Off the Grid (Amish Safe House, Book 1)

by Ruth Hartzler

  She went back upstairs and used the restroom, killing fifteen minutes in there flipping through a three year old Good Housekeeping magazine that was sitting on top of even older periodicals in a wicker basket near the toilet.

  Kate stole a glance at her house through the guest bedroom window, and what she saw froze her in her tracks. The window looked out toward the side of her house, and into her own bedroom. There in the bedroom, was a sweeping shaft of yellow light. It was someone walking with a flashlight.

  Psalm 37: 39 – 40.

  The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord; he is their stronghold in the time of trouble. The Lord helps them and delivers them; he delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in him.

  Chapter 3.

  For a moment Kate froze, but seconds later, she decided to take action.

  Kate turned and rummaged in her overnight bag, pulling her gun from it. She wished she had thought to bring a jacket, because she didn’t want to waste time dressing. She went back down the stairs in just her pajama pants and tank top. She pulled on her sneakers, having left them with Helen’s shoe collection by the front door, and then she pulled the front door open and slipped out into the night.

  The air was cold, and goose bumps erupted up and down Kate’s arms. The cop car was there, the engine running, a small but steady plume of exhaust coming from the tailpipe. Kate crept to the car, bending at the waist so no one would see her from her house as she came up along the driver’s side.

  “Officer Coy,” she called, as she neared the driver’s side window. The glass was up, and the cop sitting beyond, his head down a bit. Kate thought he had fallen asleep, though he didn’t wake when she used two knuckles to knock on the window. She tried the door handle, found the door unlocked, and pulled it open. The slight movement of the car made the officer shift, and he came spilling sideways out of the car.

  Kate jumped, knowing right away that the cop was hurt. She heard a gun fire and looked up to see a masked figure on her porch.

  Kate thought fast. She pushed the injured Officer Coy into his car and then hopped in as well. It was awkward because he was still half in the driver’s seat, and half in the passenger, but Kate pulled the door shut and threw the car into drive. The masked figure came from the porch after her, but after she had driven a block away, she didn’t see him anymore. She turned around quickly, suddenly thinking of Helen. She raced back to Helen’s house, skidding to a stop with the tires squealing.

  Kate leaped out, hand on her gun, and raced for Helen’s door. She banged through it, and raced up the stairs. The elderly lady was coming out of her room, unharmed.

  “What is with all the racket?” Helen asked, and Kate shooed her back into her room.

  “Shut and lock the door,” Kate said before turning and racing back outside to the police car. Kate grabbed the radio and pressed the button on the side.

  “Dispatch, officer down, civilian calling for help,” she said, thinking it prudent to call herself a civilian for speed and clarity.

  “What’s your location?” the dispatch woman asked, her voice tense and urgent.

  Kate at once gave her address.

  “Copy that, are you in any immediate danger?”

  “Possibly,” Kate replied.

  “Cars are on their way; what’s the situation with the downed officer?”

  “He’s been hit with a blunt object, I think,” Kate said, looking down at Officer Coy.

  “The nearest car is two minutes away,” the dispatcher said, and indeed Kate could hear a siren blaring in the distance, and growing louder.

  “I hear them,” Kate said.

  The first cop car pulled quickly to a stop in the middle of the street.

  “Hands where we can see them!” one of the two cops, a woman in her forties, screamed.

  Kate lifted her hands into the air while she sat in the car, forgetting she had a gun. The cop noticed straight away and drew her own.

  “Put the gun down!” she screamed and Kate let it fall to the pavement outside of the car.

  “Get out of the car,” the other cop said. He came forward, kicked the gun away, and then put his hand on Kate’s arm and pulled her out of the car.

  “Did you call this in?” he asked her, his tone somewhat apologetic.

  “Yes,” Kate said. “Do you have an ambulance coming?”

  “Yes,” the cop said, and then he let Kate go. The female cop came forward and took Kate by the arm, pulling her away from the scene of the crime. She opened up the passenger side rear door of her cruiser and had Kate sit in it, with her legs still outside. And then for the first time out of many that night, Kate spoke to a police officer about what had happened.

  A cop went up to get Helen, and when the police were finally done with her, Helen took Kate back into her home, where Kate finally fell asleep.

  2 Timothy 4: 18.

  The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

  Chapter 4.

  Kate was relieved to see her boss. “We have jobs that are more exciting if you’re looking for something like that,” he said by way of greeting. “You didn’t have to go get a stalker.” He then turned serious. “How is that cop?”

  “He’s going to be fine,” Kate said.

  “Thank goodness for that,” David said. “I know a lot’s happened, but we have some things to discuss.”

  Kate knew that he was going to say that, and she nodded. “Let’s sit in the kitchen.”

  “I’ll put some coffee on,” Helen said.

  The three of them sat in the kitchen, sipping coffee from mugs that had steam curling overtop them, and eating coffee cake.

  A little while later, Helen excused herself and went to bed, and then the conversation turned serious. The first course of action was figuring out who exactly would want Kate dead. Someone had stalked her, threatened her, and made her feel uneasy by sending the pictures, and then the very night she was home, had tried to shoot her. The way they had attempted to dispatch her police protection made both Kate and David sure the person wanted to end her life.

  “I don’t know,” Kate said after being pressed by David for about the tenth time. “I have no idea who would stalk me, who would do this.”

  “No jilted ex boyfriends?”

  Kate sighed and looked across the Formica topped table at her boss. “Come on, David. Did you have any girlfriends at all back when you were an agent who traveled, before you got your cushy desk job?”

  David let one corner of his mouth curl up, despite the seriousness of their talk. He nodded and took a sip of coffee. “Fair enough,” he said. “And that leaves us with a possibility I didn’t even want to consider, although we need to.”

  “What?”

  “We have a mole somewhere along the line. Whoever did this, knew where you lived. I’m afraid to say that I suspect that someone on the inside of WITSEC is behind this, whether they were the person here last night or not.”

  Kate took a moment to process that information, and as she did, she felt like crying. If it was someone on the inside, they knew everything about her. She lifted her mug to her lips and tilted it back, swallowing the last lukewarm dregs of coffee and milk.

  “I’ve made some calls,” David said, but Kate barely heard. She had fallen asleep with her head down on top of her crossed arms that were resting on the table. David lightly touched her on the shoulder.

  Kate opened her eyes and yawned, before stretching her arms over her head. “Sorry, I didn’t sleep much last night.”

  “It’s fine,” David said. “Let’s go over to your house and pack some things.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’ve put something together, but we need to leave now. I’ll tell you once we’re on the road.”

  And that was that. Kate knew she trusted David, and she was trusting him at this moment. Kate popped into Helen’s bedroom and told t
he sleepy woman that she was going away for a while, and didn’t know when she’d be back.

  David was waiting for her in the living room, sitting on the arm of the couch while she went upstairs and packed a bag. She was done quickly, and her boss led her to his rental car. She threw her bag in the trunk and then climbed into the passenger side while David sat behind the wheel and started the car.

  “So what’s going on?” Kate asked as they pulled away from the curb. “Where are we going?”

  “I had to put something together on my own, and in a major hurry. We need to get you safe, while I figure out who did this,” David said, an obvious start to a longer explanation. “I have a friend, and I called him, and he’s going to help us out. Now only you, me, him and his wife will know what’s really going on, okay? The community won’t know anything.”

  Kate was beginning to get worried. It sounded as if David was trying to make the big reveal easier on her somehow, as if she wouldn’t like where she was going. “David, just tell me,” she said. “Where are you taking me?”

  “To Pennsylvania,” he said, looking over at her briefly. “Amish country.”

  “Amish country?” Kate asked. “I’m going to stay with the Amish?”

  “You’re going to be Amish.”

  Kate didn’t know what to think. She knew as much about the Amish as did any other person who wasn’t actually Amish, she guessed. They didn’t drive cars, couldn’t use electricity, grew their own food, and were heavily religious.

  Kate had never made any effort to go to church. She believed in God, but had never really thought much about Him. She occasionally watched a televangelist on TV and found such shows uplifting, but only watched them when there was nothing else on.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “I suppose can handle that, so long as it’s not for too long.”

  “Good. My friend is named Abram. I met him years ago, when we were both pretty young, and he was on rumspringa at the time. Have you heard of rumspringa?”

  Kate nodded, “It’s where the Amish youth can drive cars and dress normal, that kind of thing?”

  David nodded. “Kind of. I’ve stayed in contact with Abram over the years, and he was the first person I thought of. He’s the bishop there, and he thinks we can get by, by saying you were in an accident, where a car hit your buggy, and you have a bit of amnesia. That will help cover any lapses in Amish procedure you make. And we’ll say you’re visiting from a smaller community from another state and the doctor there thought a change of scenery would do you good. Abram suggested we say you’re from a New Order Amish community, as some of them have electricity, so that will also help cover up any mistakes you make.”

  “Sounds like you think I’m going to make a lot of mistakes,” Kate said.

  David shrugged. “To tell you the truth, it won’t be easy. They have no electricity, no internet, no cell phones – you name it, they don’t have it. Pennsylvania is big time Amish country, so you’re definitely going to get quite the crash course.”

  “I’m not dressed for Amish country,” Kate said, and David laughed.

  “Abram’s going to help us with everything, don’t you worry. By the way, you are no longer Kate Briggs. Your new name is Katie Lambright, and don’t you forget it. You’re lucky that Katie is a common Amish name.”

  Kate bit her lip. Standard WITSEC procedure: similar name or same initials. For the first time she had a taste of what her own charges had to go through when they entered the witness protection program. She realized that she’d had no real appreciation of just quite how difficult it actually was.

  Still, the idea of her enigmatic boss having a good Amish friend amused her, and she knew she wasn’t going to be able to resist asking him about. “So how do you know Abram again?” she asked, trying not to sound too interested.

  David laughed and looked over at her. “You don’t think I have friends?”

  “I know you have friends; I didn’t think you had Amish friends.”

  “Like I said, I met him when he was on rumspringa,” David said.

  Kate nodded. “I’ve seen some reality shows,” she said. There was a lot of hotel TV going on in her day to day life. “When the Amish reach adulthood, they get to leave for some time, and see what life is like outside of their communities. Then they go back, and decide if being Amish is what they want.”

  “Basically,” David said. “I met Abram when he was on rumspringa, and believe it or not, I was a bit of a party animal growing up, and we hung out. He went back to his community, but we’ve traded letters ever since then.”

  “How did you get a hold of him so quickly? If he can’t use phones, I mean.”

  “Most Amish now have phones in their barns,” David said. “I’ve only ever sent letters before, although I did have his barn number. I called his number and left a message, and then he called me back. I laid everything out, and told Abram my idea, and he okayed it, and here we are.”

  “Here we are,” Kate said, glancing over at David. He always went to bat for her, and this was a big deal, and he had just dropped everything to come to her rescue.

  The impromptu road trip was a long one, but David and Kate did their best to have a good time, despite the attack the night before. Kate talked David into stopping at a small gas station and convenience store, where they stocked up on snacks, and even bought a bag of ice and a disposable cooler to store some cans of pop.

  “This isn’t a vacation,” David grumbled as he stood and watched her dump the ice into the cooler while he pumped some gas into the rental car. Kate straightened up and laughed.

  “It is for me, I guess. Who knows how long I’ll be relaxing on the farm.”

  David laughed, shaking his head a bit. “It’s worrisome that you think living on an Amish farm is going to be relaxing.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Kate asked.

  “It means you’d better learn how to churn butter real quick.”

  “Oh, come on; look at me; does it look like I don’t know how to churn butter?”

  David laughed. “Yes. Yes it does.”

  “All right, you got me. Let’s get back on the road. Abram is waiting.” Kate laughed.

  But Abram would have to wait longer, because shortly after the sun fell, David decided to stop off for the night, pulling into a badly paved lot of a run down motel in Missouri. David went into get two rooms, while Kate walked across the two lane road to a dingy diner and got a couple burgers for herself and her boss. By the time she had walked back to the motel with a bag of greasy food in her hand, David had rented two rooms next to one another and had moved Kate’s bag into her room for her.

  They ate their meal outside, sitting on the raised concrete walkway that separated the motel rooms from the parking lot. They ate in silence mostly, enjoying watching the Missouri moon rise higher into the sky, and the thousands of brilliant stars shining.

  They said goodnight after that, and Kate went to shower and then sleep. She lay down in her pajamas with wet hair, feeling too tired to dry it. It wouldn’t look great in the morning, but she figured by that time tomorrow she would be wearing a bonnet anyway.

  As she drifted off to sleep, she thought about what had happened, and where she was going. It scared her. A man had gone to her home, looking to kill her, and now she had to leave everything behind, at least for a little while, and learn how to function in a society so vastly different from the one she was used to.

  Isaiah 41: 17.

  When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them.

  Chapter 5.

  Kate stood in a field of wheat that was only half grown, the brown shafts rising to her waist, and swaying softly in the wind. She couldn’t see anyone, but in the distance she heard someone screaming, a woman, and the voice sounded familiar, although she couldn’t place who it was.

  And then there he was, charging at her from acros
s the field, starting at the edge and coming in fast. He trampled the wheat under his feet, kept running, held his hand high, and held something in it. The midday sun was fat and yellow and angry, and it threw down a ray of light that hit the object in the man’s hand and reflected it, and when Kate saw the glint, she knew it was a knife.

  She turned to run, but was wearing a skirt that stretched to her ankle, and restricted her from spreading her legs too far, and she fell forward. Her hands hit the dirt; her knees did too, much more painfully, and she heard the footsteps of the man as he neared her. She tried to get up, but she was too slow, and the man’s hand came down on her shoulder.

  Kate awoke then, panting and covered in a cold sweat that was drying quickly on her skin in the night time Missouri heat. It had been a dream, a nightmare, nothing real, just the worst possible thing her brain could have thought up at that time.

  There was a knock on her door. Kate knew it was David. She rose and took a deep breath while she walked to the door, placing her hand on the knob and exhaling slowly, her breath cool and crisp on her lips. She pulled the door open and smiled, and there her boss was, looking concerned.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, and Kate nodded.

  “Just a bad dream,” she replied.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure, thanks.”

  “All right.” He turned and left, and Kate shut the door. She went back to the bed, untangled the sheets from the column they had been rolled into, stooped and pulled the blanket off the floor and back to the bed. Then Kate climbed into bed and lay back, covering herself up and staring at the ceiling.