Gemma pulled a new stack of files from the first cabinet. She was barely halfway down the drawers. Plenty to do, and it was better than sitting at home pretending to watch TV while her arm hurt, her mind raced, and she wondered who was going to come at her next. She was beyond exhausted, up half the night, and dreaming monstrous images the rest of the time. There was no way she would try and sleep now.
The ice cold terror of what happened had thawed and left her with the knowledge that she’d frozen. Again. Not completely, but enough that it bothered her. Just like the other time she’d been confronted—years ago now—Terrence had hurt her, and she’d done not one thing to fight him off. Was she weak? Maybe retreating into her head and not giving everything she had to get away from the situation from the first second meant she didn’t have enough strength. Perhaps she had nothing to draw on when someone came at her like that.
But if that was true, it meant Dan was weak for doing the same thing to survive his father. She’d read about coping mechanisms before and knew the mind could splinter under extreme stress. A child might not remember something which happened to them, when in any other situation they’d know exactly what went on. But she’d been far away, deep in her memories, while Terrence could have touched her all he wanted.
She needed to write another book and put in a character, who by all accounts should be strong, and make them face a situation where they were unable to defend themselves. Just so she could figure it out, wrestle with what had happened and the fact she’d done nothing. Gemma let out a growl of frustration.
The paper.
She set down the file pages and tried to smooth out the crumples she’d just made. She needed this. Needed to focus on something that didn’t involve her at all.
This stack was nothing but more mission logs. It seemed like they were carried out by a single man team, instead of a group. Hal? Bill Jones, maybe. From the little she’d gathered, mostly from Hal’s tattoos, he’d been in Vietnam. Had the man run solo missions back then? But why, and what on earth was he doing in the jungle alone? The text made it seem so benign, she didn’t understand any of it.
These papers didn’t even say which part of Vietnam he’d been in, just a bunch of numbers. She’d have to look on the library computers tomorrow, see if they were latitude and longitude references or what. But all this was forty-plus years ago now, and most of the people who took part in it were older. A lot of them would be dead now. It was all a history most people only wanted to forget, or they wanted to remember it with some kind of rose-colored sense of honor while current affairs were only history repeating itself, and everyone claimed it was some kind of “new problem” instead of people being selfish just like every bad thing that had ever happened all through history.
Gemma loved to read about history. She couldn’t imagine being called to give so much—maybe even everything—as some politician’s pawn in a global chess match that could never be won. She’d always been a pacifist, raised by her mother. An earth child.
But it was easy for the both of them to spout litany about peace from behind a wall of mountains that protected them from nearly every threat in the world.
If she was outside of Sanctuary, things would be different. It was why she couldn’t be as vocal on her stance as others were online. Gemma didn’t know what it was like to live in the real world, and the people she knew who had… well, the real world hadn’t done them any favors, had it? If she’d grown up in Kabul or New York City, she’d probably have a different stance, but she’d grown up here.
Mostly Gemma figured nowhere on this earth was perfect. If there was she’d sure like to live there, but maybe they didn’t let people like her in. There had to be some kind of standard, otherwise it wouldn’t be perfect anymore. People would just mess it up, like they had over and over again, all through history.
Marched eight miles to location. No one left alive. Target still unaccounted for.
This was a little more serious. But she wasn’t going to know what it referred to if she didn’t know who the players were. Someone had died. Someone was being hunted. Gemma sighed. Was she going to read anything at all in this mess that made sense?
At least she could figure out whether the words that had filled out the boxes on the form were Hal’s handwriting or not. Gemma wandered out to the radio room and rummaged around. Bingo. A sticky note with Hal’s writing on it. A pang of something that made no sense hit her. She hadn’t really known the man who wrote this, only as an acquaintance in passing.
Was that her destiny also, to die alone and unknown? Dan’s face filled her mind. She’d never be unknown. But the alone part was entirely too familiar to be comfortable. She’d always been at ease by herself. It was simpler than explaining to people who didn’t understand why she was the way she was.
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.