Free Sanctuary Lost WITSEC Town Series Book 1 by Lisa Phillips

colonel. Tell him our flag has been
taken.” He glanced at all of them. “Saddle up boys, we’re going
after her.”

     
     

Chapter 6
    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