by Katy Lee
Naomi screamed with pain from her fall. She cried out in frantic fear at being caught. She saw no more hope of living for another day.
Jim reached her and flipped her over. She rose up on her hands and tried to scuttle back away from him, but with one quick jab, he punched her in the eye, sending her back to the ground grasping her face.
In the next second, Jim scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder.
Naomi kicked and hit his back as Jim walked farther down the road. She had no idea where they were going, but it wasn’t long before she realized the destination.
The entrance to the mine had once been boarded up, but as he passed through the opening, she realized he had left earlier to open it.
“Why are we going in here?” she yelled.
He flung her off his shoulder and dropped her hard on the ground. The air from her lungs exited in a rush, and bright lights danced in her eyes on the impact.
“I should have brought you here eight years ago,” he said. “If I had known you would kill my brother, I would have killed you then.”
“I thought you weren’t a killer,” she replied, using his words.
“I’m not, but if accidents happen—oh, well.” With that, he gave a swift kick to her stomach and left her there, grabbing hold of herself.
He returned to the opening and looked back. “I hope your death is painful as you run out of air.” He stepped out and the door slammed behind him, sealing off all light and oxygen from the outside.
Naomi stretched her arm out to the door. “No, please, don’t do this!” But it was too late. She was locked inside an old mine, and no one would ever know where to find her. Jim’s brother might have taken her innocence, but Jim would take away her life. He’d steal everything from her. Her home, her family and now her future with the man she loved.
* * *
Sheriff Shaw gave orders for all emergency personnel to be dispatched to the coal mine. In a town with only one ambulance, and that bus already in use with the officer down, she was relying on the firemen to handle the paramedics’ job.
“You’re expecting the worst,” Sawyer said to her as she raced her cruiser toward the smoke billowing in the sky. “You know she’s there.”
“I have to plan for all scenarios. It’s my job to expect the worst.” She looked his way, the flashing lights of the other cruisers casting a red glare on her face. “But I never stop hoping. And don’t you either.”
Sawyer faced forward to watch the angry billows reaching high up to the stars. He didn’t see any flames, but the smoke was what would kill first. He pushed the thoughts from his mind and silently prayed for Gott to give her air to breathe. He didn’t know what that would look like, but he knew Gott would find a way. He felt the stirrings of hope just thinking of His almighty power.
“I don’t think I ever lost hope.” Sawyer blurted out the confession weighing on his heart. “A part of me always believed there was more to the story. That I didn’t have all the facts, even as I listened to what my family said about Naomi choosing the English lifestyle over ours. I never once fully accepted what I was told. And Liza never did either. Maybe that was why I needed to be around her. She was the only person who never stopped hoping and believing in Naomi.” Tears sprang to his eyes. “Liza died never knowing she was right.”
Cassie’s lips curved into a serene smile. “That’s the wonderful thing about belief. When you truly believe, you don’t need validation from other people. You already know it in your heart.”
Sawyer smiled, thinking of his wife’s words she lived by. My heart wants what Gott says. He nodded and whispered, “Ya, she did.”
“I have to think she would be happy for you.”
“About what?” Sawyer glanced her way, confused at such a statement.
She took the turn up to the coal mine. “I’m sorry if I am breaking your code or rules about personal things, and if I’ve gone too far, just tell me and I’ll stop, but I believe Liza wanted you to keep on believing. I think she would be happy for you...and Naomi.” The last part was said in a whisper, but it blared in Sawyer’s ears.
“I loved my wife,” he said quickly. “I truly did. I miss her daily. But I...”
The smoking house came into view as the car curved up and around the hill. Flames burst from all the windows, a menacing sight of creeping tentacles.
“I can’t lose Naomi.” He blurted out the confession from deep within him. “Is it possible to love two people?”
Cassie stopped her car and threw open the door. She jumped out, and turned back to say, “I’d say so, since you do. Stay here.” She slammed the door on Sawyer. He sat stunned at her words, though she only told him what he always knew.
He would always love Naomi. He always did.
But he also loved Liza and always would.
He laughed at the ludicrousness of such a thought. The only person who would understand would be Liza. She would know not to listen to what her mind said. That this was a thought for her heart. What would her heart say?
Go get Naomi. She needs you.
That was what it would say.
Sawyer grabbed at his chest, scrunching his blue shirt in his gripping fingers. The thought had been loud and clear. It went against Cassie’s orders. It went against logic for him to even approach a flaming house unprotected and short on knowledge. Only the firemen should even try.
Sawyer opened the passenger door and stepped out. Warnings filled his mind. As he walked past a cluster of people hovering together, he kept his face to the fire. He approached the house, even while everything in his brain told him to go back to the car. You’ll die. You’ll endanger others. The thoughts kept coming with each footstep. But when he reached the front steps, the flames flicked at him to stop him from going any farther. The door was open where the firefighters had gone in already.
Sawyer turned in the safest direction and followed a broken concrete walkway that led around the house. Each step he took was blind, but sure. Quickly, he picked up his pace until he’d made it around to the back of the house.
Then he heard the sound of a car door slam somewhere through the trees. He tilted an ear to determine any other sounds.
“Think with my heart by following Gott’s lead,” he said to himself. He turned away from the house and walked down the hill. When he stood in the thick of the trees, he scanned around him, down low and up high. He stepped to his right, around a tree trunk, and his boot hit something.
The land plateaued ahead, and he could see beyond the drop-off. He moved forward and reached the edge of the plateau. That was when he saw the outline of a person walking away from a truck.
Jim’s truck.
But the outline of the man looked to be carrying someone. The way the legs and head dangled told Sawyer the person was not awake. Possibly already dead.
“Stop right there!” he shouted, already slipping down the hill.
The figure halted and slowly turned to face him. “You’re too late!”
He recognized the voice. It was Jim Clark who shouted back, anger bursting from his voice.
Sawyer froze. He was too late?
He dropped his gaze at the body in Jim’s arms. Could he look at her? Could he face the fact that this time, Naomi wasn’t alive and well? That she never would be again?
All because of this man.
Sawyer lifted his face to the man who had befriended him. The man who had infiltrated his life to make sure he never went after Naomi. “That’s what this was all about, wasn’t it? Everything you did, you did to make sure I never found her.”
“I did it all to protect him, and I would do it all again,” Jim said, his voice almost maniacal.
Him?
Sawyer thought maybe he had heard wrong. He took a few slow steps forward. “Do you mean you sent Naomi away to protect her attacker?” A few more steps,
and Jim’s shadowy figure began to show his features.
Still Sawyer kept his gaze on Jim, not ready to see Naomi’s lifeless body.
“He made one mistake. He was young. Could you imagine what would have happened to him when the press found out?”
“That man did not make a mistake. He knew exactly what he was doing, and Gott will be his judge.”
Jim burst out with a loud scream, lifting the body up, then dropping to his knees with it. Sawyer rushed forward to stop him from falling on Naomi.
Only a few more steps, and Sawyer realized Jim wasn’t holding Naomi.
He was holding a man.
A dead man.
“Jim, who is this?” Sawyer demanded, racing faster up to the man who had been a friend for eight years.
“My brother. My little brother,” Jim wailed, but Sawyer couldn’t give him a moment of compassion.
“Jim, where is Naomi?” Sawyer looked around. To one side was the entrance to the old mine. To the other was the billowing smoke and the now fully engulfed house. “Where is Naomi?” he demanded again, his voice in a rising panic. Had she been in the house the whole time?
“Where I should have put her eight years ago when I found her by the trash,” Jim sneered and looked toward the mine. “Now I know she’ll never tell again.”
SEVENTEEN
Jim Clark didn’t think he was a killer. He saw himself as a protector. He truly believed all he did for his brother was what he was supposed to do. It didn’t matter that a whole community of Amish people were hurt in the process. It didn’t matter that lives were ripped apart. It didn’t matter that two women died.
And she would be next.
Naomi groaned in pain. Her right eye had already sealed shut where he had punched her to force her to comply.
Would anyone find her now?
Naomi thought of the innocent baby in all of this. Chloe had been left an orphan and would now lose her too. “Protect her, please, Gott.” Naomi didn’t hold out any hope of being found in this dark tunnel. No one had been here since the place shut down ten years ago. Why would they come now? Especially for an ex-Amish woman nobody wanted around anyway.
Naomi had come back to Rogues Ridge to protect Chloe. She knew driving into this town, her community would reject her. But she had hoped they would welcome a baby in need of help.
She still held on to that hope.
For Chloe.
All Naomi had wanted was to protect her. She’d even been willing to face rejection again to be sure the child was safe. She would have done anything for her. Naomi was surprised Jim Clark hadn’t understood that drive in her. Nothing he tried, not even shooting her, scared her away. He was willing to kill for his brother in order to protect his reputation. How could he not see that also made him a killer? How could he not see his protection of his brother only hurt more and more people?
She pushed up on her elbows in the cold dirt. Sharp rocks bit into the flesh of her arms. She looked out her one opened eye in the direction of the tightly sealed door but had no more strength to crawl over to it.
Calling out was impossible. Her throat would make no sounds in her raw voice. And no one would hear her, even if the authorities arrived for the fire. They wouldn’t even know to come looking for her. She was running out of the thin oxygen with each of her breaths.
Her elbows gave out, and she fell facedown. Her body could take no more. It was a night of toxic smoke inhaled in her lungs, and now, limited oxygen when she needed it most. Death drew near.
Naomi’s cheek rested in the dirt, and her mouth remained open to take whatever air she could catch. Her one good eye drifted closed with the other, and she had no more strength to open them again.
* * *
The flashlights’ beams bounced off the walls of a narrow tunnel. Sawyer walked alongside Cassie and had his own light. She’d given it to him after the officers had descended down on Jim.
The man hadn’t gone quietly, but he also hadn’t put up a fight. His devoted life to his younger brother had already broken him and destroyed his mind. Sawyer prayed he would find peace. Then he’d quickly run to the mine and started heaving the rocks that blocked the door from opening. He’d had it open before the sheriff joined him.
“She’s up ahead,” Cassie announced, her light revealing a small frame against the tunnel wall. His light fell on the small heap that was Naomi. He ran to her, falling on his knees and rolling her over. Her limp body felt as if it had no life left in it.
“Naomi, I’m here, liebe. I came for you.” He willed her to hear him. That somehow she was still in there.
“Step back,” a fireman instructed him, but Sawyer only moved to sit up by her head. He touched her matted curls and rubbed her still face. With all flashlights on her, he could see she wasn’t breathing.
A neighboring town brought the fire department their ambulance with lifesaving equipment, but as he held Naomi’s lifeless head, he wondered if any of it would help.
The workings of the professionals blurred before him as they connected Naomi to machines and an oxygen mask to get her lungs to work again. They moved her to a stretcher and lifted her up to roll her out to the ambulance waiting by the door.
Time raced by and soon she was lifted up inside and the doors closed on her. Sawyer was left to stand alone as the ambulance raced away with its sirens on. He remembered the same deserted feeling when Liza had passed away. It was the same feeling he’d had when Naomi left town, as well.
And now he was left behind again.
His life would always be one of solitude. Sawyer shoved his hands in his pockets and started to walk back up the hill, but just before he reached the plateau, someone called his name from behind.
Cassie stood at the bottom of the hill. “If you’re coming with me to the hospital, we need to go now.”
“To be told she was dead before she arrived?” Sawyer said.
Cassie nodded. “If that’s the message, yes. But it should be told to someone who loved her. Don’t you think she deserved that? Not to die alone?”
Sawyer realized his selfishness in an instant. He was thinking only of his own feelings of solitude, when he had more time to hope for more. Naomi didn’t. But there were others who needed to be there for her too.
“We need to stop at her parents’ house.” He took the steps down the hill, more determined to do right by Naomi. “They should be there. They loved her too.”
At Cassie’s nod, they set out to make the stop and pick up the Kemps. It was a silent group who entered the emergency room doors and approached the desk. Hours later, all four were ushered into the intensive care area, where they were directed to Naomi’s bed behind a wall of glass.
She hadn’t died on the way, but she wasn’t living on her own either.
The machines around her beeped and kept her alive. Sawyer remembered Liza in her last days, and how he had sat bedside holding her hand into death. He took a chair now and brought it to Naomi’s right side. He sat and filled his hands with her limp one.
Her parents did the same on Naomi’s left side. Her mamm wept softly and stroked Naomi’s curls from her face like Naomi did so many times to tame them. A metaphor for her life. No matter how hard she tried to be the best Amish girl, her wildness came out. It made her feel alone, seeking the approval of others. Even a bunch of English high schoolers. The idea of Naomi never waking to find out she was never alone to begin with cut Sawyer to the bone.
But that wasn’t what hurt the most.
The idea of Naomi never waking and no longer being in his life was what stole his breath from his lungs.
It was saying goodbye forever that would hurt the most.
EIGHTEEN
The melodious song lifted from a chorus, or so it seemed. It was a song of joy, yet it wasn’t loud or rambunctious. Instead, the tune remained low and sweet, and it eased h
er breathing to a steady rhythm and reminded her of the songs her Amish community sang while they worked. The hymn sounded so close, and she yearned to sing along, but her lungs felt so tight.
Slowly, air filtered in, and it felt good to breathe. She filled her lungs deeper this time and let her breath out slowly. Then she did it again.
The singing stopped, followed by silence, but she still took another breath.
“She’s breathing.”
She heard the voice and recognized it. Her mamm speaking from someplace close by. Naomi felt something squeeze her hands.
She squeezed back.
“Oh, Naomi! Come back to us!” Her mamm’s sweet voice filled her ears. But how could that be? This had to be a dream...or maybe she died.
“Don’t rush her. We just took her off the machines.”
“Daed?” Naomi rasped out at hearing her father’s voice. Were they real? Or was this a part of her imagination?
“Yes, dear, we’re all here. Your mamm and the bishop and a whole slew of friends for certain sure. Take your time. We’ve got the rest of our lives.” His voice hitched on that last part as though tears choked his words. “Thank You, Gott, for second chances.”
His words calmed her. She didn’t understand why they were there, or if it was even true, but in the moment, she was thankful for their presence.
Then she opened her eyes as she remembered what happened. “Chloe!” she choked out, and her voice was unrecognizable. A beeping sound pulsed fast and blared in a dim room as she searched the faces around a bed.
Her bed.
People she never thought would sit vigil for her, alive or dead, stood around her with expectant faces.
Her chorus, who had sung her awake.
Frantically, she looked for the one who could answer the only question she wanted answered. Where was Chloe?
Her right hand was squeezed. “Chloe is alive and well. Just like you.” She could hear the smile in his voice, but something blocked her right eye and her view of him.
