Author: Lisa Phillips
Category: Christian
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/lisa-phillips/page,8,563080-sanctuary_deceived_witsec_town_series_book_4.html
Bolton’s expression didn’t change, and she knew then that she was right. “It wasn’t real, Nadia.”
Sanctuary. He was talking about Sanctuary.
The door opened.
**
The trucker locked up, a crusty older man in a stained wool sweater and knit cap who didn’t say much except, “Ten minutes.” Not that the time mattered to Bolton. They weren’t getting back on that truck anyway. It wasn’t far to the safe house.
Bolton pushed the aches and the pain to the back of his mind and grabbed Nadia’s hand. She trotted to keep up with him as he made his way down the street. It was a truck stop, nothing more. Bolton pictured the map in his mind and traced their route to the town that didn’t even have a stop light, just one sign. The vacation rental was on the edge of this tiny Washington town, and no one would think anything about two tourists showing up late at night.
Nadia’s fingers were frozen, so he slipped their hands into his coat pocket. Low clouds began to drizzle. The kind of rain where the damp seeped into your bones. Bolton much preferred the east coast—so long as it was south of Orlando. Florida was just about the only decent place to live as far as he was concerned. Too bad he could never go back there.
One day Sanctuary would be a memory, too. The pain of telling Nadia that their time there hadn’t meant anything to him would be nothing but a past he had no intention of digging up. The time they’d spent together, and the life he’d lived in one place not on the run from anyone had been nice. Not to mention a friendship with a whole lot of attraction and feelings underneath the surface.
Things with Thea had been explosive. Even the good times were full of sparks, and constantly having to stop at the jewelry store on the way home to make up for whatever he’d said in the heat of the moment.
Nadia was light years away from Thea. She was comfort. She was peace. Nadia had smiled at him, not expecting anything in return. And the older, hopefully wiser, Bolton who had lived through family war had also lived through years of being stabbed in the back and double-crossed. By the time he landed in Sanctuary he’d desperately wanted some peace in his life, so he’d eaten it up not knowing it would tie her to him.
He wanted her here. That was the kicker. Yeah, he’d had every intention of dropping her the minute her life was in serious danger or when she wasn’t a help to them staying under Dante’s radar. But that didn’t meant he’d have been happy to let her go. It would have hurt, watching her walk away. He knew now how badly it would hurt her.
But both of them would have plenty of life left to live in which to heal from it.
“So what do we do when we get to wherever we’re going?”
Bolton didn’t glance at her. He couldn’t look in her eyes anymore. What he was feeling would only get worse, and he didn’t know why she persisted in dragging this out. “Wait until Ben gets there.”
“Then what?”
Bolton shrugged the shoulder closest to her. “Find out what he wants to do. I can’t keep the cops off our backs alone.”
“But you want to take down Dante? And get that…whatever thing you were talking about. How is all that going to work if we’re running from him? Don’t you want to stop and let him catch you so you can kill him and go get your stuff?”
All of a sudden it was conversation, not Bolton’s unthinkable plan. The woman made no sense. “I have to do this right. I have to make a plan, set up all the pieces, and draw out Dante without drawing out his men at the same time. One on one is fine, but if he brings his army of DEA agents he paid off, and men he hired to work for him, I won’t stand a chance.”
“So Ben is going to help you make a plan to murder him.”
“He’s not my partner in this. Just a sounding board.”
“And Ben is fine with you murdering Dante?”
Now there was a loaded question. “Ben is not lily-white.”
“None of us are. I heard he beat up the mayor the last time he was in town—which the mayor probably deserved. But normal people don’t kill the people who wronged them and walk away from everything they know before the smoke clears. Not without consequences.”
“That’s why I need a plan. So the consequences will be minimal, and manageable.”
Nadia swiped rain from her forehead with her free hand. It was running down the back of Bolton’s collar. Her hair was probably soaked. They needed to get inside fast. It wasn’t too cold, but they were going to start feeling miserable pretty soon.
She said, “I can’t believe I’m even discussing this, but I want to know why you feel like this is your only option. I want to know you.”
She wanted to be his shrink now? “There isn’t much to know. I was one man, and then I was another one in Sanctuary. I don’t know if either were real, but I’m figuring out now who I want to be next.”
It was probably the most truthful thing he’d ever said to anyone his whole life. Bolton had made money designing and building bikes to the point the business had become its own entity and no longer required much input from him. That was when he sold it. All that cash, people had started coming out of the woodwork, offering him business partnerships he couldn’t say no to. His money had tripled, and he’d ventured into some shady places with people who paid extra so there were less questions.
That was when he’d caught Dante’s attention.
“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Who you want to be next.”
Was she serious?
“We are who we are,” she said. “We can’t just decide to be someone else. Change is one thing, and personal change is hard to maintain unless it’s a ‘God’ thing. I suppose you could fix some things about yourself. But becoming someone new…that’s like a chameleon. You’re still playing a part, pretending the core of who you are is different so it matches the outside image you show everyone.”
Bolton closed his mouth and felt his brow crinkle. Did she really think it was only an act? Nadia was the kind of person who said what she thought, even if it was hard to hear. But could she have the wrong idea this badly? He’d always figured he was able to be the man he wanted to be to suit any situation. Maybe he was a chameleon, if that’s what she wanted to call it. It’d been simply what he did in order to make happen what he needed to. The fact she called it “acting” was proof she didn’t know Bolton at all. Because there was nothing on the inside, there was only the shell. Dante had taken everything else. Thea. Even Javier, though the kid hadn’t been able to help it.
That was why Bolton had to do this. Why he’d thought of nothing else for years but finally getting his revenge. Payback. Whatever he called it, didn’t matter. It was what it was and not even a sweet woman with a knack for loving hard people could change that.
“Could we maybe factor some food into this equation?”
“Sure.” He hadn’t eaten since the surgery and didn’t know when Nadia had, either. She was probably as hungry as he was. “Ben stocked the house.”
“And he knew where we’d be?” They stopped at a corner, and she looked both ways at the deserted cross street, the dark houses, and street lamps.
Bolton tugged her to the right. “We’re not more than a hundred miles out of Seattle. He had a general area and stuck to that, laid a few contingency plans. This is only one of them.”
There wasn’t anyone in the world Bolton trusted the way he trusted Ben Mason. Despite the deal he’d made with Ben all those years ago, he considered the man a friend. If Bolton had any of those outside Sanctuary.
Nadia cleared her throat. “Do you think Dante would hurt my mom?”
Did she really want him to say it out loud?
“Maybe I could call her again, warn her that someone might be coming to the commune to hurt her. They don’t have weapons. They don’t believe in violence.”
“Dante does. Words of peace won’t help them much if he wants information. He’ll find us, and he’ll use your mom—or anyone else—to do it.”
“Can I call her?”
&n
bsp; “Ben will already know you made that call. He monitors the phone.” He squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry.”
Yeah, so there was plenty to worry about—like how that man had found them and killed the doctor. But he had to say it. He had to tell her something.
Bolton strode with her down the drive of a single-story with the living room light on behind the curtains. It was on a timer, Ben had told him. The key was under a plant pot on the back porch, but it only unlocked the side door into the garage. The interior door had a coded panel. Bolton entered the numbers Ben had programmed and went in first.
He cleared the house the way Ben had taught him and then slumped down onto the couch. Bolton closed his eyes. He should get them both coffee and food, but he didn’t think he could get up. He should make her a sandwich.
“Can I use your phone?”
Bolton got up and handed it to her. “Grilled cheese?”
She smiled, like a beam of sun between the clouds. “Yes.”
“I know you don’t want to admit it” —he grinned— “but I’m pretty sure you’re going to miss me.”
The sound of her footsteps moved away. Bolton didn’t doubt that he would miss her when they parted ways, and yet they’d shared only a couple of stolen kisses. He barely knew what to make of this whole thing. All he wanted to know was that Dante understood how Bolton felt about everything that’d happened. Nadia Marie was a complication he hadn’t asked for.
“Uh…your phone is going crazy.” She strode back in and held it out.
Six missed calls. Bolton played the voicemail, put it on speaker, and held it out.
“I know you’re there, little girl.”
His blood froze. “Dante.”
Nadia covered her mouth with her hand.
“Your precious momma will be fine. Maybe. But only if you bring Bolton to the steps of Portland City Hall by midnight two days from now. Or you could kill him yourself. Either way works for me.” Dante paused. “Otherwise…”
Gunshots rang out. People screamed.
Nadia paled. “Mom.”
“Time’s running out.”
Chapter 8
Sanctuary
“I’m looking for a book on George Washington.”
Gemma waved the kid toward the back left corner of the library. “Four rows back, halfway down. Look for the covers with faces of old dudes.”
“Sweet.” The kid wandered out of sight.
Aside from him, Gemma was alone in the library. She had been most of the day which was the only reason she hadn’t closed the place altogether. Not that she’d done any work. John was supposed to have told her what her next genre was. She couldn’t be a known writer, but she could put books out. If she changed genres and pen names often enough that people couldn’t follow her for more than two years before she became someone else, she could be an author. Such was the power of self-publishing these days. It would never have been possible until a few years ago. But what good were books when her whole world had fallen apart?
John’s words still echoed in her ears. Hal was your father.
Gemma didn’t even know where to start. She’d lived her whole life in a witness protection town with a man who was her father, and no one had ever thought to mention that fact? She’d figured her mother got pregnant before she elected to go into witness protection. Not that the aging biker who ran the radio station was her dad.
Now she couldn’t even talk to him because he’d died when that bomb destroyed Bolton’s house.
Gemma swiped the tears from her face. She’d cried at Hal’s funeral. She’d liked him. They’d had a hilarious conversation about tuna at the grocery store that one time. But she’d never thought he might be her father. The worst part of that conversation had been John Mason’s face when he realized she really, seriously, didn’t even know. He’d been all about inheritance, and Hal’s last wishes.
How about, “Hey, Gemma. He was your dad.”
The kid came back with his tome, and she checked it out while he looked at her like she’d sprouted two heads. Poor boy was going to have to up his game around emotional women or he’d grow up to be one of those guys who freaked out and tried to fix everything just to get the crying to stop.
After he left, Gemma picked up the phone. Again. It rang four times and then went to voicemail, the kind where it played on speaker through the house because everyone had those ancient machines. Gemma was kind of surprised they didn’t still have rotary dial phones.
“I know you’re there, Mom. I know you can hear me. Eventually you’re going to have to pick up and explain to me how in the you-know-what Hal Leonard could possibly be my father. Did you know he left me the radio station in his will? I’m a writer. I run a library. What am I going to do with a radio station for goodness sakes…”
Gemma dissolved into hiccupping sobs. She slammed the phone down and put both palms on her desk, trying to get control.
**
Nadia took the two steps to the coffee table, snapped up the gun, and pointed it at Bolton.
“Nadia, what—” He moved toward her, his gait stiff.
Nadia backed up two steps. “What do you expect?” Her thoughts had crystalized in perfect clarity. “Dante has my mother. He wants to trade her for you.”
Bolton couldn’t possibly think things were going to go on like they had. Not now. “You’re going to get her back for me.”
Bolton didn’t stand. “He’ll kill all of us. This isn’t going to be a peaceful exchange. Let’s call Ben, find out what’s happening.”
She didn’t move. “You’re going to get her back.”
His face softened. “Lower the gun, and we’ll talk about this, okay? We’ll figure it out.”
He couldn’t think being nice would help him. Not now. “Dante wants you. What is there to figure out?”
“Nadia—”
“No! You’ve been lying to me—to everyone—since the helicopter crashed. Now I’m going to set things right. You’re not going to leave me here and take off. You’re not going to let my mom die. I won’t let you do it!” She gasped for breath.
Bolton’s eyes darkened. Before she knew what was happening he had the gun in his hand. He did something with it then put it on the table in two parts. “Nobody is shooting anybody, and nobody is leaving.”
“I need to call Ben. Grant. My brother. Someone. There’s no one here who can help me, and now my mom is going to die...”
“Because of me.”
“What?”
He shrugged. “That’s what you were going to say. Because of me.”
She motioned to the phone with a wave of her hand. “Call Dante back and tell him you’ll turn yourself in, and he needs to let my mom go.”
Bolton shook his head. “I’d let you turn me in yourself if I thought it would save her life. Dante will kill her no matter what.”
“So she’s dead already, and we’re standing here not doing anything?” Her mom’s life was in the balance, and Bolton could do something about it. Nadia took two steps back. “You can’t keep me here. If you’re not going to help, I’ll go there myself. There has to be something Dante wants that I have.”
She realized what that sounded like, but who cared. She didn’t see eye to eye with her mom, but she didn’t want her dead, either.
Bolton roared, “You don’t go near him!”
“Like you even care,” she yelled back. “You don’t even want me around.”
She wasn’t that kind of girl, especially with a crazy criminal. She wasn’t going to barter herself. But Bolton didn’t know that.
“I never said I didn’t want you around.”
“It wasn’t real,” she mimicked. “You can leave.”
Bolton sighed.
“This is the life you want?”
He didn’t move. “It’s the life I know.”
“Sorry I’m such an inconvenience. Guess I was mistaken.” Nadia walked to the hall and grabbed her jacket. It felt like she’d been wearing the thing
for days. She hadn’t had a shower, and she badly needed a change of clothes, but she pushed aside those needs and pulled it on.
Nadia lifted her hands to sweep her hair out of the back of the collar and encountered the shorn strands of her short style.
Tears pricked her eyes.
“Why are you crying?”
He knew it wasn’t about her mom. He knew.
Still, Nadia shot him a look. “You don’t have the right to ask me that anymore.”
To his credit, he looked like she’d killed his cat. He walked to her, unable to hide how painful it was to move. Maybe that was all he felt—the pain in his back. Maybe that look had nothing to do with her.
“Nadia.” His voice had softened. He touched her cheek. “Please let me at least try and figure this out.” He moved so close she felt the words against her lips. “Nadia.” It sounded so desperate.
Why couldn’t she just leave? She should be walking away. Instead his nose touched the side of hers, and she closed her eyes.
God, I have to go.
The door hit her in the back. She jumped away and spun as two men walked in.
“Nadia!” Shadrach pushed Ben Mason aside and grabbed her into a hug. He leaned back just as fast and glared at Bolton. “What did you do to her?” He shifted again. “Are you hurt? Don’t worry about Mom, okay? If I have to, I’ll take Bolton myself and swap him for her.”
“You can try.” Bolton’s voice didn’t invite argument.
Shadrach shot him a look, but Nadia was crying. She took a breath and tried to get a handle on her emotions. What was wrong with her? She should be out the door already.