Were they planning to hide him in the back of the buggy? Nico would find his hiding spot in a second and pick him off faster than a cat taking out a field mouse. And it wasn’t like they could outrun the car in a buggy.
He stepped close to Katie. “I need my gun.”
“No, you don’t,” she said.
“Yes, I do.”
She climbed up into the buggy, and he could feel the eyes of Nico and the others watching him. Even in this attire, he looked like the clean-shaven city man that he was. Eyeing the barn door again, he thought about hiding back inside, but if all these Amish men and women left, the gangsters would come for him. And they would kill him.
It was better to leave the farm.
“Kumma,” Katie whispered from the bench above him.
“Where am I going?”
She patted the left side of the seat. “Right here.”
Placing his foot on the tiny step, he pulled himself into the buggy with his good hand. Behind the bench were two narrow seats, too small for an adult, and a wide crevice that cut through the back of the leather to expose them. He couldn’t hide there.
He collapsed back against the upholstered seat and closed his eyes.
Katie jabbed him with her elbow, and he jolted upright. “No sleeping, Rollin.”
“I’m just resting my eyes.”
“These men and women are sacrificing their lives to protect you,” Katie said, her gaze focused on the rump of the horse. “You will not put them at risk because you are tired.”
“I’m far beyond tired.”
Katie nodded at the horse. “Prince, this is Rollin Wells, and Rollin, I’d like you to meet your new best friend, Prince.”
He stared at the horse, wondering if Katie was trying to lighten the mood with a joke or something, but when he looked back at the side of her head, she didn’t crack a smile. Did she want him to shake Prince’s horseshoe or something? Tell the horse he was glad to meet him?
He had to find a telephone and get back to Cleveland before he completely lost his mind.
Katie set the leather reins in his lap. “Have you ever driven a buggy before?”
“Have I ever driven—” He shook his head. “Of course not.”
“Well, you better learn fast.”
With a click of her tongue, the horse stepped forward, and Rollin grasped the straps. This woman was insane.
She pointed to the left strap. “Tug on it.”
He did as she instructed and the horse faced the drive and started walking toward the road.
“C’mon, Prince,” she whispered as the horse slowed behind another buggy. The car was about forty feet in front of them, and behind them was the long covered wagon.
“C’mon, Prince,” Rollin repeated, eyeing the cornfield again beside them. Either the horse needed to make him look good or he needed to run.
“Hello, Rollin Wells.”
Rollin jumped and glanced behind the bench to see the wide grin of a boy. The boy who’d waved at him from the cart. No wonder Katie Lehman was so irritated at him. Lance had been on her tail, annoying her on the road.
What would she think if he told her Lance was dead?
Katie turned around, scolding the boy. “You were supposed to go with Isaac and Erma.”
“I wanted to ride with you.”
“Henry…”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Henry.” Rollin held up the reins. “Do you know how to drive one of these?”
“Mamm won’t let me.”
“Maybe you can start now.”
“No, he can’t,” she said, pushing on the boy’s head. “Get down, Henry.”
The boy slipped back behind the seat.
Nico Sansone was leaning against the Lincoln, his arms crossed. Rollin only allowed himself a glimpse at the man, and then his eyes went forward, his fingers weaved around the reins. At least Prince seemed to know what he was doing.
The buggy in front of them passed beside the car, and Nico examined the driver. Rollin cringed. The Amish attire wouldn’t fool Nico. In seconds he would recognize Rollin, and he had no gun to defend himself against the man’s attack.
He mumbled a prayer to himself, just in case the God of Erma Lehman and even Matthew Kennedy happened to be listening. He prayed that the man wouldn’t hurt the innocent woman beside him or the boy in the back or anyone else in the driveway risking their life to help him.
Prince marched past the hood of the car, and Rollin bowed his head like Katie, his hat low on his forehead. His hand instinctively patted his empty holster.
A moment before he rode past Nico, he heard a voice. Glancing behind him, he watched an Amish man hop off the long wagon.
The man marched right up to Nico. “Is something wrong with your vehicle?”
Rollin didn’t dare look again. If the Amish man could distract Nico for just a moment, he would be safe.
“We’re looking for someone,” Nico said. “A dangerous man.”
“A dangerous man?”
“A man wanted for murder.”
Rollin’s hair stood up on the back of his neck. If the Amish thought he had murdered someone, they might turn him over to Nico.
“Are you a police officer?” the man asked as Rollin’s buggy rolled past the car.
“We’re helping out a friend,” Nico told him. “Have you seen any strangers today?”
The man’s voice was muted behind him now, but Rollin heard his words. “We don’t have any strangers here.”
“Thank you, Jonas,” Katie whispered.
He glanced in the mirror, and he watched Nico step in front of the long wagon and tell his men to search it.
Rollin didn’t know who Jonas was, but he assumed it was the man who’d spoken with Nico. He’d like to shake that man’s hand.
“Turn left,” Katie said.
He tugged the left rein, and Prince actually responded to his lead.
“Good job,” Henry’s voice piped up from the back.
A brief smile crossed his lips. “Thank you.”
The buggy in front of them turned right onto the country road, and as they turned left, he saw another black Lincoln at the end of the drive. Waiting. A quick glance over his shoulder, and he shivered when he saw two more automobiles on the other side.
The Amish couldn’t outsmart the city boys. The Cardano family had found him, and they’d smoked him out. The gangsters wouldn’t want the publicity that would come if they took out a group of Amish men or women, so they would wait until he was alone. Or almost alone. Now it was just him along with a woman who didn’t like him and a boy who didn’t seem to understand the danger they were in.
In the side mirror, he watched as one of the parked cars turned into the road and began following them. Another buggy continued behind them before a second car joined the slow-moving parade.
No matter how fast Prince went, there was no outrunning an automobile, and he couldn’t take off running through the fields and leave this defenseless woman and her son behind.
They hit a pothole, and it jostled his arm. He groaned, trying to keep his hands on the reins and his eyes on the road.
“Keep driving,” Katie said, and he could hear the fear echoing in her voice.
The automobile was driving on his tail, and he wondered if they would pull beside the buggy and gun him down while he was driving or wait until they stopped.
He kept his eyes focused ahead. “What do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” Katie mumbled.
A road crossed in front of them, and the first buggy went right. The buggy directly in front of him turned left. Prince followed the buggy to the right.
“He knows where he’s going from here,” Katie said.
Rollin hesitated before he looked in the side mirror, hoping the automobile went left, but when he looked behind them, the black car was still there.
“Did you make a plan for this?” Rollin asked.
“We will not go to our home until they stop following
us.”
“And if they don’t stop?”
“Prince will last longer than any automobile.”
He nodded, but he could feel the adrenaline seeping out of him. The exhaustion returning. The horse would last, but would his body make it longer than the automobile?
Another road crossed in front of him, and he watched as the lead buggy turned to the right again.
Katie pointed ahead. “We’re going straight.”
The horse started to roll through the intersection when Henry leaned into the opening beside him and waved at the car behind them.
Katie turned around, swatting him. “Sit down,” she commanded.
The automobile seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then it turned right to follow the other buggy.
Rollin sighed. “Well done, Henry.”
Katie didn’t say anything as they drove under a canopy of buckeye trees, but he could feel the anger emanating from her skin. They had all been in danger, but her son’s wave seemed to disarm the men. Maybe they guessed there wasn’t room for Rollin to be hiding in the back with him.
He didn’t know why the men turned, but even if Katie wasn’t happy, he was glad to be free of them. “Is everyone angry at me or is it just you?”
“It’s just her,” Henry piped from the back, and Rollin smiled again.
Katie cleared her throat. “The Yoders won’t go back to the house for a few hours.”
He nodded. “I’m grateful they let me spend the night.”
“And everyone was disappointed to miss the big lunch today.”
“Okay,” he said slowly, trying to empathize with the trauma of missing lunch. “Hopefully, they’ll enjoy it next Sunday.”
“Two Sundays from now. Next week is no-church.”
There were men with guns chasing them around the countryside. Why were he and Katie talking about lunch?
A honeybee flew into the buggy. He expected Katie to scream like many of the women he knew in Cleveland, but she just swatted it away.
“Turn here,” she directed as the bee dodged her hand and flew back out of the buggy, but he didn’t need to prompt the horse. Prince went left at the bend.
They traveled over another steep hill, and in the distance, he could see a cart in front of them. Dairy cows ate grass inside a fence on the left of the road, and in the field on the right side, the white petals of Queen Anne’s lace embellished the acres of red clover. In the valley beyond was a scrap of trees and a house in the distance surrounded by barns.
It was strange and a bit exhilarating to travel across the countryside like this without a car. He noticed details he’d never seen before and the smells of the steaming fields and livestock.
His eyes edged shut, and Katie elbowed him again. “Stay awake, Rollin.”
“I’m trying,” he muttered.
“Try harder.”
Prince’s hooves clapped as they bumped over a wooden bridge and the trickling water of a creek loping over and around a stone path. Minutes later, the horse paused at a driveway, and Rollin looked up the hill at a white farmhouse. A barn was to the right of the house, and beside the barn was a forest. There were acres and acres of fields to the left and on the hill above the house.
As they rode up the steep hill, they passed several outbuildings painted red to match the barn, and a large garden dotted with neat rows of green plants and staked vines bulging with tomatoes. Beds filled with colorful petunias, impatiens, and other flowers decorated the yard.
A dog barked, and two English shepherds and a brown collie ran toward them. Katie directed him toward a shed that housed a larger buggy and two wagons, and he watched Isaac unhitch his horse from the cart. Rollin handed the reins to Katie and scooted down on the seat, his knees crunched up in front of him. “I’m going to sleep now.”
Katie leaned over, looking into his eyes, and he saw the blue in them again. Liz’s eyes.
“You did good, Rollin,” she said as she took the reins. “Wonderful goot.”
His eyes fluttered closed. “And you made a goot wife.”
“I’m not your wife,” she insisted, but he barely heard her words.
For the briefest of moments, though, Rollin wondered where Katie Lehman’s real husband was.
CHAPTER 13
Celeste ducked under the metal stairwell as the trolley rumbled down Mayfield, and she clipped her gloves onto her beaded purse. She snapped the purse open, and as she reached inside, her fingers brushed the cool metal of the pistol Salvatore gave her for her fortieth birthday. She didn’t take out the gun. Instead her fingers slid past the metal, into a side pocket, and she pulled out a small smooth stone. Stepping out of her shelter, she flung the rock toward a third-floor window.
Salvatore’s society friends would be aghast if they saw her tossing rocks at an apartment window, but when she was a girl, she had been quite adept at throwing stones. And she always hit her mark.
The rock bounced off the glass, the sound reverberating down the alleyway, but no face appeared in the window. She sighed, taking a second rock out of her pocketbook and pitching it up to the glass.
Still, no one came to the window.
The gray apartment building looked like it had been bombed in the Great War. The siding didn’t look any sturdier than kindling, and she assumed the interior was just as dismal. It was a bit sad. Rollin’s father gambled away their family’s inheritance, but Rollin still could have lived in a nice home on the hill if he wanted.
Officers and detectives in every rank and unit across Cleveland supplied information to the local gangs and turned blind when necessary to the crime in their city. Their pockets were bulging with cash, and none of them came home at night to a dilapidated tenement.
Rollin’s mother, God rest her soul, had such high aspirations that both of her sons would become men of notoriety in their city. Then her oldest son was killed in the Great War and her second son chose to live his life fighting the Cardanos instead of joining them. Rollin probably would never climb much higher in rank than a detective at the precinct, but he didn’t seem to care about titles.
Celeste stepped away from the building again, hoping a light would appear in Rollin’s room. And his face in the window.
Salvatore would kill her if he found her there, but she had to warn Rollin that the Cardanos were planning something in Sugarcreek. He had to force the Cardanos out of there before they dug too deep.
The streetlight blinked above her as she continued to wait.
How different life would have been for her—for all of them—if Rollin had married Elizabeth and become her son-in-law. But Elizabeth and Nicola were gone and neither of her girls was coming back.
Footsteps echoed down the street at the end of the alley, and she stepped back under the stairwell as a shadow crossed by on the sidewalk. Even though the night was hot, goose bumps rippled across her skin.
Rollin Wells wasn’t living in a hillside mansion, and maybe because of it, he was the only man she trusted. He needed her information, and even though he didn’t know it, she needed him even more to help her with her plans.
She waited until the footsteps faded away, and then she took the last rock out of her pocketbook and threw it.
Rollin didn’t come.
Ducking her head, Celeste backed down the alley and walked out into the street. Tonight, more than any other, she felt very alone.
*
The orange glow from a kerosene lamp spilled under the door, into the hallway on the second floor of the Lehmans’ home. Her hand on the doorknob, Katie hesitated before she walked inside Henry’s room. The room where Rollin had collapsed eight hours ago and, as far as she knew, hadn’t awakened again. Erma stayed beside him the entire afternoon and evening while Katie played with Henry and then sliced ham, baked potatoes, and cooked green beans for the family.
Now the dishes were done and Isaac was settled in his room downstairs. Henry fell asleep on a mat in her bedroom before the sun dipped over the hill, and she no longer had
an excuse to avoid Rollin Wells. Erma needed her help, and even if she didn’t want to see Rollin, she’d do just about anything for her aunt.
She cracked the door and saw Rollin in Henry’s bed, sweat beading on his forehead. The light blue drapes fluttered in the breeze, and Erma rocked in the chair Isaac carved for her when their first son was born. On the dresser beside Erma was a basin filled with water and a stack of dry cotton cloths.
Rollin moaned as his head tossed on the pillow, and for a moment, she wanted to reach out and comfort him, but her fingers remained clutched around the knob. Rollin didn’t deserve her comfort or her compassion.
“Does he still have a fever?”
Erma nodded, sponging cool water on his forehead. “He should have been resting instead of driving the horse all the way here.”
Katie reached for the rag in Erma’s hand and dipped it back into the basin of water. “We didn’t have a choice.”
“His head must stay cool for the night, until the fever breaks.”
“Ya,” Katie sighed. “I will help you.”
Erma turned toward her. “What is wrong, Katie?”
She wrung out the rag and handed it back to her aunt. “A lot has happened today.”
“Are you tired?”
Her heart was more weary than her body, but she couldn’t tell Erma about it. “No more than usual.”
Erma wiped off the sweat from Rollin’s head, her gaze on Katie’s face. “Is it because he’s an English man?”
Wind breezed through the window again, flapping the strings on Erma’s kapp over her shoulders. She removed the pins that held it in place and set her kapp in her lap.
Erma knew almost everything about her and her past, but there were some pieces she hadn’t told her. Couldn’t ever tell her.
She replied slowly. “I’m more concerned that we don’t know who is trying to hurt him or why.”
Erma unfolded the rag and spread it across Rollin’s forehead. “I don’t understand why one man would ever want to hurt another.”
Unfortunately, Katie understood, but her aunt would never comprehend the struggles for money and power outside their community. Or the reason a man would kill an innocent woman.
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