by Dana R. Lynn
Rebecca grinned at her sister and pushed her blond braid over her shoulder.
“Miles is still at a trial in Ohio, so he dropped me off to visit Addie,” Rebecca signed in her flowing ASL. “I was disappointed that you weren’t there, but I ran into Sue, our old driver, and she said you were visiting friends here, and since she was coming this way, she would give me a ride.”
Lizzy tilted her head and looked over her sister’s shoulder at her driver and friend. Her friend who had been missing, and whom she had thought was dead. Unease slithered through her gut, like thick grease churning. Where had Sue been all this time? And how had Sue known she was here? She had never told her. The last time she had talked with Sue, the woman had been brokenhearted over the death of her brother, Bill. Now, she was wearing a smile.
Not her regular smile. This smile was cold and had the flavor of contempt in the slight curl of her upper lip. Uncomfortable, she slid her eyes away from Sue’s. And her gaze fell on the logo in the upper left corner of Sue’s button-down green collared shirt. It was her work shirt. Lizzy remembered Sue saying that she worked part-time for a bakery. She’d never paid attention to the name of the bakery before. She should have. Lizzy swallowed. In her mind, she recalled Jill and Keith stopping by earlier and explaining Isaac’s theory that the bakery that Bill had been working for may have fronted a drug-running business. She couldn’t believe that she had forgotten that Sue also worked for a bakery. Was it possible that her friend was also involved in dealing drugs?
Her gut said she was. The woman standing confidently before her, eyes cold as an arctic wind, was not the sweet person she had known.
How she knew, she couldn’t have said, but at that moment, Lizzy was absolutely certain that Sue had been working with Bill. She could detect no hint of mourning or sorrow in her sneering face. No, the doting older sister was gone.
And suddenly, Lizzy had a horrible thought. What if Sue had not had food poisoning? What if she had intentionally set up her brother to get killed? Could she have been so greedy that she had eliminated her brother and planned her own disappearance?
“I see you’re starting to figure things out,” Sue said, her voice calm. Except she had reached into the bag she carried and had jerked out a gun. A gun she had even now shoved in Rebecca’s side. Rebecca’s eyes widened, the color leaching from her face. Lizzy hated seeing her sister’s fear, knowing that Rebecca, like her, had horrors in her past from being held captive by a killer, not once, but twice. Rebecca surprised her, though. Outside of paling, she showed no reaction. Her eyes hardened and she gazed at Lizzy, before dropping her glance to her left hand, held against her stomach.
Discreetly, Lizzy slid her glance to her sister’s hand.
“Watch. Wait. Plan.” Her sister’s fingers flashed as she quickly fingerspelled the three simple words. Lizzy understood the message. Their goal was to survive and watch for an opportunity to move.
She would do that, but if the woman made a move to shoot or hurt her sister, all plans of waiting would be canceled. Lizzy had every intention of getting her beloved sister safely back to her husband and her baby.
Please, God, please save us. Let Isaac find us in time.
“Why don’t we take a walk outside. I think we have some things to discuss and it’s a lovely day.”
Lizzy clearly heard the threat in Sue’s casual comments. If they had stayed in the house, Isaac’s sister and mother would have been in danger. She couldn’t be responsible for them getting hurt. She nodded, then signed to Rebecca, being sure to voice her words so Sue wouldn’t think she was being sneaky. “We’re going outside.”
Sue indicated with the gun that they should head toward her car. She forced Rebecca to get into the backseat, and had Lizzy tie her sister’s hands. Tears spurted to her eyes as she complied, effectively shutting off conversation with her sister. Not that they would be allowed to continue to fingerspell or sign with each other.
Lizzy could hear Lily barking in the house. She slid into the passenger’s seat at Sue’s prompting. Sue immediately took out a nylon rope and bound Lizzy’s hands. She connected the rope to Lizzy’s ankle, hindering the freedom of her motions. She couldn’t even reach the phone in her pocket.
Silently, Sue folded her body behind the steering wheel and slammed the door. Her jaw was hard as she began to drive.
Lizzy didn’t want to encourage her to use her gun, but she also wondered if she could talk Sue into giving them information that they could use.
“Sue—” she began, but halted as the gun swung in her direction.
“Don’t tempt me, Amish girl. You are not my favorite person at the moment.”
Lizzy swallowed down the questions burning inside her brain.
Again, she sent up a silent prayer for Isaac to find them. In the meantime, she needed to stay sharp. If he didn’t arrive, she would have to save them.
At the moment, however, doubt and fear had melded into a heavy weight in her gut. If nothing changed, she and her sister were going to die.
* * *
Isaac and Ryder stepped out of the police cruiser and looked at the pristine faux marble edifice standing before them. It was the most out of place structure Isaac had ever seen.
Ryder whistled. “Did any planning about fitting in with the locale go into this place?” Ryder muttered, awe and disbelief coloring his voice.
Isaac narrowed his eyes, taking in the fancy burgundy-and-gold awning. “Apparently not.”
The sign swung from gold chains above the door. Mario’s Italian Bakery, the sign read. Except that they had looked into the owner of this business, and it wasn’t Mario. In fact, no Mario had ever owned or been employed on these premises, according to the official records. Oh, well. No law against that. He just thought it was odd. The owner, in fact, had been a man named Frank, until last year. Frank had left the place to his niece, Teresa. But as yet, Teresa had been a very hands-off owner. The young man he had talked with on the phone had never even seen her, and didn’t think anyone else had, either.
“Don’t you think it’s odd that no one here has ever seen the new owner?” he asked Ryder as they waited for the two cars at the intersection to crawl on by before they crossed the street and made their way to the bakery.
“Sure do. Especially seeing as her uncle practically lived on the premises. Apparently, she left a man named Chris to be her eyes and ears in the place.” Ryder consulted his notes. “Chris has checked out okay. He has no outstanding warrants. He is divorced, but pays child support regularly and on time. By all accounts, he is a devoted father, and a fair manager. His only brush with the law has been two speeding tickets, both of which he fought in court. The one he won, the other he didn’t.”
“So, a regular guy, but we’re looking into him, anyway.” Isaac nodded to himself as he filed all the information away.
“Yeah. ’Cause he might look clean, but one of the men under his management was a drug dealer, murdered in a drug transaction gone bad. How could he not know that? Why would he hire the man?”
Good question. Isaac opened the bakery door, then stepped back to allow the harried woman with a bag of fragrant baked goods in one arm and a screaming toddler tugging at her other hand to exit. She smiled briefly in thanks before continuing down the street, talking to her child in a stern voice all the way.
Ryder gave a mock shudder. Isaac smirked at him. “You’re not fooling me, my friend. I’ve seen the way the kids love you.”
Ryder gave him a hard glare. “They might love me, but I am not father material, buddy. Don’t even go there.”
Whoa. He’d hit a nerve. Obviously, there was some baggage that Ryder had hidden in his past. However, considering the things he himself had carried around for the last seven years, he wasn’t about to pry. He still couldn’t believe he’d told Lizzy about his dat and Joshua.
He couldn’t let himself think of the pr
etty blonde right now. He needed to focus so he could get her out of danger. And so he could get out of her life, hopefully with minimal scars on his heart. She tugged at his emotions way too much for his comfort.
He could go back to the Amish culture. Okay, where had that thought come from? He had no intention of going back. True, his relationship with God was growing stronger. And he believed his mamm that his dat had forgiven him before he’d died. But his life was here, in the Englisch world. And he was doing a necessary service in this job, although lately, the badge didn’t fit so comfortably. It almost felt like he was playing a role.
And, he had to admit, if he was Amish, he could court Lizzy.
Maybe she would—
He stopped that thought before it fully formed. There was no way he would ever ask her to leave her church. Lizzy was Amish, clean through to her bones. Even though her sister had found her place in the Englisch world, Lizzy never would. Not to mention that, now, if she did decide to leave, she would be shunned and lose her whole family. Something neither he nor Rebecca had had to deal with because they’d never been baptized.
He brought himself back to the present and followed Ryder over to the register in the corner. A polished man with dark red hair and a sincere smile waited. Unlike the other employees, this man wore a crisp white shirt with a solid dark blue tie. Chris.
“May I help you, Officers?” Chris asked. His voice was unhurried. Isaac thought he detected a bit of a Pittsburgh accent in the way the man formed his o’s.
“Actually, Chris, we were hoping to speak with you for a moment,” Isaac responded.
Over his shoulder, Chris called for one of the employees to come and man the front of the bakery. Within seconds, a young woman came to replace him. Chris opened up the gate leading to the back. “Come, and we can sit in the privacy of my office.”
Soon, they were ensconced in wooden folding chairs in front of Chris’s rather modest office desk. Isaac looked around the room, somewhat surprised at the lack of pomp in the room. Seeing the ostentatious front of the building, he had expected the inside to be more or less the same. Chris extended the hospitality of offering to get them a drink of water, or perhaps coffee or tea, which both officers declined. Isaac was itching to do this interview and find the next clue to bring them closer to the ringleader.
He opened his notepad to begin the questioning. “Chris, we’re looking into some unsavory dealings with some of your employees.”
A grimace crossed the manager’s face. “You might as well say it. You’re here about what happened with Bill. I’ve been expecting you.”
The two officers exchanged a glance. “Yes, we are here about him,” Ryder confirmed. “I am curious why you were willing to hire him, given his past.”
A red flush crept up Chris’s face and clashed with his red hair. “It was an emotional decision, one I have regretted almost since it was made. One of the other workers here, Sue, is his sister. We were dating at the time, and she told me to hire him. I didn’t want to, because I knew he was bad news and wasn’t a good investment, but she insisted. I was right, which gave me no pleasure, but by that time, we had broken up, so I will admit to feeling a little vindictive when I told her I was letting him go.”
Isaac frowned. “I spoke to Sue on the phone to tell her about her brother’s death. She had seemed pretty broken up about it, but not once did she indicate that she was working for the same business as Bill had. Then she disappeared.”
His instincts went on alert as the other man hesitated. Leaning forward, he pinned the manager with a glare. “Do not lie to us, Chris. You don’t want to face an obstruction of justice charge.”
The manager slumped in his chair, running a hand that shook slightly through his red hair.
“She’s not listed as an employee here. Sue Allister is not her full name. Her full name is Teresa Susanne Allister Bailey.”
Teresa Bailey. The unseen owner of the company.
The hair on his arms stood as several pieces came together in his mind. Sue, or Teresa, had incredible access to the bakery without really registering. She was unlisted as an employee, but the other employees might not have known that. And her business as a driver for the Amish gave her reasons to travel to various places without raising suspicions.
Sue had forced Chris to hire her brother with drug connections. And Sue had tasked her brother with making the run that had proven to be fatal to him. Had she done so on purpose? Had she planned for him to be killed?
“Why were you letting him go?” Ryder interrupted his musing.
“He had been seen doing a drug interaction on the bakery premises.”
“In other words, he endangered your business with the possibility of bringing the police in.” Isaac heard the irony in his voice, as the police were indeed brought in.
“Yes, Officer. I have done my best to run a good business and have continued to build the strong reputation that Frank had fostered before his passing. I knew that if Bill remained, sooner or later that reputation would come under scrutiny and be tarnished. I told Sue that I would quit rather than keep him on. She agreed and told me she’d handle it. But he had gotten himself killed first.”
No, he hadn’t. Isaac knew with absolute clarity that his sister had done just as she had promised. He suspected that Chris knew nothing about the discreet drug trade the owner of the bakery had been doing behind his back.
“And how is your business running with its owner missing?”
He narrowed his eyes as Chris swallowed.
“Don’t start lying to me now, Chris.”
Chris sighed and bowed his head, giving up. “She’s not missing. She said she needed to disappear for a few days, but that she would keep in contact. When I heard her place was trashed, I thought she’d known someone wanted to hurt her. When she called me, I told her about her place. It didn’t seem to faze her in the least.”
Of course it hadn’t; Isaac kept the sneer off his face with effort. It seemed Sue had been two steps ahead of them the entire time. Isaac had no doubt she’d been responsible for her apartment being trashed.
Another thought had him leaping from his chair. He had wondered how Lizzy had been found at the motel. It had to have been Sue. He recalled Lizzy telling her she could identify Bill’s shooter. If Sue was involved in her brother’s death, as he was sure she was, Lizzy was a definite threat to her. He suspected that Sue had been connected with the attacks on Lizzy. She had driven to Ohio with Lizzy enough to be familiar with the area, not to mention the fact that she knew what Lizzy looked like.
“Thank you for your time, Chris. We’ll be in touch if we need anything else.”
He all but ran from the bakery, ignoring Ryder’s astonished expression. His friend was right behind him, but the moment they were sitting in the cruiser, Ryder’s curiosity burst forth.
“What was that all about?”
Isaac waited impatiently for his friend to get behind the wheel. “Sue is behind the drug ring.”
“I got that.”
“When Lizzy talked with her after Bill’s death, she told Sue that she could identify the killer. I think that Sue and Zave were working together.”
Understanding and consternation vied for possession on Ryder’s face. “Sue couldn’t have been pleased with that.”
“Exactly. I expect she was all about keeping Lizzy from identifying him. Remember, the attacks started right after that. She knows who I am, which means she can find Lizzy.”
Ryder immediately jerked the car into Drive and pulled away from the curb. He flipped on the lights for good measure.
They didn’t even stop by the station. There was no time. Ryder drove to Isaac’s mother’s house as fast as he could safely manage it. Isaac waited for his friend to throw the car into Park, then he jumped out and raced up the steps, Ryder at his heels. The two men burst into the house, startling a shriek fr
om his mother.
“Mamm! Where is Lizzy?”
Please let her be here.
His mother’s face, though, told him that he was too late. “I don’t know, Isaac. Lizzy’s sister came to visit with another woman. They stepped outside, and then they were gone.”
Isaac felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He had failed to protect Lizzy. He had promised her he would keep her safe, but he hadn’t even recognized the danger when it had stood right in front of them.
“Isaac, what can we do?”
He would not give up. He would find Lizzy and her sister and get them home, or die trying. “I need anything you can give me about the car they were driving. I need to give the dispatcher something to pass on.” A BOLO, or a Be On the Look Out alert, was going to be his quickest way to get the news out.
Ruth Yoder called Isaac’s sister, Mary, in. Mary was able to give him a description of the car, for which he was intensely grateful. As soon as they had the description, Ryder rushed back to the car to issue the alert.
“Is there anything else you need?”
Isaac paused at the door to look over his shoulder at his mother.
“Pray, Mamm. Pray.”
SIXTEEN
The sky was darkening when Sue pulled the car to a stop in front of a place that Lizzy recognized all too well. The abandoned building where Bill had been shot less than a week ago. She had thought she’d never see this place again, and she certainly had never imagined being brought back by a woman she’d considered a friend holding her at gunpoint.
“Why are you doing this, Sue?” she whispered.
Sue was searching the edges of the lot. She ignored Lizzy’s question at first, then her mouth lifted in a satisfied smile.
“I couldn’t let you identify him.” She jerked her chin to the north side of the lot.
Lizzy’s eyes shot in the direction indicated, and she gasped. Sauntering toward them was the man who had shot and killed Bill. At Sue’s chuckle, she shivered as it flowed over her like a bucket of ice water.
