by Beverly Bird
“Nope.”
Adam shrugged. Jake would figure it out.
Jake watched his brother go inside, but he didn’t move. He watched Katya pass by one of the windows. She did it quickly, but her movements were all smooth as velvet. Or drifting smoke, he thought again.
He recalled the way she had trembled beneath his leg earlier, probably, he realized, in sheer terror. But then there had been the way her breasts had risen and fallen. Despite her understandable fear at what he had done to her, she hadn’t quailed and succumbed. She had fought him, had struggled away.
Jake swore aloud.
She was afraid of him. He wanted her to be, he told himself once more. He wanted her to stay as far away from him as possible. She should be damned wary of men in general, yet despite that, despite her puritanical upbringing, she had actually found the courage to slip into his room to make sure he was all right—whether he was dressed or not.
Alive, he remembered. She’d said she wanted to make sure he was alive. He’d honestly believed that that was an excuse at first—it had sounded that ludicrous to him. Now he understood that she might really have believed she had hurt him badly. She had probably never clobbered anyone before in her life.
Who was this woman? Not your style, Jake. Leave her the hell alone.
He touched a finger to the lump on the back of his head. One week, he told himself. Next week he would leave this place. He didn’t really need to call Dallas. He’d actually taken three weeks off for the FBI seminars. He’d just told his brother he only had one left so as to leave an escape route open for himself. ,
He finally got out of the buggy and began unhitching the horse. The beast watched him knowingly. Jake wondered what it was thinking, then decided he didn’t want to know.
“Okay, so where’s the FBI on this?” he asked half an hour later, his mind starting to work. He was beginning to feel human again. He still felt tired, but it was the weariness of worked muscles, however brief his labor had been. It wasn’t the kind of sleep-deprived exhaustion that had gripped him when he’d arrived here early this morning.
And he was eating. This was food. He shoveled braised beef and carrots and mashed potatoes onto his plate. If nothing else, he decided he liked these people for their no-nonsense approach to eating, cholesterol be damned.
“They cleared out yesterday,” Adam answered, chewing. “The last agent to leave said he was going to work out of the field office in Philly.”
“Not impossible,” Jake allowed, “depending upon how much he got done while he was here.”
“My guess would be not a lot,” Adam said.
Jake tried to ignore the eyes of the women. The eyes of the one to his right, particularly. He could feel Katya watching him. As for the kids—all five of them, including Bo—they were all at the other end of the table, caught up in conversation and giggles of their own.
“That was Joshua Byler there today—the guy with the blond beard,” Adam went on. “His Amalie was the second to disappear. She’s been gone since November now.”
“Any patterns you can discern so far?”
He asked Adam, but Mariah answered. “They were all just babies,” she said quietly, sadly.
Jake shot a glance her way. She was sitting across the table from him. And out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Katya again. She wasn’t eating, he noted. She was more or less pushing her food around on her plate. Her eyes were still on his face. As near as he could tell, she never even looked at her meal.
She was watching him just the way she had upstairs earlier, before he’d grabbed her arm. She’d been checking out his legs then, of all damned things. His ego told him that there’d been other more interesting things to inspect, but her gaze had been glued to his legs. And she’d been looking at him as though the sky had just started raining golden nuggets.
He felt something strange happen to the pit of his stomach. A sort of hollow flutter. He didn’t much care for it.
“Anything else?” he barked suddenly. “Anything besides that?”
Mariah pushed her plate away and rested her chin in her hands. “Patterns,” she repeated slowly. “Well, there have been an equal number of boys taken as girls—two each. The boys were taken at church suppers—you know, after services. No one noticed anything, but they wouldn’t. There are so many people milling about then, children running, playing. The littlest ones just chase after the older ones.” Her eyes turned pained. “One mother didn’t even realize her baby was gone until it was time to go. They thought he’d wandered off into the woods. We searched for days.”
“Find anything?” Jake asked sharply. “Anything at all? Maybe even something that didn’t seem important?”
She shook her head. “No, nothing,” she said quietly.
“What about animals?”
“Animals?”
He looked down the table at the children and dropped his voice. “Could an animal have gotten to him?”
She looked shocked. “Oh, no! We may look rural, but there are cities and humanity all around us. We have badgers, of course. And some deer. But that’s it.”
Jake nodded. “What about the other kids?”
“Amalie vanished at the little farmers’ market in the village. She was toddling along behind her mother...and then she wasn’t. Lizzie Stoltzfus disappeared from her own yard while her mama was hanging clothes on the line. Oh, dam it,” she finished lamely, swiping at her eyes.
“I’ll find them,” Jake said hoarsely. “I’ll try.”
Katya felt a shiver dance down her spine. It was the way he said it, she thought, fighting the urge to drop her fork and hug herself. Oh, there was such danger in his voice now. There was a very real threat there, a ferocious, determined anger. But it was focused on whoever was doing this to them.
He wasn’t...nice. But having him there made her feel safer than she had in a very long time, even though she had been hiding behind Adam’s significant brawn for weeks.
Jake turned his head slightly and caught her gaze. She felt heat wash through her. She meant to look away and couldn’t. His blue eyes were hard, questioning, measuring—then, blessedly, he looked away first. Katya breathed again.
“One other thing,” Adam said suddenly. He looked at his wife. “You know, it only just now hit me. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Lukas disappeared in October, Amalie in November, Michael in December—”
“And Lizzie the day after New Year’s!” Mariah cried. She looked quickly at Jake. “One a month! Is that what you mean? Is that a pattern?”
Jake finished eating and pushed his plate away. “Yeah, it is. And it’s a damned good one. It gives me something to work with.”
The table went suddenly silent. He felt the prickle of too many eyes. He glanced down at the other end of the table. The children were all looking at him steadily. Even his own nephew watched him as though he had just grown horns.
“What?” Jake demanded. “What are you staring at?”
“That’s a bad word,” Bo said. “Tell him, Pa.”
“I did,” Adam said. “I tried,” he qualified. “Just ignore him.”
Jake felt absurdly embarrassed, and that irritated the hell out of him. He stood abruptly and rubbed his temple, attempting to soothe a new headache growing there.
“I’ll start by talking to the parents in the morning,” he said shortly. “In the meantime, this is what—February eighteenth? Can you somehow get word around your...uh...?”
“Gemeide,” Katya supplied in a whisper.
His eyes shot to her then he looked away again fast. “Yeah. Get word around the gemeide or whatever for people to handcuff themselves to their babies. To all of their kids, for that matter. If that pattern is deliberate for some reason, and no kids have disappeared yet this month, these people really need to be on their guard.”
“I’ll spread the word,” Mariah said. “I’ll send notes home with all the children at school tomorrow and tell the other teachers, as well. Unfortunately, this isn�
�t Church Sunday, so we won’t all be together to spread the word that way.”
“Well, do the best you can.” Jake rubbed his temple again.
“It hurts,” Katya said suddenly. “Your head still hurts.”
He moved his eyes to her again. And away. “Yeah. No. Not where you hit me.”
“It’s tension, then. I could—”
“I’m fine.” Now that he was on his feet, he couldn’t remember where it was that he’d meant to go. Away from here, he thought, to some other room where little kids didn’t chastise him with their eyes for swearing. To some other room where this little wisp of a woman didn’t watch him like she wanted to gobble him all up.
Get off of that thought. Now.
“What?” He realized she was still speaking. She was on her feet now, too, stepping closer to him.
“Sit down, sir. I’ll—”
“For God’s sake, will you stop calling me sir?” he roared.
Her hand flew to her mouth and she literally reeled away from him. Her elbow cracked hard into the wall behind her. Her eyes filled. Jake closed his own, cursing himself. He should have gone home when he had the chance, he thought. He should have gone home before his brother had had the opportunity to tell him about missing children.
But he hadn’t. And that left him one option.
He reached for her and caught her wrist, pulling her hand away from her mouth gently. He told himself he did it because he had read somewhere that psychologically it was best to touch her right away, while she was shattered. It was a technique abusers used, though unwittingly, to keep a woman coming back for more, to keep her pliable. But it worked just as well the other way, to help a victim heal.
Touch her now, he thought, while she was vulnerable, before she could build up a brick wall against him. He’d prove that he wasn’t an ogre, and get that notion right out of her mind. He had to show her that every time a man snapped at her, a blow wasn’t going to follow.
But it wasn’t just any man she was dealing with here. It was him. And suddenly, that felt dangerous. Suddenly, bridging any kind of gap between them seemed like a very bad idea. He felt his heart beating a little too hard.
“Come here,” he said softly. He drew her toward him. She came, trembling, watching him with huge, wary eyes. He rubbed his thumb over the pulse slamming in her wrist.
“W-what?” she asked, her voice shaking.
“I’m sorry. I yell sometimes. It doesn’t mean anything. Ask Adam. It’s nothing personal. You’re right. I’m just a little stressed out. Next time just yell right back at me.”
“Of course.” The words tumbled out of her on an expelled breath.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“Yes,” she managed. “I mean, no.”
“Good.”
He was still holding her wrist. He finally loosened his fingers. And then his eyes fell from her own stricken gaze to her mouth, barely open, her breath soft.
The idea of kissing her blindsided him. Because when a woman stood close to him and looked at him in that way, he generally did just that. He almost—almost—started to lower his head before he even realized he was doing it. Because her mouth was pretty and enticing, and damn it, something about her drew him.
It was her eyes. It was the way she looked at him. Like he was something amazing and wonderful and good. He couldn’t remember any woman ever looking at him that way before. Mostly they knew he was amazing, dangerous and bad.
He stepped back quickly. He became aware of the entire table staring at him. At them. “I need to find that pay phone,” he said hoarsely. It was as good an excuse as any to get the hell out of this house while his head was still overruling his hormones.
Chapter 6
Jake roused the next morning to the smell of coffee. It smelled the same the world over, he thought, whether it was brewed in an electric coffeemaker or on top of a wood stove. It smelled good. He got up and ambled into the kitchen, following his nose.
“That couldn’t have been comfortable,” Adam said, inclining his head toward the sofa in the other room, where Jake had been sleeping.
Jake shrugged. “Somebody should be downstairs.” He swigged from the mug Adam poured. “Just in case. Besides, there didn’t seem to be anywhere else. I don’t do corn husks,” he added. That had been his other option—the floor mattress Adam had offered him.
But Adam shook his head. “Frank Essler is a coward. No way would he come here knowing two large men are under the same roof. He prefers to hit people who don’t hit back,” he said, his expression tightening.
“Let him try,” Jake growled.
There was a sound of distress from behind them. They both turned sharply.
Katya stared at them, her eyes filling absurdly. She was touched—and astounded—that these men cared enough about her predicament to discuss it. And for one of the rare times in her life—although maybe not so rare lately, she realized sadly—she was angry and ashamed. Angry that Frank had put this on her. That there was even a need for these men to be discussing her. And she was ashamed that Jacob Wallace was looking at her so...pityingly. She hardened her jaw and stepped into the room. “I came to get breakfast for the children. Mariah is busy upstairs.”
Both men moved away from the stove and the counter without a word, giving her room. She tried to ignore them, but it was hard not to be aware of them. She got cereal and poured it into bowls, as she took milk from the refrigerator that was powered by a hydraulic motor just outside.
She had four brothers, three brothers-in-law. Her family had gathered frequently until the gemeide had broken apart and her kin had stayed with the old one, mortified that one of their own was making such a fuss about the inequities of her life. Katya had often worked in a kitchen with all those men underfoot and others besides. And never had she noticed that the air changed with the overwhelming force of their maleness. These two men—especially Jacob—seemed to fill the kitchen with their very essence. She was exquisitely aware of him. She found it a little hard to breathe. When Jake spoke to her, she almost overpoured the milk.
“Who’s handling your divorce?” he asked suddenly.
She looked at him, astounded.
He didn’t seem to notice her expression. “You might want to get a restraining order,” he went on. “That way, if he does bother you or the kids, they’ll incarcerate him. That might dissuade him from trying it again and the kind of evidence that he’s violent should help get you custody in a divorce. It doesn’t always work—usually those things aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on, and I’ll be the first to admit it. But it might work here, assuming he really doesn’t want to get involved with the law of the...the outside world.” He couldn’t remember the term Adam had used. Anner something.
Katya was still staring at him.
“What’s wrong?” He scowled. “I mean, why not just take a shot at it? If it doesn’t work, you haven’t lost anything but a few bucks for filing fees. It’s worth a try.” Maybe she didn’t have a few bucks, he realized belatedly.
“I can’t divorce him,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“I said I...I’m not allowed to divorce him.”
Her words sank in slowly. “You mean...what, because of your religion?”
“Yes. I—”
“So what are you supposed to do with the rest of your life?” he interrupted harshly.
“What I’m doing.”
“You’re not doing anything!” he said angrily, and she blanched.
He couldn’t have said why he was so upset. Her religion was her own business. He’d always made it a point to argue neither God nor politics. But temper was hot behind his eyes. Burning, even. It made his blood move fast and hard.
“But I don’t have to live with him!” she protested. “That’s enough. Unless...”
“Unless what?” he asked sharply.
“Unless he comes back,” she said faintly.
“That’s what we were j
ust discussing,” Jake grated.
“No, no, I didn’t mean...not ‘come back’ that way. I mean, if he goes to our new deacons and repents.”
“Repents,” Jake repeated.
“Says he’s sorry.”
“Easy enough. Just words. Then what?”
“Then I’ve got to go back to him.”
“What?”
“I...would have to live with him again.”
Jake wheeled on his brother. “This is bull—”
“Watch it,” Adam warned quickly. “Anyway, he won’t do it.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Yeah, I do. To repent, he’d have to admit that he hit her in the first place. And he’s still denying that. He’s telling everyone in the old gemeide that Katya is crazy, that she ran off for no reason. I think we’d have some warning first. You know, he’d start saying, ‘Well, maybe I pushed her around, but she deserved it.’ We’d see it coming.”
“And then what?”
Katya realized he was glaring at her, not Adam. “I’d run,” she blurted.
Her own blood started pumping hard. She had no idea where the words had come from. Her heart, she thought wildly. Yes, yes, the response had come straight from her heart. Because she had been thinking about it so much lately, wishing...
For a miracle.
It was a moot point, an impossibility. Where would she go? How could she survive? Stupid, mousy, always making mistakes. Frank’s words echoed in her head. She felt tears burn at her eyes and she turned away to hide them.
Adam watched his brother’s jaw working. “What else can she do but play the odds?” he asked quietly at last. “They’re in her favor.”
“For what?” he roared. “For being tied to a bastard who’s not part of her life for the rest of her days?”
“Jake,” Adam said carefully, “it’s not your problem. You can’t fix the whole world.”
Jake turned sharply for the door. “I’m going to go see those parents,” he said abruptly.
“How are you going to get there?” Adam asked.
“I’m—” Jake broke off, staring dumbly out the door. “Damn it.”