Safe Hearts (Amish Safe House, Book 3)

by Ruth Hartzler

  Kate’s mind drifted to Ryan. She replayed the scene by the lake in her mind. Ryan had said he wanted to have dinner with her as soon as she left the Amish. It was so easy to imagine herself in slacks and a blouse, chatting with Ryan about various things, such as a new movie, a case, even something from the local grape vine. It was easy for her to imagine starting a future with him.

  However, Kate had to face facts. There was a chance the mole might not be found for years. On top of that, the invitation had been to Kate, the awkward Amish woman, not Kate the U.S. Marshal, not Kate, the tech-savvy, crime-solving, independent woman. Yes, there was something there; she could not deny that. Yet nothing changed the fact that Ryan was attracted to an illusion. No matter how sincerely she acted, it was all still firmly under a mask. And what if Ryan preferred the mask to the real Kate?

  No. She had to resist dwelling on her fantasies of the ever-dashing town cop. She had to stay put, until her boss gave her the okay.

  “Kate? Kate?” Lillian waved a hand in front of Kate’s face, and gave her a teasing smile. “You look like you’re a million miles away.”

  Just hundreds of miles, Kate thought wistfully. She missed her life. What’s more, she was sure that the many small mistakes would eventually start to add up. There would be questions she could not afford to answer.

  “Is all this talk about marriage getting to you, dear?” Lillian chimed in. Her eyes lighted up in sudden inspiration. “Maybe you have someone in mind you wanted to get to know better?”

  A red-faced Kate was rescued by the sound of a greeting at the door. Everyone’s attention focused immediately on Beckie as she made her way inside, balancing a basket with jam and biscuits peeking over the top.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Beckie said, in a brittle voice with a weak smile. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying. She looked tired, as if she had not slept a wink since she found out about her cousin. There were even a few stray hairs curling from under her bonnet that she normally would not have allowed.

  “Oh Beckie, you poor dear,” Lillian gushed as she jumped up to hug Beckie around her neck. A more prudent Nancy quickly took the heavy basket.

  “How is your family holding up?” Lillian fussed over Beckie as she nudged Lillian out of the way and helped Beckie toward a chair. “We didn’t think you would come, with everything happening.”

  “I needed to get away from the house a while.” Beckie blinked her eyes rapidly as her eyes glistened with still unshed tears. “It’s really bad, ladies; I don’t know what we are going to do. My cousin. He-”

  She burst into tears as she covered her face. The ladies went immediately to her aid with encouragements and promises to help in any way they could. It never ceased to amaze Kate how quickly the Amish rallied around each other without question. It was something she was very much going to miss when she returned to her own life.

  Kate felt guilty. She did not know quite what to do in these situations. In a professional sense, yes, but less so as an Amish woman. She didn’t have their connections or skills to help and console one of their own. Kate was a loss for words, so she helped Nancy clear the room and got Beckie a cup of water.

  “They think Jeremiah poisoned the man,” Beckie sniffled, as she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.

  “Where would they get a fool idea like that?” Esther demanded, as she slid her chair out of the corner to join the rest of the ladies, hobbling along until Lillian rushed over to take her chair for her. “Jeremiah is a gut mann. No one has ever doubted him before.”

  “Tell us everything that happened, dear.” Nancy patted Beckie’s hand in comfort. “From the beginning.”

  Beckie took a deep breath and dabbed at her nose. “Jeremiah went to the café early to get ready for some sort of special they were going to have that day. A new coffee I think. I don’t usually pay attention to his work-talk; I just know it was important to him.”

  “Of course,” Lillian said soothingly.

  “He found the back door unlocked,” Beckie continued. “He is sure it was locked the night before. He suspected a burglar, so he went and checked it out.”

  Kate wanted to jump in and demand why he would do something so foolish. People are supposed to call the cops in that situation, rather than run headlong into a situation. She had seen all too many tragedies occur when people did not call the authorities to handle possible danger.

  “When he made it inside, he found the man dead on the floor, and before he had a chance to call the police they raced in and arrested him. They think he did it.”

  “Rubbish.” Esther sniffed derisively. “That sort of ignorance seems to be getting more common nowadays. Back in my day, no one would have dared accuse an Amish mann of such a thing.”

  Everyone nodded. Kate wondered if she would have come to the same conclusion before being stuck here. She’d had many myths and assumptions debunked in her time here.

  “What happened then?” Lillian asked in a polite tone, although her voice was strained with impatience.

  “Well, he checked on the man. Jeremiah thought he might be able to help him start breathing.” Beckie paused as there were collective gasps of sympathy. “But just as he leaned over the man, the police swarmed in.”

  “So he did call the police?” Kate asked, surprised as the woman shook her head sadly. Kate puzzled over that. It was a small town compared to what she was used to. But even then, no cops should have responded that quickly.

  Beckie looked around at them with teary eyes. “They aimed guns at him. They made him get on the ground and treated him like he killed the man. They said they got a call about raised voices in the store at an odd hour.”

  “Did anyone see Jeremiah before he went to the store?” Kate asked, trying to piece together the scene. She ignored the narrow, studious look that Esther trained on her.

  “No, he went straight to work to get ready for his promotion,” Beckie answered miserably. “He tried to explain that, but nobody would listen. And they are saying they found a bottle of poison, right where he was crouching trying to help the man.”

  Kate’s mind whirled. There was a call to the police, practically as soon as Jeremiah got to work. He went into the crime scene. He was found with the body and a poison bottle was nearby? That didn’t sound good at all. Kate knew that the police would have a hard time swallowing the idea he was a victim of circumstance.

  Kate asked what the poison was, but Beckie had no idea. She didn’t even know if the police knew yet. Beckie just knew that her cousin was in jail for something she knew he could not have done.

  “I’ll get everyone kaffi,” Nancy stated as she headed toward the kitchen. “I bet if we go over this a few times, we’ll figure out something. We should know someone who can help Jeremiah.”

  Kate rose to help Nancy with the coffee. Nothing about the case made sense. The evidence against Jeremiah looked bad at face value, but if there was anyone that could shed some light on a clue or two, it was these ladies.

  Luke 8: 17.

  For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.

  Chapter 3.

  It was almost like coming home.

  Kate never thought she could miss office life. She had always preferred fieldwork to paper pushing. However, as she gazed around the small town police station, the blur of overlapping voices sounded familiar and comforting.

  Kate looked around, wondering what to do. She couldn’t exactly go to the sitting area and blend in, not dressed as an Amish woman.

  “Excuse me miss. Can I help you?”

  Case in point. It was a busy office, but she wasn’t here ten seconds before being addressed. She turned her head to see a young receptionist who looked fresh from school, over dressed and too under confident to pull off the look. Kate forced a smile at the girl. If she were herself, she’d have been telling the girl about her posture right about now. Confident appearances went a long way in their line of work.
<
br />   Of course, here she wasn’t a U.S. Marshal. She wasn’t an experienced field agent with years of on-the-job training to offer. She was just some Amish woman who had walked off the street. And they were more interested in why she showed up than what her credentials might be.

  “Miss?”

  “Oh, yes. I came to see Officer Ryan Weaver,” Kate finally said, as she turned her full attention to the woman. She felt a small wave of irritation at her own state of distraction. She’d never been fully comfortable in the Amish community, but she had never been so off her game. This wasn’t the time or place to be acting like a cadet.

  “I’m sorry.” The woman gave her a puzzled, apologetic smile. “He’s out on patrol. I could take your number and leave it on his desk for you.”

  Kate gave the woman a thin smile, and processed the suggestion. She supposed she could give the number for the phone in the barn, but she had no interest in lingering around a barn waiting on a call back like a school girl.

  She watched the woman’s face color as the realization sank in that there were still places in the world that people did not live on their phones. Kate felt a little sorry for the girl, especially as the receptionist fumbled out an apology and seemed at a loss as to how to deal with the situation.

  “It’s all right; I don’t mind waiting.” Kate offered, more to help prompt the girl to a proper solution. It was the truth. She could use an excuse to linger in the office a while longer. Listen to the sights and sounds. Take in the smell of old coffee and ink toner.

  “Of course.” The young woman looked relieved to have some sort of solution for the moment. “It might be a while.”

  “I have nothing but time,” Kate assured her.

  Kate was surprised when she was taken to Ryan’s office to wait. She assumed she would simply remain in the waiting area until he got there.

  After assurances that she didn’t need anything while she waited, she was finally left alone to look over the office space. Kate wasn’t sure exactly how long Ryan had been in town. She knew he had not been here that much longer than she had, and she had seen janitor’s closets bigger than the office they made him. Still, he managed to give the space a personal touch. There were a few books on Forensics and cold cases. A book on boating drew her eye. That was unusual in a place that had no major lakes or rivers to boat at. Maybe his last location had a port?

  She eyeballed the files that were scattered on his desk. She itched to peek through them, wondering if there was any data on the recent crime rings. Or better yet, some clues about Jeremiah’s case. Would they have assigned it to Ryan, come to think of it? He did end up spending a lot of time on cases related to the Amish community.

  No, she wasn’t going to go nosing through Ryan’s files just because the new receptionist made it painfully easy to do so. She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the office. For a moment, she could almost pretend that she was in her own office. How long had it been? She missed paperwork and patrols; she even missed the case files. She missed the late nights on the job followed by an early morning of paperwork. She’d never complain about needing a vacation again.

  It wasn’t all bad. She had met some amazing people in her time here. She had learned a lot of things, and had an appreciation for stuff she had previously taken for granted.

  “Still, if this keeps up much longer, I’ll end up hunting down that mole myself.” Kate frowned as she pondered the possibility. It was risky of course. And there was no guarantee that the danger would pass, just because the mole was apprehended. But at the same time, this was dragging out far too long.

  If Kate kept up this charade much longer, she was sure that something was going to go wrong. There was a huge difference between amnesia and never having a skill in the first place. The Amish weren’t fools. They took the claim that her mistakes were due to memory loss without question at first. Yet surely they would eventually wonder how she could act like she’d never done any of this stuff a day in her life.

  Kate wondered how she had fooled them for so long, and felt a pang of guilt. Eventually she was going to draw unwanted attention. After all, she could demonstrate no memory of family; no one from her imaginary old community ever called, and what’s more, it was clear that she was learning everything from scratch.

  And if the mole was never found? Was she supposed to stay Kate the clueless Amish? Be swapped from place to place every few months to keep the lies from adding up? Never be herself again?

  Kate was beginning to understand why certain people would break rules in witness protection. She sued to wonder why some of them talked to people they shouldn’t, and wanted to go back to their old lives, despite the risk. She finally understood that the loss of an identity one had worked all their life to build was crushing, even to a workaholic loner like herself. How much worse would this be if she actually had people waiting for her back there?

  “Kate?”

  Kate roused herself from her musings and opened her eyes. Ryan stood in the doorway with his jacket slung over one shoulder. As usual, he looked absolutely stunning, even fresh off the beat. In fact, if she didn’t know better, she would have thought he was preparing for a magazine shoot instead of a day in the office. And those eyes. If she wasn’t careful, then she could get lost in those eyes.

  “Hello, Ryan.” Kate rose quickly to her feet and checked the time on the wall clock. Not much time had passed at all.

  “I was told I had a visitor,” Ryan said as he smiled at her. Something fluttered in Kate’s chest at his smile. For a moment, she wondered why. She had dated before; she had felt attracted to men before. Yet with Ryan, it always felt a little different somehow.

  As Ryan walked past her to take up his seat, she felt a tingle shiver up her arm and down her spine. Every nerve in her body felt like it was on high alert, but in an exhilarating way.

  “I’m, I’m…” She blinked and tried to find the words. Had she been pretending to be an awkward Amish for too long? She actually felt like she couldn’t find the words to say. “I uh. Jeremiah.”

  “Jeremiah?” Ryan frowned.

  “Jeremiah Steinbeck,” Kate said, as she tried to clear the cobwebs out of her head and get back in the game. What was wrong with her? “He’s Beckie’s cousin. Everyone’s frantic over his arrest. I was hoping you might be able to help them.”

  “Steinbeck?” It might have been her imagination, but he looked a little relieved that this was a business call, and disappointed too, oddly enough. Was it possible to be both? “Steinbeck. That’s the murder case in that café.”

  Kate nodded as she folded her hands in front of her, trying to keep the guise of the proper Amish woman. “We know he is innocent, but the evidence looks bad for him.”

  “I hate to break this to you, Kate -”

  “No one wants to believe their family can kill someone else,” she finished for him. She herself had made that speech to many family members of criminals. She knew how hard it was for them to accept such a horrible truth, especially when they loved the criminal.

  Ryan nodded grimly. “I know it’s probably not what you want to hear.”

  “I expected it,” she admitted with a smile. “But something isn’t adding up about the whole thing. Like why he would poison the journalist someplace so obvious? There are lots of quiet places he could have taken the man. And why poison him if they were fighting loud enough for someone to call? That is a pretty slow way to do the job if they were able to draw that kind of attention to themselves.”

  Ryan furrowed his brow as he pondered the second one. “You may have a point there, Kate. Pretty sharp thinking for a quiet country girl.”

  “Oh no,” Kate said quickly. “We were discussing the case for hours at the last knitting circle. Beckie’s a sweet woman. Everybody wanted to find some way to help.”

  “So you ladies all started poking around for holes in the story.” Ryan seemed impressed. Kate knew the feeling. The way the women could brainstorm together still astounded her
, as did the way in which they could rally around a cause. “Maybe we should hire your group to work on some cases,” Ryan said.

  Kate gave a polite laugh at his joke. “Right now, they’re concerned about Jeremiah.”

  “Let me make a couple calls. Maybe I can figure something out, but just keep in mind that he could still be guilty.”

  “I understand. But at least it will be less about circumstantial evidence.”

  Ryan gave her a half grin. “You’ve been hanging around us too long.”

  “Pardon?” she asked. Her gut clenched as she suddenly realized her carelessness.

  “Circumstantial evidence,” he repeated with a hint of amusement. “You said it like you’ve been in the field for years.”

  She gave a strained smile. She had been saying things like that for years. This fake Amish thing was getting older by the minute. She frantically tried to think up a reason why it would seem so natural. “We read too, you know. It’s not all knitting and baking.”

  “Of course.” Ryan looked a little dejected over the sharp edge in her tone. “I didn’t mean anything by that. I was just teasing you. It’s a bad time for jokes, I know, what with one of your own in the hot seat. I’m sorry.”

  One of her own. If only he knew. In his eyes, she was Kate the Amish woman. What would he ever think of the real her? Or of the months of lies to keep her cover, at that? Kate felt a painful twisting in her stomach as she tried to imagine his reaction.

  “No, I’m sorry,” she said apologetically. “It’s a hard time for Beckie. I guess it rubbed off on me.”

  “That’s understandable.” Ryan gave a thin smile, and Kate wanted to bang her head on the desk for handling the slip poorly. “You came to this town for some R and R after your accident, and you get pulled into one thing after another. It would be a lot for anyone.”