Finding Mercy (27 page)

She sighed and turned away from gazing up the hill at the trees ablaze with autumn glory. It was lovely, warm weather for midautumn. The sky was a shattering blue, and the fertile valley lay peacefully below. But it didn’t calm her. She had to find her heart again, her contentment here and gratitude to God. But her soul was restless now, not to travel, not to see the world, but to have the one person in the world she loved as a woman loves a man come back.

A car she did not recognize drove into the lane and came past the house to park near the barn. A black car, shiny, stylish, but solid-looking. A tourist who had seen the Plain Lavender sign? Connie Lee again, only in a different vehicle? Not Linc Armstrong!

But, to Ella’s surprise, the man who got out of the car looked Amish, at this distance. He must be Mennonite since they drove cars, usually black ones. Oh, yes, someone local who waved to
Grossmamm.
But he started up the hill. He wore black jeans and a black denim jacket. Underneath, she glimpsed a white shirt and Amish-looking suspenders. He wore a broad-brimmed hat that obscured his face, but she could tell he was clean-shaven.

And then she knew.

She gasped and stood, spilling the pile of lavender. Frozen in place at first, she took two steps down the hill, then started to run. Alex strode upward, his arms spread. Near the bottom, she hit into him, but he only lifted and spun her with her feet and heart flying. She held on to him so hard she probably hurt him.

“Ella, my love!”

“Me too—for you. I was so worried! I missed you so!”

Who cared, she thought, that courting among her people was only done in private? They held and kissed and kissed, and Ella cried.

“You two best come inside!”
Grossmamm’
s voice finally interrupted their reunion. “Some others like to say welcome back to him,
ya,
they would.” Ella glanced over Alex’s shoulder and saw her family’s faces at the windows, all staring. “You’ll be late for the wedding today and for your own, if you don’t get busy!”
Grossmamm’
s voice floated to them. “And Andrew-Alex, you’ll have to go talk to the bishop about being dressed like that.”

“You are always giving orders,” Alex told
Grossmamm,
pretending to be angry. He gave her a hug too. “But you and Ella are invited to dinner soon at the old farmhouse I’m renting just down the road until I can straighten lots of things out. I need to hire someone to help me buy a horse and learn to handle it and get a buggy too. Can’t see keeping my worldly gas guzzler much longer,” he said, gesturing toward the car.

“Well, if that don’t beat all,”
Grossmamm
told him in a sassy voice with a big smile. “If that’s the Stutzman place you’re talking about, you’re gonna need all kinds of help to fix it up, but that’s what we do, help each other. You’ll make a fine Amish businessman and husband, won’t he, Ella?”

“What wedding was she talking about?” he whispered to Ella as
Grossmamm
went into the house.

“The sheriff and Ray-Lynn’s. We’re going to the reception at the Dutch Farm Table in about an hour.”

“I can’t just crash it.”

“Everyone will be happy to see you, especially since you’re now yourself again,” she assured him. “That is, you look different, but you are yourself, right?”

“My new self. I want to try it here, learn the Plain People’s ways, live simply and safely—and pray the woman I want will wait for me to be able to marry her.”

“I bet she will, but for an
Auslander,
it can be a difficult road.”

“It’s the right road. I know that after what I’ve—we’ve—been through. Here’s hoping I can find the bishop at home. Maybe your father will go with me. I don’t want to keep anyone who’s in love and getting married waiting.”

* * *

It got quiet at the reception in the restaurant when the big Lantz extended family walked in with their guest. Alex had squeezed in a quick but good talk with the bishop about his sincerity to join the Amish, but he wondered if he’d overstepped with these people who had been so kind and gracious before. Was he being pushy with the clothes, the car, renting the farmhouse close to Ella—after having her with him in the world for a time, appearing on TV, sending a man to prison, a million reasons they could reject him and ruin all his plans?

But Bishop Esh came up and extended his hand in public as he had earlier in private. “The right hand of fellowship to a friend of ours,” the old man said in a loud voice.

And then it started. The beaming bridegroom in an old-fashioned tux came up and clasped his shoulder. Someone in the room started to clap. Seth Lantz, Ella’s older brother, shook Alex’s hand, while Ella hugged her sister-in-law, Hannah. Other men came up to shake his hand, most of whom he hadn’t met yet. It would take him weeks to learn all these names, years to know these people. But that was exactly what he wanted to do.

Over the din of welcomes, he heard his names, both Andrew and Alex, and the applause swelled. He glimpsed
Grossmamm
standing with a group of older women, smiling and crying at the same time.

Soon, he and Ella were holding babies or little kids as if they could bestow some blessing on them. “This is Marlena, my niece, Seth’s girl,” Ella told him, bouncing a beautiful child in her arms.

“I’m Nate McKenzie, married to Ella’s friend Sarah,” an obviously worldly guy told him and shook his hand with a nod and glance at a pretty woman, one half-dressed Amish. She even had her hair covered with a little lace cap, though it was a lot smaller than the many prayer caps in the room. “And this is our new baby,” he added.

Alex was nervous about such a tiny mite being put in his arms, but he didn’t have to hold that one, since Ella cradled the child while she and Sarah leaned their foreheads together and whispered. Ray-Lynn came over to give him a hug that made her massive skirt bounce out so far in back she nearly knocked the bishop over.

It might have been Ray-Lynn and the sheriff’s reception, but Alex felt it was his.

27

ALEX WAS LATE. On this first day of November, he’d promised he was going to walk to the lavender shop right after breakfast. He had yet to sell his car, though he didn’t drive it and had borrowed a horse and buggy until he went with
Daad
and Seth to buy a mare at the Kidron Auction next week. But he’d said he’d give the horse a rest and just walk the short distance to her shop.

He and Ella were going to make plans to market the lavender next year, not only through the Home Valley Spa, which was yet unfinished, but through more outlets than the several Ella had in town. Alex even had plans to sell products to Connie for her New York City spa, but Ella wasn’t so sure about that. Now that Connie knew who Alex really was, at least she’d been friendly to him, declaring more than once she was an American at heart despite her family heritage.

“Well,” Ella said aloud to the empty room as she stopped restocking the shelves, “then I’ll go meet my man on the road.”

How wonderful, she thought, to think of Alex as hers. Everyone knew it; everyone who mattered approved. He had helped other Amish businessmen to market their furniture or sausage or windmills more effectively. He was learning Amish
Deutsche.
He was being instructed in the faith. The church was supportive of him, though he could not formally join for nearly a year, and so could not marry her until then. But he was worth waiting for. Now that they were safe and no longer being watched by his enemies or their police friends, she could happily wait an eternity for Alex Caldwell, the name he and the bishop had decided he should keep among them.

She wrapped her cape around her shoulders, tied her bonnet over her
kapp
and cut kitty-corner across the field toward the side road that led to the old farmhouse Alex was renting. She supposed they could fix it up even more than it had been already, but they hadn’t decided whether to begin their married life there next year or here in the upstairs of her house.

Ella hummed and quickened her steps around the base of the hill. It looked barren now. She could see all the way to the top where
Daad
had his beehives and she’d been kept as a hostage last summer. If she’d only known then how the scarlet binding cords had worked, she might have gotten free sooner, but the Lord worked it all out for the best. If she had not been abducted, Alex never would have taken her with him when he fled.

Even as she came around the hill onto the road, she didn’t see Alex up ahead. It was unlike him to oversleep. Why, he’d recently gotten up before dawn to help
Daad,
Abel and Aaron bring in the first cutting of winter wheat. She walked even faster.

The house came into view. As usual, his car was parked outside and Bethany, his borrowed mare, must be in the barn because his buggy sat just outside. What if he’d fallen or was sick? He’d probably wish he still had a way to call for help. She knew he missed his cell phone and what he called his laptop, but then he’d teased that she was his laptop now, when he pulled her down onto his thighs. He’d tickled her at first but then, as usual, it had turned to crazy kissing and caresses she could feel even now.

Cutting across his small lawn toward the porch, she felt much warmer than her rapid walk had made her. Although Alex mostly used the back door, she knocked on the front one since it was closer. Her footsteps sounded lonely on the porch. “Alex!”

No answer. Silence but for the wind through the bare tree branches and the caws of distant crows. She twisted the doorknob. Locked, but that was best. Besides, he had some of the New Yorker in him yet. She jumped off the side of the porch and hurried around to the back door.

Oh, good, she thought, it was unlocked. She hurried into the familiar kitchen where they’d fixed more than one meal together, though he often ate with the family.
Grossmamm
still liked to spoil him with extra-large desserts.

“Alex? Are you here?”

Maybe he was in the barn. He sure fussed over that horse a lot.

She hurried through the kitchen, then the dining room where he had papers and plans laid out on a card table under an unlit kerosene lantern he sometimes lowered on a chain from the ceiling, then into the living area.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” a voice—a familiar voice—said from behind her, and then everything went black.

* * *

Ella fought her way through the darkness. Her head hurt. Was she paralyzed? No, tied. Tied, her hands behind her back, her feet together, and curled up in some small, dark place. A nightmare that she was back on the hill again? No, because when she moved, her ankle touched another body—Alex? She tried to say his name but she was gagged.

She struggled to remember what had happened. Where was she? Had she fallen and hit her head? A vibration, a hum surrounded her. Not
Daad’
s bees this time—a car?

Was she—were they—in the trunk of a car? Surely, not Alex’s! She recalled with a shudder the trunk with weapons in the assassin’s dark car they had taken after he fell to his death in Pinecraft. Then she pictured the black-tinted windowed van that had cornered her in the field the day her cape was taken at the mill, the day Deputy Hayes had stopped her buggy. Now why had she thought of that?

She jerked so hard, she kicked the body next to her, surely Alex, who was either unconscious or dead, because he didn’t budge. Blinking back tears, she tried hard to remember what had happened. Oh,
ya,
she’d gone to Alex’s house to see what was keeping him. Someone had spoken from behind, then hit her on the head—and that voice—Win Hayes!

But—but she’d been so certain the deputy was on their side. He wanted to please Sheriff Freeman, didn’t he? She’d believe Connie Lee or Linc Armstrong, if there was someone evil who was local, but Win Hayes?

Yet she pictured the way he always seemed to be two people, smiling yet frowning, protective yet overly watchful. And that hero worship of Alex—too overdone?

The vehicle jerked to a stop. A car door slammed, the trunk lid opened. No, not exactly a trunk lid in a van, but they’d been under a heavy horse blanket in the back part of the vehicle and the hatch was lifted away now. When the blanket was ripped away, blinking in the light, she stared up at Deputy Hayes—in casual clothes, not his uniform—glaring down at her. When her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw she and Alex both were tied with lots of the Chinese red cord.

“I swear to you, I’m really sorry about this, Ella,” Win said, reaching for her and hauling her out of the trunk. He slung her over his shoulder, slammed the back of the van, leaving Alex. He hadn’t moved; Was he dead? Win walked with her through a short stand of bare trees to—to the pond!

“Mmm! Mmph!” she protested through her gag.

“I took a lot of money and promises of promotion to get rid of Alex for my employer, and then you had to get involved. You should’ve stayed out of it. But now, I have a contract for double duty, double death—and I appreciate your giving me the idea for the drowning. Who knows what went wrong? Just a lover’s suicide to the outside world, but for Marv Boynton, justice.”

“Mmph!”

“The guy’s amazing, powerful, charismatic. He may be going to prison for the rest of his life, but he wanted to be sure that he settled with the guy who ratted him out. And when he heard about you, he figured letting Alex know you were going to die with him—before his eyes—well, like I said, I’m sorry, but too late now for me to back out. I’ll remember your contribution to my getting a big police department someday, Ella. Maybe I’ll name my first daughter for you.”

This man was demented—a demon from hell!

He put her on the ground near the fringe of the pond she had feared for so many years. He left her there. She watched him trudge back to his van through the trees. He had pulled way off the main road. With all the time he’d spent driving this area, he probably knew every back way around here. And,
ya,
the van that had followed her that day, tormented her, then just driven off, that’s what he was driving!

It must have been Win Hayes working for Marv Boynton all along, and she’d always urged Alex to watch out for the Chinese! She would have bet on Connie Lee as a contact, but then that crimson cord had spooled all over the road the night her son wrecked his car. Ella never saw Win there, only the sheriff, but he’d probably come later to help write a report or clean up the mess—and taken lots of cord.

Quickly Ella tried to loosen her bonds the way the woman in the spa shop had told her. Why had she not paid more attention to it? She should have tried it herself. Now she had multiple strands of it wrapped around her, so would tightening it, then relaxing it even work?

She saw Win lugging Alex toward her. She had not cried, even in her fear and grief, until she saw that Alex was breathing, was still alive but unconscious. And he wasn’t gagged.
Help us, Lord. We had a good life within our reach....

Win put Alex down with his back against a tree and slapped both his cheeks. Alex opened his eyes and stared at Win, then at her with horror.

“It’s part of the deal you’re still alive, Caldwell,” Win told him. “I have specific orders from Mr. Boynton to make sure you get what’s happening and why. And I figured if I waited at your place long enough with you, Miss Ella might just come calling.”

Win went to the pond, stooped and filled his baseball cap with water, carried it over and threw the water in Alex’s face. Alex sputtered, then said, “Let her go.”

“You know I can’t now. Besides, my orders—which I’d like to change, really—are to get rid of her first so you can watch, then you. Mr. Boynton wants to remind you that you are taking his wife and family away from him for life, all he loves and enjoys, when you should have kept your mouth shut out of loyalty to him. So an eye for an eye.”

“Vengeance, not justice?” Alex challenged. “You believe in that? And you don’t think Sheriff Freeman will find out it’s you—assuming he puts two and two together
before
Boynton tidies up this dirty business by getting rid of you too?”

Ella was glad he was trying another tactic. Anything to give her more time to loosen her bonds. It seemed to be working for the ties around her ankles, but her wrists were still immobile, and she felt the cord cutting into her skin there.

“Don’t give me that stuff about how you know how Mr. Boynton thinks,” Win insisted. “You don’t, or you would have caught on to what he was doing sooner. I’m the one going places with his money and influence now, not you. I think two drowned bodies in the pond’s much better than a fall off a high tower. Yeah, I’ve been told all about that, how the others failed to eliminate you. And I want to thank Ella for giving me that idea of this place for the ending of a sad story.”

He looked at Ella, back at Alex again, then went on. “I’ll no doubt be part of the death investigation, and chime in on all the gossip around town. A lover’s pact? Or Caldwell couldn’t hack it here, but he didn’t want someone else to have her. So he drowned her, then himself,” he taunted. “Hell, I don’t have all day. Law and order calls—which is also why no one will suspect me, not Sheriff Freeman’s golden boy. If this goes to a homicide investigation, I’ll be sure they’re looking for another anonymous hit man like the one you two dispatched along the way.”

Ella’s legs were almost free if she could just carefully kick the ties off without his seeing her. But he was going to drown her before Alex. She watched as Win shoved a handkerchief in Alex’s mouth. He tried to kick Win, trip him, but Win easily sidestepped, then turned to her.

“Sorry, Ella. I’m not kidding I regret doing this to you. Let’s get it over fast. Pointless to give you two time to say goodbye. You Amish are good at forgiving—so I hope you can forgive me.”

But as he half lifted, half dragged her toward the pond, she managed to kick off her ankle ties. In those few yards to the water, frenzy flashed at her, that old panic she’d held in check since Alex had talked her through it. Fear of drowning, of the dark water…

“I kept you gagged, because a woman’s scream might carry through these bare woods,” Win was saying. The man was crazy, but at least he was guilt-ridden, so if she could only talk to him…

He stood her up at the edge of the pond. “Don’t struggle. I know there will be ligature marks on your skin, but I’ve padded his ties so it will look like you’re the only one bound. They’ll assume he tied you. Couldn’t bear to leave you for someone else to have, could he, when he changed his mind to go back to the world? Forgive and forget and just let go, Ella.”

He put one hand on the small of her back to give her a shove. But she hooked her loosed feet around his, tried to throw her weight into him. To his shock—hers too—they both went off balance and hit the water hard.

It was cold! It shocked and immobilized her at first. She tried to recall how she’d kicked to keep her head up in the waves in Florida, but then Alex’s hands had been steadying her, buoying her. The nightmare came roaring back, drowning her in the pond of her terror, pulled down, under.

Win was close, so she kicked at him underwater, felt her feet hit his groin. He sucked in a breath, water with it. He choked.
No panic attack!
she screamed at herself. But why not, because she was going to drown with Alex watching. He was rolling toward the edge of the pond, but he was bound hand and foot.

Fighting to get a breath, she lay on her back, wishing she could breathe through her mouth gag. She blinked and shook her head to clear water from her eyes. Her bonnet had come off. Its ties clasped her throat, but she bent her knees and kicked hard at Win again. She hit his chest. He thrashed, roiling the water. She felt it then, the swirling vortex under the pond, the stream-fed current from below that had almost pulled her under the day her friends had saved her. No friends now. Enemy. Do not fight back, do no violence. But she wanted Alex and children and lavender and life!

She kicked at him one more time. She missed but the sharp movement propelled her away from him. Despite tied hands, she kicked toward the bank. Alex reached bound hands toward her; she thrust a foot at him and he held it, then rolled over to pull her out, bit by bit, on her back. Her sopping skirts rode up, her head scraped, but she felt warmer—wonderful.