Community Agricultural Project, Moldavia, Romania
THE SUN WAS SETTING as Hanna Hastings leaned against the fender of her Renault pickup, making notes on her tablet. The harvest was going well, despite a lack of modern combines. The single machine they had dated back to the 1970s and had already broken down twice. What these farmers lacked in technology, they made up for in resilience. When the machinery malfunctioned, the most skilled mechanics of the group would go to work on it, despite a complete lack of replacement parts. While those repairs were taking place, the community came out and continued the harvest with hand tools just as they’d done for centuries. These were hard men and women from a harsh land; they reminded her of her family in Montana.
Windswept hills provided fertile soil but droughts threatened to ruin crops and crush wills. Hanna had received a grant to dig a well, build a basic irrigation system, and introduce the local farmers to modern seeds and chemical fertilizers. The results of their efforts were paying off. This year’s yield appeared to be the best that anyone could remember, despite a relatively dry summer.
Hanna was a horticulturist and crop specialist with a master’s degree from Utah State University. She had been born in the United States after her family had immigrated to Montana and, as the baby of the family, she had always rooted for the underdog.
She was only eight years old when she found her first cause. The ranch hands had moved some cattle to a fresh pasture and a newborn calf had been separated from the herd. They quickly discovered the oversight and reunited the calf with the herd, but her mother would not claim her. The calf was dehydrated and weak when Hanna first became aware of her plight. Caroline drove her to the feed store in Winfred, where she used her allowance to buy a nursing bottle and a large bag of milk replacer. She also made a deal with her father: if the calf survived, she would never be sent to auction. Jonathan reluctantly agreed; he’d never been good about saying no to his youngest daughter. She named the calf Patches and nursed her back to health in a hastily built pen. Patches regained her strength and was soon able to rejoin the herd, living a long life and having many calves of her own. Those calves earned thousands of dollars in revenue for the ranch, which Jonathan dutifully placed into Hanna’s savings account. One of the family’s favorite photos was a snapshot of Hanna sitting inside Patches’s pen with her legs crossed, bottle-feeding her rescued calf.
It came as no surprise when Hanna turned down a potentially lucrative career with a seed company and chose to work for an NGO educating farmers in developing countries. She was currently helping modernize the farming practices of one of the poorest countries in the European Union. She stayed in touch with her family through email and Skype and planned to return to Montana for Christmas.
Her father always joked that Hanna was the bleeding heart of the family, but that wasn’t exactly true. Though she was incredibly compassionate, she was very much of the “teach them to fish” mind-set. Her father was right about one thing, though: she couldn’t save the entire world by herself. She looked forward to going home in a few short months. She’d been away too long.
An hour later Hanna picked at her dinner at the small table that served as a dining room, her laptop next to her. The living conditions of the small farmstead apartment should have been uncomfortable for a wealthy American, but she had a genuine appreciation for the simplicity of it all. She tried to email her parents, but the farm’s satellite internet signal was down, as usual.
Headlights flashed across the ceiling as a vehicle turned onto her lane, the beams casting eerie shadows as they filtered through the high window frames. She heard footfalls on the stone walkway as a figure approached. Visitors after nightfall were not a normal occurrence. Listening to her sixth sense, Hanna looked around for something to use as a weapon and picked up a battered kitchen knife. The knock at the door sent a shiver down her spine, but a woman’s voice put her at ease.
“Excuse me,” the woman said in Romanian.
Hanna peeked through the window shade and saw a young, well-dressed female.
“Can I help you?”
“My husband and I are lost. Is this the road to the bed-and-breakfast?”
She could see that the woman was holding a smartphone, presumably trying to find a location on the map that would not come up due to that lack of coverage in the area. Still suspicious, Hanna unlocked the door and stepped out to help, holding the knife in her right hand, the blade pressed upward against her forearm to conceal it. The woman smiled and held out the phone so that Hanna could see the map. She leaned in to see where she was pointing.
“Thank you so much.”
Hanna opened her mouth to respond but was grabbed in a powerful bear hug from behind. She slashed backward with the knife and felt the resistance of clothing, flesh, and bone. The vise grip loosened as her attacker grunted in pain. Twisting away, she turned and ran back through the doorway, sprinting through her home for the back door that led into the night. If she could get out of the house, she would have a two-hundred-yard dash to the forest. She heard footsteps behind her and threw a chair into the doorway to slow her pursuer.
Almost there. The back door. A chance to escape.
Slamming her shoulder into the back door, she catapulted herself toward the tree line and was knocked to the ground with a two-by-four to the face. She fell backward, crashing back into the door frame, the knife slipping from her grasp. Bloodied and barely conscious against the side of the house, she had no defense when the man she had stabbed appeared and struck the left side of her head. Before the others pulled him off, he landed another blow where her jawline met her ear, sending her spiraling into darkness.