed a laugh. “Brother, there’s always more.” While John smiled to his empty office, Grant said, “I got a call from the marshal who was Hal’s contact, a million years ago when he signed his memorandum of understanding and first entered the witness protection program.”
Hal? A wave of grief hit John. The older biker had been a figurehead in this town, as much as he hadn’t wanted that notoriety, up until Tommy’s bomb left him dead. John squeezed his eyes shut. They’d buried Hal in town, not even knowing who his family was in order to inform them of his passing.
“It was totally out of the blue, this call. The man is like eighty-six. Hal was sixty-seven. Did you know he was the first person to live in Sanctuary? I didn’t even know that.”
John shook his head. “How do you know this now? You’re not even a marshal anymore.”
“Thanks for reminding me.” Grant’s voice was sardonic. “The congressional committee was disbanded, but the marshals kept me on as a liaison. The new director of the marshals was read in to the concept of a witness protection town, and now we go from there. Anyone who agrees to live in Sanctuary will testify, and afterwards, will step out from under the cover of the marshals’ service and enter private witness protection.”
John wasn’t worried about new enrollees. He had enough going on with the nearly two hundred residents currently living in town. And nothing would change for them, except funding would be better. Maybe they’d even be able to rebuild some of the houses so people didn’t have to live in forty-year-old government housing that had been patched up over and over.
“So, Hal’s case inspector?”
“Yep,” Grant said. “I can barely believe what he told me. I thought I knew every resident of Sanctuary, even the ones who moved there before I became director.”
“Or before you went to junior high.”
Grant laughed. “True. This guy’s story is unreal. Get this, Hal had a long-standing relationship with a woman in town.”
“I know about his ‘lady friend.’” Though that was all John knew. No one could identify her, and she hadn’t stepped forward.
“Did you know they had a daughter?”
“What?”
“And she lives in Sanctuary. One of your born-and-bred residents. The librarian—Gemma Freeman.”
John nearly stopped breathing. “Hal’s lady friend was Janice?”
“That was my reaction. Can you imagine, the biker and the hippy?”
“
Not to mention they’re both older than dirt.”
Grant laughed out loud. He took a breath and groaned. “She has to be grieving, and no one even knows why.”
John’s heart turned over. Hal was gone. Why did it hit him like new every time? “I’ll go see her. Find out why Gemma doesn’t know that Hal was her father.” He’d seen her, and she wasn’t acting like a woman whose father had just died.
“I actually might know the answer to that,” Grant said. “I’ll send you the file Hal’s case inspector sent me. But you won’t believe half of what it says.”
Ten minutes later John’s iPad had finally downloaded the ginormous file. He swiped through the pages, and his eyebrows rose. These were the first documents ever to contain the name Sanctuary. Written forty years ago, they detailed the birth of the town he now called home. A town that had been established purely for the protection of one man.
Hal Leonard.
The older man John respected. The biker who refused to play anything but sixties and seventies rock on his radio station.
A man, it turned out, that none of them had really known.
**
Nadia gripped the door handle as Bolton slammed on the gas and the car fishtailed. She exhaled a long, slow breath trying to calm her heart rate. Those days of running, hiding—of being scared—were supposed to be over. And yet here she was, running again. Only now they seemed to be running from the police.
Bolton’s hands gripped the wheel. His attention was fully on the road, the traffic. Did he even remember she was still here?
“We should have stopped to talk to the cops. We could have told them about that man at the doctor’s house and how he tried to kill you.” The police could help them figure this out.
Bolton hit the brakes. He yanked the wheel to the right and parked—badly—at the curb. “The police aren’t going to help us.”
“Uh…that’s what they do.”
Bolton snorted. “Not with people like me.”
“What does that even mean? You aren’t different than anyone else.”
“No?”
There it was. Again. That feeling there was this huge thing she was missing. And because she didn’t know it, Bolton was treating her like a child. Sheltering her, like the world was this great evil out to get them, and they couldn’t trust anyone. But Nadia hadn’t made it this far without knowing precisely who her allies were. There were plenty of people she could call—if she could get their phone numbers.
Sanctuary Deceived WITSEC Town Series Book 4 Page 5