by Katy Lee
“Perfect timing,” Jim said after a long hesitation. He closed the laptop and scooped up the handful of new orders to put into the project bin. “But work on these first. Real customers first. It’s not even hunting season yet. At least not for deer. I can wait. I’m patient.” He chuckled and walked up behind Sawyer.
Sawyer glanced over his shoulder to see Jim running a hand up the edge of the gun case, where a knot in the wood was visible. “The glass door will go over that. You won’t even see it.”
“I’m not complaining. It gives it character. The whole piece is beautiful. I’m going to have to buy more guns to fill it.” He chuckled. “Not that my brother will mind.”
“Do you both hunt a lot?” Sawyer asked and went on sanding.
“My whole family does. It’s a family affair, I guess you could say. Passed down from generations before. Hunting is a way of life for us, and we never miss our shot.”
Sawyer slowed the sanding and finally came to a stop. He glanced up to see Jim staring out the window at the house.
“If you’re not able to help find Irving Adams, it’s okay,” Sawyer said, snapping Jim’s attention from the house back to him.
“It’s no problem. I told you I will help in whatever way I can. I’ll get right on that search and be back here as soon as possible. Maybe even by tomorrow.” He headed to the door. “Do you think Anna has any of her banana bread made already? I think I’ll knock on the door and see if she’ll take pity on this old bachelor and give me some.”
Sawyer jumped to his feet, his heart racing. He dropped the sandpaper to the floor. “I’ll get you some.” He rushed to the door. “Forgive my rudeness. I know she always has something for you. I should have brought it out to you.”
“Sawyer, calm down. I can get it. Besides, I never get to say hello to the baker herself. She usually sends it to the shop. Now’s my chance to greet her and thank her appropriately.”
Sawyer did his best to be nonchalant when he fell in line beside Jim and walked with him out the barn and toward the house. “I think she made a nut bread today,” he said a little too loudly, hoping someone heard him through the opened windows as he neared. “Anna will be glad to give you something to go.”
Sawyer prayed she heard and would meet him at the door. He also prayed Naomi and Chloe remained upstairs and out of sight.
As they hit the first step, Sawyer yelled, “Anna, Jim’s here to say hi. He hopes you have a sweet treat for him today.”
Jim laughed loudly. “Sawyer, you’re making me sound like a good-for-nothing leech.” He reached for the screen door’s handle.
Sawyer forced a smile as his breathing hitched and tightened in his chest. He made a grab for the handle first, but Jim beat him to it.
Then the baby let out a loud cry that echoed through the house. Jim looked through the screen and up the stairs in the direction it came.
“That baby doesn’t sound happy,” he said and dropped his hand from the handle. “Maybe now’s not the time to disrupt Anna. I didn’t realize she had another baby. How about I take a raincheck for when I get you that information?”
Sawyer let out a deep sigh. “That sounds fine with me. I’ll be sure to have something ready for you.”
The men said their goodbyes, and Sawyer watched as Jim climbed into his car and backed up. Sawyer’s gaze fell to the license plate and a quick read of a certain group of numbers caught his attention.
8-3-8-3-1-7.
The 3-8-3-1 were the same as the car that nearly ran him over in the dark the other night. He had thought the plate began with a B and ended in a 2. Could he have been wrong? Were they really an 8 and a 7?
But that would mean it was Jim’s car.
The screen door behind him opened, and he jolted at the sound.
“What has gotten into you?” Anna stood there with a towel, drying her hands.
“Sorry,” Sawyer said and took off his hat to rub a hand through his hair and push his thoughts away. He reached for the door to come in for dinner. “This plan to keep Naomi’s presence here a secret is harder than I realized. It has my nerves stretched to their limits. I’ll be glad when this is all over.”
Anna huffed and pursed her lips. “You know what to do, brudder. If you had listened to me this would already be over.”
* * *
After two more days of the silent treatment from Anna, Naomi scooped up Chloe and headed out to the barn. Careful to stay out of view of the street, in case someone happened to be passing by, she stuck to the trees and picked up her pace in the open portion of the trek. She entered through the back door of the barn, directly into Sawyer’s workshop. She slammed the door behind her and fell back against it.
“I don’t know how much longer I can smile through Anna’s torment,” she told him. “Maybe you should let her arrange a blind date for you. That would make her happy again. What do you say?”
Sawyer slowly lifted his head up from a table he was staining. His lack of humor spoke for him. “I thought you were my friend.”
Naomi smiled and hiked Chloe up farther on her hip. “I am. We are, aren’t we, Chloe?” Naomi bopped the baby on the nose. The child’s eyes crossed just before she burst out in the most adorable belly laugh.
Naomi laughed with the baby in a contagious way, and before she knew it, all three of them were joining in the merriment. Naomi repeated the nose bop, and Chloe laughed even harder. Minutes went by before she sighed her last giggle and beamed joyful eyes up at Naomi.
In awe at this child’s complete trust in her, tears pricked Naomi’s eyes. “Oh, Sawyer, she’s so perfect. I never knew a baby could make me feel this way. So complete. So purposeful.” Naomi smiled at the baby’s sweet face, then glanced up to see Sawyer’s serious one watching her across the table.
She felt her lips twitch as they locked eyes on each other. Then the smile became harder to keep. She let it drift away as he slowly wound around the furniture and ambled in a slow, direct line to her, never taking his gaze from her.
He wore no hat, and his hair was flat from being squashed by it earlier. It gave him the look of the little boy’s innocence she remembered from their childhood. But Sawyer was no longer a child.
And neither was she.
“When you showed up here with Chloe, I thought you lacked natural motherly instincts. I actually felt bad for the baby.”
“I’m trying my best,” Naomi said in her own defense.
Sawyer shook his head in all seriousness.
“I’m not?” Her voice cracked.
“Chloe would be blessed to have you as her mamm. I’ve watched how you care for her so selflessly and lovingly. She adores you and trusts you and follows you around the room with her eyes. You are everything to her.”
“But I’m not her mother, and you are right, I do lack the skills to be anyone’s mother. I’m totally winging this, and I know I’m failing miserably.”
“Who says?”
“Well, you just did. And Anna reminds me constantly with her disgusted looks at everything I do.”
Displeasure crossed his face. “First, I need to apologize for myself. I know I didn’t treat you any better than Anna does when you first came back. I was wrong. And so is she. You are doing an amazing job with Chloe. Please believe that. And in a second, I’m going to go talk with Anna and put an end to this desire she has to make your time here so miserable. There’s no cause for this treatment.”
“No, Sawyer, it’s fine. I can handle it. I can take whatever she throws at me. I’m tough.”
Sawyer smirked. “That you are.” His eyes turned sad in the next instant, and his lips thinned into a slight frown.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
He searched her eyes for a few moments of silence before he said, “People get stronger by enduring hardships or...by traumatic incidences. In your line of work
, you must know that.”
Naomi frowned and nodded once, not knowing where he was going with this. “Sometimes.”
“Right, because sometimes they run. Like you did.”
Naomi swallowed hard. She held Chloe close as though the baby could guard her from his questions.
“Why did you go into your line of work, Naomi?”
“I told you already. Because I’m good at what I do.” Her response came out in a rush.
“Because you can relate to these women?” So did his.
Naomi had no response for him. All she could do was shake her head back and forth as though that would put an end to this line of questioning.
“Did something happen to you?”
Naomi felt the blood drain from her face. Her head pounded as his question echoed inside her mind. “That’s enough, Sawyer.” She spoke forcefully. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Don’t say another word.”
Sawyer listened to her, but even his silence spoke volumes.
He knew. He might not know the details, but he knew something happened to her.
But how?
Chloe cooed and gurgled in the heavy silence. Then she let out a cry. She had enough of being ignored. Her outburst effectively broke the connection and Sawyer pulled away a few inches.
He said, “Someone’s wanting some attention. All right, little one. You’re coming with me. Time for a diaper change, I’d say.” He scooped up the baby from Naomi’s arms and looked over Chloe’s back at her. “I’ll be back soon. I’m going to talk to Anna too. Things are going to change here for you. For us both.”
“Nothing can ever change.” He needed to know the Amish life could never be an option for her again. She was not about to tell everyone why she really left.
In the next second, he turned his back and left through the door to go back to the house, chatting sweetly to the baby in his arms as though Naomi’s words meant nothing. His voice lingered through the barn and grew faint as he walked on.
This was dangerous ground they were on. The faster Sheriff Shaw found Irving Adams, and whoever else is hunting her, the faster Naomi could return to her life.
Alone.
But alone meant without Chloe...and without Sawyer. It would feel like it had eight years ago when she didn’t have anyone.
But that wasn’t true. She now had her career, and she had her group. She wouldn’t be alone like before. She would be okay.
Once she was safe again, she would be okay.
A crunching footstep in the barn alerted her to Sawyer coming back. “I meant what I said,” she said to the open doorway. But it wasn’t Sawyer who appeared at the door in the next moment.
Across the workshop, the man with the cowboy hat who had visited Sawyer a couple days ago stepped inside. He removed his hat as a slow, lopsided smile spread on his lips. “I knew it,” he said. “You ain’t dead. You ain’t dead, at all. Hello, Naomi.” He flashed a wide grin, exposing a chipped tooth. “Remember me?”
TWELVE
The night of the party flashed in her eyes. Snippets and scenes always played on repeat at the back of her mind, but no matter how hard she tried to elongate them, to gather more of the details, she never could. But the sight of this man’s chipped tooth did what no amount of therapy could.
It gave her another scene.
The after scene.
“James Clark. You helped me,” she said.
“Yes, but please, call me Jim. James is so formal, and after what we shared that night so long ago, I would say it made us friends, wouldn’t you?” He took slow steps toward her.
Jim? Sawyer’s friend Jim was the James she remembered? She gave a half-committed nod while putting that together.
“Oh, come on, you had been knocked unconscious and left by the trash outside. I needed to get you out of there. It wasn’t safe for you. I took care of you, didn’t I? You shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
“I know.” The lasting guilt would always plague her. She told her women in the support group that allowing the shame to continue would never allow them to see the truth. But letting it go was harder than one thought. “My mind always wonders, what if I had listened to Sawyer? Or what if I had stayed home with my friend who backed out?”
“Yes, things would have been so much better for you.” He stood beside a table Sawyer had been staining, only a few feet from her now. “Why did you come back?”
“I had to find someplace safe,” she said. “I thought Rogues Ridge would be it.”
“You thought wrong.” His quick response came with an edge that raised the hair on the back of Naomi’s neck. She shifted her stance nervously. This was Sawyer’s friend, and the man who had helped her eight years ago. There was no reason to fear him.
Was there?
She swallowed hard on a parched throat. “Why was I wrong in coming back here?”
“Because you had done so much to move on from here. To get past what happened that night.”
Suddenly, Naomi wondered if Jim had told Sawyer about that night. Did Sawyer know about her attack? Fear spread through her at the thought, but she had to know. “When you helped me, you promised not to tell anyone,” she said. “I didn’t want Sawyer knowing.”
The man raised his hands. “Hey, if he knows, it didn’t come from me. Honest.”
Naomi relaxed a bit. “Are you sure he doesn’t know?”
“Beats me. All I know is I got you out of town that night. Brought you to that motel to get cleaned up. I even paid for the room, remember?”
Naomi nodded, but that night was a blur. “I remember being dropped off at Edna’s, the ex-Amish woman who helps Amish runaways. Did you bring me there?”
“Sure, the next day. I did that for you. And then we parted ways, and I promised to not tell anyone where you were. And I didn’t.”
“Why did you go to work for Sawyer?” she asked.
“He needed a website technician. It’s what I do. I handle a lot of sites for the town, and even the state. That’s all.”
The answer seemed legitimate, but knowing how close the two men worked still made her uneasy.
“Look, I just came by to give Sawyer some information he had asked me for. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Jim removed a folded-up piece of paper from his jeans pocket. “He wanted the address of a man named Irving Adams.”
She locked her eyes on the paper as he passed it over to her, but she couldn’t take it.
Debby’s killer’s information had been all she wanted. Now she just wanted to be free from it all. To not look Sawyer in the eye again, in case he knew everything.
“That should go to Sheriff Shaw,” she said.
Jim shrugged. “That’s fine. Do you want to take it to her?” He reached into his back pocket and withdrew a key ring. “You can take my car, if you want. I’ll help you any way I can. Just like I did before.”
Now he held both out to her. This man had come to her aid once before, in her darkest hour, and it appeared he was again.
Slowly, Naomi stepped away from the door that had backed her up to this point. She took a steady step closer to him. Then another. She reached a hand to take the paper first. She grasped it, but he didn’t relinquish it. She tugged once, then looked up from the paper to see his chipped tooth in a grin.
“Why are you so nervous? Relax,” he said. Then he let the paper go.
She curled it into the palm of her hand and reached for the key ring.
“What’s going on?” Sawyer barked from the doorway, and immediately Naomi jumped back a few steps.
Jim turned away from Naomi to face Sawyer, who walked toward them. “Jim, you shouldn’t be in here.”
“I’m sorry. I came by to give you that address you asked me for. I just gave it to Naomi. I was about to give her my car key as well, so she could bring the info
rmation I found to the sheriff.” Jim laughed nervously. “You had me going there. I was a bit shocked to see her alive.”
Sawyer directed his next question to Naomi. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, averting her gaze to the floor beside him.
“Can I see that?” he asked and reached for the paper.
Naomi let it go. He unfolded it and read it silently. “This is more than I asked for.” He looked at Jim. “How did you get all this information?”
Jim scoffed and grinned. “I’ve got a little brother in with the bigwigs in the state. You know that. He can track anyone down. He can track their dog down too.”
Sawyer looked to Naomi. “Jim’s family are politicians,” he said as though she’d asked.
She shrugged her indifference and said, “I don’t follow politics all that much. Sorry. You must be proud.”
Jim grinned a big and bright chipped-tooth smile. “My brother’s got his eye on a US Senate seat, and I mean to do everything I can to get him there. Helping people is what I do best.” He winked her way.
Her breath hitched. She glanced at Sawyer, but he didn’t see it.
Sawyer waved a hand to encompass the workshop. “That you do. You help me daily with the business. I can barely keep up with the orders since you came on board to handle the internet store. You make big things happen, and I know your brother is good as gold with you by his side.”
So he hadn’t seen the wink. Naomi sighed and nodded to the piece of paper. “I just want to get that to Cassie right away.”
“I can take it into town tomor—” Sawyer said.
“No,” she cut him off. “Now. I can drive James’s—I mean Jim’s car.”
