Galen's Gemma - Dale Mayer Page 0,20
the civilian world, for lack of a better term. Although he had worked with several who had similarities. Maybe that’s why she was something odd, yet not so odd. He was confused by how to even label her. But as she slept here, her breathing slow and steady, he realized what it must have cost her to do this right now with him. It meant she had to trust him.
He got up slowly and walked to his laptop, grabbing it, meanwhile wondering if she was still just a little bit wary of him, yet extreme fatigue won out. She was seriously burned-out to drop off like that with him here. … As he sat back down, her eye movements had slipped into one more level of unconsciousness, and he realized that she was in a deep sleep now. He turned on his laptop to see just what was going on. Galen sent messages to Levi, asking him for further information. He wanted crime-scene photos to match up with what he had just been told to confirm Gemma’s recollection of it. He also wanted to know about life insurance and whether the couple had any recent marital problems.
Levi messaged back right away. Isn’t that something you should ask the wife?
Galen replied, I will when I have more intel. I wanted to hear what the general gossip has to say. Just in case their marital problems were not so secret.
By the time Gemma woke up and slowly sat up, looking around in confusion, he had pretty well answered all the questions they had raised, confirming all that Gemma had said. The two society ladies Levi had spoken with confirmed that every marriage had problems and that Rebecca was a complainer anyway. Galen gently put down his laptop and quietly walked over, seeing a groggy and distant look in her gaze. He crouched in front of her. “Take it easy,” he said. “You just woke up from a really deep sleep.”
She nodded slowly. “It took me a moment to figure out where I was,” she said, as she stifled a yawn. She looked around at the cabin. “I used to spend weeks of my summers here.”
“And yet your sister didn’t seem to know too much about this place.”
“She never came with me,” she said. “It was before our parents died, and it was my favorite place to come.”
“Why is that?” he asked.
She smiled, slowly opening her eyes. “Because it took me back to nature and let me forget about the various levels of humanity that I struggled with.”
“You must have been very happy here,” he said.
“I was,” she said, “but it also started changing around that time. I wasn’t even sure if I should come back this time.”
“Did they have all the weapons back then?”
She frowned and thought about it, then shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of, but that could be just because I was a teenager, and they didn’t think I needed to know about them.”
“That’s possible too,” he said. “They are very well weaponized now.”
“The world isn’t the same way it was ten years ago either,” she countered.
“Do you have any reason to fear these people?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve known Tim for a long time. But I don’t want to bring any danger to him and his family and his friends. They have this life of peace, living off the land as much as they can and living on the fringe of society. All by choice. They know what society is like. They had an ugly situation a few years back that shifted the way they lived, as they were forced to protect themselves from another group.”
“Are they aware of your situation?”
“Yes, and they opened the door to help me,” she said. “However, I promised not to put anybody here in unnecessary danger.”
“Well, let’s hope you can honor that. As long as they understand it’s still possible that the scenario could get ugly, then they will stay alert. Over the next couple days we’ll see if anybody comes through Joe’s cabin, who goes to Joe’s house, and how much other information we can roust out. Maybe we can head back home after that.”
She nodded slowly. “I know we can’t disappear forever. I just wanted to step out of the world a little bit and cause everybody who was after my family to stop and rethink.”
“Do you have any idea why they might want to take out Rebecca? Aside from the fact that she might have spoken to Joe of