Dante. Loose in the world.
The feds were keeping it under wraps, calling it “need to know.” No press. No public. Just an internal investigation into how on earth a former DEA agent gone bad had escaped from prison. Ben couldn’t claim he wasn’t involved much longer before it would become clear he had stakes in this. They just needed to find and re-capture Dante before Ben had to intervene.
Shadrach headed out the door first and down the sidewalk to the truck. The former marine turned back. “What I want to know is why they were at that doctor’s house in the first place. You think Bolton’s back is getting worse or something?”
“Kenna said that doctor had written a paper on a type of polymer that could be used to treat a very specific kind of spinal injury.”
Shadrach reached the car and turned back. “So Bolton had the surgery? He’s walking?”
“We have to assume that’s a possibility.”
“Then at some point during or after, a man came in and killed the doctor then tried to kill them?”
Ben nodded. “That would be my guess.” Shadrach was good at this. He would be a good addition to the team, if he stayed.
“So where was Nadia when all this was going down?”
“Helping him would be my guess.”
Ben got in the car.
Shadrach buckled his seatbelt. “You know what I think? I think Bolton has been stringing her along this whole time. They go on the run, save enough money, maybe to pay for the surgery. Barely get out of that alive. Dante is on their tails…”
Ben had sent Bolton plenty of money, but having Nadia work as well had kept her from losing her sanity completely. Bolton had reported back that she was withdrawing into herself day by day, but Ben had counseled him to hold on. Love was a powerful emotion, one that could cause a person to stay the course far beyond where others would have given in.
Ben would know.
**
Bolton’s back screamed at him to stop, but he pushed forward. They’d lost the cops across two streams and six miles of dense forest, but maybe it wasn’t going to be enough. If they headed the right direction to where Ben wanted him, then soon they would hit a town, and if his picture had been plastered across the TV news, Bolton was going to get spotted fast.
“I still want an answer.”
He didn’t glance at her, though she raced along beside him. “Just because things are quiet now doesn’t mean they’re not right behind us. They probably have dogs out now to search for us.”
“And you happen to know a lot about being pursued by the law, do you?”
Bolton sat on the tree trunk for a second before he swung his legs over. This couldn’t last much longer. “This isn’t the old west, and I’m no outlaw. But, yes. I do know a lot about being on the wrong side of the law.”
“And yet Dante was the one behind bars. A man with connections in law enforcement so that he has every cop in the vicinity looking for us for whatever reason, when he is the one who escaped from prison.”
Bolton blew out a breath. He should never have passed on that information Ben had given him. He’d known this was coming. “He was DEA.”
“And so they put him in jail? For being a fed.”
Bolton ignored the sardonic tone in her voice. “It’s complicated, okay? He was investigating me, and he wasn’t getting anywhere, so he started planting evidence. Coke shipments that were supposed to be my doing that he just ‘happened’ to uncover. Pretty incriminating.”
Okay, so there was a lot more to it, but he’d have to piece it out, or she’d walk away. Bolton wasn’t the kind of man a girl like her took home to Mama. “And you were innocent?”
Bolton huffed out a breath. “Let’s focus, okay? There’s no signal here, and we need to head west.” He glanced at the sky.
Nadia stopped beside a tree. Her breath came in puffs just like his. She hadn’t needed to lose the weight that she’d lost eating on their slim budget, but she had. That was on him, too.
She shot him a look. “And the fact you’ve had a phone this whole time, and you haven’t once let me even touch one because it was ‘so dangerous, Nadia. You can’t call anyone. No one can help us.’ And now you have the audacity to stand there and look at me like you did nothing wrong. When there is not one single thing about this that is right.”
“It’ll be over soon, and then you’ll be able to go home to your normal life.” It was what she wanted. He’d known it for a while now. “You wanted to come with me to get the surgery, but the helicopter ride didn’t turn out like either of us expected. I took the opportunity to do what I needed to do, and I’m sorry you had to be part of it, but I did what I had to do in order to keep you safe. And yes, that meant lying to you about the phone. If you’d known I had one, then you would have thought about it and thought about it, until it drove you crazy.”
“So you command what’s good for me, is that it?”
“In this, yes.” She started to argue, so he cut her off. “Ben and I have been working together so that we stayed safe.”
“And Shadrach?”
“I don’t know if your brother knows, but Ben and I agreed to keep the circle small. Like the two of us, small. So likely your brother doesn’t know.”
Nadia turned away. “We should keep walking the way your new BFF thinks we should. We’re getting close to a road. I hear traffic.”
“We’re headed to a tiny town, not a road.”
She shrugged. “Listen for yourself.”
Sure enough, Bolton could hear cars. The police had probably raced around the streets and were now ready to cut them off. He brushed past Nadia. “Let me go first.”
“Because I can’t take care of myself, or others, so I need you to protect me.”
“That’s not—” Bolton didn’t want to argue. He sighed. His steps got more labored. With each movement, the pain in his back ratcheted up a notch. How long before he collapsed outright and was no help to her whatsoever? “We just have to be on the lookout for cops.”
“Yes, we wouldn’t want noble and honorable officers of the law to catch us.”
Bolton glanced at the sky for a second and pressed on. The edge of the tree line gave good cover, and sure enough, two lanes of traffic crossed each other on their way to wherever their busy lives were taking them.
He turned back to her. “Go up there. Stick out your thumb.”
“Me?”
“You’re attractive.” Understatement. “They’ll stop for you.”
“And when you walk out of the trees they’ll drive away.”
Bolton pulled the gun from the front of his waistband. “No, they won’t.”
Ten minutes later they were riding in the back of a semi among a pile of boxes that shifted with every gear change. Bolton lay stretched on the floor and watched to make sure none of the boxes fell on him, as he tried to relax the muscles in his back.
Nadia had her knees bent, her arms around her legs. Her big, sad eyes trained on him, probably not intending to shovel maximum guilt his way, but it was what it was. She said, “Does it hurt a lot?”
Bolton shut his eyes for a second. Some things he wasn’t prepared to lie about.
“I’m sorry you got hurt.”
“That’s on Dante, not you.”
“What happened?”
Bolton looked at her then. It was either that or fall back into the whirlpool of memory. Nothing good existed back there. Especially not when he thought about Nadia, and yes, Sanctuary. There had been good there, in the people. But it never changed who Bolton was or what he needed to do when he got the chance to leave town.
Maybe, in a way, they’d given him the chance he needed. Dante’s coming after him and trying to kill him, leaving Bolton with an irreparable—aside from experimental medicine—spinal condition. Andy and that blasted chair he’d hit Bolton in the back with, the one he owed him for. It had all given Bolton the chance to come after Dante and finally finish this once and for all.
Sanctuary ha
d never been a permanent solution. It’d been easy to wonder if Dante had been killed in prison, while Bolton lived his life as a rancher. But now that he knew for sure Dante was alive and well—and out of prison—well, it couldn’t be denied that Bolton owed him. Dante just wouldn’t like the payment. But that was for later. Right now, Nadia was waiting for an answer to her question.
“Ben took the week off. Had another job.”
“Ben Mason?”
“He was in charge of my protection when I was brought into witness protection.” Bolton had made it a condition, not about to trust a bunch of marshals he didn’t know, even if one of them was Ben’s big brother. “But that week he had something going on, so he left a friend of his in charge of my protection detail. That guy is no longer of this world. Ben took care of him after we realized that Dante had bought him.”
Bolton took a breath and exhaled. “But it was too late. Dante had sent his army to take down the house. I got caught in the fire, and a shot gun blast to the small of my back virtually decimated my ability to walk. It healed some, but every step walking was a hair trigger away from paralysis.”
“How on earth was riding a horse okay?”
Bolton smiled, his eyelids too heavy to open. He loved that horse. “Special saddle and a back brace.” Warmth descended over him. The peace that the oblivion of sleep brought.
“And you didn’t tell anyone?”
“What was the point? Thea was gone.” Bolton’s throat stuck. “Javier—”
He couldn’t say anything else.
Chapter 7
Thea? Who was Javier? Nadia’s heart flipped over as she stared down at Bolton. His face had relaxed in sleep, his features taking on an almost serene appearance. Almost. His eyes danced behind their lids and made Nadia wonder if he dreamed about them. These people Dante had come for and taken. Or killed. People Bolton cared about enough that their absence had left him distraught.
Maybe Thea and Javier were the destination. Maybe they had been all along, and Nadia Marie was nothing but an unwanted tag along. That stung. She leaned her head against the side of the truck and tried to remember if there had been any indication in Sanctuary that he was only being polite.
No one wanted to think they were being humored. It would suck if that was what this was, but Nadia just hadn’t had the impression her feelings were one sided. Bolton had seemed drawn to her. The medical center had exploded, and Bolton had been with her. He’d been hurt, and she’d thought they’d had a moment, but maybe not. Perhaps it’d only been the pain making him vulnerable. He’d certainly needed someone to help him over the past few weeks, and at times he’d clung to her. But those were the early days before he began to pull away.
Because he’d been lying to her?
If it had bothered him, it was an indicator that he had a conscience. That had to count for something. Nadia couldn’t claim she had always made the right decisions, not by any stretch, but she wasn’t a criminal. And while she didn’t think he’d committed any crimes in Sanctuary, he seemed determined to kill the man who had wronged him.
What Nadia needed to do now was help him not commit murder. Arguing with him, hoping he would change his mind, wouldn’t work. His history with Dante was imprinted on the fabric of who he was—it was the same with her brother Shadrach and being a marine. Shad would never stop being a marine, and Bolton would never get off this path. It would take nothing less than an act of God to get him to quit, but Nadia had full faith in the Lord that it was possible. And if she could help, all the better.
She needed to pray about this. To take some time and ask the Lord what the next step should be. Then when it came time to move, she would be ready.
For longer than she cared to remember now, Nadia had held on to the hope that one day she and Bolton would be together, that maybe they’d get married and start a family in Sanctuary. Now that man was gone. The man here with her was a stranger, one she wasn’t entirely sure she liked.
Nadia didn’t know him, and whether or not she wanted to work on being friends didn’t matter much. He still needed her help, and she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. This was a prime opportunity for her to show him something she thought maybe no one had ever shown him before. Her actions would tell him a story, one he’d likely refuse to believe. But then Andra hadn’t believed it at first, though when she’d told Andra the full story of the gospel, the woman had understood. She’d realized why Nadia didn’t ever give up on her friend and never shied away from loving her, even when Andra told her all that she’d done.
How many people she had killed as an assassin for hire, and for the government.
Nadia couldn’t love any other way than the way she was loved by her Heavenly Father. After all, she’d been forgiven of so much. Why wouldn’t she then look for ways to pass that gift on to the people around her?
It had changed Sanctuary when the new sheriff arrived, and Andra had been in a place that she could accept his care for her.
Nadia fully believed that miracles were possible. She’d seen them, and she knew it could be this way with Bolton, too, if he would allow it. It would be harder than it ever had been for him to let her in, but Nadia didn’t want to give up, because it could cost Bolton his life. His happiness, or even his sanity, when the hatred for Dante consumed him. If it hadn’t already done so.
Nadia was fine with hard things. The past few weeks had been some of the hardest of her life, considering how much mental anguish there had been. How much she’d wished that things were different with Bolton. But now it was time for all of that to change.
Bolton had been right about his phone. If she’d known about it, Nadia would have gone crazy. A week later she’d have stolen it.
The flat, rectangle was visible in his pants pocket. Nadia held her breath and slipped it out.
She’d been cut off before she could talk to her mom the last time, forced to hang up because Bolton was there. At least now she knew she’d had the right number.
Nadia tapped her finger silently on the knee of her leggings while it rang, praying her mom was home.
“Nadia?”
“Mom,” she breathed, trying to be quiet in the truck.
“I can barely hear you. Shadrach told me you might call.” There was a tone, but her mom said, “He told me not to ask any questions, just to give you his number.”
Thank you, Lord.
“I’ll have to go find it.” Her breath came in rhythmic bursts, and it sounded like she was walking. Nadia’s mom had always been big. A hearty appetite and a college knee injury kept her weight steady. But she had also always been happy, a product of her natural—okay, hippie—lifestyle. Nadia had chafed against burlap and herbal tea as a teenager, then she’d made so much money with her art she’d barely been able to spend it all before more came in. She’d had a top floor apartment in Manhattan, two blocks from the hottest club in the city.
They’d barely communicated at that point. A relationship that was never perfect had faded into estrangement. There hadn’t been anything to say.
It had been a world away from the small town Kentucky commune her mom had moved to after her kids left home, and Nadia had soaked up every second of it. Shoes, clothes, travel, partying. It had been a relentless onslaught of life. Until Manuel decided to start shipping priceless stolen paintings inside the frames with her work. And then he’d pinned it on her, saying she’d descended into the world of black market art.
Nadia had faced Manuel down and stood up for her own honesty. But she hadn’t seen her mom since then, which meant that now, as she moved and muttered around the place where she lived, tears sprang into Nadia’s eyes.
“Here it is.” Her mom sighed. “Seven-oh-three, five-five-five, six—”
Bolton grabbed the phone and sat up in one move. He ended the call and stared at the phone screen, before he cast a furious gaze in her direction.
Did he think she was going to back down or cower?
“Who?” He barked the word at her.
Nadia could give him any number of answers, but she did try not to lie. “My mom.”
“Why?”
“She was giving me Shadrach’s number. Apparently he thought I’d call her, and he was right.”
Bolton stared at her. There was no clock, but the seconds moved by anyway. Just without the ominous ticking.
“What was I supposed to do? You have a phone, and I need help.”
“And so you call someone that can lead Dante right to us.”
“Why would he think we have anything to do with a hippy commune in Kentucky?” Bolton’s head jerked. Guess he hadn’t been expecting that. Well, Nadia wasn’t going to explain, either. Her family life was none of his business. “Look, it was only one call. No one even knows who I am. I’m sure Dante won’t—”
“If we die, it will be your fault.”
“What?” She shook her head. “That’s crazy. He’s not going to find us, not in a truck in the middle of nowhere.”
“We’re going to a safe house. Though there’s a question now over whether Dante will trace the call back to this phone and be able to find us.” Bolton touched the screen. The phone chimed and the screen went black.
“How could he know anything about me? My name wasn’t anywhere on that news report.”
“Do you want to risk it if he does? We have to get away from this place, just like the sheriff and his questions. This is the first place Dante will look—our last known location.”
The brakes on the truck engaged, and Bolton shifted around. He moved toward the back door, ready to get down. Nadia could jump, but he had to do it slowly so as not to move anything.
“Sometimes I really don’t like you.”
He didn’t look back. “That’s because you’re too nice to just plain hate someone. And why not? Hate is pure. It can give you strength, purpose. Clarity of mind.”
“I hate that stupid denim jacket. It’s ugly. How’s that for pure?”
“At least everything I own isn’t pink.” He said it like it was an abomination.
“Guess we know where we stand.” She folded her arms. “Excuse me while I tag along so you can enact your sick plan to get back at Dante. Or were you planning on dumping me off all along? Using me as cover because Dante wasn’t looking for a couple where the man was in a wheelchair, and then the minute I became no longer useful you were going to leave me…where? On the side of the road? You were happy enough for me to hitch hike. What if the next trucker who picks me up turns out to be some rapist? Will you even look back when you drive away?” Nadia took a breath. “Did you ever care at all?”
Sanctuary Deceived WITSEC Town Series Book 4 Page 7