“Mama, I don’t want to sleep in your room anymore. Your walls are scary.”
Jennie sighed. LJ had woken her up out of a sound sleep. Her walls were scary? She looked around her room, trying to imagine how it looked to a four-year-old. Ahh. There were shadows on her walls. She sometimes left the blinds open a few inches.
Getting out of bed, she closed the plastic slats, eradicating the looming shadows on her wall.
“Is that better, sweetie?”
“Yeah,” LJ said, dragging the word out.
“But?”
“I want my light.”
Of course.
“I’ll be right back.” Jennie turned on her bedside light, so that he wouldn’t get scared, then quickly went to his room to collect his Scooby-Doo night-light. A minute later, she was plugging it in.
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
Finally. She tucked the covers around him before getting in on the other side of the bed. It took her a while to fall asleep. Her mind refused to accept that it was time to slow down and instead kept running over the events of the day.
Almost as shocking as Steve’s escape was Luke’s return. Her brain couldn’t get over the change in him. When she had met him, he’d kept his curly hair short and typically wore faded blue jeans and T-shirts. If it was cold, then flannel shirts were his main defense against the weather. To see him looking so much more mature than the man she’d married, and staring at her with nearly no recognition, it was like hearing he’d died all over again. And the way he dressed! She hadn’t exaggerated when she told him that he used to go out of his way to appear Englisch. Anything he could do to blend in with her world he’d do. She knew he had often rebelled against what was expected when they were younger. Part of that might have had to do with the fact that he and his father clashed so frequently. That was why he’d left the Amish world. Today, she could see that he was completely comfortable in his choice to join the Amish world.
Of course, he hadn’t known about her. That would have made a difference. She knew it would have. Maybe if she’d insisted he wear a wedding ring, he would have at least known he was married and come searching for her. At the time, though, she hadn’t argued when he’d said wearing a ring, or jewelry of any kind, made him uncomfortable.
Jennie huffed and flopped over on her other side. This was doing no good. It didn’t matter how many times she thought about what might have happened. Nothing would change. She’d still have been alone for the past five years.
He was here now, her mind whispered. Yeah, but for how long?
Finally, she drifted into an uneasy sleep.
Jennie sat up in bed, her senses on full alert. The room was dark still. What had awakened her?
Reaching out a trembling hand, she patted LJ’s warm body. She could feel the steady rise and fall of his little chest as he breathed deeply, still sound asleep. Relief seeped down into her soul.
He was safe.
A quick glance at the digital clock glowing on her nightstand told her it was just past four in the morning. Not quite time to rise. She normally didn’t get up until six.
But something had awakened her. Silently, she pushed her covers away and slid off her side of the bed, taking care not to make too much movement. She didn’t want to disturb LJ. Once he woke up, there’d be no getting him back to sleep. She really had no desire to rise for the day before dawn. It had taken her so long to get to sleep in the first place.
She pushed her feet into the slippers she kept tucked under the edge of the bed before padding out to the hall. Once there, she paused, listening. She could hear the wind wailing outside and shivered in response. Moving to the thermostat, she turned the heat up a notch. Normally, she wouldn’t, but she felt bad about Luke sleeping on the couch. The living room always tended to be a little drafty, and that couch couldn’t be comfortable.
She went into the kitchen to get a drink of water, careful to keep the glass from clinking. On her way back to the bedroom, she paused.
What was that noise she heard? It came from outside. She went into her room and tried to look out her window. Her window faced away from the street. There were no streetlamps to illuminate the ground below. In fact, it was impossible to see anything moving about in the inky blackness outside.
There was a large tree right outside. Its branches stretched up to her second floor window and beyond. Sometimes they scraped against the windows. She’d probably heard that and, in her paranoia, was overreacting.
Kicking off her slippers, she crawled back into her bed, pulling the covers up over her shoulders. Lying on her side, she placed her arm around LJ.
Everything was fine, she told herself. She was well, LJ was here at her side and Luke was just in the next room. Closing her eyes, she tried to will herself back to sleep. It was hard with her heart running like a freight train.
Thump. Scratch.
Her eyes shot open. That was no tree branch. Something was outside her apartment.
She hurried out of bed. Should she wake Luke? There was no way she was going to be like one of those women in a horror movie and go investigate the noise by herself. Not when she already knew someone was out to kill her.
Another scratch made up her mind. This one sounded like it was right outside LJ’s room. Flipping on the hallway light, she ran to the bed and grabbed her son. Picking him up, she carried him as quickly as she could to the living room and deposited him on the love seat. Luke was sleeping on his back, one arm flung over his head.
“Luke!” She ran to him and shook his shoulder. “Luke! Wake up.”
Faster than she would have believed possible, he bolted upright, knocking her over. He yelled out in Pennsylvania Dutch. She didn’t understand the words, but by then, he seemed to be aware of his surroundings. He bounded to his feet, helping her to stand even as his eyes scanned the living room. His posture relaxed when his eyes fell on LJ still asleep on the love seat.
“Are you all right? What’s going on?”
She wrapped her arms around her middle, chilled despite the fact that the living room was now a toasty seventy degrees.
“I heard something. I thought it might have been a tree scraping along the side of the apartment. But then I heard another sound, coming from outside LJ’s room. There’s no way it could have been a tree branch.”
She didn’t say anything else. Luke was already headed down the hall. She wanted to call him back. What if someone was in there, and he got ambushed?
“Luke,” she called out, her voice a raspy whisper.
When he didn’t respond, she grabbed her cell phone and lowered herself to the floor in front of the love seat where her son was sitting. She wanted to be ready to call 911 at a moment’s notice.
Luke stepped into LJ’s bedroom. The light filtering in from the hall illuminated much of the room, casting eerie shadows on the wall. He stood for a moment, allowing his eyes to scan the room. Nothing stood out as being out of place.
Jennie had heard noises from outside. Striding over to the window, he opened the blinds. There was nothing moving outside. Casting his eyes down, he froze.
Up against the side of the building, propped right against the windowsill leading into his son’s room, was a ladder.
“Jennie,” he called out softly.
Within seconds, she was in the doorway. She seemed to glow, silhouetted against the soft white light from the hall. For a brief moment, he was trapped, an image of her in a long white gown flashing through his mind.
When it vanished, he blinked.
“Did you find something?” she asked.
He pulled himself back from the sense of loss suddenly engulfing him. Unable to speak, he nodded and pointed to the window, giving himself time to recover.
Brow furrowed in confusion, she stepped to his side and looked out. When she sucked in a breath, he knew she’d seen the ladder.
Hoping his voice was under control, he asked, “Was that there earlier?”
He wasn’t surprised when she shook her head. “No. I’ll bet when he leaned it against the window, that was the thud I heard.”
“Do you want to call the police?” He was normally reluctant to take that course of action, but when it came to Jennie and LJ, he found he was more than willing to do whatever was necessary to keep them safe.
“Oh, yeah. Definitely.” Her chin quivered before she steadied herself. She was so pale. “Luke, if I hadn’t heard that noise, and if LJ had been sleeping in here...”
“Hey.” Luke pulled her into his arms and held her tight against his chest. “Neither of those things happened. You can’t torture yourself with what might have happened. You’re safe, LJ’s safe and I’m here. We’re going to call the police now, and then we’ll go from there. Jah?”
Her only response was to nod her head against his chest.
He wanted to stay in this position, but knew he needed to let her go. Just one more second.
She pulled back. Reluctantly, he opened his arms and watched as she stepped away.
“I’m good.” She surveyed the window once more before spinning around and striding from the room. He could hear her voice a moment later on the phone with the police. “They’ll be here in under ten, Luke.”
“I’m going to clean up.”
He gathered his bag and went into the bathroom. He arrived back in the living room to find that LJ had woken up and Jennie was opening the front door and standing out of the way so the police trooper who had come to check out the situation could enter. Trooper Carter looked around and waved at LJ, who was sitting in front of the television, watching a video Jennie had put on for him.
LJ waved back and took a bite of toast his mother must have made him while Luke was in the bathroom, his eyes back on the screen.
Luke looked at Jennie and raised his eyebrow.
She nodded her head in LJ’s direction. “He isn’t allowed to watch TV unless it’s a special occasion, so he’s probably not going to move from that spot until the video’s done.”
He approved, he decided. LJ didn’t need to know how worried his parents were. Or how close he had come—
Nee. He hadn’t let Jennie go there earlier, so neither would he. He turned his eyes back to the trooper talking with her.
“You woke when you heard something?” Carter was saying.
“Yes, I wasn’t sure what, but it was a strange sound. One I had never heard before. When I heard another sound coming from the direction of his room...” she lowered her voice and discreetly pointed at the four-year-old engrossed in cartoons “... I came and got Luke. He was sleeping on the couch.”
Carter turned his gaze to Luke, who picked up the narrative. “There was nothing in the room, and I couldn’t see anyone outside. It was still dark. That’s when I saw the ladder.”
Carter’s eyes sharpened. “Ladder? You better show me.”
Jennie’s gaze flashed to LJ.
Luke touched her hand. “Jennie, why don’t you stay with LJ and I’ll take Trooper Carter back?”
Relief flickered across her face and she nodded. He understood. She didn’t trust LJ to be safe alone in a room in his own home anymore. The idea saddened him.
“This way.” Luke led Carter down the hall and stood back while the trooper examined LJ’s room. Carter pulled a pair of latex gloves over his hands and opened the window before peering at the screen. He pushed on the bottom of it. The entire screen came off and crashed into the bushes directly below the window.
That shouldn’t have happened.
Carter looked out of the window and whistled. Luke moved closer. “What?”
The trooper stood up, closing the outer window. Motioning for Luke to follow, he returned to where Jennie stood waiting at the end of the hall. She had a clear view of LJ and the men coming toward her.
“You found something.”
There was certainty, and a tremor of dread, in her soft voice.
“The storm window had been removed. It was lying on the ground, broken. Whether he dropped it or stepped on it when he fled, it’s hard to say. The screen fell when I touched it. He must have been removing it.”
She dropped her head in her hands. “Oh! He was so close.”
“I noticed the lock on the window is ancient. It wouldn’t have taken much for him to have gotten past it.”
Jennie made no protest when Luke slipped an arm around her shoulders to comfort her. In fact, she leaned in, letting him take some of her weight. “I had no idea they were in such bad shape.”
“Well, something must have scared whoever it was away. Did you come into the room?”
She shook her head. “No. I heard the noise, got LJ and brought him out here, then I woke up Luke.”
“You didn’t turn on the light or anything?”
“Just the hall light.”
Luke spoke up. “The bedroom door was half open. Was it that Deets guy, do you think? Could the hall light have been enough to scare him away?”
“Could have been him. And turning on the light might have scared him off.” The trooper looked at Jennie. “Mrs. Beiler, is there anywhere that you can stay for the time being? Until we catch this person, I don’t recommend you remain here. However, if you are determined to stay, I think I can offer you some protection. I can see if the department could have a cruiser drive by several times a day.”
“I don’t know. There are so many people in and out of the building.” She paused.
“There is that. Also, your apartment is on the side of the building. It would be harder to see from the street. Which brings me back to my first question. Is there somewhere else you could hole up for a while until we catch this guy?”
She floundered, tears shimmering in her brown eyes. “I don’t know. My brother is away. I have a key to his place. Maybe we could stay there.”
Trooper Carter appeared to consider the idea for a moment. Finally, he shook his head. “I don’t think that’s the best plan. If you’re right, and your stepfather is behind these events, it’s possible he may look for you at your brother’s house.”
Her shoulders sagged beneath Luke’s arm. He tightened his hold for an instant, a silent reminder that he was there for her. He agreed with the trooper. If his sister Theresa was in trouble, she came to either he or Raymond for help. He had no doubt Steve would search for her at Aiden’s place.
She couldn’t stay here. Jennie hadn’t been able to identify the man who had nearly run her over, nor could she identify the man that had tried to get in through the window. It could have been Steve, though Luke didn’t think so. It seemed unlikely that the man would have been able to travel this far already. It was almost two hundred miles on foot. Even if he had a driver, it appeared he had recruited others. There was no way to know how many people were involved. Jennie could be talking with one of the man’s henchmen and not even know it.
“I know where you could stay,” Luke stated. “You could stay at Onkel Jed’s haus.”
Jennie blinked at him, her face blank for a moment. “Your uncle wouldn’t want some stranger interrupting his life.”
“Onkel Jed is not a stranger to you. You’ve met him before. And unlike me, he has never lost his memory.”
Carter’s eyebrows climbed nearly to his receding hairline.
“It’s been years since I saw him. He had no idea that we were getting married. You sort of broke all connection with your family at that time,” Jennie said.
Was that regret he heard?
“He might not have known about us, but he is a gut man. I know he would want to help if he could.”
“It might not be a bad idea,” Trooper Carter broke in. “You have to go somewhere. If the man’s willing to help, and if he’s someone that no one would think of, it’s a good plan. I would need the address. To keep in touch and to check in with you.”
“I can give you that.” Now that the idea had been accepted, Luke actually liked the idea of her coming to stay with his family. At the same time, he wondered if it was a horrible idea, having her staying so close. He could stay elsewhere, put distance between them.
That was what he would do. He would see Jennie and LJ safely to his onkel Jed’s haus, then he would find another place to stay. Somewhere close enough to keep in touch daily, but far enough away to help him resist the lure of this lovely woman.
He needed to start distancing himself now. Casually, he dropped the arm that was still about her shoulders. It hung at his side, feeling empty and useless. He ignored the temptation to put it back.
He missed them already.