by Dana R. Lynn
“Levi got hit.” Lilah’s whisper caught him off guard. He found himself snagged by the vulnerable light in her glance.
Shaking himself free, he returned his attention to Officer Dawson. “A graze. Nothing serious. I don’t need to go to the hospital.”
Her sharp glance pinned them. “I need to see where you were shot.”
Flushing, he pulled his shirt up just enough to show the bandage. Using his right hand, he maneuvered the bionic fingers to grip and pull the bandage to show the wound.
“Do you have any idea why someone would want into your brother’s office?”
Lilah nodded slowly. “Maybe so. I think he had something in there, something hidden that could get someone in trouble. Right before he died, he told me to go to his office and find something. He died before he could tell me where to look or what I would be searching for.”
“We were going to search this morning, but we couldn’t even get into the office,” Levi continued. He told the officer about the tree that had smashed into the office, and how he suspected it had been cut down deliberately.
“Probably to keep others from getting suspicious,” she mused.
“Jah, that’s what Levi and I thought,” Lilah informed her.
This time when Officer Dawson rose, they rose with her. “You can’t go back to the office now,” she said. Lilah opened her mouth, but the officer cut her off. “It’s going to be a crime scene. We’ll search, and let you know if we find anything.”
She turned away, before turning back. “Oh, two more questions. You said the sniper chased you. What kind of vehicle?”
“It was a dark green Jeep,” Levi responded. “We didn’t get a license plate number. I’m pretty sure there was too much dirt to see it, even if we’d thought to look. Nor did we really see the guy.”
She grimaced. Levi was thankful she wasn’t asking them to come in to look at mug shots. It would be pointless, and he wanted to be done for the day. He still couldn’t get the images of Hannah’s parents lying in their own blood out of his head.
“Last question. Lilah, if Hannah was your sister-in-law, why weren’t you staying here?”
Lilah’s head fell forward. Levi could almost feel the grief swelling up inside her. Yet, when she lifted her head, he couldn’t see any tears. He knew they had to be simmering beneath the surface.
“I wasn’t living here because Hannah asked me to leave after the funeral. She didn’t want me around after what had happened to Jacob.”
“Hmm.”
Levi narrowed his stare at her. “You think Hannah’s involved.”
“I’m not saying anything. Remember, don’t go to the office until you get the all clear from me. I’ll be in touch.”
The moment she was gone, Lilah rounded on him. “What makes you sure she thinks Hannah’s involved?”
He rubbed his neck. “I would. Hannah kicks you out. Maybe to get you out of the way. Your brother’s office is targeted. If she was working with someone, wouldn’t she know that he’d likely hide something there? As you mentioned before, she didn’t tell you about the arson. Then we arrive, her parents are hurt, but not dead, and she’s gone. No sign of struggle.”
She was already shaking her head. “I don’t care how much sense it makes, I won’t believe it.”
“Well, believe it or not, she’s who the cops are looking at first.”
“She didn’t do it, Levi. She had survived something truly tragic. That’s why she asked me to leave.”
His hand landed softly on her shoulder. “I believe you, Lilah. But I think the police will need more proof than that.”
She moved away from him, and his hand dropped back to his side. “Does this mean that they will not look for the man in the green Jeep?”
“Nee. They can search for both.”
She bit her lip again. Seriously, he found that habit of hers distracting. He already liked too much about her. He was not a good candidate for a husband, which meant he couldn’t get emotionally entangled. Or let a woman get emotionally attached to him.
A hollowness in the pit of his stomach told him it might be too late, at least for him.
Lilah opened the door and stepped out onto the steps. She started down them but when she got to the bottom, she turned to face Levi. Whatever she was planning to say vanished when her eyes widened and she pointed at the railing.
Levi hurried down and looked at where she pointed.
On the railing of the Hostetler’s immaculately kept haus, where every inch of the haus and porch looked freshly painted, there was a splotch, the shape of a human palm.
It was blood.
NINE
Whose blood was it?
A hollow pit in his gut told him it was Hannah’s. Despite all the circumstantial evidence to the contrary, Levi trusted Lilah’s take on her sister-in-law. Fragile, overwhelmed and scared. She was not a cold-blooded killer.
But someone was. Someone who felt the need to get rid of Jacob and his family, and Levi, due to his connection with Lilah.
Levi could probably end the threat to himself by removing himself from Lilah’s life. He wanted to be able to live with himself, though. He couldn’t walk away, not now that he knew his friend had been murdered. And not after seeing for himself that an innocent woman was being put in harm’s way. She wouldn’t give up the search for answers, so until answers were found, she would continue to be in mortal danger.
Levi opened the back door and waited while Lilah climbed in. Her face was chalk white, her lips pale and pinched at the corners. She didn’t speak. He gently shut the door behind her and opened the front door. He sank down onto the seat beside Owen’s.
Twisting in his seat, he moved so he had a clear view of Lilah. She was staring out the window. The strain of the past few days was stamped on her face. She sagged back against the seat, defeated.
“Hey,” he called to her softly.
She dragged her eyes from the window, one eyebrow quirked in a question.
“We’re not giving up. We’ll find Hannah. And...” He remembered Owen sitting next to him. No need to give an outsider more information than necessary. “We’ll keep searching for the other thing, too.”
Her lips tilted up. She shot a discreet glance toward the driver, nodding. She understood his message. They could have switched to Pennsylvania Dutch. For many Amish families, the unique dialect with German roots was the main language spoken at home. It would have been rude, however, to isolate Owen that way.
“I have been selfish.”
Lilah’s words startled him.
“Why would you say that?” Levi slid a glance toward Owen. The man could hear them, but he didn’t appear interested in their conversation. Still, it wasn’t exactly ideal to have anyone listening in.
She shrugged, leaning her head against the window. “You’ve gone through so much for me. And your family, too. I hate that my problems are going to continue to intrude on your life.”
“Not for long. But it doesn’t matter.”
He dropped the subject since they had an audience.
A few minutes later, Owen whistled. Levi’s head jerked up. Lilah groaned.
They were driving past her haus. There was already a police cruiser sitting in the driveway.
“Wow, that place is a mess,” Owen remarked.
His cheerful voice grated on Levi’s nerves. It bordered on rude and was inappropriate, in his opinion. It was also cruel, which surprised him. Owen had been there when the police were talking about the fire. Had he not put two and two together and realized this was Lilah’s haus? He didn’t dare look back at Lilah. He didn’t want to draw Owen’s eyes to her and expose her pain.
Levi changed the subject and began chatting about the events happening in Berlin for the next few weeks. Tourism was booming and Owen jumped into the conversation enthusiastically, comp
letely dropping the topic of Lilah’s haus.
“Jah. I drive a buggy for the Amish Country Tours.” The business was actually in Sutter Springs and not Berlin. But it was close enough that he could drive into Berlin and visit some of the Amish run shops and businesses if that was what the clients wanted to see. “They sell out nearly every day. We have to turn walk-ins away. Most of them cumme back,” Levi mentioned. That was far more personal information than he usually gave anyone, but he wanted to give Lilah time to regain her composure if she needed it.
He wilted back against his seat when Owen pulled into his driveway. He was a gut driver and Levi appreciated his being available on such short notice, but he was a bit nosy. And over-the-top cheerful.
Although, that probably said more about Levi than it did Owen.
Good humor restored, he paid the driver and opened the back door for Lilah. She slid out and brushed past him, leaving a trace of lavender scent in her wake. He shut the door and watched her mount the stairs and enter his haus, before turning in time to see Owen’s car disappear in the same direction they’d recently come from.
Lilah exited the haus as he made his way over, two glasses of lemonade in her hands. He gratefully took one and sank down on the top step, waving for her to join him.
She smoothed her skirt down and lowered herself to the step, keeping a good two feet of open space between them. He noted the careful way she settled herself. The large distance was no accident.
He took a small sip of the cold lemonade, then a larger gulp. It was gut.
“Levi.”
He glanced over. Her eyes fell before his. Her hands wrapped around her glass.
“Jah?”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Started again. “What happened to you? At Hannah’s haus?”
His hand jerked and he spilled lemonade on the lower step. She started to get up, but he motioned her back.
“Leave it.”
“I shouldn’t have asked,” she apologized.
“I don’t like to talk about it, but you had to deal with it. So, I guess maybe you have a right to know. If the sniper had been there, you would have been in danger. So, I’m sorry.”
He took another drink to settle his thoughts. “You know I left the Amish for a few years, ain’t so?”
She nodded but didn’t say anything.
“I left after arguing with Daed. I didn’t plan on ever coming back. I met a guy, Aiden Forster, and he and I got to be gut friends. The best. When Aiden told me he was enlisting, I thought, why not? It’s not normal, but we were deployed together. Along with some other guys. One of them, Harrison, started to hang out with us. He was this great big guy, with a big voice and an even bigger heart.”
Thinking about Harrison, he turned his head so she wouldn’t see the pain on his face. He swallowed the lump lodged in his throat.
“Levi—”
“I’m okay,” he croaked out. “Give me a minute.”
He breathed in deep to get himself under control. “We were going out on a surveillance mission. I was supposed to go with Harrison, and we were meeting another team. But I got careless and the Major held me back to yell at me. Harrison went with Jones, another guy in our unit.” He slammed his eyes shut, twisting his head away as if he could block out what was coming.
“They were ambushed. All six of the men on the mission were killed before they even knew what was happening. Aiden and I got there too late to stop it. The enemy were still shooting. Everywhere I looked, I saw fire and smoke. I went a little crazy, I guess. I couldn’t leave without Harrison. He was dead, I knew that, but I dragged his body out. When my arm was hit, I was forced to drag him one-handed.”
He stopped, unable to go on for a minute.
The scent of lavender reached him, soothing him. He opened his eyes. She’d scooted closer to him. Her hand reached out to rest on his left hand.
“I’m so sorry about your friend.”
“Jah. Me, too. He’d saved my life less than a month before. Pushed me out of the way of falling boulders. Getting shot as I pulled him out was the end of the army for me. I lost my arm from the elbow down. Harrison’s parents were all kinds of thankful I’d rescued his body. They had something to bury, and that was important to them. After my arm healed, I found out that they were paying all my medical bills, all of them. They even paid for my prosthetic arm.”
He held up the hand and flexed the silver fingers. “Fancy, ain’t it? It’s called a LUKE. Which stands for Life Under Kinetic Evolution. I don’t really understand what that means, only that I can pick up a glass or simple tools with it. It’s not capable of everything my arm could do, but it does more than I ever expected.”
She looked at the arm, frowning. “It looks closer to a flesh arm than I would have expected, except of course for the color.”
He shifted, thinking that might be enough. He caught her glance. Nee, she wanted more.
“You want to know about the flashbacks.”
* * *
For a moment, Lilah felt mean.
Then she stiffened her shoulders. He’d known what she wanted to know. She linked her hands together on her knees and waited.
He sat back on the step and stared straight out in front. “I have what’s called PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s fairly common for soldiers. Or anyone who’s been under trauma. Sometimes I have nightmares. Like nights where the thunder is loud, I can’t sleep.”
“You’re afraid to close your eyes,” she murmured.
He jerked his head toward her. “How did you know?”
She settled her chin on her clasped hands. “After the accident that killed my parents, I had nightmares for the first two years. Sometimes I still have them, though not as violently. Maybe because I spent all my time learning to walk again.”
“Learning to walk?” He sounded horrified. She felt bad about the conversation switching to be about her, but maybe it was gut. If he learned about her flaws and issues, perhaps he’d feel less vulnerable telling her about his.
“Jah. The entire left side of the van we were in was destroyed. It’s amazing I survived at all. My left leg was broken in two places. I was in a full leg cast for two months. After not using my leg for so long, the muscles had gotten weak. I needed physical therapy to build them back to strength. It took months.”
He nodded. “Jah, I can understand that. It took a long time to learn how to use this arm, too.”
They both stopped talking when his mother came to the door, asking if they wanted more lemonade. They both declined, then waited while she walked slowly back into the haus. He stood, glancing back at where his mother had been.
“Let’s walk.”
She followed, aware he wouldn’t want his mother to hear how he had suffered, and in fact, was still suffering, from his time in the military.
They wandered away from the haus and out beyond the barn. The Burkholder family kept a robust vegetable garden. Levi picked up a wooden crate.
“My brother Sam left this out here. We can gather some vegetables while we talk.” They started with the tomato plants, selecting ripe Roma tomatoes, bright orange red in color, and carefully placing them into the crate. As they moved on to the broccoli, Levi talked.
“I haven’t had a flashback for over a year. I had begun to believe I was free of them. But seeing those poor people, lying there in their own blood...”
He shook his head. “One minute I was in the Hostetler haus, the next I was in Afghanistan, searching for my unit. Seeing their bodies. I could hear them scream, smell the desert air and the fumes of the fire. I knocked over that curio cabinet without being aware I did it.”
She remembered. “I heard the crash, then you started yelling.”
“I think that’s when I thought there was an explosion around me.” He dropped an eggplant in the crate and lifted his gaze to meet her
s. “I heard your voice and it pulled me out. I thought I was getting better. Maybe I’ll never be better. Sometimes it feels like Gott is punishing me for leaving home.”
She didn’t think, just acted. Her hand was on his cheek, feeling the slight bristle of his late-afternoon whiskers. His eyes widened, startled. He didn’t pull back. Neither did she. All the words of comfort she’d meant to say dried up inside her mouth.
She wanted him to kiss her.
The thought shocked her out of the daze brought on by the connection. She jerked her hand away as if it had been burned.
“Sorry! I shouldn’t have touched you. Oh, how mortifying.”
His chuckle hit her ears and she glared. She didn’t think there was anything funny about it.
He gestured to the garden around them. “I never thought of lettuce as romantic before, but hey, what do I know.”
A giggle popped out of her mouth. She slapped her hand over her lips. It was relief, she knew, but it broke some of the tension growing in the air between them. They completed collecting the vegetables, then headed back to the haus.
“I don’t think you’re looking at this the right way,” she said.
“What do you mean?” They paused on the driveway.
“You said you thought Gott was punishing you. That was why you had the flashback today. But you also said they’re getting better. And today, I was able to bring you out of it. So, it seems to me Gott is right there beside you, giving you strength.”
He thought about it. “Maybe so. Let’s go in. It’s almost time for supper. Daed will be home soon.”
They cleaned up and joined his family for dinner. They sat at the table, and each member bowed their head to pray silently until David lifted his head to indicate prayer time was concluded.
Fannie had cooked a delicious and filling dinner. Lilah hadn’t felt hungry until the aroma of fresh dumplings tickled her nose. Her stomach grumbled loudly, causing her to flush.
“I heard something today.” Sam wiped his mouth on a napkin before addressing Lilah again. “Someone at the lumberyard was saying that Ben and Waneta Hostetler were attacked in their home, and their daughter Hannah was missing. Ain’t that your family, Lilah?”