CR!FAQVHAE2713SQDF4PGQ1SC7ZMJ68

by Unknown

  Seth tensed and turned toward Linc, not even pretending he didn’t overhear.

  “Roger that. She all right?” Linc asked.

  “Don’t know. Hannah went down to check, and Ella called from the Troyers’. I’ve got paramedics coming, too. I’m almost there.”

  “On our way!” Linc said, and punched off. “You heard?”

  “Ya. Turn left at the next road. Not paved but a shortcut.”

  “I thought he was going to say he found Arrowroot. Jack’s in love with Ray-Lynn, you know.”

  “I do know,” Seth said, hanging on as Linc took the sharp turn much too fast. Despite the snow glaze on this road between fallow fields, at least it was a straight shot from here.

  “You might know, Hannah’s in the mix again,” Linc said, voicing Seth’s fears. “And you love her.”

  “Always have, no matter how much I messed things uÃessp.”

  “You should let her go, let her have her chance with a music career. She bombs, she’ll come back—maybe.”

  “You should let her go,” Seth threw back at him.

  “It’s not like that,” Linc insisted. “At least not around here.”

  “You get her out in the world again, you think you’ll keep her, want her for good? It would be bad for her. Turn right, and we’ll be almost there.”

  Linc careened around the last corner, but slowed as he saw the sheriff’s cruiser off to the side, light bar blinking, no one in it. Seth was out of the car before Linc could kill the engine. A taut rope tied to the cruiser’s back bumper draped over the side of the ravine. Seth looked over the edge as Linc joined him. The sheriff was only partway down, and he didn’t want to alarm him by yelling that they were here. Seth gasped and Linc swore when they saw Hannah far below, balanced on a rock, leaning toward the upended van.

  When Hannah saw the sheriff was taking too long, she dared to try the back door of Ray-Lynn’s van. She was surprised it was unlocked. Maybe the jolt of the accident had sprung it loose. Bracing herself against the weight of the door, she carefully opened it. Ray-Lynn lay sprawled on the back floor, her body twisted and wedged in at a funny angle with one leg and one arm up. So pale, unmoving. No blood on her that Hannah could see. Though she didn’t wake up or move, even when Hannah shouted her name, she thought—just maybe—she might be breathing. Hard to tell with that bulky coat she wore. She had one boot on, but her other bare foot looked so strange with bright red polish on her toenails.

  Hannah dragged her gaze away from Ray-Lynn as Sheriff Freeman came down the slant of the ravine, holding on to a rope as if rappelling. “She there?” he called from about twenty feet away.

  “Yes, but she’s … unconscious, I think. Not moving, won’t wake up.”

  He stopped his descent just above the van by putting his foot on a sapling. It bent, unbalancing him, but he held on, righted himself, swung a bit to the side. “I got help coming,” he shouted, but his voice shook.

  Those words … a friend not moving … fear … his voice … It was not the same, not that time, but pictures flashed through Hannah’s mind of the night in the graveyard when Kevin was killed, when the sheriff came and she was so afraid, when the squad was coming … but Seth was there then. But now—did she hear his voice above? Could he be here this time, too?

  She remembered how Seth had touched Kevin’s neck to check his pulse to see if he was alive. She had to know. She reached out and put her hand under Ray-Lynn’s coat collar, beneath her turtleneck sweater. Her skin felt so cold but she had not gone stiff. Yes! A faint pulse, though not regular.

  “She’s alive, alive but so hurt!” she shouted as the sheriff stopped himself a few feet above the back bumper of the van. She could tell he’d been tempted to pÃn tut his feet on it, then had backed off.

  “Thank God! You sure?” he cried.

  “Yes. Yes, I feel a neck pulse!”

  “I didn’t see from up there that the van’s wedged against a tree. I’m gonna have to go around a little. Here, take this, push the green button and tell the medics what you know, what you see,” he said, and dropped what she’d call a walkie-talkie to her.

  She did as he said, surprised that a rescue medic was already on the line. She told him how Ray-Lynn was positioned and about her jerky neck pulse and that there was no blood, and that she wouldn’t wake up and—and that reminded her of the 9-1-1 call she’d made the night of the shootings, too. A nightmare. A nightmare she couldn’t escape.

  But when Linc and Seth rappelled down ropes closer to the path she’d taken, even as she heard the screech of a distant siren, her past horror became that of the present. The sheriff was yelling orders. Mr. Troyer’s voice from up above rang down, asking what he could do to help. Linc was looking in the van without touching it, telling the sheriff not to touch or move Ray-Lynn. At last a medic rappelled down and a rescue basket on ropes bumped over the side, snagging now and then against the trees. But Hannah was suddenly in Seth’s arms, holding tight to him, shaking all over as they leaned off to the side against a tree as big as the one that had stopped the van.

  Here she was, Hannah thought, in the arms of the man she’d asked to stay away, the man who said he would. It had taken this terrible accident, on top of the earlier tragedy, to bring them together again. Was that a message from on high? But all that mattered now was that Ray-Lynn be helped and saved.

  Such joy she was yet alive—such hope! Yet the grim expressions on the two medics’ faces and the ashen look on Sheriff Freeman’s said it all. Though she didn’t trust Mr. Troyer anymore, Hannah had no choice but to let him and two of his sons pull them up, one at a time, after Ray-Lynn had been strapped in the basket and lifted. As limp as the rag doll Hannah had given to little Marlena, as cotton-white in her blank face, the once-vibrant, vital Ray-Lynn didn’t seem to be there at all.

  Up on the road, in the EMR vehicle, the medics fought to do what Hannah overheard them call “stabilize the victim.” Hannah’s trembling increased as Seth and Ella wedged her in between them in Ella’s buggy where they were trying to keep warm. “I’m all right. I’m not in shock,” she told Seth more than once as he held and chaffed her icy hands. Somehow down there, she’d taken off her gloves.

  Hannah could see the EMR vehicle was preparing to leave. “Ray-Lynn doesn’t have any family except cousins down south,” she said. “Maybe I should ask if I can go with her.”

  “I think the sheriff will take care of that,” Seth said. “If—when she’s conscious, we can have women go and sit with her. Then you can, too.”

  The sheriff strode over to the buggy. “Thank God you found her, Hannah and Ella. Can’t thank you both enouà yogh for what you did. I’m going to the Wooster hospital with her. Hannah, she told me just yesterday she was hoping to hire you as an assistant and have you work your way up at the restaurant. You do me a favor, go close it up today. Take a key home with you and go on in tomorrow, see if you can help out there. Mrs. Stutzman will understand—if it’s okay with the bishop.”

  “I make my own decisions now.” She could tell her declaration of independence from her father surprised Ella and Seth, but she plunged on. “I’ll do it for Ray-Lynn. She’s been a good friend to Sarah and me.”

  He started to say something else but choked up and turned away. He jogged back to his cruiser where he said something to Linc and got in to follow the EMR vehicle away, both with their lights blinking in the wan early-afternoon light dusted with snow.

  Linc came over to the buggy. “I’m going to stay here and survey the scene. I’ve got help coming from the State Highway Patrol, a tow truck to retrieve the vehicle. Even though first responders compromised the area above the accident site,” he said, turning back and pointing, “it looks like there are two sets of tire tracks, in addition to my car and the sheriff’s cruiser’s treads and your and Troyers’ buggy wheels. I’m starting to agree with him—nothing’s coincidence around here, so you be careful.”

  “You mean someone did this to her deliberately?”
Hannah asked. “And it might be related to the graveyard shootings?”

  “No conclusive evidence. Sorry, that’s FBI talk.”

  To Hannah’s amazement, Ella piped up. “In other words, the proof is in the pudding? That’s Plain People talk.”

  Finally, realizing Seth still held her hands, Hannah pulled them back and gripped them in her lap. She and Ella shared the buggy blanket but she was still shivering. “Is Ray-Lynn going to be all right?” Hannah asked. “What did the medics say?”

  “She’s comatose and barely hanging on. The sheriff’s insistence on a search for Arrowroot may have bombed, but it paid off big-time with your finding her.”

  “God works in mysterious ways,” Ella put in. Linc nodded but didn’t glance her way as his sharp gaze pinned Hannah where she sat.

  “So we’re still looking for Arrowroot,” Linc went on. “Not sure how, but he could be connected to this. Hannah, when I get finished here or can turn it over to others, I want to depose you—an interview about your being the first on the scene here.”

  “I’ll be at my parents’ after I close up the restaurant for Ray-Lynn. But if you don’t find any evidence of Arrowroot in her car, that means someone else lured her out here at night and then ran her off the road.”

  “No jumping to conclusions, but I hear you. But other than answering my questions about finding Ray-Lynn, you’re not going to help out with this investigation anymore. Got it, Hannah?”

  “Now I hear you.”

  “Seth? Same for you.”

  “Then solve it fast, Special Agent Armstrong.”

  Linc looked as if he’d say something else, but, as if Seth had bested him, he turned and walked away, pulling out his cell phone and punching something into it.

  Ella whispered, “Maybe he was secretly recording your words with that little machine. Like he wanted to have it on tape that he warned both of you to keep out of his way, which I wish you would. What he said scares me.”

  Everything that had happened scared Hannah and, as they buggied back toward town, she sent a silent prayer heavenward for Ray-Lynn’s recovery and her own protection from whoever had injured her. Yet, wedged in warmly between Ella and Seth in the buggy, she felt strangely safer than she had in days.

  CR!FAQVHAE2713SQDF4PGQ1SC7ZMJ68

  24

  “ANY WORD ABOUT RAY-LYNN?” HANNAH ASKED Linc the moment she opened the back door for him that evening.

  “Bishop Esh, Mrs. Esh,” he said with a nod as they rose from the kitchen table to greet him. “She’s still comatose. Two major blows to her head, at the back and at her forehead. If she was driving when the van went over, a forehead blow is common. Actually, the back blow was a lot like mine in the maze, though since she was knocked around in the car when it slid over, more than one contusion is possible. They’re trying to stabilize her, can’t tell how much damage was really done until she wakes up. She has a broken arm and shoulder but seems to be holding her own. Bishop Esh, I hope you don’t mind if I interview Hannah about finding Ray-Lynn.”

  “No, sure,” Daad said as he and Mamm took their coffee cups from the table. “We’ll be in the living room. Time for more prayers, for Ray-Lynn. For you and the sheriff, too, Agent Armstrong.”

  “Much needed,” Linc said. While Hannah poured a cup of coffee for Linc and cut him a piece of spice cake, her father lingered at the door, so she wondered what else was coming. Her wrist was paining her again. She knew she’d set her recovery back today, but it had been worth it to help. In the three-way awkward silence, Linc took his leather jacket off and draped it over a chair, then sat with a sigh across the corner of the table from her.

  “You know, Bishop Esh,” he said, “I never used to give prayer much time or thought until I was attacked in the maze. I guess it’s made me empathize with victims more.”

  Daad nodded. “‘The dark places of the earth are full of the haunts of cruelty,’” he recited. “Written long ago, ya, but true today. And some of those haunts are in evil thoughts and sinful deeds, mine included.” He looked at Hannah, hopefully, she thought. She had hardly spoken two kind words to him since he’d admitted to sabotaging her singing career, though in front of Mamm she went through the motions. “I will pray you find and stop the one or ones you seek, Agent Armstrong,” Daad added, and left the room.

  Linc took out a pad and pen. With all of his tech toys, it calmed her that he was going back to basics. “So you and Emma just stumbled on the scene?” he began.

  “We pulled off near the bridge to eat a sack lunch. We were thinking of stopping at the Troyers’ to see my sister. I spotted tire marks in the frozen grass and mud, kind of like skid marks in the snow that had caught there.”

  “Skid marks of one vehicle?”

  “I know you said you saw two. I didn’t notice that at all, so I think tires from a second vehicle were lined up pretty much with hers, like they were wide enough apart to be another van or a truck. You probably shouldn’t have said that about two, right? Like leading the witness.”

  She could see him grit his teeth, then fight to calm himself as he took a sip of coffee. “Hannah, just answer my questions, all right? If you were watching lawyer or detective shows on TV when you lived away—”

  “Perry Mason reruns, old ones, I guess, but they were good.”

  He muttered something she couldn’t catch, then added, “Better than those current shows, where the forensic team solves crimes and nails the criminals, too, in a couple of days. Like I told you before, to ID those bodies in the graves—all this takes time.”

  “The thing is, we don’t have time. Terrible things keep happening!”

  “Tell me something I don’t know. So, once Ella headed to the Troyers’ for help and you got down to Ray-Lynn’s van, what did you notice first?”

  “Crackled front windshield but not broken out. She wasn’t in the front seat. Even though the van must have fallen—or been pushed—nosedown, stuff had mostly been thrown into the back. And, oh, yeah, her purse was caught inside, so if things were intact in it, that means no robbery was involved, right?”

  “Just go on.”

  “I was afraid to put too much weight on the van. Did you get it hauled up so you can get a closer look at it?”

  “Who’s asking and who’s answering here? Yes, I did. It’s being towed to the sheriff’s garage at his house so we can process it without gawkers or gossipers. Go on, I said.”

  “I was both relieved and scared to see she wasn’t in the driver’s seat. I had a wild idea John Arrowroot might be there, too—you know, if he’d forced her to take him somewhere. Could you tell if her seat belt didn’t work or she wasn’t strapped in? Oh, sorry, that’s a question. One thing that might be important is that, when I saw her in that terrible position on the back floor and opened the door, it wasn’t locked. I can’t believe she’d have her car doors unlocked out atËnlo night after she closed up the restaurant, especially if she took the day’s money with her—which is why she could have been a robbery target. Maybe the force of the van going into the ravine sprung the locks. I’d ask if that’s possible, but that would be a question, Agent Armstrong.”

  Linc rolled his eyes upward and raked his free hand through his short hair. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, you’re beautiful, Hannah. And in more ways than one. Darn right, that door’s being unlocked is important because it could mean that she could have been put unconscious in the vehicle, especially with that double hit on her head when it should have only been a frontal blow. In that case, her doors would not have been locked, because someone had to put her inside to push her over. Her car key was found under her on the floor, so it’s a puzzle how it would have been thrown out of the ignition if she was actually driving.”

  “But why Ray-Lynn? You finally figured out Kevin, Tiffany and I were shot because the grave digger thought we were going to disturb those graves and find what he or she hid there. But Ray-Lynn hasn’t been a part of this investigation at all.”

&nbs
p; “The sheriff’s on that, working from the hospital. Ray-Lynn phoned your boss, Mrs. Stutzman, that night to ask if she and her roomer, Lily Freeman, could help with the search for Arrowroot.”

  “But so what?”

  “So Amanda Stutzman told her Mrs. Freeman might have gone out to the Rooster Roadhouse on Troyer’s Mill Road. Got any other ideas why Ray-Lynn then evidently headed that way?”

  Hannah swallowed hard and tried to keep calm. Ray-Lynn had it in for Lily, didn’t trust her, but she’d said she had decided to trust Jack—unless she’d found something out from talking to Clair Kenton when she got her hair done. But if Hannah told Linc all that—that Ray-Lynn had a separate investigation of her own going—how would that help?

  “Hannah, what?” he demanded.

  How to answer this truthfully? When she’d gone into the Dutch Farm Table this afternoon to close it up and post a sign that said Closed But Will Reopen Friday Morning, she’d felt such a sudden rush of responsibility for the place. It was the Home Valley meeting place for Amish, Englische and outsiders alike. It was warm and welcoming, an extension of Ray-Lynn’s personality and hospitality. She and the sheriff co-owned it, and Ray-Lynn’s dream was for them to be partners in life, too. Over the door was a sign Hannah’s dear friend Sarah had painted, and soon some of Sarah’s paintings would be on display there. And if there was anything that would keep Hannah in the Home Valley and living independently of her father and Seth, too, it was working with Ray-Lynn at that restaurant.

  Fighting to keep her voice calm, she said, “Ray-Lynn and the sheriff are sweet on each other—you know what I mean …”

  He leaned closer to her. His eyes held hers. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Seth said the sheriff was going out to the Rooster Roadhouse to paËoadss out more posters about the Arrowroot search. So maybe she thought she could help him with that.”

  “After he’d just left her with some posters and told her to be careful driving home in the increasing snow? You’re a clever woman, Hannah Esh, but don’t try to cover for Ray-Lynn, even though we’re all pulling for her. Could she have driven out there to tell Lily Freeman, in front of Jack, to keep her hands off him? I get the idea from Jack that Ray-Lynn had more or less told him that in private. So now I’ve got to talk to him, then help him interview the Rooster Roadhouse crowd who might have seen her or her van that night. However much he cares for Ray-Lynn and wants to be with her right now, he’s going to have to get back to work. But I know how conflicted he feels, torn between the oath he took to do his job and yet wanting to just chuck it to be with the woman he wants.”