The Silent Order

by Melanie Dobson

  “Partway to the barn,” he replied. “We can’t get too close in an automobile—and we can’t let Antonio know you are here.”

  “Antonio wouldn’t hurt his own mother…” she said, but her voice trailed off. None of them was certain what Antonio would or wouldn’t do.

  “Just a moment,” Erma said before she shuffled out of the room.

  He groaned to himself. The minutes were slipping by, and every interruption cost him another piece of dialogue that might be happening in or around the barn. A fleeting look at Katie told him that she was ready to go as well, probably so she could be home when Henry woke up.

  Minutes later Erma came back into the room, the satchel with her medical supplies looped over her arm. Carefully, she placed it on the floor and started rummaging through it.

  Instead of pulling out a vial of medication, she drew out a ball of cloth and began to unwind it. Inside, he caught a glimpse of ivory and then silver.

  His gun.

  “Erma!” Katie gasped, but Erma didn’t respond.

  His hands twitched, wanting to swipe the ball of cloth from her and unravel it, but he waited as Erma methodically unwound the layers. Finally, she pulled out the gun. Pointing the barrel toward the ground, she handed it to him.

  “You might need this tonight.”

  He took the gun and slid it into the holster he’d kept hidden underneath his jacket. “I might.”

  Erma reached for his arm, patting it to get his attention. The look in her eyes was raw. Desperate. “You need to bring Katie back to us.”

  He nodded. “I won’t let her get hurt.”

  Erma slid around them to open the door, but she clung to both Katie and Celeste before she let them go.

  *

  It was a bit like a dance, trying to follow Rollin through the forest. He told her when to step and which way. Then he’d hold out his arm and she’d freeze in place before he motioned her ahead once more. She wore her black bonnet and a black dress to blend into the night, and as long as they were quiet and stayed in the shadows, no one would see them.

  She’d said good-bye to her mother on the road, and in her heart, Katie knew she would never see her again. It saddened her that her mother chose to empower the Cardano family’s world of crime with her silence when she could always come home to a community who would forgive her and welcome her back. Her mother was secure in her prison. And enamored with worldly things—her home and her food and the bit of notoriety that came with being a Cardano in Cleveland.

  Here she’d been one of many, everyone dressing the same, believing the same way. No one standing out. Her mother craved drama, and she loved to stand out, even if she was standing behind her husband or son.

  Rollin held a branch up for her, and Katie ducked under it.

  Ever since she moved to Sugarcreek, Katie stood out. A sixteen-year-old with a baby, even though she’d pretended to be eighteen. Those in their community didn’t know much about her upbringing, but they knew she’d been raised by an English father and Erma’s sister, a woman who’d deserted their community. They’d been curious from the beginning about her, but they didn’t ask questions.

  As Isaac and Erma’s niece, the Amish people loved her, and the solidarity of the community had been refreshing for her. Over time she’d moved from being an outsider to becoming part of their community. Her mother had taught her bits of the language as a child, and she learned how to act and speak so she wouldn’t stand apart from the others. It wasn’t that different from her life in Cleveland except the people here followed the rules because of their faith instead of their fear.

  Sometimes she longed for a place where she wasn’t forced to fit into a mold. Where people’s expectations weren’t placed on her. A place she didn’t have to be afraid.

  Rollin stopped her, and as they waited in the darkness, she patted her apron pocket.

  Inside was a roll of bills her mother insisted that she take. At first she refused, knowing almost every bit of money that came through her father’s house was stained with blood. Her mother told her the money was legit, from the coffers at Mangiamo’s. Whether or not it was true, her mother convinced her to keep it when she said Katie should use it for whatever Henry needed.

  It felt ominous in a way, taking the money from her. The last time her mother had given her money, Katie used it for bus fare. She’d worked hard over the years to help Erma and Isaac, trying never to be a burden to them, and they provided well for her and Henry. But she’d never earned a penny of income in her life.

  Maybe the money was what she needed to find a safe place for her and Henry to start over.

  In the sliver of moonlight, she could see the barn in front of them. Years ago, when she was about nineteen, she’d discovered several young people climbing up the tree beside the barn. Curious, she’d climbed it behind them and found a window at the top, opening into the hayloft. At the time, she’d been much like the other young people climbing the tree—except, of course, none of them was rearing a child on her own.

  Rollin put out his arm, stopping her again, and she watched the dark outline of two men guarding the back door. She tugged on Rollin’s arm, and he followed her to the north side of the barn.

  No one was guarding the wide trunk of the sycamore tree.

  Katie tied her long skirt in a knot, tucked it between her knees, and pointed toward the top of the tree. Rollin helped hoist her bare foot up to a limb about four feet off the ground, and she pulled herself up. Feeling for a branch above her, she balanced herself and then slowly climbed the tree, to the closed window above. When she reached the top, she opened the shutters and climbed inside.

  There were small mounds of hay in the loft, but they stank of mold and decay. In front of her was a wooden railing and below it, the room glowed from lantern light. A ladder hung at the end of the railing, leading to the main floor below.

  Rollin crawled into the loft behind her and sat on a bale of hay.

  “Where’s your jacket?” she whispered close to his ear.

  “I couldn’t climb with it.”

  Her gaze wandered back toward the opening. “Where did you leave it?”

  “I stuffed it into a hole in the tree.”

  “No one’s going to bother us out here,” someone said below them, and neither she nor Rollin whispered again. He edged toward the railing while she backed away into the shadows of the loft. Something scampered in the hay next to her, and she scooted the other direction. She didn’t mind most animals, but she was not fond of mice.

  “Junior thinks that cop is on to us.”

  “The dead one?” the guy said with a laugh.

  “No, the one who won’t keep his nose out of our business.”

  “Junior’s coming,” another man said.

  Silence invaded the barn until her brother walked through the door.

  “Any sign of visitors?” he asked.

  Katie rubbed her arms at the sharp tone in her brother’s voice. She’d hoped he would find his own way in life instead of following their father’s steps.

  “No one but the owls.”

  And the mice.

  “Wells is out there,” Antonio said. “And we have to keep him away.”

  “He’s not going to come alone.” Katie remembered where she’d heard that man’s voice before. It was Eligio Ricci, their driver and one of her father’s bodyguards. If Eligio was here, her father must be coming soon.

  “Detective Wells prefers to work alone.”

  Rollin looked back at her, catching her eye. Her brother was right, and they both knew it. She’d forced her way into joining him, even when he didn’t want her here. If there were some way she could help stop her father and her brother and the others from hurting anyone else, she would do it.

  “Our friends from Cincinnati will arrive before lunch,” Antonio said.

  “What about your uncle?”

  “He’s already here.”

  The voices were muffled for a moment, and then she heard
Antonio speak again. “There will be no sleeping tonight, gentlemen.”

  The men swore to him that they would stay awake until morning.

  Footsteps thudded across the wooden floor again as Antonio walked outside. Rollin motioned for her, and she snuck toward the railing and glanced over. Below were thirty or forty chairs set up in straight lines. At the far end of the barn was a long banquet table covered with a maroon tablecloth, ready for Irene’s food.

  A car pulled into the driveway outside, and a door slammed. She followed Rollin back into the shadows.

  “Maybe they are having a wedding,” she whispered.

  “It will be some type of union,” Rollin said, his cheek brushing her bonnet. “Just not between a man and his bride.”

  CHAPTER 26

  A dozen men played poker and smoked cigarettes in the cramped dining room of the farmhouse like nothing major was about to happen. And Uncle Ray was dealing the cards.

  Antonio stood in the doorway, watching the men for a moment. Except for his uncle, they were all Antonio’s men, handpicked for their loyalty to his cause. They’d all done what was required to be part of the Cardano organization.

  It was a good thing that he was in charge of this meeting. His uncle and the others would squander the opportunity.

  Raymond called out to him as he stepped back, saying he should join them for a game, but Antonio shrugged him off. There was much more at stake tonight than a card game.

  He marched through the sparsely decorated living room, and the screen door slammed behind him when he stepped outside. Emanuele watched him from the barn door, but as he turned toward the driveway, his cousin didn’t ask where he was going.

  There were five cars parked in the long drive now, but by tomorrow night there would be at least twenty. Men were coming from Columbus and Dayton and as far away as Cincinnati. They all knew what was expected of them and what they should expect.

  When he was finished, the Cardano family would be the sole supplier of corn sugar to every major bootlegger across the state, and Antonio would no longer be the underling, following in his father’s shadow. His father’s top men were on his side, and Heyward finally realized that Salvatore wouldn’t be in this business much longer.

  With the Puglisis still reeling from Leone’s death, the Cardano family would swoop in and take everything. And Antonio would be at the helm.

  He chewed his fingernails as he walked down the long lane, trying to remember if he’d forgotten anything.

  If all went as planned tomorrow night, he and the key players on his team would take his main adversary down, and he would organize the rest of the men into a well-oiled machine to meet the supply and demand of their customers’ unquenchable thirst.

  He patted the new Smith & Wesson pistol at his side. His father personally taught him how to shoot a pistol before Antonio’s seventh birthday, and not long after he turned fifteen, Salvatore assigned him the task of eliminating a man who’d betrayed their family. Instead of killing him, though, Antonio hired someone to do the job.

  His father thought he was gutless, but it wasn’t about guts. Antonio hated the sight of blood, and he couldn’t understand his father’s disdain when he refused to kill. It had been a smart move to hire a soldier who shot when asked. A man who didn’t feel queasy when things got bloody. And it kept Antonio’s hands clean.

  He may not be fond of blood, but he had the brains in the family. No one had ever pinned a murder on him nor would they ever.

  Tomorrow, for just a moment, his father would be proud of him. Salvatore Club Cardano would pay him some respect.

  At the end of the lane, he saw Heyward’s Cadillac parked under the low limbs of a tree. Antonio slid into the passenger seat, his eyes focused on the dashboard.

  “When are the others coming?”

  “In the morning.” Heyward nodded toward the house. “Do you think Raymond knows what’s about to happen?”

  “He doesn’t care about anything except his poker hand right now.”

  “And you’re certain he’ll pull the trigger?”

  “Without a doubt. He wants Salvatore gone as much as I do.”

  “A lot could go wrong tomorrow.”

  Antonio slipped an envelope out of his jacket, filled with five thousand dollars in large bills. Half the payment up front. He wouldn’t pay Heyward the other half until it was over. “But it won’t.”

  Heyward took the envelope and tucked it into his coat. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Junior.”

  “And with you,” Antonio said before he climbed out of the car.

  Not only would he be a free man after tomorrow. He would be in charge.

  *

  Rollin stepped over the windowsill and his foot searched for the branch underneath. The army taught him how to crawl, shoot, and run, but they’d never taught him how to climb trees. He supposed they assumed their troops learned to climb when they were boys, but Rollin never had.

  His foot found a branch, and he reached out in the darkness for a branch to clutch with his hands. He’d made it up the tree without making a fool of himself. Surely he could make it down as well.

  He didn’t look down, didn’t think about how high they’d had to climb to get up to the loft. All he needed to do was get down to solid ground. He and Katie would walk back to the Lehmans’ house, sleep for the remaining hours of the night, and then he would figure out his next step.

  Clinging to the curved tree limb, he slowly eased himself toward the trunk. His arm ached, but he ignored the pain. All he needed to do was maneuver both arms around the middle of the tree. Then he could inch himself down. He didn’t care how manly he looked in the process. He just wanted to get down alive.

  “Be careful,” Katie whispered, like he wasn’t trying.

  With his fingers entwined around a big branch, he put his other foot onto the peeling bark and moved toward the center. If only he could see what he was doing, he could get down this tree.

  Leaves brushed across his face. His hands pressed into the strength of the wood. He was so close to exposing the Cardanos, so close to finding out what they were doing. The only thing between him and his escape from them tonight was a lousy sycamore tree.

  He should have gone behind his mother’s back when he was a kid and climbed a few trees. Then he wouldn’t be a thirty-one-year-old adult who couldn’t get down from a barn.

  Katie nudged his back. “You’ve got to move faster.”

  “I’m trying.”

  Swinging even closer to the center, he stepped down a notch and searched until he found another secure hold for his foot. Below him, in the dark web of branches, he looked for ground, but all he saw were sticks and leaves.

  It was going to take him a lifetime to get down.

  Katie said something else, something he didn’t understand. When he glanced upwards, his hat slid toward the back of his head. He hesitated, leaning down again, but his hat still teetered. He tried to reposition his hands, to grab his hat before it fell, but it was too late. His hat slipped off his head, bumping down the branches below.

  Katie sucked in her breath.

  Someone moved around the barn, and he froze, both hands secured on the tree limbs. A flashlight illuminated the woods behind him and then the wide base of the tree.

  He could see his hat now, perched on a branch about fifteen feet down from him. And he prayed the man below didn’t look up.

  Katie’s hand tapped on his shoulder, and as quietly as he could, he tried to get back through the window. The flashlight scanned the woods again as he pulled his torso and then his legs back into the barn. He closed the shutters.

  Reaching for his hip, he checked for his gun, and it was still there. If Mr. Hatchet down there decided to climb up the tree, Rollin would pick him off.

  “What were you trying to say?” he asked.

  “When?”

  “When I was in the tree. You said something, and when I looked up, I lost my hat.”

  “Oh�
��” She paused. “I was telling you to be careful.”

  “Next time, you might want to just think it instead.”

  “It shouldn’t take but three minutes to get down that tree.”

  He brushed off his arms. “It takes me a little longer.”

  “Haven’t you ever climbed down a tree before?”

  “You’re one brilliant woman, Katie.” He leaned back against the wall, bracing himself for her laugh. “How did you figure that out?”

  But she didn’t laugh at him. Instead the irritation in her eyes turned to sympathy.

  “You never climbed a tree before?”

  “We didn’t have any good climbing trees in our neighborhood, and even if we did, my mother would never have allowed it.”

  “Your mother didn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “She didn’t want me to get dirty.”

  “Oh…”

  He heard voices again downstairs, and he and Katie stopped whispering.

  She yawned as she settled back into the hay, and he felt the weight of exhaustion bear heavily down on him as well. Neither of them had slept much the past few nights.

  The men guarding the doors and probably the sycamore tree would be up all night, alert and waiting for him. His only hope was that he would rest well tonight, and the guards would go to sleep around dawn. Then he and Katie could escape.

  Someone turned off one of the lanterns below, and he could see the shadows of the men posted at both doors. He moved back to Katie.

  “Are we spending the night?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  The stench of moldy hay ballooned into the air as he pushed together a small lump beside Katie. How many people were coming for this meeting? Maybe he could catch more than the Cardanos tomorrow. Maybe he could catch a whole network of criminals and possibly even Malloy and some crooked cops.

  He shifted in the hay.

  Antonio was right about one thing. Rollin preferred to do things alone, but in order to catch these men, he’d need help.

  Katie leaned her bonnet back against the hay. “I’m exhausted.”

  His focus shifted, from the men below to the beautiful woman next to him, and his heart seemed to skip a beat. He usually preferred to be alone, but tonight he wanted to be with her.