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  They climbed into Pam’s car, driving down the gravel road. They’d made it almost to the two-lane when they rounded a curve in the road, and Amber heard Pam pull in a quick, deep breath.

  Then everything went wrong at once.

  Twenty-Seven

  Hannah heard Pam gasp before she hit the brakes. Hannah had still been working with a stubborn seat belt clasp when the sudden stop caused her to fall forward, bumping her head slightly on the headrest.

  Pam had already unfastened her seat belt and jumped out of the car. For a big woman, she could move quite fast when she was motivated. Amber turned around and said, “Maybe you should stay in the car.”

  Hannah nodded, adjusting her kapp, which had been knocked askew. She stared out the front window, though, and she could see that someone had pulled brush and tree limbs across the road, completely obstructing their path.

  “Someone’s messing around,” Pam said.

  Amber looked up and down the road. “I guess we should move it.”

  Hannah got out to help. There was no need to wait in the car.

  They’d moved about half of the limbs when there was a loud splat against the side of the car. Green liquid squirted all over the driver’s door.

  Pam dropped the limb she was moving and strode over to the car. “What . . . how . . .” She glanced left, then right.

  She’d backed up when the next splat—this one a bright red—landed on her window. The splatter ricocheted off and covered her shirt, obscuring the pretty daisies on the fabric.

  “Oh no. They did not.”

  Amber had rushed to her side, and Hannah followed quickly in her wake.

  “Get down,” Amber said.

  “Down? I’m not getting down. I’m going after this creep.”

  Another splat covered the car, Amber, Hannah, and Pam with yellow paint.

  “Other side,” Hannah said, waving frantically. “Let’s move to the other side.”

  They did, using the car as a shield against the attack on themselves.

  “Teenagers,” Pam declared. “It has to be teenagers. Or it could be the poison poet. What if it’s blood? Or icing? The poet would use poison icing—”

  “It’s only paint.” Amber had wiped some of the yellow off her shirt and was smelling it. “Paint has a distinctive odor. This is paint. Someone has a paintball gun.”

  Pam leaned forward to smell it, and the color orange burst on her hood.

  “It better not be paint. It better wash off. I’m going to find this nut. You don’t mess with me, or my car, or my clothes!” The last two words were said in a rising pitch.

  When the next paintball hit the top of her hood, paint again flew—this time purple—and splattered into Pam’s hair. Her eyes rolled up into the top of her head, as if she were trying to see the paint in her hair. For a moment she looked as if she might faint, but then she shook her head, scrunched up her face, and said, “They’re mine. When we catch them—they are mine.”

  Hannah and Amber exchanged worried looks.

  “Who has their cell phone?” Amber asked.

  “I don’t own a cell phone.”

  “Mine’s in the car,” Pam said.

  “So is mine.” Amber peeked over the top of the car. “I’m going in.”

  “Do not get that paint inside my car.”

  “But we can’t just sit here. There’s no telling how long they can keep this up.”

  “I’ll get it.” Hannah removed her apron, which was where the bulk of the paint had splattered, then slowly opened the door, ducked inside, and retrieved Amber’s purse.

  “Call nine-one-one. Tell them a maniac has us pinned down. Tell them I’m having a hair emergency.”

  Amber shushed her and keyed in the number.

  “We’re outside the quilting retreat,” she said to the officer, describing the intersection of the two roads. When she explained they were being held in place by a barrage of paintballs, the officer apparently stopped her.

  “I don’t want to call the administrative number.”

  She listened a minute longer, then said, “No, we’re not in imminent danger, but listen . . .”

  “Send them a picture of my clothes,” Pam said. “The person holding the paintball gun is in imminent danger.”

  Amber was shaking her head, pausing, and then trying to reason with the dispatcher on the other end. “I understand that they can’t kill us with a paintball gun, but . . .”

  She listened another second, and then stared at her phone.

  “What happened?” Hannah was squatted next to Pam, who was squatted next to Amber.

  “They said not to bother them with non-emergency situations.”

  “Non-emergency?” Pam’s voice rose again, this time in disbelief. “What if one of those paint things hit me in the eye? Would that be a non-emergency? I’d probably lose my job. Who would want a one-eyed assistant manager? Or I could slip on the paint and hit my head. Concussions can be lethal. This situation is brimming with danger, and I think—”

  “The police department reminded me I could be fined for misusing the emergency number. I don’t think they fully grasped our situation.” Amber stared at the blank screen, then stuck the phone into her back pocket.

  “You could call Tate,” Hannah suggested.

  “I could, but he’d only worry. Whoever this is obviously isn’t going to hurt us, though I don’t know what they are trying to do.” She turned and peeked through the window, and another smack hit the side of the car.

  “Stay down.” Pam looked at her as if she were crazy. “Every time they see you, they send another paintball. What color was that one?”

  “Black.”

  Pam closed her eyes. “I’m envisioning my car, clothes, and hair clean. I’m sending out positive thoughts to the creepy, disrespectful, sorry little person hiding in the woods.”

  Hannah had actually been in a paintball fight a few years earlier. A few of the teens had paid a taxi to take them west of Elkhart to the game center there. At the time she’d thought it was fun and a bit wild. She’d never done anything like that before, though she’d confessed it to her bishop the next week. Holding the gun, even though it was only a paintball gun, had seemed wrong. And though they were only having fun, she’d known that she didn’t want to do it again. The next time they all went out, they went to the movies. Her rumspringa had been rather short-lived, and she was quite glad to have it behind her.

  Amber had again removed the phone from her pocket and was Googling paintballs. “This says paintballs contain a water-soluble dye that washes off with a simple spray.”

  “Spray of what? Turpentine? Oh no. That will ruin my car. That’s not going to happen.”

  “Water.” When both Pam and Amber turned to look at Hannah in surprise, she explained about the trip to Elkhart.

  “You used a paintball gun?”

  “Ya. Just that once. And even though we wore old clothes, I was worried about the paint coming out. It washed out, though I did treat it with a stain remover first.”

  “I suppose that’s good news,” Pam admitted.

  “Uh-oh.” Amber was staring at her screen again.

  “What? What did you read now?”

  “That’s the normal paintballs, but law enforcement has access to semi-permanent paintballs to mark leaders in riot situations.”

  “No. There’s no way. This person can’t have that kind of access, because this person is a lunatic.” Pam fairly shouted the last word, but there was no answer.

  The bombardment of paintballs had slowed while Amber was reading from her phone, and then it stopped completely.

  “A better question is, why did they want to pin us down?” Amber raised her head to look through the window, but no accompanying paintball splattered.

  “It’s an expensive way to have fun at someone else’s expense,” Pam muttered. “Maybe they wanted to send a message.”

  “I think they’re gone.” Amber stood, brushed at her clothes, and then w
alked to the front of the car. “We still need to move the rest of these branches, at least the biggest ones. We could go back to Diane’s and ask for help.”

  “I’m a big woman. I don’t need help moving tree branches—and some woman might have put them there in the first place. You just watch the woods and tell me if you see anyone carrying a paintball gun.”

  Ten minutes later they were back in the car and traveling toward home. Pam had retrieved large trash bags from her trunk, explaining, “These come in handy more often than you would think.”

  She shook one out of the box, pulled the bottom seam apart, and draped it over her head. “You’ll need to cut me some arm holes.”

  Amber fetched a pair of nail clippers from her purse, and soon they were each wearing a trash bag. Ten minutes outside of Middlebury, the rain started. Hannah looked behind them and saw that they were leaving a trail of paint as it washed off Pam’s car.

  “What does it mean?” Hannah asked. “Does it mean that whoever was sending the messages and baking the pies was at the retreat? If so, why were they so angry?”

  “I’m supposed to be at home.” Amber stared out the window. “I’m supposed to be agonizing over the last humiliation, or the next one.”

  “That’s it.” Pam tapped the wheel with the palm of her hand. “They knew you were going to be there and the point was to humiliate you. People don’t just happen to have paintball supplies in their cars. I wouldn’t be surprised if they took pictures and plaster them all over the Village.”

  “Thank you,” Amber groaned. “Now I have something to look forward to.”

  Hannah leaned forward. “Also, I think the person must have been at the retreat center. We saw only women at the retreat, but maybe a man was hiding somewhere, able to hear what we were saying. Anyway, they knew when we were leaving. Who left right before us?”

  “Carol. She left with the other girls a half hour before we did.”

  “So whoever it was waited in the woods, then after Carol left, pulled out the brush and set up an ambush, knowing, I guess, we would be the next to leave.”

  Amber turned to glance at Hannah and Pam. “But we all agree that we didn’t see or hear anything suspicious at the retreat, right?”

  “True, but Hannah’s also right. Somehow they knew when we were leaving.” Pam crossed her arms. “I’m going to find out who it is. Mess with my wardrobe and you are messing with me.”

  They drove the rest of the way in silence, each, Hannah knew, wrestling with her own thoughts. Their week without incident had come to an end.

  Pam had just pulled up to Hannah’s house when Amber’s phone dinged, indicating a text message. She read it once, then held it up so Pam and Hannah could see it.

  Poison squares,

  Paintball bullets,

  Wizen up

  Or there will be more to it.

  “This person is a bad writer,” Pam said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  But Hannah was thinking they must be getting closer, and whoever was behind the pies understood that. This person understood they were in danger of being caught, and as that danger drew closer to reality the person or persons became increasingly more desperate.

  Twenty-Eight

  Hannah’s life resembled an Englisch roller coaster. The ups and downs were becoming hard to follow. The next week after the paintball attack had passed quickly, still with no progress made on the poison poet. On the positive side, no new pies had appeared, no one was attacked with paintballs, and no new instructions arrived for Amber. On the negative side, her boss and friend was working herself into a state of exhaustion.

  Amber had come up with a new plan designed to “spy on her employees”—those were the exact words she had used when telling Hannah and Preston about it as they walked through the covered bridge on the east side of the property.

  “Spend a day with your boss” was ostensibly to help Amber understand more about the tasks and responsibilities of various positions within the Village. A by-product was that it allowed Amber to be out of her office. She was able to see and hear what was happening among her employees.

  She had spent one day washing dishes, another taking orders in the restaurant, and a third working on the grounds crew. So far she’d learned nothing, and she was exhausted from trying to complete her office work at night. But she held on to the belief that eventually they would “crack the case.” Sometimes Englischers spoke in such a strange way Hannah could only shake her head and try not to laugh. Of course, this was no laughing matter. It was serious, and Hannah only wished she could be more help.

  Amber stopped in at the coffee shop less often, and Hannah knew that was because she didn’t want whoever was threatening her to see them together any more than necessary.

  But Hannah understood without Amber explaining her absence. She also knew the stress was taking its toll on her boss—beyond exhaustion. That much was obvious. The day before she’d left her phone and tablet on one of the benches beside the pond. A customer had turned them in to Hannah.

  Pam had confirmed that, though they had contained no instructions, the anonymous texts to Amber were still coming; the one about the paintball incident was just the start of a new round. They were all on edge, though Gordon insisted the person would slip up and be caught. The big question was, what would happen next?

  Hannah woke Sunday morning with the strong impression it was going to be a special day. She took a moment to study the light coming in the window, listen to the sounds coming from the rooms below, and watch her sister, Mattie, curled up and clutching her Amish doll as she slept.

  The doll was faceless, as all Amish dolls were. It wore a dark purple dress and a black apron, very similar to Mattie’s clothing. The doll reminded Hannah of one she’d had as a child—one with glasses, which was a bit unusual. Hannah hadn’t wanted to wear the glasses that had been prescribed for her, but it was obvious that she couldn’t see well. She’d needed them from a young age. But even after the doctor, her mother, father, and brothers all spoke with her, she still stubbornly refused to wear them.

  So her father had fashioned a miniature pair out of wire, careful to cover the ends so she wouldn’t scratch her four-year-old hands. One morning she woke to find her doll sitting on the nightstand, wearing the glasses. She had worn her glasses from that day forward, and she had loved that doll.

  Probably her dad had no idea how much that gift had meant to her. Had she ever told him? She could think of so many things she wanted to thank her parents for, but then her days became busy and she inevitably forgot.

  Suddenly she remembered.

  It was her birthday. The last she would celebrate while living in her parents’ home.

  She dressed quickly and quietly, careful not to waken Mattie so early in the morning, and made her way to the kitchen. Her mother and father were sitting at the table, enjoying a cup of coffee.

  Hannah could tell by the rays of sunlight slanting through the kitchen window that it was at least seven in the morning. No doubt both of her parents had been up for several hours. Timothy had already been to the barn and back, and Eunice, she knew, had already accomplished some of her daily household tasks. Outside the window she could see Ben, Noah, and Dan making their way back to the house.

  “She must be getting older, sleeping in so late.” Timothy smiled, stood to refill his coffee mug, and stopped to kiss her on top of the head. “Happy birthday, dochder.”

  “Danki.” Hannah spied the cake on the counter. When had her mother found time to mix, bake, and frost it?

  “German chocolate—your favorite.” Eunice reached across and squeezed her hands. “Happy birthday.”

  “You’re going to spoil me.”

  “Haven’t you heard?” her dad asked. “The Amish don’t spoil their children.”

  At that moment her three rowdy brothers banged through the back door, stopping in the mud room to remove their jackets. Before they were settled at the table, Mattie bounced in.

&nb
sp; Her mother had prepared scrambled eggs, sliced fresh bread, and set out jam preserves. But the best part of the meal, in Hannah’s opinion, was the chocolate cake. It was a terrible indulgence to eat it for breakfast, but then again she was twenty-three now. She was old enough to make her own decisions—even when they were bad ones. Her brothers readily joined in, and soon all their plates held a good-size piece of the treat. Mattie dropped her fork and decided to go at it with her hands.

  Her gifts were practical but delightful.

  Her mother and father gave her a new peach-colored dress and a white kapp. The dress her mother had made while Hannah was at work. The kapp was bought at the mercantile in town. Both were lovely and needed—she’d filled out in certain areas and her old dresses barely fit any longer.

  Noah offered her one of the pups he was raising, and Dan joked about letting her help with his camel—of which he hadn’t yet taken delivery. It was Ben, her oldest brother, who finally produced a package wrapped in brown paper and boasting a bright blue bow. “We pitched in together to buy it.”

  The notebook was spiral bound with lined pages and a beautiful cover boasting their native Indiana wildflowers. “We thought you could put your recipes in it,” Ben explained.

  “Ya, if you write down some of the things Mamm cooks, maybe Jesse won’t have to subsist on kaffi recipes.”

  Hannah endured the ribbing in good form. Her brothers had taken the time to think of her, and that meant more than any gift they could have given. But she also appreciated the journal. Maybe she would use it for her thoughts and memories and prayers rather than recipes. It would be a good way to put on paper the things she wanted to remember—like this morning, this last birthday with her family.

  Then Mattie insisted on getting down and toddled into the sitting room. When she returned, she was holding a drawing their mother said she had worked on all week. Written across the top, in her mother’s handwriting, was “Happy Birthday, Hannah.” And below that was a picture of her family, all standing in the field. After climbing into Hannah’s lap, Mattie pointed out each member of their family. The males had surprisingly long arms, and the females each wore kapps that looked more like pigtails—but Hannah loved it. The number twenty-three had been added to the bottom right corner. Hannah had attempted to trace it with an orange crayon.