“Listen, Gina,” he said, keeping his voice low like he was dealing with a spooked and frightened animal. “I don’t want to kill you, and I don’t think you want to kill her. I think you’re just doing what you were told to do. Drop the weapon and get out of the car, nice and slow, and nobody needs to get hurt.”
The young woman’s head shook. “I can’t... Fisher...”
“Fisher is unconscious, I have his gun and I can take you somewhere he’ll never find you.” Jonathan stepped closer and raised the weapon. He had a clear shot now, just past Celeste’s shoulder. One shot and Gina would be dead. But he really didn’t want to take it.
Please let me help you.
A flurry of activity yanked his attention to the diner. The family was bursting through the door. The little girl screamed. The father shouted. Jonathan raised his badge and yelled.
“I’m a US marshal! Everyone get inside, lock the doors, stay away from the windows and call 9-1-1!”
A gun fired inside the car, sending glass flying as a bullet exploded through the windshield. Celeste tumbled backward out of the car and onto the ground, leaving Gina moaning and doubled over in the back seat. He blinked. Celeste looked up at him.
“She was going to shoot you,” Celeste explained. “So when she turned and aimed at you, I grabbed the gun and kicked her with both feet.”
The hat had fallen from her head. Her blond hair fell loose and wild around her shoulders. Gina’s gun was clenched in her hand. Looking down at her, Jonathan felt like he’d lived a thousand lives in one instant. You’re the most incredible person I’ve ever met. If I feel all this for you after less than a day, how will I ever let you go when all this is done? She handed him the gun. He took it with his left hand, then reached for her hand with his right and pulled her to his feet. Behind her, he could see Gina sobbing hysterically in the back seat of the car.
“Come on!” He squeezed her hand and felt it tighten in his. “We’ve got to run.”
They ran for the truck. He threw the door open, and practically lifted her up into the passenger seat. He closed the door behind her the moment she was clear, then ran around to the other side, allowing himself one glance back. Fisher had roused and was groaning. Gina was crying so hard she her body shook. The diner’s blinds had closed and the lights went off. He prayed for the safety of those inside.
“What were you thinking, fighting her for the gun?” he demanded. They peeled out of the parking lot. One hand was clamped on the steering wheel, the other dialed Chief Deputy Hunter. “Don’t get me wrong. It was impressive. It was incredible. I can’t tell if I should be in awe or infuriated. But you also should’ve trusted me to handle it. You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”
“The gun wasn’t pointed at me!” Celeste spluttered. “It was pointed at you. I’m not an idiot. I waited until she was distracted, I was out of the line of fire and then I fought her for it. It was smart.”
“It was risky!” His head shook. The phone rang. He couldn’t figure out if he wanted to yell at Celeste or kiss her right now. But neither was an option and neither urge made his job any easier. “Yeah, it was brave. You’ve got guts. I’ll give you that. But if I die they’ll just find another marshal to protect you. If you die, there’ll be no one to testify against Dexter Thomes at his trial! Remember that!”
“Chief Deputy Louise Hunter.” His boss’s voice filled his earpiece.
“There’s been an incident,” Jonathan said. He filled her in quickly and gave her the location, a description of Fisher, Gina and the vehicle in rapid fire. “The diner seems to have gone on lockdown. Hopefully they’ve called 9-1-1.”
“I’ll make sure the 9-1-1 call went through and that authorities are on the way,” Hunter said. “Where are you now?”
“We’re back on the road and headed west. We’re still en route to—”
The phone clicked. Celeste had hung up his phone.
* * *
“What are you doing?” he demanded, and the determination and fire in his face nearly shook her resolve.
Instead, her fingers tightened over the phone.
“What are you doing?” She threw his words back at him. “You wanted to get rid of my tablet, but you’re still using a cell phone?”
“It’s my work phone!” His voice rose.
“It’s traceable and hackable!” Her voice rose to match it. “Do you think the fact I logged into the tablet is what made two random criminals show up at the diner? Well, I’m telling you it probably wasn’t. Because it’s not putting out a signal. Your phone is.”
“You honestly think these criminals are sophisticated enough to hack a government-issued cell phone?”
“Yeah.” Her chin rose. “I do!”
She could feel her feet digging into the floorboards beneath her feet. He was wrong, and she was right. She knew it. Problem was she had no idea how to convince him of that. He was the most stubborn man she’d ever met. And while she kind of admired his resolve and found it attractive, right now it was infuriating that he wasn’t respecting her expertise.
“Look,” she said. “I don’t know how to convince you. I can’t prove it to you without access to the right tools, and I might be wrong. Maybe both of our devices are clean and they found out we were there another way. But it’s important you know that it’s a possibility.”
Jonathan’s jaw set. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. He made a sharp turn to the left. The truck sped away from the highway and toward a strip of buildings.
“Let’s set up a test of some sort,” she said. “We put my tablet in one location and your cell phone in another. Then we wait and see if criminals show up at either place.”
A run-of-the-mill truck stop was coming up quickly on their left.
“Can you wipe it?” he asked. “Quickly. Erase everything on it.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Do it,” he said. “Now.”
He swiftly shifted into the left-hand lane. Her finger fumbled with the buttons. Was he really asking her to wipe a law enforcement cell phone clear? She took a deep breath and wiped it.
“Done,” she said. “But a really tech-savvy person with the right skills and tools might be able to reconstruct some of it.”
“Give it to me.” He stuck his hand out and she dropped the phone into it. He pulled a hard left, crossing the highway and swerved into a truck stop. He rolled the window down, then as she watched, he smashed the cell phone hard against the side of the truck over and over again, until all that was left in his hand were cracked and mangled pieces. With the quick flick of his hand he tossed the pieces into a dumpster. Then he pulled back onto the highway. They sped in the opposite direction.
Her lips fell open. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“You made a good point,” he said. “If you were wrong, I lost a cell phone. If you were right, my phone was putting us is danger. Now, can you give me your word that it is completely impossible we’re being tracked through your tablet?”
No, she couldn’t. Someone could have remotely re-enabled the internet after she’d disabled it, or the device could’ve been infected with some kind of virus. But she was 99 percent certain and it was a risk she was willing to take. Did he have any idea how important the data on the tablet was? Or how impossible it would be for her to ever get her hands on it again? Frustrated tears pressed against the corners of her eyes. “No, I can’t. It’s very, very unlikely, but not impossible.”
An access road lay ahead on the right. He slowed the truck and turned into it. Thick trees surrounded them on all sides. He pulled to a stop, turned and looked at her.
“Do you agree that our location is being tracked, somehow?” he asked. “We can agree on that, right? Because while there’s no logical reason those criminals should’ve been able to find the location of the safe house, even if there was a leak within the US Mar
shals office—unlikely though that is—or they somehow hacked into somebody’s emails, that still wouldn’t explain how they found us at a random diner I told nobody we were stopping at.”
“Agreed. Could they have tracked your truck?”
“Possibly.” He stroked along the edges of his beard. “But that means they tracked both trucks, somehow, without knowing I was going to change vehicles, and decided to attack us in a public place instead of all the much more convenient and more remote places on the roads we’ve taken to set up an ambush. And between the clear blue sky and empty roads I definitely would’ve noticed if we were being physically followed.”
She pressed her lips together. He was right.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t destroy this data. It’s my only hope of ever finding where Dexter hid the stolen money. We can save it to a memory stick. Or even just print it! Paper is better than nothing. It doesn’t have to be on an electronic device. I just don’t want to lose it.”
His eyes closed and for a long moment he almost wondered if he was praying. Then his dark eyes were on her face again. A smile crossed his lips that warmed every corner of her heart.
“I just remembered I have a memory stick that nobody’s touched but me. Got it years ago and it’s been on my key chain ever since. What if we transferred the data onto the memory stick and I promised to hold on to it until I find another option. Okay?”
She nodded. She didn’t like it, but he’d smashed his phone because he’d trusted her. She could do the same and trust him. “Okay.”
“Deal.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out the tablet and gave it to her. Then he slowly worked a small, flat and bright yellow bobble off his key chain. “I got this years ago at a youth conference I went to as a teenager at a church that wasn’t mine. The speaker talked about God having a plan for our lives and it was just so inspiring that I picked up a copy of the talk on the way out. I can guarantee that unless someone broke into my home and pilfered it from my bedside table while I was sleeping, or literally picked my pockets, stole my keys and slipped them back without my knowing, nobody has touched this but me. Is there any way people can trace the data itself?”
“Not if I save it as a plain text file.” She plugged it into the side of the tablet, turned it on, converted the file to plain text and downloaded it to the memory stick. The whole thing took less than thirty seconds. Then she gave the tablet back to Jonathan. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
He slid the memory stick back onto his key chain. Then he drove back and forth over the tablet until it was nothing but a collection of shards he then collected up and threw in a trash can. They kept driving. She leaned back in her seat and watched the memory stick swing as it dangled from the keys in the ignition.
Now what, Lord? I’m trying so hard to believe You have a purpose for my life. But I feel like I’ve just lost the last sliver of who I was.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“I call my boss, fill her in on everything that’s happened, make sure we’re still on track as per our destination and get someone to meet us there with a new cell phone for me. I’m still not happy with the idea of you using an electronic device, not until we know more about what’s going on. But I’ll ask if somebody can bring us something we can use to print your data out on paper so at least you have something to go over it with. Oh, and also to bring you a box of pencils.”
He cut her a sideways glance. A grin crossed his face and it was definitely growing on her. She felt a smile twitch at the corner of her lips. Had she ever smiled this much before? In school, she’d always been accused of being too serious and not knowing how to lighten up. Since then countless men in stores, coffee shops and the street had accused her of not smiling. Now somehow, in the middle of everything that had gone on, this one equally serious man was making her smile. It was an unfamiliar feeling. She liked it. “Don’t forget a pencil sharpener.”
He guffawed like a clap of thunder disappearing into the rain. “Deal.”
The smile faded and a darker look moved through his features. He looked straight ahead again. “There’s a town about thirty minutes east from here called Hope’s Creek. It’s pretty far off the beaten path, but it has public phone booths in the center of town. I can call Hunter’s secure line from there.”
“Public phones?” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a phone booth anywhere—at least one what was functional and not covered with graffiti. “What kind of small town still has public phone booths?”
“It’s near a large sprawling Amish community.” He still wasn’t meeting her gaze.
“But the Amish don’t believe in telephones! Just like they don’t believe in electricity or cars.”
A totally different laugh left his lips now. It was a bitter one that emanated from the back of his throat, and it was almost like he’d tried to bite it back and failed.
“You make it sound like they don’t believe they exist,” he said. “Of course they do. They just have a very different relationship with technology than the Englisch. That’s the term they use for the outside world, and people like you and me. A lot of them hire cars, use electricity in their businesses or use public phones when they need to. They just don’t believe in letting technology take over lives and ruin relationships. If you don’t have a phone in the home, then you pay more attention to the people you’re with. If you don’t have electric lights you get better sleep at night and wake up ready to face the day. If you don’t have a car...” His voice trailed off into a sigh. “If you don’t have a car you never move too far away. Living by the Ordnung, which I guess you’d call the rules the Amish live by, is not about hiding from the world. It’s about having everything in the correct balance, in relationship with others and Gott.”
“Well, I didn’t know that,” she said. It was one of the longest monologues she’d heard come from his mouth. “But I like learning, and I’ve always wanted to know more about the Amish. The thing I’m going to miss most about the internet is the ability to find out about things I don’t know much about.”
He released a long breath.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That came out stronger than I intended. I just don’t like anyone judging people by their appearances. And in my experience, too many people just see a beard or a bonnet, and don’t even try to see the person underneath.”
“Hey, I get it,” she said. She reached across the center of the truck. Her hand brushed his sleeve and she felt the strength of his arm under her fingers. “It’s okay. I’m a female computer programmer. I was the only woman in some of my university classes. I get horrible messages from strangers online when they realize I’m a woman. I get what it’s like when people judge based on appearances.” He smiled. It was a good smile and a relieved one, like he was worried that he’d somehow offended her and was glad to know he hadn’t. They lapsed into silence. The sun rose even higher. Bright blue filled the sky above them. Then she saw a buggy out her window. It was driven by an older man with a long white beard. Then there were more buggies with the young and old, men and women, families with kids, and groups she guessed were friends. She glanced at Jonathan. “I can see what you meant earlier. It does look like fun.”
But his face was as serious as a man driving to his own funeral. She frowned as an uncomfortable thought crossed her mind, one that had been nagging at her for a while.
“Can I ask you a question?” she asked. “Why didn’t you kill Gina? You had the shot. Instead, you showed mercy.”
He ran his hand over the back of his head. “I didn’t need to kill her.”
“You didn’t kill Fisher, either,” she said. “Or Miller. Or Lee...”
“I haven’t killed anyone,” he said. “I’m not in the business of going around killing people I don’t have to kill. Whether I’m escorting a prisoner who’s trying to escape or part of a manhunt scouring the cou
ntryside for a criminal or putting my life on the line to protect a witness like you, if there’s a way—any way—the criminal I’m up against can end up in court, facing justice instead of dying by my bullet, I will always choose justice and mercy.”
“Have you ever taken a life?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “A few times I’ve shot someone so severely I honestly believed the wound would be fatal. But each time, thankfully, they’d been saved by paramedics.”
She paused, pondering her next question. Instead, to her surprise, his hand reached for hers and she felt the warmth of his fingers brush her skin.
“Trust me, Celeste,” he added. “I believe in you. You stopped a criminal no one else could, and if anyone can find that missing money it’s you. If I’m ever faced with a choice between pulling a trigger and letting somebody hurt you, I will save your life.”
EIGHT
Not much had changed, Jonathan thought, as he slowly eased his truck toward Hope’s Creek. It was a small town, with an official population of just a couple of thousand but many more living in the sprawling Amish farms spread out through the countryside, including his own family and people he’d grown up with. The ice-cream store was closed for the winter, but the faded sign was the same. The florist had a new name, but the hardware store looked exactly as he remembered it. Amish community, at least as he’d known it, had centered around family and friends. Even church had been held in the people’s homes. Hope’s Creek used to be his entire world. Yet, he couldn’t say he had ever expected this to be his world forever. No, something inside him had always prompted and pushed him to go out into the world and make a difference.
As a child, he’d believed with his whole heart it was God. But his bruder, Amos, had told him in no uncertain terms that it couldn’t be, and his pa’s quiet and stubbornly simple faith had made him feel impossible to talk to. Something defiant inside Jonathan had decided his only option was to leave. He’d been eighteen, mourning the loss of his mother and like a horse with blinders on. But now that he’d chased after that calling and become the man he’d thought he was supposed to be, where was he? The two parts of him were like oil and water, or two magnets repelling each other. Amos was right. He could never be both Amish and a cop. And now he was back, for the length of a single phone call, just a short buggy ride away from the only place he’d ever considered home.
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