Colton Destiny Read online

  “A stranger out there would likely have been noticed, yes,” he said. His voice was soft, taking on an almost husky note. She didn’t dare let herself speculate on why, afraid she’d convince herself it was simply because she’d said his name.

  Determinedly, she kept going. “Then that leaves someone else.”

  “If you eliminate people we know and strangers, what is left?” he asked, his brows raised.

  “Someone who’s both,” she said.

  Chapter 18

  Emma was angry that it had taken her a few days to work her way around to this. The fact that a stranger abduction was the most logical didn’t mean she could ignore other possibilities. Even though the retention rate in the Amish community was high, a few people did leave.

  She supposed she’d just gotten it into her head that if anyone left, it would be a difficult decision, abandoning all they’d ever known, leaving this peaceful, calm life for the frenetic “other” world. And that they would leave either regretfully or eagerly, but not angrily or with hatred for their family or the way they lived.

  “You’re letting your own feelings color this,” she muttered to herself.

  Just because she was feeling the pull of this quiet, unruffled existence didn’t mean it wasn’t anathema to others, even—or perhaps especially—some of those who had grown up with it. And that quiet, unruffled existence was still peopled by humans, with all their failings and some of the same problems the outside world had.

  She guessed a psychopath could just as easily be born Amish. Which would be a great study for some shrink arguing the nature-versus-nurture case.

  She reined her mind back in, irritated anew; she’d never been prone to wandering, philosophical thoughts like this, and she didn’t have time for it now. She looked at the mostly checked-off list she held. Last night Caleb had given her a couple of names, but said he was sure there were more he didn’t know. Emma would have thought the decision of a child to leave would have been big news in the small community, and was at first surprised Caleb hadn’t been able to name them all off himself.

  “Ones in the past, yes,” he’d said quietly. “In the last three years, no.”

  She’d felt herself flush, embarrassed that she hadn’t realized what should have been clear—Caleb hadn’t been paying much attention to anything but his own pain since the death of his wife. And as always, that was the one thing that could throw cold water on her silly reaction to him.

  He had told her Mrs. Stoltzfus was her best source; she would know not only who had left but why and if they were still in touch with their family here, how often and just about everything they’d done since leaving. Every community, it seemed, had its information clearinghouse. And Mrs. Stoltzfus indeed had had all the information she could want.

  So she’d spent today, armed with more details than she could remember at the moment, once more making rounds, stopping to talk with families who had lost one to the outside world. She had expected reluctance to speak of the lost one, and she’d been right so far; it had been like pulling out splinters, especially compared to the voluble Mrs. Stoltzfus. But no matter how disappointed they were in the person’s decision, none of them could even begin to take seriously that they would do such a thing.

  “Those Ohio Amish, from where you are, perhaps,” one matron told her now, rather stiffly, despite Emma’s effort to explain she was merely exploring other avenues. “But not here. And not my Solomon.”

  So, Emma thought as she thanked Mrs. Miller for her

  cooperation—which in fact had been more than lacking—and made her escape, was there really a social-order system of sorts among the greater Amish community? Did one think of itself as more observant than another and therefore more worthy?

  Or was it simply that there were women like Mrs. Miller in every community, Amish or not?

  Emma smiled to herself as she headed back to the ranch truck. Some things, it seemed, were indeed universal, including some personality types. Perhaps her precious Solomon had had good reason to leave that had little to do with his life here and much to do with his mother.

  Even during the short time she’d been inside this last house, it had gone from afternoon to dark with the speed of this time of year. And just as quickly it had gone from brisk to downright cold, and she hastened her steps, glad the truck had a very efficient heater.

  She was warm by the time she reached the main street of Paradise Ridge. It was already closing down, but the lamps were still on in the bakery, and on impulse she stopped. She would take a pie home to the ranch, she thought. It would be welcomed, and she could kid herself into thinking it was just the food and warmth that had made her feel so welcome in Caleb’s home.

  The young woman behind the counter was as gracious and smiling as Mrs. Miller had been grim and forbidding. Emma smiled back, placing her as the daughter of the woman who normally ran the bakery, who was also Mrs. Miller. Mrs. Miller number one, Emma thought, to differentiate the much more kindly woman from the Mrs. Miller number two she’d talked to earlier today.

  The girl quickly boxed up the Dutch apple Emma picked out, and tucked in an extra couple of turnovers as well, saying as her last customer of the day, she might as well take them with her so they wouldn’t be discarded.

  “Thank you. Leah, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. And you’re...Agent Colton?” The woman’s smile faltered as she acknowledged Emma was no ordinary customer. When she had to reluctantly tell her there was no news on the missing girls, Emma felt that knot in her stomach that was growing every day. She’d been here less than a week, true, but she felt she’d made absolutely no progress. Just as back home in Ohio, whoever had done this had done it quickly, efficiently and without any fuss to draw attention.

  And the fact that the Amish were so isolated, so used to dealing with their own problems and avoiding outsiders, didn’t help any.

  Emma glanced outside into the darkness. “How are you getting home?” she asked the young woman. She was older than the targets had been so far, but not by much, and she was pretty. And alone.

  “Walking, of course,” she answered, sounding surprised. “I only live two blocks down.”

  Emma knew the answer would have been the same if the distance had been miles. “Let me walk with you.”

  “Oh, surely it will be all right. It’s so close.”

  “But it’s dark, and better to be safe.”

  The flash of gratitude in the young woman’s eyes told Emma she’d guessed right. The undercurrent of fear in Paradise Ridge had by now reached all corners and was powerful enough to batter against the walls of faith that kept this community strong.

  She set the bakery box in the truck, then waited while Leah turned out the lamps, covered the counters and locked up. Emma had talked to her briefly at the meeting, but she’d been with her parents, and beyond having known Hannah, she had had little to say.

  “I’m sorry there’s no news yet,” she said as they started to walk. “I know Hannah was a friend of yours.”

  “I knew her,” the girl said, as she had before. “But she’s younger than I. Actually, I looked after her now and then when she was a child.”

  “Really? What was she like?”

  Leah gave her a sideways look. Emma saw the hesitation there.

  “It can’t hurt, and it might help,” she said quietly.

  With a little sigh Leah went on. “She was...rebellious. No, that sounds too strong, and she was too kind to be angry. She was...”

  “Restless?” Emma suggested.

  “Yes,” the girl said with relief. “That’s it.” Again she hesitated, but this time went on without prompting. “I always thought if anyone would choose the world of the English, it would be Hannah.”

  “Do you think that’s what she did?”

  “No,” Leah said quickly. “Not like that. She would never leave the girls without a word. Her nieces. She adores them. Especially little Grace. She was practically her mother after—” she ducke
d her eyes hastily “—Mrs. Troyer died.”

  Emma didn’t miss the telling dodge of the eyes and mentally added Leah to the list of young women with their eye on Caleb.

  Can you blame them? she thought. Did you really think you were the only one he has this effect on?

  “Did you know Miriam and Rebecca?”

  “I knew them, of course. We all know each other. But they’re even younger than Hannah, so they were...just kids.”

  Emma nodded in understanding as they neared the small, tidy house with a freshly painted fence, a neat garden now lying fallow for the winter except for a few late crops and the now-familiar warm, golden glow of the gas lamps in the window.

  “I’m sorry I can’t help,” Leah said.

  She sounded miserable, and Emma reassured her quickly. “Don’t be. It’s perfectly normal that you spend most of your time with people your own age. And you have your own family to focus on.”

  “Seven brothers,” she said, and Emma thought there was a wry note in her voice.

  “I have four,” Emma said with an empathetic laugh. “I know what you mean.”

  On that companionable note they parted, although Emma, after declining the tentative offer to come inside for something warm to drink, waited until the girl was safely inside. Then she turned and started back toward the truck, once more turning it all over in her mind, wondering if at last she’d found the right direction, if perhaps someone who was known and yet no longer known was the key to it all.

  She had the truck unlocked and was sliding into the driver’s seat before she noticed the slip of paper under the windshield wiper. She got out again to look, saw that it was a torn strip of lined paper like that used in spiral notebooks everywhere. She reached for it, then stopped. She leaned back into the truck and reached for her kit, a small aluminum case that went everywhere and contained, among other things, a minimal evidence kit. She grabbed a pair of latex gloves, snapped them on, picked out a small, flat plastic ziplock bag, then reached for the note.

  And nearly dropped it the moment she looked at it.

  Emma felt her knees wobble. She grasped for some rational thought, some way for this not to be what it looked like, but her brain had locked, and her own voice was screaming so loudly in her head she wasn’t at all sure she wasn’t letting it out into the suddenly frigid air.

  The words seemed to almost dance on the ripped page, taunting, swirling, laughing at her, the odd rows of numbers along the edges seeming to spin in place.

  The words. She stared at them.

  Must I be a Christian child,

  Gentle patient meek and mild?

  Oh yes, I must cheerfully obey

  Giving up my will and way.

  I must.

  I must.

  The words, she thought desperately. She’d seen them before. Or some form of them. The image of a verse posted in the schoolroom where the community meeting had been flashed through her mind. A nursery rhyme, almost the same words as these, yet commanding, not questioning as this did.

  A nursery rhyme, twisted and broken to mean something entirely different.

  Another fractured nursery rhyme. Written in a child’s crayon. Just like the other.

  A chill deeper than any winter seized her, as if an arctic blast had swept in. Deeper because this chill came from inside, from that deep, buried place where she kept the memories of those nine eternal days of hell she’d endured at the hands of the monster she refused to honor with a name.

  She tried to focus, tried over and over to tell herself it couldn’t be, it simply couldn’t be. The numbers, those were different. The writing itself was different. It couldn’t be.

  But it could be. Hadn’t she lived with that fear from the moment she’d gotten notice that her nightmare was going to be set loose? Hadn’t her anger nearly consumed her, no matter how often Tate had told her it was just the way the system, too often, didn’t work? His words hadn’t worked then, and they wouldn’t work now. Because now she felt no anger, only that icy cold.

  So cold she was surprised her heart kept beating. So cold she doubted she would ever be warm again. She felt as if something was quaking deep inside her, some tiny bit of humanity that was curling in on itself, preparing to die.

  She didn’t know what to do. She was a highly trained federal agent, she’d dealt with criminals of every evil stripe, and yet now she stood here, helpless, too frozen to move. It was dark and quiet here in Paradise Ridge at this hour; there was no one to call out to, if she could even find her voice.

  She realized she was shaking, that inward cold gripping harder. She tried to move, tried to use that skill of compartmentalization that had enabled her to keep going in the face of horrors most people would never see.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t shove the evil back into it’s cage. It was too strong and right now she too weak to deal. Tate would tell her to man up and get past it, but he’d always given her credit for more strength than she’d ever really believed she had. It wasn’t Tate’s bracing words she wanted.

  She didn’t want to freeze to death standing here.

  She just wanted to be warm again.

  Chapter 19

  Caleb had been staring at the same page for...he didn’t know exactly how long. It wasn’t that the book wasn’t interesting. It was; he favored historical biographies, liked to know about other lives in other places, even if he would never experience either firsthand. But he was having trouble concentrating, and after reading one page repeatedly and still having absorbed little of it, he finally leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment.

  The girls were settled in bed. They’d eaten well tonight, thanks to Mrs. Yoder’s contribution of a roasted chicken. The meal had been a quiet one. The girls were becoming more and more concerned about their beloved aunt, and Caleb knew his own deepening worry was affecting them. Just as it was poking at him, prodding at him, telling him he should be doing something, not just sitting here waiting for outsiders to find her.

  And yet what choice did he have? He had the girls to take care of, and he had no idea how to do any more than had already been done. He’d done his share of hunting; he could follow a trail, if there was one to follow. But there wasn’t.

  And that realization, along with his growing fear that Hannah might never be found, had pushed him into near silence tonight. The entire evening had been a marked contrast to the lively chatter that had gone on when Emma had joined them. He told himself he preferred the quiet, but he couldn’t help remembering the way the girls had smiled and laughed the entire time she’d been with them.

  He couldn’t help remembering the way he had smiled and laughed the entire time she’d been with them.

  His eyes snapped open and he shook his head sharply. Perhaps he should go to bed if he was so weary he couldn’t keep control of his thoughts. Of course, in sleep all controls slipped, and no one knew that better than he. For months after Annie’s death, his nights had been haunted by her image. Images that the most fervent prayers had been unable to stop.

  And now they were haunted anew, fleeting dreams of an auburn-haired Englishwoman who tempted his soul, and he hated it.

  Except that he didn’t.

  He heard the sounds of someone on the gravel walkway. He glanced at the clock on the shelf across the room. The old, steady heirloom that had been his grandfather’s, and which was wound carefully every night, read a quarter to nine, late for callers. People rose early here, and it wasn’t like them—

  He slapped the book closed with a snap.

  It wasn’t like them, so it must be someone else.

  “Emma,” he breathed, surging to his feet with an eagerness that embarrassed him once he realized where his mind had leaped.

  He made himself walk slowly to the door. Or thought he did; there had still been no knock by the time he reached it. Yet he was certain he’d heard footsteps on the porch. Curious, and a little wary, he opened the door.

  Light from inside spilled out
onto the porch. The very woman who had so invaded his thoughts was standing there. The light caught the fire of her hair, and his reaction reminded him anew of why the women of his world wore coverings; this rich, thick fall of hair was definitely an adornment.

  She looked up. Her eyes were wide and dark, and so full of dread it sent a shiver through him. And then he realized that she was shivering, from head to toe, shaking as if it were much, much colder than it actually was.

  “Emma,” he said.

  She just stared at him with those eyes. His breath caught.

  “Hannah?” he whispered, fearing the absolute worst.

  For a moment she didn’t react, as if she were having trouble processing. Then she shook her head, relieving that fear at least.

  But doing nothing to explain why she was here and in such a state.

  “Emma,” he said again, “what’s wrong?”

  “I—”

  Her teeth were chattering. He looked closer; the only way he could think of for her to be this cold was if she’d gotten soaked somehow or had been outside too long without a coat. But she wore the dark blue parka he’d seen before, and she appeared to be dry. Yet still she shivered and seemed too cold to even speak.

  Finally galvanized, he moved. He stepped out and put his arm around her, urging her inside. He resisted, with some difficulty, the urge to simply take her in his arms and warm her with his own heat, since it had spiked as usual at the sight of her.

  While she stood, shaking, he grabbed one of the big upholstered chairs and pulled it over next to the woodstove. He’d been letting the fire dwindle while he’d tried to read, but he stoked it back up now, adding two pieces of well-seasoned wood that caught quickly.

  He sat Emma in the chair—and she let him, without protest, which told him much about her state of mind—then walked to a trunk that sat against the far wall, opened it and took out a thick blue blanket. He came back and wrapped it around her. Then he pulled up a wood chair from the table and sat opposite her, waiting.