Finding Mercy

More than once, when Ella darted a quick glance his way, their guest—Andrew—had those sharp blue eyes still on her. Later, when she placed his roast beef and gravy sandwich in front of him, she said, “Things are upside down today, first dessert, now the main course.”

“I appreciate both,” he said directly, quietly to her, then addressed everyone in a louder voice. “I mean to pitch in and help any way I can, though I’ve got to admit, planting a memorial tree after 9/11 is about as close as I’ve come to farming.”

“Oh, ya,” Daad said, “9/11, when the country was attacked and so many people died. Whatever is in the evil and sad past in your life, Andrew, we will keep you safe here.”

Ella was amazed to see tears shimmer in Andrew’s eyes. His lower lip quivered. He looked just the way she felt when she was afraid of the drowning darkness she had shared with no one and never could. She fought the desire to put her hand on his shoulder and began to serve the others.

2

THAT EVENING AS dusk descended, Ella worked late in Seth’s house. No, it was her place now, she reminded herself as she carried cartons of lavender products in from her work shed. Kitchen cabinets and counters, two long tables and planks on sawhorses would have to do for shelves and work areas until she could get everything built the way she wanted. She hoped to buy a still someday so she could distill the precious lavender oil. At least she’d finished stitching her dress to attend Hannah at her wedding. She’d been thrilled when Hannah asked her to be one of the side sitters, special friends of the wedding couple.

From dowels overheard, Ella hung the remaining bunches of last year’s dried flowers by the rubber bands around their stems. Instantly, the kitchen and living area, even the two small first-floor bedrooms, gave off the familiar, delicate smell. Sometimes she was so used to the scent that her nose went numb from it, but it was deep in her mind and heart and she could imagine it. The kitchen here bothered her, but not because it was so small. On its wooden floor, Seth’s wife, Lena, had died of an aortic aneurism, something she’d carried inside since birth and no one knew about.

Ella lit a third kerosene lantern to keep away sad thoughts. Her black mood had been lurking lately, probably because Seth and her little charge Marlena had left. Ella guessed worldly people would call her malady an off-and-on depression. Secretly, from books in the book mobile, she’d looked up the problem, but she still just wasn’t sure what to call it or how to best cope with it. She hoped it wasn’t what she read about bipolar disorder. Mostly, she just hid out when it hit her. You’d think nearly drowning would make every second of life that followed full of relief and joy, but that cold, grasping whirlpool seemed to pull her under sometimes, as it had then.

At least the hard work of producing her small number of Lavender Plain Products kept her focused outside herself. Now her family’s new houseguest gave her lots to think about. Since she’d moved her things into the previous unused upstairs here, “Cousin” Andrew was being given her bedroom. How strange to think of an intriguing mystery man sleeping in her once private place.

She decided to go back to the farmhouse to get the refrigerated items Hannah had brought her from the restaurant for her generator-run fridge. It had been so kind of Ray-Lynn and Hannah to think of a sort of housewarming gift for her, and she was going to give both of them scented candles when she got settled here.

But as she stepped out on her back porch, she saw a figure jogging down the lane from the house or barn. In the gathering gloom, she could see clean white shoes. Those, and the fact no one Amish went jogging, told her who it was. His quick steps spit gravel in a regular rhythm. But it was almost dark, and even buggies should stay off the roads now.

Earlier, she’d seen Daad take Andrew for a tour of the barn and the fields—back to the pond too, a place she always tried to avoid. Then she’d seen Mamm showing him around their big garden, pointing out and naming flowers and vegetables as if he were from another planet. It was pretty obvious to them that their adopted cousin had no idea of how to garden or farm. But Daad and the boys would teach him. She sure could use his help weeding her lavender beds, but she hadn’t dared say so.

Ella headed for the farmhouse. Since her brothers had carried her bedroom furniture to her new place after supper, maybe this would be her last trip tonight. Trail bologna, Swiss cheese, some of Ray-Lynn’s delicious baked goods; she’d seen how much Andrew had appreciated their food… Ach, she had to stop thinking about him so much, just because he was new and different. Too much happening around here at once, but maybe that would help her keep her head above water—she always thought of it that way....

She was almost to the farmhouse when she heard a long squeal of car brakes, then a crash. Not far down the road! What if a car had hit a buggy? It happened too often, and who came out the loser then? Little Marlena’s maternal grandparents had been killed in a buggy car crash in the area that sound came from—the direction Andrew had run.

What if a car had hit him, jogging in the dark on the road?

Not even taking time to call for help inside the house, she lifted her long skirt and broke into a run in the same direction he had gone.

* * *

When Ray-Lynn Logan heard the screech of brakes and the bang! she stopped her van right in the middle of the road.

She’d given her restaurant manager, Hannah Esh, the day off to help her fiancé, Seth, get settled at the Troyer house and to help her family prepare for her wedding day. Ray-Lynn had promised she’d pick her up after she closed the restaurant, and bring her home. Hannah had been living with her ever since Ray-Lynn’s concussion and coma, though of course Hannah was leaving this week to begin her new life as Seth Lantz’s wife and little Marlena’s mother. After her accident—which was really an attempted murder—Ray-Lynn had lost a couple of years of her memories, and that was about how long she’d had the restaurant. Worst of all, she’d forgotten her entire relationship with Jack, the county sheriff, which they were trying to rebuild—a relationship she still wanted to work, thank goodness. As appealing a man as Jack Freeman was, that kind of love—romance—she could not just fake.

But she was certain of what she’d just heard. Her accident had been at night too. She shouldn’t have driven out after dark even now, but she had to learn to cope again, to be normal.

Sweating, shaking, she knew she couldn’t just sit here in her new van in the middle of the road, even a usually quiet, country road in Amish country. She hit her emergency blinkers, fumbled for the cell phone in her big purse and punched in the easy-dial for Jack’s private number. He’d know it was her from the caller ID. He had to answer! Good! No recording. He was picking up.

“Honey, you home?” he asked before she could say a word. His voice sounded so good. “I had a domestic outside of town, didn’t get a chance to call you yet, but—”

“Jack, I’m in the van on Oakridge just before Troyer Mill Road, going to pick up Hannah! I—I’m not hallucinating, but I just heard a car hit something—it’s wrecked—I’m sure of it.”

“What direction from there?”

“Before the covered bridge, but past the Amish cemetery, not too far from that pond in the woods. I’m afraid to go look.”

“Keep clear of it. Go on back to the bishop’s house and wait there. I’ll check it out right now.”

“But Hannah will worry about me. You know she does.”

“You can explain to her later. Just do what I said, and I’ll look into it.”

He punched off. Yes, she should do as he said, but what if she could help someone the way others had helped her? The old Ray-Lynn, the one who was so outgoing, feisty and strong—she had to get her back so she could be the woman Hannah and Jack both assured her had made him fall in love with her. How could a take-charge man like Sheriff Jack Freeman ever love a wimpy, wishy-washy, scared little rabbit? Ding-dang, she still had to recover her old self!

She turned on her brights, put the van into Drive and headed down the road toward where she’d heard the crash.

* * *

Alex’s first reaction when the car roared down the road toward him was to dive out of the way, not even be seen. At least the roar hadn’t included gunfire. Since Atlanta, he’d been paranoid about loud sounds, about vehicles backfiring or even speeding up. If there was a contract out on his life, did he just have to fear guns or could someone try something else? A car accident would look a lot more natural than bullets in the brain.

Praying his location had not been compromised again, he leaped off the narrow road. The speeding car had barely missed him as it vaulted up and over the next hill ahead—and then the crash.

At least the ditch where he’d landed was dry, but when he got to his feet and tried to climb out, he realized he’d twisted his left ankle. Idiot! He’d been so desperate to run for a while, savor the safety and freedom of this place. Now how was he going to get to that wreck, get back to the farm and the Lantzes?

He had to go up and over a hill to see if he could help. When others came, he’d have to fade away, try to cut through the woods past the pond Eben had showed him on his tour this evening.

Alex limped up the hill, which seemed endless. A sharp pain stabbed his ankle with each step. What else bad could happen to him? His past in ruins, his life endangered, probably a price on his head. But he couldn’t just leave someone who might be hurt or dead. As much of a jerk as the driver had been to speed on these hills, Alex couldn’t leave someone in need, no matter if his own hide was in danger.

Running footsteps behind him. What if this was a setup? Someone tried to flush him out with the headlights, tried to hit him, but he’d jumped aside, now they’d make sure…

He hunkered down just off the road—no ditch this high on the hill—and saw a person running toward him. A woman? Her light-colored apron and the white cap Amish women wore seemed to glow in the dark. His eyes had adjusted after staring into the headlights of that car.

He stood and limped onto the berm of the road. The woman running toward him stopped. “Andrew? Oh, thank the Lord, you’re all right! I heard that car crash like it hit something.”

“I sprained my ankle getting out of its way. Can I lean on you? I’m pretty sure the crash was just on the other side of the hill.”

“Oh, ya, sure. Is it bad? If it hurts too much, I can just go see. That crash was loud. Surely someone else will come. They didn’t hit a buggy, did they—or if you didn’t see it, only heard it…”

He could tell she was nervous too, and not only because of the wreck. Did she not want him to touch her, put his arm around her shoulders? Ella was pretty, the lavender lady, with the white-blond hair and pale blue eyes. She had a great bod her Amish garments could not quite hide and an almost angelic face, framed by that stiff white cap. Unlike her mother and grandmother, Ella had her feelings written plain on her face, emotions that flitted past and changed. He’d been upset to hear he was being given her bedroom, but Mrs. Lantz had assured him that Ella had already planned to move to the small house on the other side of the garden and her big field.

“Okay, sure, lean on me,” she told him, stepping closer. Strange that, just as he reached his arm to touch her, the new moon popped over the horizon behind her head. Its sickle shape didn’t give them much light but, in the midst of his fear, it seemed strangely like a celestial smile.

* * *

At the bottom of the hill, the side of a small, red sports car was wrapped around a big tree. And the hood of the car was evidently on fire. As they trudged toward it together, their awkward gait—Alex was now half hopping, just putting pressure on his good leg—reminded Ella of a three-legged race.

When they got there, they both gasped. It looked as if the red car itself bled strings of blood. No—Ella saw it was spools of shiny, red cord that had been thrown out of the car.

“Stay back,” Alex ordered her, and took his arm from her shoulders. “I’ll see if someone’s still inside.”

“You can’t—your ankle. I’ll check.”

“No! If that fire spreads, the gas tank might blow!” he shouted, and made a grab for her. He missed and only snagged his fingers in her prayer kapp, which pulled off and yanked her long, pinned-up braid free. The weight of it slapped between her shoulder blades as she ran. She was pretty sure she heard a couple of curse words from Cousin Andrew.

He was right about a possible explosion. She smelled gas. She’d have to hurry. Passenger side crunched in. Driver’s door open. No one in the car, maybe got out, but to where? Been thrown out?

“No one here!” she started to shout back to Andrew, but he’d come up right behind her. He tugged her back so hard by an elbow that she almost flew off her feet. She banged into him. He fell back, but she balanced them before he pulled her away. His face, lit by the fire, looked like a mask of anger. What was this man really like?

“Get back, I said! You could be killed if that blows!”

Limping, he managed to drag her across the road and shoved her into the ditch, just as the car went up in flames with a big boom! Clinging together, they huddled in shallow water among grass and weeds. The light and heat slapped them, a hundred times worse than an open oven door or roaring fireplace log. Light all over—no, that was headlights up on the road. Someone was here to help! And here she was in Andrew’s arms, clinging to him.

Ella clambered up and out of the ditch, dripping wet, her snagged braid spilling her hair loose. Despite the headlights in her eyes, she could see someone was getting out of a van.

“Ella? Ella, you okay? It’s Ray-Lynn. The sheriff’s on his way. What happened? Whose car?”

“Don’t know, but he didn’t burn up with it. I went to get him out but he was gone.”

“We’ve got to find him, like you and Hannah found me, saved me. I— Oh, who’s that?”

“This is our cousin, Andrew Lantz from Pennsylvania, visiting us for a while. We were— We both heard the crash.”

Ella could see Andrew was already searching among the charred trees along the road, using a Y-shaped branch he’d found for a crutch. “Here!” he shouted to them. “He’s back here!”

They ran to him, bent over a prone form. It seemed one unwound spool of the crimson cording pointed right at him. A young, dark-haired man lay sprawled half in the ditch on this side of the road. When Andrew turned him over to see if he was breathing, they saw he looked Asian. Andrew gasped.

“You know him?” Ray-Lynn asked.

“No—just surprised. Chinese, I think, and here—in Amish country.”

They could hear the sheriff’s siren coming closer. Andrew’s head jerked up, turned toward the sound.

“It’s all right,” Ray-Lynn said. “Just the sheriff. He’ll call the authorities for help, and we can tell them what happened.”

Ella took off her apron and covered the unmoving man.

“He’s breathing, has a pulse,” Andrew said as he rose and moved away.

Ella bent over the injured man while Ray-Lynn walked away to flag down the sheriff. He jumped out of his squad car with a bright flashlight. Ella saw him give Ray-Lynn a quick, one-handed hug and whisper to her, though his words carried on the wind.

“Don’t you let this flash you back to your own accident. You done good, honey, you and Ella and— Where’d that Amish guy go?”

Ella looked around as Ray-Lynn filled the sheriff in, and he came over to look at the unconscious victim. Unless Andrew had dived back into the ditch, he was nowhere to be seen, and with that sprained ankle. Then in the scarlet reflection of the sheriff’s pulsating light bar, she saw he was crosscutting the field that led toward the pond and the more distant farm, moving jerkily with that homemade crutch.

Like a real Amish man, was he just humble, not wanting to take credit for helping to save someone’s life—if the car’s driver lived? Or was it because he had his identity to hide and even the sheriff could not know about his being in that protection program? Or, she thought as the new, local newspaper editor, Lucinda Drayton, pulled up, was Andrew just making sure he wouldn’t be interviewed or photographed?

Ms. Drayton slammed her car door and ran toward the sheriff shouting, “What happened?” Ella would have to tell Andrew that the new editor was real good about not showing Amish faces. Didn’t he know he’d have to talk to the sheriff later?

Sheriff Freeman told Ms. Drayton, “Don’t know much yet. That license plate’s almost toast, but I’m gonna call in what I can see of it. We got an injured man on the ground. Squad’s coming.”

He walked back to his car and bent inside it to get some sort of telephone from the seat. Ray-Lynn knelt by the victim, and Ms. Drayton started photographing the still-smoldering wreck. In the reflected headlights, her short, sleek silver hair looked like a prayer kapp.

Ella walked over and told Ray-Lynn, “I can answer the sheriff’s questions tomorrow, but I’ve got to get back right now.”

“I can take you home, but it will be a while. Where did your cousin go?”

“He’s new—shy, too. I’ve got to go see if he’s okay,” Ella said, and hurried away as she heard other sirens coming closer. Even though Andrew was hiking toward the place she never wanted to so much as see again, she cut through the trees the way he had, toward the pond.

3

ELLA HURRIED TO catch up with Andrew, but he had a good start on her, even using his makeshift crutch. Whatever he was hiding must be bad if he didn’t even want to meet the sheriff.

She wasn’t planning to go near the pond now, just skirt around it, but she needed to be certain he’d make it back to the farmhouse. She’d get Grossmamm Ruth to tend to that ankle with a poultice or a wrap.

Oh, no, he was making straight for the water. It was all worse in the dark, with the trees hunched over it, because it had looked like that when she’d met her best friends Sarah and Hannah there that night so long ago. Back then, Ella had been the wildest of the three, planning pranks, urging the others to sneak out at night. Scolding her once, Mamm had called her a daredevil, but even that bad name hadn’t stopped her adventures.

That night, they’d taken off their clothes to keep them dry and, stripped bare, had gone into the cold water.

“Ooh, goose bumps already!” Sarah had said. “I’m gonna get out and just sketch the scene.”

“Of us naked?” Ella had challenged, and they’d all giggled. “Just swim around a little and you’ll warm up. Hannah’s not complaining.”

“It’s ’cause my teeth are chattering too hard!” Hannah had cried, chin-deep in the pond.

And then, somehow, amidst the laughter and the kidding, the kicking and the splashing, it happened. In the middle, where the coldest water came in from a deep stream that fed the pond, it seemed an evil, icy hand reached for Ella and pulled her around and down.

Had she put her own head under? In their horseplay, had she inhaled or swallowed water? Later, she could never remember. It was black and wet, and she held her breath, but her air was gone and a darkness like death sucked her in. She struggled, but it was too strong until someone grabbed her long hair and pulled and then…

The next thing she remembered was lying on the bank, spitting up water, shaking, gasping with her friends bending over her. Later, when she could breathe and talk, she begged them not to tell her parents what had happened—what had almost happened.

But she was changed after that. Hannah and Sarah knew it. Ella admitted it. Her parents saw it as an improvement. The daredevil had drowned and a more careful Ella was born that night, fearful the Lord had scolded her, shaken her.... Ever since, she’d lived with the curse of the sudden, drowning moods that she hid from everyone, however hard that was in such a tight community. Oh, they knew she was moody, a bit of a loner, a hard worker tending her lavender. But they never knew she carried with her the burden of the blackness, the wet, drowning fear of…

“Ella? I thought you’d stay with them.” Andrew’s voice jolted her. She saw pale moonlight sliced through the opening in the trees enough for him to see her too. He was sitting on the bank of the pond with one leg in it. “Your dad showed me this pond and said the water was cold. I needed to soak my ankle. I should have soaked my head for getting in that mess my first night here, but I’m glad we could help whoever that was. I think he’s going to live.”

“I pray he will,” she called to him, staying put at the edge of the clearing, leaning back against a big maple as if glued to it. No way was she getting closer to that water—or to him again. “You reacted like you knew that injured man.”

“No. Just surprised to see an Asian man in Amish country, which was stupid of me. I—I used to know some Chinese, and that’s what I think he was, American-Chinese, of course.” His voice had a slight tremor to it. “I didn’t expect him here, that’s all.”

She wondered if Andrew had been a travel agent. Or what if he was a spy against the Chinese and that’s why he had to hide out? No, that was crazy.

“Is the cold water helping your ankle? My grandmother is good at tending to things like that. I can head home and bring a buggy closer so you don’t have to walk far.”

“I think I’ll be able to make it with this crutch. I apologize for leaning on you earlier.”

“Oh, that’s fine. We all have to do that—lean on each other. You know, you still might have to answer some questions from the sheriff. The woman who owns the local newspaper showed up too. She’s pretty nice, though, not like the man who owned it before.”

No answer from him but a huge sigh. Silence. Just an owl’s whoo-whoo, wind rustling the leaves overhead and the ripple of the water where he moved his foot in it.

“You can tell me if I’m out of line,” he said, not looking at her now, “but are you afraid of me? Or is there some rule about not getting too close to outsiders or to men for unmarried Amish women?”

“Oh, no—not like that. I’m just—wary of the water.”

“Oh. The pond. Your dad said it’s deep. You mean you can’t swim.”

“I used to. Liked it, even, but not now.” She almost blurted out more. She had a strange urge to confide in this stranger when she’d not even told her own family. Nor had she shared her near drowning with her come-calling friend, Eli Detweiler, though they were once, briefly, betrothed. But Eli would not—could not—give up his liquor after rumspringa, and there was no way she was going to trust him to be her husband and the father of her children—or to know the deepest, fearful secret of her heart.

Wide-eyed, drawn to Andrew but not going closer, she watched him stand unsteadily. He still had his makeshift crutch. She almost ran forward to help but stayed put. He kept his shoe and sock off; they dangled over one shoulder. It was even a big step for her to be this close to that water, looking at its cold, pale face.

“I’ll run ahead and bring Daad back with the buggy,” she said, and started across the fringe of the clearing. “I can drive it through the Kauffman farm, then I’ll call for you.”

“No, don’t walk all that way alone in the dark,” he insisted. “It’s bad enough for me to be out here alone. Since you said it’s okay for us to be close, I can make it with this crutch and you.”

It’s okay for us to be close… His word snagged in her mind. A while ago he’d said, they had to lean on each other. I can make it with this crutch and you. She’d wanted someone to trust and tell her deepest fears to for so long, someone strong to rely on. Since Andrew wouldn’t be here long, maybe she could confide in him, and then he’d be gone and she could go on alone....

She shook her head to clear it, then remembered her kapp was gone and her hair was loose and wild. When she turned against the breeze, her tresses, silvered by moonlight, blew in her face. Though an Amish woman only unbound her long, uncut hair for her husband in their marriage bed, Andrew limped closer, his eyes taking her all in.

“Yeah, I suppose I’ll have to speak to the sheriff,” he said as they started off together, away from the pond. He didn’t touch her this time, and they moved slowly. “But I’m pretty sure Mr. Branin hasn’t informed him yet about my being undercover here. And the last thing I need is a newspaper interview.”

“Maybe I can help, at least with Ms. Drayton at The Home Valley News.”

“You’ve helped already, just by being here, by caring about what happened to me.”

He turned slowly sideways to stare at her. Up this close, with his face etched by moonlight, she could see how thick his eyelashes were, see the little squint lines at the corners of his blue eyes and the worry line on his broad brow. Suddenly self-conscious, she pulled her hair back behind her head, twisting and knotting it into a horse tail. When her gaze locked with his, she nearly stumbled, and it was he who reached out to briefly steady her.

Lightning leaped between them, something unspoken but understood. They both had secrets. They both had a new friend.

* * *

Alex was not used to being fussed over by women. By anyone. Yet the fact that Ella and the woman she called Grossmamm Ruth were tending to him was strangely comforting. It made him miss his own grandmother, now lost to him by her dementia.

His father had always tried to make him grow up too fast, which turned out to be a good thing when he lost both his parents in a boating accident when he was thirteen. Until he was eighteen, he’d lived off and on with a New York City legal guardian with vacations with his grandmother at her place in Nassau—lovely but lonely. She was being tended there now by a full-time caregiver and wouldn’t recognize him even if he did visit.

His first instinct when the feds convinced him he might have a price on his head was to hide out at her place, but they’d told him that could endanger her too. Gerald Branin had said they’d seen WITSEC cases where a hit man used a close family member to flush out or coerce their target.

“Ow!” he clipped out as Grossmamm Ruth, massaging his ankle, hit a sore spot.

“Good!” the silver-haired lady said. “So that’s the exact spot of the sprain. We tie the ice bag there, but you keep drinking that good dandelion tea, keeps swelling down real good.”

Obviously, this dear old woman’s favorite word was good, or goot, as she said it, even in English. “Ella, you pour him more tea,” she said. “And please get him some more of your daad’s good honey with the comb on a biscuit—good for what ails you.”

She was bossing Ella around too, but she seemed to take it. He’d known a lot of kids growing up who didn’t get it that rules and regs from a parent—with consequences—mean they cared, they loved you, wanted you safe. Damn, he hoped he would be safe here among these kind and good people.

He was yearning for a cup of Starbucks java but he downed the weak, strange tea. It warmed his insides anyway. Ella warmed him too, and that presented a problem.

“Now,” Ruth said, “no more using that tree limb crutch you found. I got a good hospital one you can use. But, ach, even with that, you’ll not be going into the fields with Eben and the boys tomorrow, not for a couple days. I gave my ankle a bad twist our last winter in Florida, on the Lido Beach. Made me so mad—I could not walk in the sand and wade the waves.”

“In Florida?” Alex asked.

“Oh, ya. My husband and I, we had a nice little house down there in Pinecraft, right by Sarasota. You think the Amish can’t take trips, enjoy warm weather in the winter?”

“I’ve just never heard of Amish snowbirds,” he said.

“Ach, these old bones did not like the winter cold, even though there’s always work to do here.”

“That’s why I want to help,” Alex insisted, still trying to deal with a mental picture of fully clothed, black-clad Amish like Grossmamm Ruth on a south Florida beach amid the bikinis and Speedos. “I’m already enough of a burden.”

“You go help Ella with her bed—right out the back door.”

The way the old woman had put that—Ella’s gaze met his. She actually blushed, her fair skin turning rosy from her throat to her cheeks.

“Help me weed my lavender bed,” she put in quickly.

“I know what she means. If I can kneel and not put weight on this foot, that’s fine.”

“My sister Barbara usually works with me but she’s helping another family out. You’ll get to meet her at Seth’s wedding though. I think Barbara will be staying home after that, so you wouldn’t need to help me for long.”

Ella’s father came in the back door from outside. “I walked the field to tell the bishop all that happened,” he told them, bending to take off his muddy shoes before coming into the immaculate kitchen in his socks. “The sheriff was there, coming here next to talk to Ella and Andrew. The bishop says we should tell the sheriff the truth about you, have him keep the newspaper editor and others away from you, best as can.”

“I’d rather leave it for Gerald Branin to tell him—procedure, protocol, he said.”

Eben shrugged, then nodded. “Then you are only Cousin Andrew Lantz until we get the say-so, but the sheriff always been straight with us. And you tell the bishop when next you see him.”

A sharp knock rattled the back screen door and “Sheriff Freeman here!” resounded through it. Alex wondered if the sheriff could have overheard any of that. Sure, he’d been called to the accident scene, but he seemed to materialize out of the blue—the darkness—everywhere. No, that was unfair, Alex scolded himself. He was just paranoid, not trusting anyone with a gun, even a law-and-order guy.