Amish Country Undercover. Katy Lee

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       FOUR

      Grace released the pent-up breath she’d been holding since Jack left, slamming the door behind him. She stretched out her throbbing feet and winced from her burns. Her days of walking barr fees were over much earlier in the season than normal. Autumn was only beginning, and she should have had a few more weeks of warm weather to walk the farm with no shoes.

      Two gunshots echoed through the night, reminding her of the danger just outside her front door. Both she and her daed jolted in their places on the floor. Her lack of shoes was the least of her worries when there was a gunman on the loose.

      “Are we under attack?” Grace’s father laid his forehead on her shoulder. His voice had never sounded so fearful. The whole scenario was unfathomable for their simple Amish lifestyle, never mind for someone whose mind couldn’t comprehend normal, everyday things.

      As Grace rubbed his cheek, she looked up at the closed door. The FBI agent had just left through it, hoping to catch the thief stealing his truck and trailer—and her horse. Would she hear another gunshot? Or had the thief just found his mark?

      “I wish I could say no, Daed, but I’m not sure what’s going on. It appears someone is using me to steal horses from Autumn Woods, and the FBI believe I’m involved.” Grace wasn’t sure how much of that her father understood, if anything. She didn’t understand it herself. “What do I do? I could be in a lot of trouble.”

      “We mustn’t fight,” he said solemnly, and lifted his head. “No fechde.”

      Grace frowned at his appropriate reply. It was not what she wanted to hear. His Amish gentleness stayed true, even when he could lose his daughter to prison. He didn’t understand what was at stake. But he was still right. There could be no fighting.

      “I know,” she replied, and swallowed a growing lump of resentment. With the possibility of going to jail, Grace wondered how far God would ask her to go.

      She thought of Joseph in the Old Testament, wrongly accused of a crime that had put him in jail for years. As horrifying as it was for him, Joseph had to go there to save many lives. God needed him there. God’s will was done. “Gött’s will be done to me, as well,” she said under her breath. Her gaze dropped to her folded hands in her lap. A prayer formed in her heart, and she spoke it quietly as her eyes drifted closed. She sought protection for herself and her father in whatever place they were called to go from here.

      Grace opened her eyes and lifted her gaze to the window the agent had been standing by earlier. The curtain billowed out in the slight breeze. Then Grace heard the truck’s engine shut down. Someone was out there.

      Was it the agent? Or the thief?

      Rising up on her knees, Grace crawled over to the window, careful to keep her skirt under her, protecting her from the broken glass. As she reached the window, she noticed a stain on her white curtains. Smudges of dirt, she thought.

      But when she touched the fabric, a bit of the substance came off on her fingers. She studied her fingertips, then looked at the floor in front of her, finding little droplets of a dark liquid.

      Grace dabbed her pointer finger in one and knew in an instant what it was.

      “He’s bleeding,” she whispered, as the possibility became real.

      Agent Kaufman was injured. But how?

      It didn’t matter.

      “Daed, he’s hurt!” Grace spoke louder, crawling back to her father. She pushed herself up on her feet, then cried out, crumpling back to the floor in pain.

      Carefully moving to stand on the edges of her feet, Grace found her balance and caught her breath. “Daed, I have to go outside. The agent is bleeding.”

      Grace remembered the grunt the lawman had given when he was carrying her. Had he been shot and never said a thing?

      She glanced to the floor where he had placed her and taken care of her burned feet. He had lowered her father so gently, СКАЧАТЬ