Amish Country Undercover. Katy Lee

understand.” Panic made her hands shake as she reached for his, still holding her foot. “I could go to jail.”

      Jack nodded. “That’s what I’ve been saying, ya.” He cringed at his unconscious slip into the old language. One night with this woman, and his past was already breaching the borders of his new life. He looked to see if Grace had caught his dialect, but she was facing her father.

      Benjamin slumped back against the wall, watching them talk with a look of confusion on his face. “Oh, Daed. What should I do?” she implored him.

      Benjamin squinted in response. If he had an answer, he wasn’t sharing it with his daughter.

      For the first time since Jack met Grace tonight, he saw tears well up in her eyes. Not even when she was being shot at did she cry. But in this moment, with her father unreachable, he could see how much Grace relied on him.

      With Benjamin inaccessible, she was left to take care of everything alone. Left to run the business as perfectly as possible, so the elders wouldn’t take her job away from her.

       Signing on with a horse theft ring wouldn’t be the way she would go, not if she wants to show how well she can handle the job.

      The thought bounced around in Jack’s head—and disrupted his plan.

      The plan was to bring in his horse thief, no matter what.

       But what if I’m wrong?

      The idea seemed ludicrous. He was never wrong. He always had a way of sizing a person up and knowing if he had his man...or woman, as the case may be. That talent traced all the way back to Colorado, when someone had pinned a crime on him. He’d figured out who was behind the scheme and had called him out—even if he’d had to stand alone to do it.

      But that was another story.

      After that day, Jack had vowed he would always seek justice, and he wouldn’t stop until he had the right criminal behind bars. Up until this point he hadn’t been wrong when he’d brought a perpetrator in.

      Could he be wrong about Grace?

      Jack studied her crestfallen face as she searched her father’s confused gaze. Jack wasn’t ready to give in and admit to being wrong about her. Too much evidence was stacked against her. She’d had the stolen horse in her barn...and now in his trailer.

      But maybe...

      Jack pressed his lips together in annoyance. He typically liked a good joke, but not when the joke was on him. He could imagine his supervisor, Nic Harrington, laughing hysterically if Jack brought in an Amish woman who was completely innocent. Nic would never let him live it down.

      Before Jack could slap cuffs on anyone, he would need to be 100 percent sure he had the right person.

      But first, he had to catch the gunman in the trees.

      Jack winced as he stood up to go. He’d hidden from Grace the fact that the gunman had clipped him. Something that the man would pay dearly for.

      “I’ll tell you what you’re going to do,” he responded, when Grace’s question to her father went unanswered. He opened the door. “You’re going to prove your innocence.”

      “How will I do that?” she asked, clearly bewildered as she looked up at him from the floor.

      “I’m going with you to Autumn Woods.”

      Her eyes widened once again. “But what will I say when I’m asked why I’m with an Englisher?”

      “You won’t be.” At her confusion, he said, “I’m going to need some of your daed’s clothes.”

      “You’re going to pretend to be Amish? I don’t like this at all.”

      “Ya, me neither. But believe me, this is going to hurt me so much more than it will hurt you.”

      Just then the sound of a vehicle starting up outside alerted Jack to the present danger. How? He felt for his keys in his pocket.

      “That’s your truck. With my horse!” Grace shouted. She jumped to her feet, then crumpled back to the floor in obvious pain, clearly not going anywhere.

      Jack withdrew the keys from his pocket, needing to get outside. But instead of reaching for the doorknob, he stepped forward to help Grace. Instantly, she waved him away, struggling to speak through the pain. Then she forced out the only word he needed to hear.

      “Go!”

       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,