“What just happened?” she asked.
“I shot out his tires,” Jonathan said. He reached for his phone and it was only then she realized she still had it, wedged between her palm and the steering wheel, in a white-knuckle grip. She relaxed her fingers. He slid it from her hand. “I’ll call it in, and I’ll take over the driving as soon as I know we’re clear and safe. That was a minor crash. He should be okay.”
She focused on driving and waited while he called both Karl and Chief Deputy Hunter. He ended the call and sat back on the seat. He frowned and his brow knit.
“They’ll send law enforcement to look for him,” he said. “I don’t know how big the operation will be.”
Holding the steering wheel with one hand, she reached over with the other and brushed the back of his hand, but he didn’t take her fingers. “I’m sorry he got away.”
“It was the right move,” Jonathan said without really looking at her. “I was not about to risk your life by trying to apprehend him when I’m with you. Catching him was not worth losing you. Nothing is more important to me that making sure you’re safe and alive. You matter to me. You have no idea how much.” His fingers parted, making space for hers. His thumb ran slowly over her hand. She glanced his way, and as their eyes met, something moved through them, so deeply in their core that it was like he was seeing her and she was seeing him for the first time. She shivered. “Celeste? There’s something I need to tell you. Something important that I need to let you know. I...”
He choked on the words before he could say them.
She squeezed his fingers. “Jonathan? Is everything okay? Whatever it is, you can tell me anything.”
She waited as silence filled the truck and the man beside her struggled to find the words to say. His eyes closed. She watched as he swallowed hard.
Then he pulled his hand away and crossed his arms.
“Never mind,” he said. “Karl and Stacy are en route to meet us. They’ll escort us to a hotel on the outskirts of Philadelphia where we’ll check in under assumed names. Tomorrow, all four of us will escort you to the courthouse. If Doppel-Dex is not apprehended, there’s a possibility he’ll strike there.” His mouth spread into a tight smile. It was an impersonal and professional grin, missing all the warmth and tenderness she’d gotten used to seeing on his face.
He lapsed into silence again. It was uncomfortable, like a walled fortress encasing him that she wasn’t welcome to enter, and it made her stomach ache.
She kept waiting, minute after minute and hour after hour for the wall to fall, for them to go back to that natural, easy, comfortable way they usually were together. But even after they stopped to switch drivers, stopped yet again for food, and then finally met up with Karl and Stacy just as that sun was beginning to set, Jonathan’s professionalism and silence remained, and that incredible mind and heart she’d begun to care so deeply about stayed out of her reach.
* * *
Artificial yellow light filtered through the curtains of Jonathan’s rectangular hotel room, clashing with the shining red block numbers of the alarm clock on the other side of his bed. It was quarter to six in the morning. An hour before his alarm was set to go off and two before it was time to escort Celeste to Dexter’s trial. Doppel-Dex had still not been apprehended, and law enforcement would be on alert for some kind of attempt on Celeste’s life at the trial. Karl lay fast asleep and snoring lightly on the other hotel bed. If Jonathan had managed to get any sleep, his aching body wasn’t aware of it.
Instead, his mind had returned, again and again, to that moment in the truck right after he’d made the call to let Doppel-Dex go in order to ensure Celeste’s safety.
He’d just been about to foolishly blurt out to Celeste the words he’d never imagined saying to anyone, let alone a witness he was protecting.
I think I love you.
But how could he ever say those words to Celeste? Knowing what a short time they’d known each other? Knowing that it was highly unprofessional and that as a marshal and witness they could never be together? Knowing that she deserved so much better than a man like him? He rolled over onto his side, balled his pillow and tried to punch it into a shape that would fit comfortably under his head.
His family had forgiven him for leaving them the way he had. He knew Celeste would accept him despite it, too, and that she’d tell him God had forgiven him.
Jonathan wasn’t even sure if what he wanted was forgiveness. What he felt more than anything was anger. Not freshly angry over something new that had happened. No, this was like a deep-seated anger that had burrowed in him years ago and had never gone away. He’d been angry when bullies had attacked them. He’d been angry when Amos had told him he couldn’t be a cop, when his mother had died and when he and his father couldn’t communicate with each other. He’d been angry when he’d left home without looking back.
He’d been angry long before Celeste had come into his life. She’d gotten him praying again. She’d gotten him hoping again. She’d been the missing piece that had brought him back to his family and the life he’d left behind. And as much as he longed for a future with her, he knew there was no way it could happen.
I’m tired of pretending I’m not angry at You, Lord! Why did You take my mother from me? Why did You place a calling on my heart when the only way I knew how to pursue it was to rip me away from my family? Why did You let me meet Celeste, and start falling for her if You were going to take her away again?
Enough. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t pray, he couldn’t think and he didn’t much like what he was feeling. He opened the nightstand drawer and found a hotel Bible. He dropped to the floor on the other side of the bed, sat with his back to where Karl lay sleeping and looked out at the Philadelphia skyline outside. What was that Bible verse that Celeste had written on the note for his father? Ecclesiastes 3 something?
He found Ecclesiastes in the middle of the Bible and started skimming. It wasn’t until he hit the point about there being a time to plant and a time to harvest that he really started reading. He’d found it. The section both his father, the farmer, and Celeste, the computer programmer, loved so much, about how there was a time for everything.
And then he read, “He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the word that God maketh from the beginning to the end.” And then a couple more lines down, “I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it.”
He set the book down and laid his head in his hands and prayed.
Gott, I don’t get what You’re doing in my life or what You’re making out of me. I know I want the peace that my pa has. I want the joy that Amos has found. I want the hope that Celeste has in You. So, I’m giving up trying to figure it out. Just show me what You want me to do.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat with his palms pressed up against his eyes, or when exactly he’d fallen asleep. All he knew was that when he woke up, the light of the real living sun was streaming down onto his face and Karl was standing over him with a cell phone in his hand.
“That was Stacy,” he said. There was a flicker of something in his eye when he said her name that Jonathan couldn’t quite read. “She and Celeste will meet us in thirty in the lobby. We have to go. The hearing was pushed up by two hours because of the chaos at the courthouse.”
He was on his feet within a heartbeat. “What kind of chaos?”
“When news leaked online that she was going to testify today, people showed up in droves. The courtroom is crowded. There are people gathered outside with signs.”
Jonathan stopped short. “What?” People were coming crossing the country to see Celeste? “What people?”
“People who were robbed by Dexter Thomes,” Karl said. “People she was trying to help. She may not have found the money they lost, but she stepped up
and caught the man who robbed them. Your girl is a hero.”
“She’s not a girl—she’s a woman,” Jonathan said quickly. Maybe if Karl learned to be smarter with his mouth, Stacy might one day look at him the way he sometimes looked at her. And Celeste definitely wasn’t his.
Their phones both beeped. Karl reached his first.
“It’s Hunter,” Karl said. “Poindexter has posted online that if Celeste shows up to testify, she won’t leave the courtroom alive.”
SEVENTEEN
“Everything okay?” Celeste leaned toward Jonathan and whispered as they sat side by side in the back of Karl’s vehicle as his colleague eased them through traffic and up to the courthouse.
It was a question Jonathan had felt her asking in a dozen different ways—words, looks and gestures—ever since he’d walked into the hotel lobby and his eyes had brushed over her form. It was a question he still didn’t have an answer to. She’d looked exquisite, he thought, in a long blue Englisch dress with a high collar and a pale blue scarf, the color of the morning sky. Her blond hair was tied back in a loose bun at the nape of her neck.
“Of course,” Jonathan replied, knowing that he wasn’t really answering the question she was asking. “Everything is fine. Dexter Thomes will be under armed guard, you’ve been well prepared for your testimony and I’ll be keeping you safe every step of the way.”
But is everything okay between us? He could read her green eyes asking the question. He tightened his smile and broke their gaze.
No, it wasn’t. Because there could never be an us.
Guide me, Gott. I’m trying to trust You have a plan.
He glanced through the window at the crowded courthouse steps. A sight filled his eyes that was both one of the most incredibly incongruous and yet surprisingly joyful things he’d ever seen—his pa and Mark stood on the sidewalk outside the courthouse.
“What are they doing here?” Laughter spilled from Celeste’s lips as she squeezed his hand and he let himself feel her there for one long moment before pulling away.
“I honestly have no idea!” He waited for Karl to safely park the vehicle. Then he got out, keeping Celeste close to his side. Stacy and Karl took up protective positions on either side of him and Celeste.
“Pa! Mark!” Jonathan called. The older man and the young man made their way through the crowd, oblivious to the curious looks of some of the Englisch as they passed. “How are you even in the city?”
“Mark’s friends from the Englisch church heard that Celeste was testifying today,” Eli said. “When we got back to the farm, he told us what had happened and said he needed to come see you.”
“You drove?” Jonathan blinked. While the Amish didn’t drive or own cars, many weren’t opposed to getting a ride in somebody else’s car when the situation required it. Not that he could remember his own father taking a ride anywhere except to the hospital with his mother.
“The Englisch pastor drove us in his church van,” Eli said. “He is a good man. We talked on the journey. He said he wants to send some of his young people to help volunteer in the shop, and has offered to give Mark a mentorship at the church, helping with the youth program while he decides whether he wants to be baptized. I like this idea very much, and I think Miriam and Amos will, too. It will keep him close to God and home, while he figures out what God wants him to do.”
The glow in Mark’s smile said that he did, too. Not only did the young man seem no worse for wear after being threatened by Doppel-Dex, there was something in his stance that would’ve made Jonathan think he’d grown a whole year or two in maturity overnight.
“I’m very proud of you,” he said. He suspected that Mark would one day choose to be baptized in the Amish faith. “I am glad to see that you’re not repeating the mistakes I made. I wish I had been as wise and faithful when I was your age, and not as stubborn and angry.”
“You saved my life.” Mark said the words slowly, like he was reading off a thoughtfully written list. “You risked your life for me. You sought peace with the enemy before resorting to violence and weapons. I’m sorry that I doubted you.”
“I’m not,” Jonathan said. “I’m glad you were looking out for your family, and in a way, you giving me a hard time helped me get my mind and heart straight.”
“All that matters is that you’re open to God’s calling now.” Eli clasped him on the shoulder.
“We’ll meet you here after the trial,” Mark added. “We’ll talk more then, Onkel.”
Uncle. The word swelled something unexpected inside Jonathan’s heart.
They said quick goodbyes, then Jonathan walked up to the courtroom steps with Celeste by his side. It was one thing for his father to tell him to listen to God’s calling. But what was God saying? They entered the building, went through security and down a hallway, where they were greeted by lawyers. Then it was time for him to escort her into the courtroom and into the witness-box. They stepped into the courtroom, and for the first time since the ordeal had begun he laid eyes on Dexter Thomes. The hacker sat tall and arrogant in the dock, seeming to somehow project a swagger that implied he’d be sauntering out a free man. His signature tinted glasses were gone, his beard was trimmed and his shaggy hair was pulled back in a ponytail. His eyes tracked Celeste’s every motion like a hawk. Doppel-Dex was nowhere to be seen.
“I’m nervous.” Celeste’s voice was so low Jonathan barely caught it as they approached the witness stand.
“If you get scared look at me,” he said quietly. “I have your back.”
The trial resumed, and then all he could do was sit there and watch as the prosecutor walked Celeste slowly but thoroughly through every detail of how she’d tracked Dexter Thomes online and why she was convinced he was Poindexter.
A man slipped into the back of the courtroom and took a seat, and Jonathan found his well-tuned senses turning toward him. The man was tall, bald and clean shaven, with a face so hollow it bordered on skeletal. He was fiddling with his phone and something about him sent a shiver of warning down Jonathan’s spine.
He nodded to Karl and glanced the man’s way. Karl nodded back.
“It’s like seeds planted underneath the soil...” Celeste’s voice dragged his attention back to the witness-box. “There are always patterns in the data, even when they’re hidden so deeply you can’t see them.”
She sat up straight, her head held high and her eyes focused as Dexter’s defense attorney took over the questioning. Despite every assault the defense attorney could launch on her integrity, intellect and judgment, she remained utterly unshaken in her resolve that, yes, Dexter had stolen the money.
“But you told officials that you thought you saw Dexter Thomes in some rural town in Pennsylvania.” The defense lawyer smirked. Jonathan bristled. He wasn’t even trying to prove that Dexter Thomes was innocent, just discredit Celeste.
“I saw a man who looked like him,” she said. “I did not see him.”
“Like you saw a pattern in code that nobody else could see,” the lawyer said. “And we’re supposed to take this on faith?”
He said the word faith as if it was a dirty word. Jonathan winced. Was that how he’d sounded when she’d explained it? For a moment Celeste didn’t answer. Instead, she looked at Jonathan. Their eyes met and a soft light dawned in her eyes. A smile crossed her lips and it lifted something in his own heart.
“I believe in the sun even when it’s hidden behind a cloud,” she said, her eyes on Jonathan’s face. “That’s not blind faith. That’s knowing that something is real even when I can’t see it.”
Her eyes then turned to the judge.
“Before I went off-line, I downloaded a copy of Dexter Thomes’s background data on his site. Over the past two weeks, I’ve been working on it the old-fashioned way, with a pencil and paper, line by line, trying to find the pattern. Now I know I’ve finally found one. And if you
gave me a laptop right now and access to the internet, I would be able to tell you exactly where the money has gone.”
Jonathan blinked. How was that possible? Confidence seemed to radiate through her, taking his breath away. It took everything in his power, all his strength and resolve not to tell the judge to listen. But there was nothing he could do other than listen as she argued her case, as she proved her mettle and her worth, as she shone like a light and explained, in words that were above his head, what she was able to see in the data and why she thought she could continue to follow it to the end. Finally, after a sidebar between the judge and lawyers, somebody brought Celeste a laptop. The courtroom fell silent as everyone held their collective breath and watched her fingers fly over the keyboard, typing, exploring, scrolling and dissecting. Then she gasped.
“And I’ve done it!” She spun the laptop around toward the judge. “I’ve found it. Well, I’ve found him. I’ve known for a while that Dexter was searching birth dates and social security numbers, but I didn’t know why. He was looking for his half brother, a petty car thief called Casper Harrison.”
Instantly the smirk fell from Dexter’s face as cell phones began to ping around the courtroom. People rustled in their chairs. Something was happening. And by the smile on Celeste’s face, he was certain she knew what it was.
Jonathan glanced back to the bald man in the back of the courtroom. He was gone.
“Casper and Dexter look different enough,” she went on, “but apparently enough alike to be able to fool people. Dexter stole the money. He sent the money to Casper, who’s been using it to pay people off for tracking me, or at least he has been.” The chorus of phone chirps grew louder. Even those who’d apparently had the good sense to turn their phones to silent were checking them. “Because I just found the money and sent it back—a simple reverse payment algorithm. I’m guessing the sounds you’re hearing are people getting notified by their banks that the money is back in their accounts.”
Amish Hideout (Amish Witness Protection Book 1) Page 16
