Guarding The Amish Midwife. Dana R. Lynn

don’t think he would miss.”

      “Bill is dead.” The lilt was gone and her voice was a flat statement.

      “Most likely.”

      “Are you sure that this is the place?” Ryder asked, his face skeptical.

      Lizzy flushed. Isaac would have thought she was embarrassed except he had seen the way her eyes had flashed. She did not like being questioned like that. No wonder. Ryder hadn’t meant anything by it, but his voice did have a sarcastic edge to it. Lizzy had no way of knowing, but Ryder’s voice always sounded that way. He doubted if the man even realized how harsh his tone was. It was just the way he talked.

      “Jah!” Lizzy replied, lifting her chin, her own voice cold. “This is the place. I did not make up a story about my driver getting shot.”

      Ryder’s eyes widened. Too late the man seemed to realize that his question had been taken the wrong way. “Oh! Hey! I didn’t mean that to sound like I thought you were lying. I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t a mistake.”

      He threw Isaac a “Help me, buddy” glance.

      “It’s okay, Lizzy. We’ll keep looking. Maybe we will find some other signs of what happened here.”

      Ryder grunted, his head bobbing once. Isaac held back a smirk. His friend had gotten himself into trouble on more than one occasion for attitude. The man had a good heart. He just had a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Isaac knew that he had had a very rough time growing up with alcoholic parents. Although he had never asked, wanting to respect his friend’s privacy, he had always figured there was some sort of abuse or neglect that went along with it. Ryder had developed a veneer to keep people at bay.

      Isaac could not fault the man for it. Not when he had his own past to overcome.

      “Lizzy, we are going to have a look around to see if we can find any evidence of what happened. I need you to either stay there or wait in the car.” He zeroed his gaze in on her oval face. “I mean it. If you walk around, you might trample on something. Ryder and I have done this enough to know what we are doing.”

      “I will wait right here.” She pointed down at her feet.

      He smiled. Something about her earnestness touched him, despite the terrifying situation she was in.

      “Okay, then.” Turning to his friend, he gestured to the right. “Why don’t you search from here toward the property line, and I will go toward the building.”

      “Sounds like a plan.” All amusement faded as he and Ryder both focused on the job before them.

      The men set off in their separate directions, alert for any clue that a murder took place in the parking lot. Every once in a while, Isaac cast a concerned glance at Lizzy. Her arms were tight across her middle, and he could clearly see that she was shivering. April in Ohio was capricious. On this particular day, the temperature hadn’t risen much higher than sixty and the rain was cold. He was wet clear through after a quarter of an hour. She’d been out in the weather several times that morning. And though he knew that one did not catch a cold from being wet, it was still a miserable feeling.

      At one point, he had gone over to her to suggest that she wait in the car. “I can turn the heat up. There’s a blanket in the trunk. It would not be much, but it might warm you up a bit.”

      Lizzy had looked at him for a moment. Her lips had curled at the corners in a small smile. Her eyes, though, those deep blue eyes, had remained haunted. “Denke, Isaac. I appreciate it. But I would not feel as safe so far away. I might be cold here, but I have two police officers close by. No one would try to harm me here.”

      How did one argue with that? Isaac jogged back to continue searching. In his mind, though, her words played over and over again. If he had any doubts about her telling the truth, which he hadn’t, they fled. No one would stand out in the cold to feel safer if it weren’t the truth, he reasoned. Plus, her eyes held far too much knowledge of the dark side of the world.

      Ten minutes later, he found his first proof of the shooter’s presence. A bullet had lodged in the side of the building. He ran back to his car and grabbed some tools from his trunk. Carefully, he dug the bullet out and put it in an evidence bag.

      Encouraged by what he found, he continued his search, meticulously scouring every inch for any sign of disturbance.

      “Yo! Isaac! Got something!” Ryder shouted across the parking lot.

      Isaac hurried over, careful not to step on anything useful.

      “What do you have, Ryder?”

      Ryder indicated the gravel at his feet. “Something was definitely pulled through here. Something big.”

      Like a body. Isaac narrowed his glance at the ground. Ryder was correct. Something had been dragged through. He looked closer.

      “Ryder, look here.” He pointed at a spot on the ground. “I think we have blood.”

      Grabbing evidence bags and their phones, they went to work taking pictures and collecting samples of both the gravel and the blood. They might not be able to use them. They didn’t have the fastest DNA lab available to them. Nor was DNA always reliable.

      It might not have been much. Unfortunately, it was all the evidence they had.

      As they were walking back toward the cars, Isaac noticed something that had escaped their notice earlier. Under the bushes, lying on the ground, was a black baseball cap.

      Lizzy gasped. “That looks like the hat that Bill was wearing when he picked me up this morning.”

      They carefully extracted the hat from the bushes and added it to their evidence. There was an unusual design on the front. It was only partially there, though. It looked like someone had tried to rip it off, but missed some of it. Unfortunately, the part that remained was not part of any logo that he recognized.

      “I can’t even tell what logo this is supposed to be. Can you tell?” Isaac frowned as he pointed it out.

      The other cop shook his head. “No. Not with so much of it gone. Maybe it’s the logo for the place where he works. Or maybe a sports team of some kind. It’s possible someone will recognize it, although I’m not sure if there’s enough for that.” He snapped a picture of it.

      “We’ll have to ask around, see if we can find anyone who recognizes it. Right now, I am going to take Lizzy into the station to see if she can identify our shooter. As long as I’m heading in that direction, I’ll take this stuff back to the station.”

      Ryder gave him a thumbs-up. “I will start seeing if anyone recognizes this logo.”

      In the car, Isaac turned the heat on and handed Lizzy a blanket. “I apologize that this is taking so long. As soon as I can, I will get you to your family’s house.”

      “I understand. If I had thought about it, I would have asked to grab my bag from the trunk before the car was towed away.” She was silent for a moment. “Do you think that maybe this guy will forget about me?”

      He did not want to answer that question, mainly because he didn’t like the answer that he knew he had to give. However, Isaac would never lie. He despised dishonesty.

      “I don’t think he will forget about you, Lizzy.” She turned her pale face to him. “Right now, you are the one person who can identify him. He won’t forget that.”

      Nor was he likely to let her go.

      * * *

      Lizzy regretted asking the question the minute the words left her mouth. It was too late to call them back. One look at Isaac’s face, though, and she knew what the answer would be. Had known it before she’d asked.

      Once again, she was a target. For no other reason than that she had been in the wrong place. She was trapped in a weird nightmare and had no choice but to let it play out before she could be free from it.

      The