“Meet me outside,” he whispered through the thin layer of her prayer kapp. “I want to share something with you.”
Her heart beat wildly. What could it be? He must have had news about the intruders or about Jesse. Whatever it was it sounded good. Darcy put the bread on the dessert table with the other treats. She and Nana had made several gallons of hot chocolate for the kids, too. Nana stood guard by the table, refilling mugs and loading plates with cakes and cookies.
Darcy grabbed a wool wrap that Abigail had brought over for her and threw it around her shoulders. As she walked through the aisles of the stable, she wondered if Thomas had heard from Agent Ross. Maybe he had figured out the verses in the letter. She passed through the front door and out into the courtyard.
Thomas stood a few feet outside next to one rather large gray horse. The horse was bridled but wore no saddle. His light-colored coat shimmered like stars in the night. Thomas looked as handsome as a movie star. He wore a smile that was brighter than the blanket of snow covering the ground.
“I thought I’d better get you out here in the snow before you decided to go on a buggy ride with one of those fine fellows at the singing. How about a ride?”
“Me?” Darcy shook her head slightly. What was happening? “I—I was expecting information about the case, not... But what about your leg?” She looked down at the ground. Her heart was racing. Her hands trembled.
“No information. Sorry. Just me and a horse. But I’m not going to ride. Just you.”
“Just me? Oh, I don’t think so. I don’t ride,” she informed him. “No way.”
“Well, not really all by yourself. I will lead him. You just get to sit and look pretty.”
“Thomas, I don’t know... Shouldn’t we stay and oversee the singing? You are the host.”
“Ach, no.” He waved his hand through the air. “Nana’s inside. Anyway, we are riding patrol.”
“Patrol?”
“Ja.” His voice was mocking, so she knew his words weren’t the least bit serious. “Sometimes the couples want some alone time. They wander off into the woods for a kiss or two.”
“Sounds like you know from experience.”
“Maybe.” He winked, smiled again and waved her to him.
“What if I fall?”
“Are you going to fall?”
“No.”
“Gut. And just in case, I brought you a helmet.” He placed the rider’s helmet on her head and fastened it around her chin.
“Well, there’s one more problem.” She put her hands on her hips. “I’m wearing a dress, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“You think Amish girls don’t ride horses?” He paused for a moment. “Well, they don’t too often actually. But it’s not unheard of.”
“Okay, fine. I give in.”
“Here, let me give you a leg up.”
The next thing she knew Thomas had slung her over the back of the horse. She balanced herself and took hold of the reins. Thomas put another halter over the horse’s head and connected a lead rope to it.
“How do you feel?”
“A very long way from the ground.” She glanced over her horse’s shoulder toward the snow-covered ground.
Thomas grinned. “He’s a gentle giant of a plow horse. I’d put my own baby on him.”
Darcy hadn’t ridden horses since she’d been to summer camp as a girl and she’d never ridden bareback. Nor in the snow under the stars. She had forgotten how much she’d loved it.
* * *
“You have ridden a horse before.” Thomas couldn’t take his eyes off Darcy as she sat astride the big gray. She was tense and clung onto the horse’s reins but she kept her head up and her legs still. He only wished he could have ridden, too.
She laughed. “I haven’t been on a horse since I was thirteen at summer camp. My grandparents sent me every summer. It didn’t take me long to realize that they were just getting rid of me for the summer.”
“That must have been hard. Not knowing your parents. Having grandparents that weren’t close.”
“Oh, don’t feel sorry for me. My grandparents spoiled me. Anything I wanted, I got.”
Except love, he thought.
“I’m glad you brought me out here.”
“Me, too.” Thomas stopped and stared up at her. He was falling for Darcy Simmons, harder and deeper each moment. Did she feel at all like he did?
Not that it mattered. She would go home soon and he had to remind himself of that. This wasn’t her life. He wasn’t going be anything to Darcy. And she wasn’t going to be anything to him. Anyway, who would be stupid enough to fall in love with someone who was destined to leave him? He’d already done that once. He certainly wasn’t going to do it again.
Darcy looked back down at him. “You okay? Your leg must be killing you. We’ve walked a long way and you’re only using one crutch.”
“No. I’m good. Abigail took a look at my leg and said the EMS guy did a really good job cleaning it up. It really was just a graze.”
“You don’t feel pain, do you?”
“Oh, I do.” He saw a movement in the distance. He turned his head to follow it.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked again.
“Yes, I just thought I saw something in the woods.” He shook his head. “It was probably just a deer.”
And yet, Thomas was pretty sure what he’d seen was on two legs. It might be nothing. Or it might be someone dangerous, come to harm Darcy again.
He turned the horse around and led them back toward the barn as fast as his leg would allow. The stable glowed like a beacon as a light snow fell. The singing was a faint hum in the distance, floating over the snow-covered fields. It was a terrible thought to consider that danger might still be lurking at their doorstep. And why his doorstep? He searched the woods again. All seemed still. He was just tired and imagining things. After all, who would risk coming around with all these people here?
Darcy didn’t seem to be listening. She was staring up at the night sky. Her face glowed in the soft moonlight as a few lucky snowflakes kissed her soft skin.
“Did you ride a lot with her—your wife?”
His wife, Mary? Mary was the furthest thing from his mind. “What made you think of that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know... It’s just sort of romantic, I guess. You know, the barn singing. The ride in the snow.”
“No. Mary didn’t ride.” His jaw tightened. “She didn’t really like much about life in the country.”
She looked down at him and smiled apologetically. “I shouldn’t have asked. But...” She hesitated, and he figured she was torn between good manners and curiosity. Finally curiosity won. “It’s just that you seem so content. Aren’t you sad? Aren’t you angry that you lost your wife? Aren’t you lonely?” The words came out in a rush, and as soon as they were out, she looked uncertain. He figured she was worried she’d said too much, and he hastened to reassure her.
“I don’t mind talking about Mary. I am very sad that she died so young from cancer. But the saddest part is that she spent so much of her life unhappy. Not because of me, but because she didn’t want this life. Her family pressured her to take vows and marry. She wanted to leave here. And eventually, she did. Not long after we married. You see, she got sick after she left me—not long after she finally had the life she wanted.”
“Wow.” Her eyes were wide. “How you can be so okay with that? Didn’t that hurt? I don’t know anyone who could talk so calmly about someone who treated you like she did. How could she have done that to you?”
“It’s called forgiveness,” he said. “It’s a way to show love. Sometimes when you love something, you have to let it go. It’s the only way to have peace in this life, Darcy. Love and forgiveness.”
She presse
d her lips together and nodded. “I’ve never met anyone like you. Like all of you—your friends and family. You’re all so...accepting. So comfortable with who you are.”
“How about you?” he asked. “Any lost loves? Someone special in your life now?”
“Ha. No. Never. I go on a lot of first dates.”
“So, you’re content being single, it seems. I’m not so unique after all.”
“No. I’m not. I’m not content. Or at least I haven’t been.” She looked off into the distance.
Thomas stopped walking. He turned around and looked up at her. Tears filled her eyes. A few had spilled over her lids and down her cheeks. It pained him to see her hurting. He wished he had not asked her.
“I am so sorry. I did not mean to upset you,” he said.
“No, it’s just that when Bishop Miller told me about my father, that he asked for my forgiveness. It dawned on me how different my life would have been if I had had my father in my life. If I had lived here with him instead of my grandparents. I had...”
“Had love?” Had Gott, he thought, but did not add. God was working in Darcy just fine without his interference. Maybe there was no future for him with Darcy. But there was one for her with God and for that he was so glad she had come here.
She nodded and turned to him, her face streaming with tears. “Can you imagine? What if he had brought me here with him like he’d wanted to? Then I’d have been...”
“You’d have been loved,” he said. And Amish, he thought to himself, and not off-limits to me. “But you are loved, Darcy. You have friends. You have an important job.”
“I have a good life. But Thomas, I’ve never been happy.” She pointed to her heart. “And I never really knew it until I came here, because I didn’t know there was more. Seeing life through the eyes of you and your people, it makes my world seem so small and unimportant and empty.” She chuckled at herself. “I sound crazy, don’t I?”
Thomas reached up his arm and closed his fingers over her hands that clutched the reins. “Crazy? No. You do not sound crazy at all. You sound like you have found Gott. And in Gott you are finding peace.”
She laughed again and wiped away the tears. “Maybe you’re right...”
He let go of her hand but he didn’t want to. “Accept what you have found, Darcy. Never let it go. It won’t matter where you are or who you’re with.”
They rested in silence for a moment. Darcy wiped her eyes and looked away, then she stiffened, causing even the docile plow horse to stir.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You were right, Thomas.” Her voice was as cold as the air around them. “Someone is in the woods.”
NINETEEN
Darcy sat rigid on the back of the giant draft horse. Her tension no longer had anything to do with riding bareback or finding God. She had seen someone in the woods.
“It could be some of the kids from the singing,” Thomas suggested. But she could tell by his stern expression and the way he’d quickened his step that he knew it was an intruder. The intruder.
But how? She understood an intruder at Jesse’s, or at her town house, but here? At Thomas’s? Why would they come here?
“Oh, no,” she cried. “Thomas, where did you put the Bible and the other things we found at Jesse’s?”
“Agent Ross took them,” he said. “Why?”
“Because why else would someone be here?”
The intruder at Jesse’s cottage had fled the house and the flames, but he might not have completely fled the scene.
“What if the man who shot at you stayed near the house during the fire and watched us leave? What if he saw us throw those things out of the window to save them? What if he knows we have that key? And what if he already knows what to do with that key”
“Slow down, Darcy.”
“No. Thomas, the person I see is running. And he most definitely does not look Amish. Do you see him?”
Thomas followed her gaze. She could see his expression of concern amplify as his eyes found the dark figure.
“Ja. I see him. Here, Darcy.” He lifted up an arm. “Slide down. I’m going to go see who it is.”
“After he shot at you?” Darcy slid off the big horse. “You can hardly walk. Plus, what if he has a gun again?”
Thomas wasn’t even listening. She might as well have been talking to the horse. She knew Thomas well enough to know that he wasn’t going to let anything happen to all those people at the singing. They were under his roof and they were his responsibility. And so was she. He was going to keep them all safe and if that meant his leg hurt or he got shot at again, he most likely didn’t care. Why was it that the thing you admired most in others could also be the thing that drove you crazy about them?
She wanted to grab his arm and hold him back, but even with Thomas being wounded, she was no match for his strength. She watched as he slid the halter off the horse and handed it to her. He took the reins from her hands and with teeth clinched he swung himself up on the back of the horse. His face betrayed the pain that had to be rippling through him. He’d probably reopen the wound.
“Go back inside, Darcy. I’ll be right back.”
He clamped his legs around the huge gray and he galloped toward the forest’s edge.
At the same moment, shrieks sounded from inside the barn and then there was a sound a bit like rolling thunder. Darcy had never heard that noise before, but instinctively she knew it was horses. A lot of horses, all moving together in a herd.
A large door where the gathering was taking place slid open and about ten of the horses came barreling out. They bucked and ran and whinnied and snorted until they’d all exited and then, like horses do, one of them stopped and so did the rest. The boys from the singing were already running after them with lead ropes.
Darcy glanced back at Thomas, who looked back at the commotion. Her heart raced wildly. Maybe he would come back now? The intruder was probably long gone anyway. But Thomas kept moving away from the stable.
* * *
Thomas heard and saw the commotion back at the stable, but he didn’t stop. There were plenty of boys at the gathering who could tend to his horses. Darcy would be safe if she went back toward the others. And to keep them all protected, he knew he had to keep going.
He had easily closed more than half the distance between the runner and himself. But they were getting close to the highway now. If there was a car waiting, Thomas feared he might not make it in time to stop the intruder.
“Stop! You’re trespassing!”
The runner looked back. Thomas saw his face, reflecting in the bright snow-lit night. It was not anyone he knew and yet his face seemed familiar.
Thomas saw the man’s car parked at the edge of the woods. There was a creek several yards from the road and only one good place to cross. The man had not parked near enough to it to make his escape. Thomas clamped on to his mount and clicked his tongue against his cheek, urging the steady horse to increase speed and jump the creek. He’d forgotten the pain in his leg.
Thomas pulled up on the other side and cut the runner off before he reached the car. The man slipped and slid in the snow right under the horse’s belly, but was not able to escape as Thomas jumped down and grabbed the man by the collar of his black coat.
The man stood and turned to him with his head dropped. It was a man he’d never met before, but he looked so much like an image he’d seen on Agent Ross’s computer screen that Thomas knew that it had to be Wissenberg’s son.
“Going somewhere?” he asked the man.
“This is not what it looks like. I promise,” the man said. “I was trying to stop her. She’s crazy.”
“Who’s crazy?” Thomas asked.
“My sister.”
* * *
Darcy broke into high gear
and arrived at top speed at the open barn, throwing her helmet aside. On her way, she passed a few able adolescents who had rushed forward to catch the loose horses. Most of the kids had backed up along the sides of the indoor paddock. One or two others had not been fortunate enough to get out of the way before the horses had run through. Darcy checked these kids first. A couple of scrapes and bruises, but thankfully no one had been seriously injured, mostly just frightened. Some of the grown-ups, including the Millers, had stayed on and were helping attend to the frightened kids.
Darcy scanned the room for Thomas’s grandmother. Nana Ruth stood back near the entrance to the main stable. She looked unharmed.
“Are you okay?” Darcy asked. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” said Nana Ruth. “All of a sudden the door to the aisle was thrown open and ten or twelve horses came running through. It was madness.”
“Did you see anyone suspicious inside the stable? Did any of the kids wander away from the group?”
“No,” answered Nana Ruth. “I kept track of the children. Everyone was here and accounted for except for you and Thomas. Thankfully the kids had stopped singing and lined up close to the table for more food and hot chocolate. Otherwise there would have been many more injuries. Where is Thomas?” Nana’s brows knitted together in a deep frown.
“He saw someone running into the woods. He went after them on the horse.”
Nana whispered something under her breath that Darcy couldn’t quite understand, but she knew it wasn’t anything good.
“I’m going to go check the rest of the stable.” Darcy turned away.
Nana grabbed her by the shoulder. “Take one of the boys with you. I don’t think you should go in there alone.”
Darcy scanned the large room for Amos. Nana was right. She shouldn’t go into the stable alone. She was just so used to doing everything herself. Having people around that watched her back was a completely new experience for her.
She just hoped that the dangerous people who were after her wouldn’t hurt any of these good people. If they did, she would never forgive herself.
Lancaster County Reckoning Page 14