Bolton’s hand reached out and clasped Nadia’s as she stood by him. He reached for his son with the other hand and the teen shot him a grim look, his eyes full of tears and ready to overflow. The town’s fate had come to this, and they’d finally seen it play out.
Sanctuary had never been a safe place, but neither was the rest of the world. At least here he’d thought they had enough friends around them that they were strong to face whatever might come next.
Bolton glanced back at the Meeting House and all the people gathered inside. They’d been through so much already. Crazy murdering psycho’s, crazier murdering psycho’s, followed by a crazy murdering SEAL. Through it all several of them had found love. Made families. Forged some semblance of happiness out of everything that was right and wrong in Sanctuary.
He’d almost done it. Nadia Marie was here, his ring on her finger. Their wedding date would be set when she finally agreed they didn’t need to wait any longer. Javier was here. Things were good between them, and while it would never be a perfect father/son relationship because of the years they’d spent apart, Bolton liked to think they were becoming good friends.
And now the town was overrun.
Sheriff Chandler had done little more than sit behind a desk when he had been here. He’d certainly never actually arrested anyone. Why did they think the crime stats had gone up since John arrived? Now the man was back? No cancer. No sickness at all that Bolton could see.
One shot, and now John lay on the street in the midday sun.
A tear rolled down Bolton’s face, but he didn’t have a free hand to catch it.
**
Matthias moaned, low in his throat. A gasp from Frannie set the baby to crying, but her gaze didn’t move from across the street. Matthias went to her and took the child, then held them both close to his chest.
She’d had a hard time since Susan was born, but God had been so faithful to give them joy in spite of the bad days Frannie had. He’d seen her smile as many times as she laughed, and knew there was a measure of guilt there that she wasn’t happier about their family. Matthias just reminded her that happiness was a human emotion, and those could change faster than the weather. What was true was that they had each other, and God had them. Their baby was healthy, they had another on the way, and they were together. Life was good.
The Meeting House was packed, most of the town already attuned to what was happening in Sanctuary, and while some crowded closer to the windows to attempt to see across the street, others backed up. Even before the posse rode down Main Street on horseback, armed. Before the former sheriff of Sanctuary had gunned down John Mason in the street. So many here had PTSD or other trauma symptoms. The sheriff’s death was going to be a blow he wasn’t sure this town could recover from.
Matthias’s breath caught in his throat. Emotion. He squeezed his eyes shut.
God had them in His hands.
Over the murmur of dismay and disbelief of people in the room, Pat Mason screamed. Aaron sat crouched in a corner, rocking and talking to himself. Olympia crossed to the boy and pulled him into her arms. Matthias’s sister was lost to them, but even with Antonia gone, his mom found a needy heart she could touch.
Andra sat on a plastic chair, holding baby Nicholas, her face completely pale. Who was going to help her?
The doors flung open.
People rushed back, and Phil and Matt entered. They dragged an older couple into the room, and then a young family.
Sheriff Chandler stepped up to the door. He surveyed the gathered crowd, all stood in stunned silence. Then he turned to his men and said, “Knock on every door. I want everyone brought here for a town meeting.”
They slammed the doors shut.
Matthias glanced over at Bolton, and they shared a look. He squeezed Frannie and then moved so he could look down at her face. “I need to talk to Andra.” She nodded her upturned face, and he kissed her quickly because he needed to, then touched his daughter’s head before he walked to where Andra sat with her baby.
He crouched in front of her, not liking the look on her face. “Andra?” She was pale, too pale. Her eyes glassy. He touched her arm and found it cold and clammy under his fingers. She wasn’t crying, she was in pure shock. “Tell me what you need.”
He couldn’t imagine what was going through her head. Brand new mom, nearly brand new wife. Seeing her husband shot down in the street right in front of her eyes. The whole room could hear Pat lose it, and Aaron wasn’t any better though he was quiet and kept things to himself. Andra had some kind of mental strength Matthias had never seen before.
His sister hadn’t been his best friend, but he hadn’t held himself together when he heard Antonia had been killed.
Andra was going to lose it, too, and he’d bet money she wanted to do that alone.
He held out his hands. “Do you want me to hold Nicholas for you?”
She shook her head.
“How can I help you?”
Andra swallowed, then looked him square in the eyes. “Get my husband’s body out of the street.”
Matthias stood. “Okay.”
He needed something to do, something practical that meant he was helping, even if it was only in a small way. He didn’t want to see John like that, but if it was what she wanted then he would do it.
Matthias went to the door.
“Anyone out there?” Bolton had rolled over on his chair. Matthias saw Nadia with Frannie, and sent her a smile of thanks.
“Doesn’t look like it.” Matthias cracked the door and just listened. “Seems like they all dispersed on Chandler’s orders.” He stepped outside, and Bolton held the door open. “Yep, it looks clear.”
“Be careful anyway.”
Matthias stepped out from the cover of the Meeting House doorway, grimacing at the idea of what he was about to do. But Andra had asked. Lord, help us all. Whatever Chandler had planned wasn’t likely going to be pretty.
But as he passed the flower bed in the center and approached the spot where John had fallen, he realized something.
The sheriff’s body was gone.
Matthias’s steps faltered, and he stopped.
“What is it?” Bolton yelled across the street.
Matthias was about to reply when movement at the end of the street caught his attention. Matthias saw Elliot and Shelby walking his direction, their steps frantic. Shelby glanced back over her shoulder, and Elliot urged her on.
Matthias met them outside the Meeting House.
“Men with guns dragged us out of the medical center. Never mind that we have patients, we’re supposed to be over here for a town meeting.” Shelby’s words came fast, her skin flushed. She walked in and looked around. “Is she here?” She glanced around. “Has anyone seen Gemma?”
Janice got up from sitting with a group and walked over. “I haven’t seen her.” She held hands with Shelby. “I don’t know where she is.”
Matthias needed to talk to Andra. She was looking at him now, expectant. Did she think he’d bring John in here? Matthias held her gaze and shook his head.
Andra frowned.
Shelby glanced back at Matthias. “What about Dan?”
Matthias swallowed. He’d seen the pastor on the back of his horse. Janice answered for him, “Dan was with the mayor and Sheriff Chandler.”
Shelby gasped. “What?”
Matthias nodded. “We all saw him.”
“No, I don’t believe it.”
“He was,” Janice said. “He betrayed all of us and joined them.”
“He didn’t look good.” Matthias wanted her to know that. “Maybe he was even coerced into it. We don’t know that he went willingly.”
Shelby nodded. “He wouldn’t have abandoned us. That isn’t the kind of man Dan is.”
“You don’t know the kind of man he is,” Janice said. “The son of Bill Jones could be capable of anything. And where’s Gemma? He probably killed her and then joined Chandler!” Janice stumbled away, wailing.
Shelby turned into Elliot’s arms. “He wouldn’t have killed her.”
Matthias said, “I don’t believe it. Janice is distraught, but so is everyone.” His voice cracked, and he walked to Andra. “He’s gone.”
“I know he’s gone, Matthias.” Her voice, thin and broken, made his chest ache. “I saw it just like you did.”
“His body.” Matthias’s gut tightened. “It’s gone.”
Andra mouthed the word, Gone, but no sound came out.
“I’m sorry.”
He heard Bolton behind him telling Shelby and Elliot what had happened. The noise in the room broke out into murmurs, disbelief that Dan had become one of the bad guys. People asking who had seen their friends, their neighbors. Janice yelled, “You never liked her anyway! What do you care what happened to my Gemma?”
Shelby and Elliot wandered to an open chair and sat.
Andra stood, the baby in a sling tucked close to her chest. She wandered to Aaron, crouched, and spoke quiet into his ear. Aaron glanced up, his face puffy and wet. She held out her hand, and he got up. Andra walked toward the door to the kitchen in the back, the bathrooms. The door to the bunker underneath the building. Aaron bent low in front of Olympia and took Pat from her arms. “Come on, little brother. Time to go.”
“Go?” Bolton wheeled toward the family. “Where are you going?”
“To the bathroom.” Andra’s face was dead-pan. She never gave anything away. Ever.
“Time to go,” Aaron said.
Andra said nothing, just turned and led her family through the swinging door to the kitchen.
“Chandler won’t like it if they’re gone when he comes back.”
Matthias turned. He figured the look on Bolton’s face was a lot like the one on his. “She knows what she’s doing.”
“Then we’re agreed she’s not just taking her family to the bathroom.”
Matthias nodded. “John’s body was gone.”
“I don’t want to know where Chandler took it.”
Matthias didn’t want to know what they were going to do with it. He’d seen enough blood and lived through enough death in his life to know that. So he bowed his head and did what Dan would tell him to do.
He prayed.
**
“Everyone reports to the Meeting House. No exceptions.” The voice was muffled through the locked door that separated Gemma from the rest of the house, and freedom.
Gemma turned her head but stayed in plank position. Sweat beaded on her brow, but there weren’t a lot of ways to burn pent-up energy that worked as well as doing a few push-ups. She sat back on her heels and blew out a breath. She’d worked her hands out of the bindings and taken off the scarf from her mouth, but she was still confined to this room.
“The mayor knows we’re on his side. I’m sure he can explain to us what we need to know.” It was Mrs. Evangeline.
Gemma was going to scratch that woman’s eyes out if she got the chance.
“No exceptions. Now who else lives here? Anyone?”
“Just us,” Mr. Evangeline told the man.
Boot steps pounded down the hall. Went different directions. Came closer to the room she was in. The handle twisted, caught, and was let go. “What’s in there? I’m supposed to search everywhere.”
“That’s just a storage room,” Mrs. Evangeline said. “All the sets from old theater productions. You know we run the Sanctuary art program. But it’s so messy in there it would be like showing you my unmentionables drawer.” She giggled, too fast and too fake.
“Yeah, I don’t wanna see that.”
The boots pounded away. “You two still come with me.”
More footsteps, and then the front door shut.
Silence.
Gemma jumped up. They were gone? Really, seriously, gone? She pushed on the door. Please let it be as well made as all the rest of the doors in town. She’d been mad at her mom once, and punched her bedroom door. The thing had been hollow, and basically crumpled under her hand.
Gemma lifted her foot and kicked the door. Her foot went straight through until her leg up to her knee was on the other side of the door. She hopped and pulled her foot out, then kicked and kicked until there was a hole big enough to get through.
Thank You, Papa.
Gemma ran out the back door, jumped the fence. Through another yard. Between two houses. A dog barked, but she ignored it and sprinted as fast as she could into the woods.
You set captives free.
**
The baby stayed mercifully quiet. Andra took every back alley and short cut she knew and got her boys to the park. They couldn’t go her normal route to the cabin. That would take them by the mayor’s house. Chandler had probably set up shop there in order to oversee his hostile takeover of the town. Andra’s hands clenched by her sides. She pushed aside the rage and took a cleansing breath. That was a feeling for later. When the kids were safe, and she had a gun in her hand.
“Mom.” Pat’s whisper brought her head around. She closed the gap between her and Aaron, who still held him.
She crouched so their faces were level. “Yeah, buddy?”
“Where’s Dad?”
Andra put her arms around Aaron and Pat and pulled them both close to her. The baby stirred as she said, “Pray, okay?”
“Aaron pray.”
Andra squeezed the older boy’s neck. He was a man in age, but she prayed he’d never lose that youthful mentality even as she grieved the fact he’d always be childlike. She prayed both Pat and Aaron would be able to distance themselves from this. It was why they had her.
“Let’s go,” she said. “It’s not far.”
Her cabin in the woods had burned down, but when she and John had talked about weekend getaways and how they weren’t really possible in Sanctuary, they’d decided to rebuild it. Between getting married, a rogue SEAL terrorizing the town, and then having a baby, they hadn’t managed to start on the build yet, but they’d made some improvements.
And John had designated the cabin their rendezvous point. She’d scoffed at first, until she’d realized the wisdom of an “In case something happens” plan. Her eyes filled with tears. Something had happened.
His body. It’s gone. Andra had never prayed as hard as she had for the last hour. God’s action wasn’t contingent on her prayers. That wasn’t why she pleaded and begged for His help, for Him to have saved John somehow. She’d seen her husband get shot. Andra prayed because that dialogue with God was all she had to keep her going up the winding path that crept toward the mountains.
It was all she had to keep the hope alive.
**
“Thank you all for coming.” Sheriff Chandler’s voice boomed across the room and from the speakers. Someone had turned it up loud.
Beside Matthias the baby let out a mew. Frannie covered the baby’s ear that wasn’t pressed against her with the blanket, and then her hand. He shifted closer to her and held them both steady against his side.
Conversation broke out across the room.
“What’s going on?”
“I thought you were dead.”
“What’s happened?”
“Where did you come from?”
Sheriff Chandler lifted his hand. “Today has been unpleasant for a lot of you, but it was necessary. I knew when I left that the situation in Sanctuary needed to change. For too long all of us lived under the thumb of the federal government. Now the committee wants us to bow to their whims instead?” He shook his head. “No. Not me, and I couldn’t stand by and do nothing while all of you simply exchanged one dictator for another. You should be free.”
Bolton shifted in his wheelchair and whispered to Matthias, “If he doesn’t want to be lord and master of this town instead of the committee, then why did he ride in and shoot John?”
Matthias shook his head. He raised his hand and the old sheriff nodded. His men looked on, scattered around the room like sentries. Dan was outside. Matthias had seen him arrive, but he hadn’t come inside. Did they keep the pastor out there on purpose, or was it his choice?
The sheriff glanced around, waiting for someone to oppose him.
Matthias wasn’t going to stay silent. “If you’re trying to convince us you’re here to help, why drag people out of their homes? Why walk around carrying guns that are illegal in this town and kill the sheriff?”
Chandler didn’t react, he stayed completely stoic and faced the crowd. “I’ll prove my loyalty is to this town by proving to you all that the committee—particularly the Mason brothers—are not working for you. It’s time for the truth to come out, and for Sanctuary to be revealed for what it was intended as.”
Matthias said, “Everyone already knows it was a prison for Dan Walden’s father.” Frannie shifted in her chair and glanced at him for a second. She was upset? He rubbed her shoulder with his thumb. He had to stall long enough that Andra could do whatever she was doing, even if it was only so that she could hide her boys and be safe. All the sheriff’s men were here which meant there was no one else stalking the town.
Matthias said, “What we don’t know is how you got in here when no aircraft landed. Is there another way in and out of Sanctuary?”
“That is privileged information. Does ‘everyone’ also know that Mei Ling is an employee of Ben Mason, or that she was sent here to be the deputy sheriff, and none of the other applicants even had a chance?”
Matthias shrugged. He trusted John, and by extension his brother Ben. The man’s methods were unconventional. If there was something Ben needed done in Sanctuary, then it needed done.
Sheriff Chandler waited for a second, and then said, “Didn’t think so. There have been too many secrets in this town for too long. I’m going to bring the truth to light, and it’s up to each of you to decide if you wish to remain here.”
Matthias wanted to know what the plan was to allow those who didn’t want to stay the chance to leave. The only problem was the reason why they were here in the first place—the fact that they weren’t safe in the outside world. Would people choose mortal danger over living under this new regime, a regime that didn’t seem to have their best interests at heart?
Sheriff Chandler continued, “Those who remain who truly threaten the safety of Sanctuary are not in this room, but they need to be found. Mei Ling must be brought to me. We will find out why she is here, and what she was sent to accomplish. This woman is armed and dangerous, and we believe she is responsible for the deaths of more than one person, including Terrence Evangeline and Antonia Hernandez.”
“The other person we are currently looking for is Gemma. While unarmed, she is dangerous and believed to possibly be in league with Mei Ling. They could be plotting all kinds of things together, and so it is imperative they be found.”
The room erupted into shouted questions and comments.
“Enough!” The mayor strode onto the stage and put his mouth right up to the mic. “Quit being so ungrateful when we saved you from them!”
“You seriously believe that?” someone yelled.
“Shut it, Hank!” The mayor’s chest heaved. “Ben Mason is a thug, and Mei is as good as the same. Where is Terrence, huh? She probably killed him, too!”
The sheriff pushed him aside while everyone gasped. Even Matthias felt his eyebrows lift. He glanced at Frannie, whose eyes were wide as well.
“She needs to be found!” One of the men dragged the mayor from the stage.
Sheriff Chandler cleared his throat. “Until these people are brought to me, there will be a nine p.m. curfew in effect. After that time, no one is allowed outside of their homes.”