“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 the 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.
Her life was far simpler than that, and wouldn’t you know she actually liked it that way.
Mei wrote something down. “Talking. Okay.” Like she didn’t all the way believe it, but she was willing to entertain the idea. “Do you…talk…often?”
“It’s not a euphemism. We’re friends.”
Mei nodded slowly. “I think I’m getting it.”
That’s was good, because Gemma didn’t have the brain power to explain. “The mayor left and Dan went to change his shirt. I was walking back across the grass and fell in the hole.”
“Did you know the tunnel was down there?”
“No.” Gemma shut her eyes and remembered it. The dark expanse.
“And the pastor, does he know there’s a tunnel under his house?”
“I don’t think so.” He’d have told her. Plus, didn’t that mean he’d have to have gone in the house? No way.
Mei asked her about the Mayor and what he’d been doing there. She was still asking when Shelby came in. She pulled up short, a straw in an open can of clear soda. “The mayor?”
“Apparently if you’re a lifer, that means he offers you succession.” Except he hadn’t actually offered it to her. Just Dan. Was it because she was a girl, or because she was a librarian? Libraries were institutions of learning that were the heart of a community. Who—in Sanctuary and out in the rest of the world—hadn’t gone to the library as a child to check out a book for a school project? Adults frequented her shelves, and people held meetings in her rooms. Even those who didn’t read came in to surf the internet. It was their only access.
“Okay.” Shelby handed her the can and said to Mei, “Question time is over. She needs to rest.”
Shelby adjusted the blanket. The ceiling light was off, and only the white glow from the hall gave any light, but enough it vaguely bothered her head.
“Did my mom get here?”
“I called her, but she didn’t answer. I left a message.” Shelby didn�
��t react. They both felt the same way about Janice and the fact she’d withdrawn since the explosion rocked the town. Shelby just didn’t know it was because that was the day Hal Leonard had died.
Her father. She’d told Dan that interesting factoid but not Shelby. Yet.
Gemma pushed all that aside. “Hey, Shelb—”
Her friend waved away the words. “Sleep first. Okay? We’ll have plenty of time to talk tomorrow.”
Gemma had wanted to tell her for weeks. She had a huge secret, and yet every opportunity to tell Shelby that Hal had been her father—that she’d never known all this time she’d been living in the same town as him—had passed them by. He’d been having a secret relationship with her mom for years. Gemma had met him, talked to him, and thought they’d had a rapport. At least as much rapport as a twenty-four year-old could have with a sixty-something biker. They’d laughed over tuna in the tiny town grocery store, and he’d never said one word about being her father.
Neither had her mom.
It didn’t surprise her that her mom hadn’t shown tonight. Janice didn’t want to talk with Gemma about the past. Said she only wanted to move on, like Gemma had since she moved out a few months ago. Like Gemma could move on from being lied to for her entire life? One day normal, the next day John shows up like, “Hey, Gemma, your dead father left you an inheritance.” He’d actually stuttered when he realized she didn’t even know Hal was her father.
Hal was dead, all Gemma had was an archaic radio station and a giant secret.
She wanted to tell her best friend, but Shelby was getting married next week. Gemma would tell her when she got back from her honeymoon—to Frannie and Matthias’s house up the mountain. She’d heard the view was spectacular.
The woman was planning a wedding. She needed to focus, not worry about Gemma. So Shelby left Gemma to the quiet, and Gemma closed her eyes. Only she didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want those thoughts, all the questions swirling in her head.
“Knock, knock.” His voice was a whisper. Probably didn’t want to wake her if she was sleeping.
Gemma smiled and turned her head. Pain spiked through her. “Ouch.” She groaned the word.
Dan winced. “That bandage doesn’t look good.”
“Are you okay?”
His eyes softened, and he sat in the spot where Mei had been. “I’m okay. It wasn’t fun, but I’m glad you’re awake. What does the recovery look like?”
“Headaches for days. Blah blah, muscle aches, blah blah, plenty of rest. Something like that.”
He smiled with his lips. “I brought your bag.”
“My Coke?” She grasped for her tote. “My hero.”
Dan blinked at her. He shook it off and said, “Mei fished it out after they got you. It’s probably going to explode if you try to open it.”
She waved her hand. “It’s all about patience. Twist the lid a little bit, count to five. Twist, count to five. You get it open.”
His smile reached his eyes. “Did they give you pain meds? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk this much.”
Gemma slapped a hand over her mouth. “Don’t let me say anything awful.” Of course it came out like, dunlet musay anyafool. But he actually laughed.
Gemma waited while the sound cascaded over her. She could count on one hand the times he’d done that. And never on this day. She held out her hand. Dan waited a second, then placed his in hers. She had to say it. “You’re happy.” On his birthday. She couldn’t say that word, but she knew that he got it. Because he nodded before he let go, and she thought that she might have seen the sheen of wet in his eyes.
Dan cleared his throat. He probably didn’t want to be alone tonight any more than she did. “I saw Mei leaving.”
“She was asking questions.”
“She asked me some as well, though it was pretty obvious what happened since she showed up and was the one who got you out. She actually seemed more interested in what the mayor wanted.”
“Same here,” she said.
“I know John has been interested. The mayor isn’t doing goodwill work. He’s been sick for a while, and now he’s touring the town and holding private meetings with people? It doesn’t make much sense.”
Gemma shrugged. She wasn’t about to go try and solve that mystery. She had enough of her own with the file cabinets her father had left her, stuff he’d hidden behind a false wall in his radio station. She had planned to head over there tomorrow and do some reading, since a volunteer opened the library on Saturdays for her. Try and make sense of what Hal’s papers were, and why they had to be hidden from the town. Not to mention why Hal had never told anyone about them but left the guarding of them to her in his will.
Why he’d been in love with her mother.
Fathered a child with her.
Lived in town and never said one single thing to anyone about that. So many secrets. Her father, and he’d never told her that. Not once. Never tried to get to know her, even in secret. Never. Not once, her whole life.
Dan planted his fist in the bed beside her and leaned in. “Gemma, why are you crying?”
Chapter 3
Shelby’s smile was so full it encompassed her whole face. Gemma tried to return it but couldn’t muster much enthusiasm. She relaxed into the armchair and tried not to wince. This was her best friend’s dress fitting, and Gemma wasn’t going to mess it up. She’d been released from the medical center an hour ago, and all that was better left there. Especially after Dan had asked her so sweetly why she was crying, and she’d told him to leave.
Because she was a big coward.
He knew about Hal, but he couldn’t know what Hal left her.
Olympia sashayed her round figure into the room. The matron held a tray of glasses and a pitcher of lemonade, which she deposited on the coffee table beside two platters of desserts.
If she could move her head without it pounding, Gemma would have probably taken three of each. Good thing.
Olympia clapped her hands. “Okay, ladies.” The woman’s eyes were shadowed, but no one said anything about the fact Antonia wasn’t here and apparently had no intention of showing up.
Olympia held out her hand to Shelby, who took it. “It’s time to try the dress on.”
At least three people squealed. One of them was Nadia Marie Carleigh, the town’s hairdresser. Gemma did her own hair color. Andra, the sheriff’s wife, sat with Nadia, who was round as a…not a house, more like a large farm animal—not that Gemma would ever say that to a pregnant woman, Andra least of all. Gemma would probably drop dead, alone, hours from now, and no one would ever know what killed her.
Andra waddled over and slumped on the arm of Gemma’s chair with an oof. She glanced down and smiled.
Gemma smiled back, trying not to make it obvious the woman scared the Charles Dickens out of her. “How are you?”
“I’m carrying this thing around twenty-four seven, how do you think I am?” Andra touched her belly. Her words had a tone, but the way she rubbed her stomach softly was louder.
“Ready to pop. Isn’t that what people say?”
Andra snorted. “I wish it was that easy to get one of these things out.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Never married. Never kissed…okay, maybe there was that one time, but it wasn’t Dan, so it didn’t count.
Andra looked like she wanted to say something, probably like, It’ll happen for you. But she didn’t, which was appreciated since Gemma despised when married people thought that a wedding and babies were the endgame of every single person. Gemma got enough drama writing fiction.
“How’s your head?”
Gemma shrugged but kept her attention on the door, waiting to see Shelby come back to the living room in the dress she would wear to marry Elliot in a couple of days.
“I heard you were at Dan’s farm when you fell.” Gemma didn’t move. Had pregnancy destroyed Andra’s interrogation skills? “Did you know he’s officiating the wedding?” The woman was blatantly rooting
around for dirt. Andra and Nadia had likely decided Gemma would be more receptive to Andra than Nadia. Or Andra drew the short straw.
Gemma held her facial expression still. “Of course he’s doing the wedding. He’s the pastor.”
“I wasn’t sure you knew that.”
“Worried I’ll corrupt him?”
Andra hadn’t moved, either. And her face never gave anything away, ever. “Could you?”
“Nope.” She’d kinda tried, years ago in a desperate move. She had way too much respect for him to do that “tempting” stuff anymore. It hadn’t worked anyway.
“Well then.”
Gemma looked away, not the winner in the contest of wills between her and Andra. It could be construed as a draw. Better luck next time.
Andra chuckled. “So you’re feeling better.”
“As better as anyone who fell in a hole yesterday.”
“That was crazy,” Nadia jumped into the conversation, like she’d been waiting for the perfect opportunity to interject herself. “Seriously, you fell through the earth into a hole. Shelby and Elliot told us all about it when we came to see you at the hospital—”
“You did?”
Andra nodded. “Shelby said you weren’t up to visitors.”
No one had told her. Why would they come to see her? It wasn’t like they were “friends.” Nadia and Andra had both come to town as adults. Frannie, who ran the bakery, showed up as an older teen. Antonia, Maria and Sofia, Olympia’s grown daughters, had come as kids with their brother Matthias—now Frannie’s husband. Gemma hadn’t really connected with any of them. Not even in a school of fifteen kids. They didn’t understand her, and she didn’t understand them.
Maria brought her twin boys to the library sometimes these days, but she didn’t give Gemma anything more than basic cordiality. The only one who’d tried to engage her was Beth, the daughter of the former president. But Beth was gone now. Gemma had seen in the paper a while back that she and her husband had a baby boy.
Sanctuary Deceived WITSEC Town Series Book 4 Page 31