Sanctuary Lost WITSEC Town Series Book 1 (8 page)

“…so Sheila told me she didn’t want to see my
sorry butt again. By the time I got over there she’d thrown all my
stuff on the front lawn. It took me years to build up that
collection of The Amazing Spiderman. I had nearly every single one
except number three-hundred, you know, with the first appearance of
Venom. Now I’m back at my mom’s house.”

“That’s harsh, dude.”

“You’re telling me.” The first guy sighed.
“Issue number seven got mud on the corner.”

The two guys couldn’t have been older than
early-twenties. John waited until they crossed in front of him at a
right angle to Main Street and then he sprinted across.

The road to the farm was much like the road
to the ranch. As wide as a two lane road it was blacktop all the
way to the open gate. Air puffed from his lungs in clouds as John
moved down the side of the road where the tree line was. He
couldn’t hear much, but past the gate there was movement and the
low rumble of men talking.

John froze. He ducked against the nearest
tree. Ten feet to his right something moved between the trees. The
steps were silent but he heard the rustle of fallen leaves as
someone made their way to the farm. John lifted his wrist and
illuminated his watch.

8:47 p.m.

“Freeze!”

John pulled his gun surrounded by four men,
all masked. They pointed paintball guns at his chest. Every one of
them had the letter B drawn on their cheeks.

“Easy, man.”

John waited until they lowered their guns and
then re-holstered his weapon. “Sorry. Reflex.”

The one in front grinned. “Looks like we
caught ourselves a dark agent boys.” The man took John by the arm
and hauled him with the group to the yellow light of the barn. John
figured he’d just go with it.

A tall, dark haired man wearing a black
t-shirt and black cargo pants sat on a bale of hay. He was younger
than John but had an air about him that was solid. Salt of the
earth, his mom would have said. Even with a B on both his
cheeks.

“Sheriff?”

John nodded.

The man cracked a smile and stuck out his
hand. “Dan Walden. You’ll have to excuse me for missing last
night’s welcome dinner. I was elbow deep in mare placenta.”

John blinked.

“Thankfully it all came out okay.” He
motioned at a stall to their left, where a brown horse with a
smattering of white hairs across its neck and back stared at them.
“That’s Bay.”

The guys who’d walked him in gathered closer
to the huddle. “He’s the dark agent,” one said. “He has to be.”

Dan looked at John a question present in his
eyes. It was hard to imagine the man ever getting flustered, even
when he was “elbow deep in placenta”. Whatever that meant, John
didn’t even want to know.

“I’m not the dark agent.”

Dan’s eyes narrowed. “Still, you’ll remain
here with us where we can keep an eye on—”

The lights went off. John stood completely
still. The room smelled like hay and other less appealing farm
odors. The men around him spun, bumping into each other. John
pulled out his flashlight and flipped it on. Behind Dan, a slender
figure darted through the room.

“Right there!”

The flagpole across from Dan tipped over.
Someone fired several bursts of paint like the steady slam of a
nail gun.

“Get her!”

Dan ran for the figure. Paint slammed into
his back but he didn’t stop. Animals whined and shifted about in
their stalls. The guys ran after the farmer out the single door at
the back, leaving John alone in the barn.

From a dark corner the slender figure
emerged. A wool cap covered the woman’s hair and a mask like Zorro
covered her eyes. She wore all black and made no sound as she
crossed the room with a red flag in her hand. Black C’s were drawn
on both of her cheeks. Another team? She tucked the flag into her
back pocket, the bright red bait clearly visible to anyone in
pursuit. She lifted one gloved finger to her lips and then sprinted
out the wide front doors of the barn.

The men ran back in. “Where is she?”

“That was the dark agent!”

“Who was it? I’ve never seen her before. Have
you?”

“No, never. She disappeared into
nowhere.”

They talked over each other until Dan came
back in. “Tanner, radio the colonel. Tell him our flag has been
taken.” He glanced at all of them. “Saddle up boys, we’re going
after her.”

The boys jumped into a rush of movement,
dragging out horses and loading them up with saddles. John lifted
one finger.

Dan halted. “Make it quick.”

“She had the letter C on her cheeks.”

“What?” Dan shook his head. “That’s not
possible, there’s no team C.”

John shrugged. “Take it or leave it.” He
turned to the door.

“Hold up.”

John turned back. Dan accepted the reins of a
gigantic black horse. It took every ounce of will not to step back
in an act of self-preservation. Dan smiled. “Here.” He threw a set
of keys and John caught them. “The truck’s been on its last legs
for five years but it runs. Or thereabouts. I don’t have anything
else with four wheels and I usually ride Indigo everywhere anyway.”
He patted the flank of his horse, while the animal stared at
John.

“The ranch has more than one truck, don’t
they?”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m aware of
that.” He swung up on the horse. “Truck’s over by the house.”

“Hey, thanks.”

Dan shrugged and kicked the horse into gear.
At least that’s what it looked like to John. The farmer, and the
four guys with him, took off in a cloud of dust kicked up by
horse’s hooves and a thunderous noise. John looked around, half
expecting the woman to emerge again. Had it been Andra?

On the surface she didn’t seem the type to
get involved in a game, even if the participants he’d observed so
far seemed to take it seriously. Could she put aside the way the
mayor and his wife—and the doctor and his wife—had dismissed her as
being irrelevant? She probably wasn’t the first person they’d
snubbed and he didn’t figure she’d be the last. No one else at the
dinner had spoken to her. Did that mean everyone knew what the
town’s figureheads knew, or did they simply follow their lead? Most
of the men he’d met so far didn’t seem like the kind of guys who
followed anyone’s lead but their own.

John found the truck and drove back into
town. Streets were deserted. The whole town looked like the fake
towns he’d done training in, both in the military and with the
marshals. He half expected to see a dressed-up mannequin on the
sidewalk.

John parked outside the sheriff’s office and
took the stairs two at a time. Pat was asleep on the couch, all the
lights were on and the iPad had died. John set it on the coffee
table and put his son in bed but left both the lamp in the bedroom
and the light above the oven on. He left the truck and walked to
the Meeting House.

Deputy Palmer still wasn’t there, though it
was hard to tell when everyone buzzed between radios stationed
around the room to the table. Pieces were shifted, knocked over and
moved to opposite ends of the map. By the looks of it, Dan’s team B
had made it across town.

“Team A’s flag has been taken.” Hal strode
over. “That’s both teams who’ve had their flag taken by a member of
this team C. What is going on?” He stared down the major general.
“There isn’t supposed to be a C team.”

The major general stood perfectly still.
“There is no C team.”

John stopped at the other side of the table.
“I saw one of them.”

Both men turned to him. The noise in the room
dissolved into silence. The major general’s eyes narrowed.
“Impossible. I would have been notified. That was not part of the
battle plan.”

“Did A team say it was a woman who took their
flag?”

Hal said, “They did.”

“Probably the same woman I saw. Probably
decided to make her own team and show you all what she’s made of.”
John liked the idea. He’d always admired women with cunning,
which—it turned out—was both the reason why he’d gotten married and
also the reason why he was now divorced.

“Impossible.”

“She took the B team flag at nine-seventeen.
When was the A team flag taken?”

Hal grinned. “Nine thirty-five.”

“There is no way…” The major general’s rant
dissolved into rambling.

John folded his arms, liking this woman even
more. “So she made it from one end of town to the other in fifteen
minutes and got herself two flags.”

The major general’s craggy face turned red.
“I would have been notified!”

“Because things always go the way you planned
in battle?” John shrugged. “Sometimes a new enemy crops up, one you
weren’t expecting. It would be a shame to let her get the jump on
both teams and get away with it, wouldn’t it?”

The major general rubbed the palm of his hand
across his girth, which was covered with a wool vest. “Not under my
command!” He turned to the pentagon woman. “Call all troops back to
the command center. I want all intel before we mobilize the teams
to retake the flags.”

She snapped straight. “Yes, sir!”

Five minutes later both teams poured into the
Meeting House. Dan and Bolton both strode over, but not without
glancing sideways at each other. Bolton was the first to talk.
“Whose idea was it to have a team C?”

John studied the man’s dark features. He’d
seen him somewhere before but couldn’t place where. Likely it was a
law enforcement connection; DEA by the look of the man. He seemed
the type to infiltrate drug cartels and bring down their empires
while simultaneously winning the heart of the cartel boss’s virgin
daughter.

John didn’t trust him at all.

He was going to have to do a serious amount
of reading in the next few weeks if he was going to get to the
bottom of who each of these people were. And that was the
short-hand route. It would take too long to meet each individual
person and determine the threat level of them living in this town.
He had to know what they were capable of if he was going to decide
whether to trust them with the formative years of Pat’s life.
Because there was no way John could shelter the kid from a whole
town.

Bolton chewed out the major general on his
lack of sharing. It appeared Bolton didn’t know the old man had no
clue what was going on, either.

Dan glanced aside at John. “The truck start
okay?”

“A little slow on the uptake but once it got
warmed up it was happy.”

Hal leaned toward them. “Sounds like my kind
of woman.”

John burst out laughing, as did Dan, but the
farmer didn’t seem to find it quite as funny. Bolton glared at
them. “Do you mind?”

John stared at the man and tried to remember
any big cases or busts but he’d been undercover for a year, which
put him severely out of the loop on that stuff. He glanced at each
of the men. “Any of you seen Deputy Palmer? He was supposed to be
in here tonight, supervising.”

The men glanced at each other.

“Care to share?”

Dan was the one who spoke. “Palmer’s not a
bad guy. He’s just a little…exuberant. Probably wandered off to
give someone a citation.”

“He said he’s lived here all his life. Does
that happen often?”

“I’m a native, too.” Dan shrugged. “Palmer
and I went to school together. The guy never met a rule he couldn’t
follow.”

John smiled. “Anyone else feel like weighing
in?”

Bolton sniffed and turned away. Hal said,
“He’s fine enough. For a young un’.”

“All right.” John motioned to the map on the
table top. “So what’s the plan for team C?”

The major general lifted his chin.
“Intelligence indicates it was the same woman who took both
flags.”

Dan said, “So who is she? You saw her,
sheriff. Any idea who it is?”

John had a fair idea, but he wasn’t going to
give them everything. These were the kind of men who had to figure
it out for themselves instead of having him take half the fun out
of it for them. Besides, he could be wrong. “I’ve met maybe a dozen
people in town. I couldn’t say for sure who it was in your barn.
Slender. Five-seven. Hair was covered, dressed in all black. Dark
brown eyes. That’s about it.”

“Great.” Bolton rolled his eyes. “I had one
of those in my barn, too.”

Was he questioning John’s ability to sheriff,
or just his observational skills? John studied him. “You got a
problem?”

Bolton didn’t even blink. “Marshal Mason
whose older brother is the director, gets all the cushy
assignments. Living life on the edge, undercover, reeling in the
fugitives and walking away clean.”

“Right.” That was why there was a cut on his
forehead and a bruise the size of a football on the back of his
shoulder. Still, John wasn’t sure this was totally about him and
not also in part about Bolton’s feelings over whatever it was that
had happened to him.

He was going to have to read up on that
later. “Have you considered talking to someone about your pent-up
frustration for authority figures? I hear there’s a shrink in
town.”

Bolton’s chest shook, which in anyone else
might have amounted to actual laughter. “Ah, so you’re the
hand-holding, hug-your-fellow-man type then?”

“Not hardly.” John stuck his hands in his
pockets. “I just have enough issues to know when I’m staring at
them.” The man wasn’t going to respect John’s sob story of Alphonz
or his associates looking for revenge. “Just looking for somewhere
quiet to raise my boy.”

“Dude, you picked the wrong town if you’re
lookin’ for a quiet life.” Bolton’s lips twitched and he almost
smiled. Almost.

“Thanks for the heads up.”

The door flung open. One of the two kids John
had seen on the street rushed in, winded, with snot dripping onto
his upper lip. “She’s dead. We found her.” He sucked in a breath.
“She’s dead.”