Whispers from the Dead (Serenity's Plain Secrets Book 2) (20 page)

26

I
had hugged or been hugged by more women in the past few hours than I ever had in my life, I thought, as I pulled back from Anna to look at her tear streaked face. Her gray eyes were bloodshot and her usually pale skin was even whiter than normal.

“Why would he take her? I don’t understand,” Anna asked in between sniffs.

I put my arm around her shoulder and guided her over to the chair by the fireplace. Jotham was filling it up with wood in a fit of anxious energy as Anna sat down. I gazed around the room and noted that the two deputies were doing a good job at collecting samples of the blood on the floor and smeared on the door handle. The blood was Asher’s, I was sure of it, but the evidence still needed to be collected to build a case.

The minister, Mason Gingerich, was seated at the table with Gabe and Seth, and his wife, Martha, was busily brewing coffee at the cooking stove. I knew that dozens of other men from the community were riding their hastily saddled horses through the snowy fields and along hedgerows in the darkest part of night. Again, it amazed me how quickly the Amish came together in a crisis, but the English were doing their part too, with over one hundred emergency response personnel and neighbors already scouring the roads and fields.

I turned my attention back to Anna and said, “I think he’s using Cacey to get out of town. She’s a bargaining chip for him.”

“He might hurt her,” Anna cried out softly.

“Shhh, you don’t want the boys to hear that kind of talk and you just got the girls back in their beds,” I said, trying to keep the worry out of my own voice. “All you can do is keep on praying and let us do our job.”

Anna nodded in agreement, but Jotham spoke up, “We aren’t doing anything, Serenity, except sitting here, waiting.”

The ruined part of his face twitched and, I wondered once again if he lived with constant pain from the scarring. His eyes were certainly shining with pain, but the psychological kind, not the physical kind.

I took a deep breath and told him once again what I had already told him five minutes earlier. “Everyone else is out there searching, hoping that by chance, they come across Asher and Cacey—and with the snow still falling it’s going to be impossible to track them anyway. We’re just going to stop, breathe and think.” I spoke up louder, addressing the room, “Where do
you
think he would go with Cacey. He’s a smart man and trudging through a snowstorm with a little girl is not something that he would likely rush into unthinkingly. He’s also injured. Asher used to be Amish. There might be a safe place that he remembers from his childhood that he would go to hole up in until the weather breaks.”

My own heart still thrummed against my chest, even though my words were spoken with calm sensibility. I knew the statistics all too well. The longer it takes to find a missing child the more likely that the child is dead. And I couldn’t erase the memory of the sick smirk that Asher had directed my way, even after his brother had been shot. He was definitely deranged and I seriously worried that he’d use Cacey to take revenge on his former community. Asher was also the type of guy that would gladly go out in a blaze of glory if he thought that he had no chance of escape. I shivered thinking about it and looked up at Jotham with a pleading look that silently shouted, “Think man, think!”

It was Gabe who broke the hanging silence. “What about the schoolhouse? There are no classes this week…”

The mustached officer looked up and added, “And the schoolhouse isn’t that far from Hoover Road, which goes straight to the interstate.”

Bingo. I grabbed my coat and toboggan and headed for the door. Jotham was at my side and for the first time since I had first seen him at the hospital, there was hopefulness in his good eye.

“Be careful you two. After Rowan and Cacey, I don’t think I could handle any more bad news,” Anna called after us.

Over my shoulder, I replied, “Don’t worry, we’ll bring Cacey home.”

It was still a long shot that Asher and Cacey were in the schoolhouse, but just in case, we parked about a quarter mile away on a side road and hiked through an open field toward the school, with the hopes of taking Asher off guard.

The snow was falling more gently now and the wind had subsided. I actually had to unzip my coat to keep from sweating too badly with the physical exertion.

“You must be exhausted,” Jotham commented.

It was nearly one o’clock in the morning and this was my second hike through half a foot of snow that evening. Normally, I would have been passed out, but the adrenaline to find Cacey was keeping me going. I wouldn’t be able to sleep until we found her.

“I’m all right. What about you? You’ve had a rough night yourself,” I said, glancing at Jotham from the corner of my eye.

“God gives us the strength to keep going when we really need to.”

“I hope God’s with us right now, we might need Him,” I said seriously.

Jotham smiled. “Oh, no worries, He’s here.”

His confidence made me feel a little better, but then the schoolhouse came into view and I took a measured breath. The building looked almost lonely resting on the snow covered knoll with only a large tree and a swing set as company. I didn’t like the fact that if Asher was indeed in the school, he had a bird’s eye view of anyone approaching. I suddenly wished that Jotham and I were both wearing white instead of black. If someone was indeed looking out of one of those darkened windows, we’d stick out against the snow for sure.

When we reached the fencing that enclosed the schoolhouse yard, I motioned for Jotham to stop. We kneeled on the ground, using the boards for a little bit of cover.

Jotham sighed and his breath was an icy puff in the air between us. “What’s the plan?”

I liked that he had listened to what I said earlier in Rowan’s kitchen. He was amazingly calm.

“Rowan is fighting for his life because he insisted on going into danger with me. Are you sure you want to do this? I’ll be perfectly honest with you—we might not make it out alive.”

A sad smile tugged at Jotham’s mouth and a single tear fell from his good eye, but when he spoke, he was completely resolute.

“I was there to save Cacey’s life five years ago,” he swallowed, “I won’t let her down now.”

“All right then.”

We stole silently up the softly rising hill, past the swing sets and only paused when we finally reached the trunk of the tree. I peeked around the bark and studied the building. All was eerily quiet and dark.

“There aren’t any lights on,” Jotham whispered.

“There wouldn’t be. Asher’s too smart for that,” I replied, slowly running my gaze over the front of the building, stopping on the door. It had a small glass panel near the top and a silver colored knob. With the snow illuminating the scene, the red smear on the white board beside it was clearly visible—and exactly what I was looking for.

“Damn. He’s in there,” I said softly, pointing at the door for Jotham to take a look.

“He’s injured. We have the advantage,” Jotham said when he straightened back out.

“No, don’t fool yourself into thinking that. Sure, he’s lost a lot of blood, but I would guess that he has his hand wrapped by now…and he has Cacey. He’s holding all the cards,” I scolded him in a hissing whisper. “Here’s what we’re going to do…”

I carefully gave him instructions and then slipped away to the side of the building. I only hoped that God really was with Jotham, because I had just put the man’s life in jeopardy.

27

I
took a quick breath and turned the corner alone. Bending down, I passed directly below the windows at a jog, only stopping when I reached the back door that Jotham had told me entered into the school’s kitchen.

Careful to not jingle the keys, I pulled them from my pocket. Since Jotham was one of the men who volunteered to do regular maintenance at the school, he had a set of keys into the building. Unfortunately, the handle was an older type that would be easy to jimmy open with the right tool. Since there weren’t any broken windows, I assumed that must have been what Asher did to enter the front door.

The key turned with a quiet click that normally wouldn’t have even been noticed, but with the desperate need for silence, the sound seemed to split the snowy night air. Pushing the door ever so softly, I peeked in. The room was empty, but there were a few wadded up sheets of paper towels on the counter. There was blood on them and the smell of a cleaning agent was still strong.

I closed the door quietly behind me and moved through the kitchen as if I was a ghost, listening, but careful not to make a sound. I took another steadying breath, hoping to slow down the pounding of my heart, which was blasting loudly in my ears as I pressed myself up against the wall and glanced down the hall way. The coast was clear.

As I began to step away from the wall, my back brushed against a broom that was hanging in the corner. There was a scraping sound that I stopped quickly with my hand. Holding my breath, I listened again.

It was still deathly silent. I suddenly wondered if we were too late. Asher might have already killed Cacey and taken his own life. It made no sense why he would bring the child into the equation if he was going to give up so easily, but crazy people often times did completely irrational things. I remembered a case that I had worked on in Indy where a bipolar mother had thrown her five month old baby boy into a frigid river in February and then shot herself on the bridge. Both had died and none of it made any sense at all. That was the really scary part. It couldn’t even begin to be explained.

The muffled sound of movement at the end of the hall caught my attention and I quickly squeezed myself in between the counter and a trash can. It was a pretty lame hiding place, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

I held my breath and listened. The sounds were definitely from the plastic tread of tennis shoes on linoleum.

I eased the gun from my side and forced myself to take shallow breaths. At this close range I only had one shot if Asher was armed. Poised on the ball of my foot, I prepared to go around the corner.

“Asher—where is Cacey?”

My heart immediately hit my stomach and I sagged. Dammit, Jotham was playing the hero.

There was a moment of silence, but I held my position and waited. Jumping out now could be a disaster.

“Why, Jotham. I didn’t expect you to be visiting,” Asher said sweetly.

I could hear Jotham slowly walking up the corridor as he answered in the soft tone of a person speaking to a child, “You don’t have to do this, none of it. I know you’re just punishing yourself, the same way I’ve done all these years. But it’s over now. Rowan is probably dead and that sheriff woman has it all figured out. She knows, Asher. She knows what we did.”

Sick curiosity stalled my forward motion and I continued to listen, but I also had my gun up and ready to shoot when the time came. I had a mental picture that Asher hadn’t turned around yet and when he spoke, his voice was louder and clearer than Jotham’s, telling me that I was right.

“Do you really think that’s why I’ve become what I have?” Asher laughed and the jolting noise made me shiver. “I was fucked up way before we crept through the cornfield to the Gentry barn. My parents and their insistence that my only salvation was through the Amish was my downfall. They’ve shunned me, Jotham, ignored me, as if I didn’t even exist, for nearly twenty years. But it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t live that way any longer. I didn’t give a fuck about Austin Gentry and his skinny little girlfriend. They meant nothing to me.”

“You don’t mean that,” Jotham sounded appalled.

“Besides, I didn’t light the match—Mr. Perfect, Rowan, did,” Asher challenged.

“No, it wasn’t Rowan at all. It was me. I’m the one who lit the match and tossed it into that wood pile,” Jotham said with a quaking voice.

Asher’s confusion was evident when he replied, “I was guarding the door, so I couldn’t see you guys very well. But Rowan told me it was him. When his house blew up and Hedy died, he said that it was God’s punishment. The only thing that kept him going was the kids.”

“Rowan took responsibility for it because he was the oldest and he wanted to protect me. Even though he knew that Gabe was mine…he never turned his back on me.”

“Well, damn. I guess that God punished you the same as He did my brother then,” he mocked.

“Please, Asher, where’s Cacey? She needs to go home,” Jotham pleaded.

“Was it really worth getting half your face burned off visiting Hedy that night? Were you getting some action or what?” Asher growled and then paused when Jotham didn’t answer him. He went on to say, “Cacey’s in the coat closet in the first classroom, but you won’t be taking her anywhere. She’s my ticket out of here and you’re going to be too dead to tell anyone anything.”

At that instant, I left my cover and went around the corner. The shadow of Asher’s body whirling around is all I saw when I fired. This time I did put the bullet into his head. But just as my weapon fired, another shot rang out, like a sickening echo.

My stomach clenched and I ran forward, jumping over Asher’s body to reach Jotham who was also on the ground. I grabbed the flashlight from my pocket and shined it down on Jotham. The large hole in his black coat was all too obvious, but I frantically pushed the material away anyway. The blood seeping into his shirt was dark red and exactly where his heart was located. He should already be dead, I thought, as I leaned forward and smoothed the hair away from his face.

“Serenity,” he said so weakly, that I had to bring my ear to his mouth quickly to hear his words, “please tell Sheriff Gentry what we did. He deserves to know.” Jotham gasped for air, his mouth gaping grotesquely, but he managed to whisper, “Tell Gabe that I love him”

Jotham’s head dropped to the side as he took his last breath and then he was still, except for the steady leaking of his blood.

I didn’t have time to feel any remorse over a man who I barely knew. My gaze settled on the pool of blood beneath Asher’s head for an instant and then I leaped up and ran down the hallway, turning into the classroom.

I flung the door to the closet open and found Cacey crouched in the corner with her wrists bound and a strip of gray tape across her mouth. I knelt down to her and as gently as I could, worked the tape away from her mouth. Once her mouth was free, I cut the thin piece of rope with my pocket knife.

Cacey leaped against me, flinging her arms around my neck. Her body bounced with her sobbing and her face was warm and wet against my neck.

As I rocked her back and forth, I finally began breathing again. My thoughts were bittersweet. I hadn’t been able to save Jotham, and I didn’t even know if Rowan was still alive, but I had managed to rescue two Amish girls.