He wasn’t going to run her down or anything, just put the fear of God into her. Remind her that everything can change in a second, just press a button and boom!
Christ, his head was pounding! He got out of the car and walked toward the house. He needed to calm down. Get on track. He tightened his grip on the tablet in his hand.
There were no street lights in the neighborhood and the light by the front door was on a timer. He’d watched it blink off a while ago. Nothing but dark out there.
There was a garden hose hanging near the garage door. The faucet squealed when he opened the valve. The rush of flowing water could probably be heard inside the house. It might even wake someone. He popped the pill and drank from the hose.
No lights came on. No one woke.
He stared at the empty windows, mapping the house in his head: bathroom, bedroom, another bedroom. That’s when he realized-there
Must have been close to 3 a.m. when Jenny came screaming awake. She hadn’t done it in a while, but I was on my feet and in her room before my head recognized what was happening.
“Don’t go! Don’t go. Don’t go.” Eyes popping with fear, she leapt out of the bed into my arms, half football tackle, half baby monkey in long-john pajamas.
“Easy, Jenny. Easy.” My hand went up and down her back on autopilot. She’d lost weight since I’d come. I could feel the vertebra of her spine. It gave me a hollow, sinking feeling.
I forced myself to speak softly. “Calm down. I’m here. I’m here.”
Clutching my T-shirt in her hands, the rest of her body relaxed. I stretched out beside her on the bed. My heart was thudding hard with the adrenaline rush of being woken from a sound sleep by terror. Jenny didn’t seem to notice. When my hand began to prickle from a lack of blood circulation, I pulled back slightly to shift her weight and she mewled a cry of despair that didn’t stop until I had my arm around her again.
We lay glued together most of the night, while I listened to her sleep and wrestled my familiar demons of fight and flight to the mat.
All I’d ever done was watch and point. I’d never had to fix anything.
Insecurities never hit harder than when they’re spliced into the black between dreams. Over and over, my head played an endless loop of mortification,
“Be okay,” I ordered Jenny through the darkness. “Please be okay.”
MONDAY
“Good thing we worked so hard to make up with the sheriff yesterday,” Ainsley remarked. Our feet crunched on the crushed stone as we marched up the long driveway.
I was surprised he got out of the van at all, after the stink he’d thrown. “Why?”
“After they arrest us, Curzon’ll have to go easy on us.”
Worst thing first, is my motto. Quick stop at the office and back out this morning, straight to a visit at the Jost farm. Farmers kept early hours, right? I shifted the binocular box under my arm to the other side.
“You think?”
“He certainly won’t want to tell his granny he just put his new girlfriend in jail.”
“Right,” I drawled. “Quit your whining. It’s not like Uncle Richie would let you rot.”
“He would if Mom told him to.” Ainsley made it sound likely. “If Jost calls the police, I’m running for the truck.”
“How’s he gonna call the police, College Boy? He’s got to go all the way out to the phone hut on the other side of the yard. Give us plenty of time to sprint to our get-away vehicle. Not that we’ll need to,” I added with all the shiny confidence of a well-practiced bluff.
“Don’t remind me. I cannot run on an empty stomach.”
Ainsley hadn’t been employed long enough to realize Monday is the work day most likely to exceed safe-living speeds.
I had a list that started at my hairline and ended where my trouser-cuff broke. We’d managed to finagle another interview with the Amish psychologist, so I could ask her about Rachel Jost’s situation. We needed to squeeze in another attempt to speak with Pat-the-fireman. And I had a conference call with New York scheduled, along with rumors of another GM visit.
Ainsley’s to-do list seemed to hold one item at a time. Currently, it read doughnuts.
“Tell you what. If there’s time, we’ll get doughnuts before we hit the hospital.”
“If we have time?” he said. “We had time to run Jenny to school.”
It was still early and I was feeling mature, so I chose not to shoot back. Points for me.
Getting Jenny to school had been even harder than usual this morning. She was slow, then she was sick, then she was “bored with school. It sucks.” I heard all about how her mother would leave her home alone if she promised to just lie on the couch and watch TV.
Right. My bullshit meter was pinging red-red-red, then she missed the bus and I saw red-red-red. I don’t really remember my mom hollering at me before eighth grade. Jenny won’t remember either.
The Jost farmhouse appeared as Ainsley and I rounded the tree line, exactly as white as the sun on a cloud, except for the windows. Glare made the glass a one-way mirror to interior shadows. I scanned the windows and continued walking. As we passed the chicken hut, there was a burst of cackling clucks and crows.
“That’s weird.” Ainsley jabbed at me with his elbow.
“The watch-chickens?”
“No. That.” A car was parked almost out of sight, around the side of the house that led to the barn. It was a modest gray Toyota-about as Amish as you could get in a car.
We both stopped to stare. Then the front door of the farmhouse banged open and out comes a guy in a suit coat with a briefcase the size of a dog kennel and a wad of manila folders. He’s clearly pissed and rushing to get out. So naturally, the folders slip and stuff shoots everywhere in a papery blizzard of fifty-two pickup.
The guy shouted something fairly common, but definitely not Plain language.
“Go help him. See what you can find out.”
“Me?”
“I’m going in to see Mr. Jost.” I held out the box in my hands.
“Trespassing, breaking and entering-” Ainsley ticked off the words on his fingers.
“Not ‘breaking.’ Guy left the door open, see?”
“-being a public nuisance.”
I blew him a kiss and stepped around the mess to get to the front door.
Behind me, I heard Ainsley offer, “Let me give you a hand.”
The door swung open with the slightest push. I could hear Rachel’s voice in the room beyond the entrance hall.
