Falling to Pieces (29 page)

The rattling at the door continued, its shaking a noise as nerve-wracking as fingers on a chalkboard.

“Trent’s worried he has a gun,” Callie explained, as she pulled out her phone and dialed nine-one-one. “I really don’t think he does, though.”

“Why not?” Trent asked.

“I know who it is,” Callie said. “I’d know that sniveling voice anywhere. And I’m betting all he has in his pocket is a bottle of whiskey.”

In what she hoped was a calm voice she told the dispatch operator that she’d like an officer sent over to Daisy’s Quilt Shop, yes
that
quilting store. Snapping the phone shut, she pulled Deborah back into the doorway of the main room.

If they glanced left, they could stare into the darkness where Trent sat on the trunk and the sounds of the door rattling, of the murderer trying to break free, continued.

If they glanced to the right, they could barely make out a bit of ambient light from the street.

“What about Trent? Shouldn’t he be with us? What if the guy does have a gun?” Deborah stuck her head out into the hall, and Callie pulled her back.

“He probably should be with us, but he’s a man. English men need to be the protector. Plus if the guy did have a gun, he’d already have used it.”

“I hope we don’t have to wait long. I’m ready for this to be
over.” Deborah’s voice was calm, but she reached over and clasped Callie’s hand.

Though it was still pitch dark, Callie looked down, tried to see their fingers entwined together. She suddenly realized how close they’d become in such a short time.

Maybe extreme circumstances did that to people—forged relationships that otherwise might have taken years to build. Or maybe it was the Amish way. How could she know?

She didn’t have long to think about it though. The darkness of the night was split by the light and blip-bleep of a Shipshewana Police Department vehicle.

Andrew Gavin’s voice was one of the sweetest sounds Callie had ever heard.

“Shipshewana Police. Whoever is in there needs to come out with your hands in the air.”

“Gavin, it’s us. Don’t shoot!” Callie and Deborah hurried to the back door, their shoes crunching on broken glass as they practically ran out into the night, out into the light of Andrew Gavin’s flashlight.

“Callie? Deborah? What’s going on?” Gavin reached into his squad car and silenced the siren.

“We caught him. We caught the murderer!” Callie couldn’t stop herself from hopping up and down. She pointed into the still dark shop.

“He’s locked in the storage room.” Deborah pointed back to the hallway, only slightly more calm. “Trent McCallister is guarding the door.”

“You two are sure you’re all right?”

“We’re fine, but you better hurry. He’s trying to bust his way out. We braced the door with a chair and a trunk.” Callie shuffled from one foot to the other.

She should feel calmer now that the guy they’d been searching for was about to be arrested, but suddenly everything felt wrong. She had an abrupt overwhelming urge to be back inside.

“Trent’s worried he might be armed,” Deborah explained. Gavin pulled out his radio. “This is Officer Gavin. I’m at Daisy’s Quilt Shop on Main Street. We have a burglary in progress. I’m requesting back-up, over.”

Callie took a step toward the door. “We can’t wait, Andrew. We need—”

They’d been standing between the shop and the police cruiser, but everyone turned when they heard Trent yell out for help. “Guys, I think you should get in here, and you better hurry.”

D
EBORAH FOLLOWED
Callie and Officer Gavin back inside. She’d never feared the darkness or the night, but something told her this evening held danger—danger of a kind she hadn’t faced before.

She said a prayer for safety and a prayer for wisdom, then reached for her bolt of cloth while Gavin directed Trent and Callie to remove the trunk and the chair.

And why did she find such comfort from holding the fabric?

She’d always been soothed by the sight, smell, and texture of cotton—whether she was quilting, sewing, or doing a simple task such as laundry. It seemed that in many ways fabric was a gift from God which held her family together physically, much as his love and grace held them together spiritually.

The light from Gavin’s flashlight flooded the hall. He handed it to Callie; then he held up his weapon and nodded at Trent to open the door.

Deborah tried to focus on what was happening; but her mind kept returning to the fabric, to the quilt squares she sewed into patterns.

This pattern was coming together all wrong. Something was missing, but she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what.

Trent opened the door—now cracked and splintered from the
battering it had received from the inside, and Roger Stakehorn nearly fell out into the hall.

Sweaty, flushed, and wild-eyed, he looked ready to charge at the first thing that moved.

“Hands in the air,” Gavin barked.

Stakehorn froze, blinking in the bright light. “What? I don’t understand. What’s going on here?”

“Why don’t you tell us, Mr. Stakehorn? Looks like a pretty clear case of breaking and entering.” Gavin motioned with his gun. “Turn around, walk to the back of the storage room, and put your hands on the wall. You can drop the envelope of money on the desk.”

Stakehorn looked at the envelope he was holding as if he were seeing it for the first time. “This is my money to begin with. I’m not stealing it. I’m taking it back.”

“Tell it to the judge. Now turn around.”

Finally noticing Callie, Stakehorn’s face turned red as the plums at the local market. “You! This is your fault. You’re the one who killed my father and now you’re getting away with his things. Well, I won’t allow it.”

He moved toward Callie. Trent moved in between them at the same moment Gavin raised his gun higher, sending Trent back to Callie’s side with a single look.

“I will shoot, Mr. Stakehorn. This is your last warning. Turn around and walk toward the back walk.”

“This isn’t over, Harper.” Stakehorn practically spit the words, but he turned slowly, walked to the back of the storage room, and stopped when his fingers touched the wall.

Deborah noticed he did not drop the envelope of money.

To Callie it seemed that everything happened at once.

She had the absurd notion she was inside a dream, one where
she had no ability to control events and was powerless to stop what would occur next.

Stakehorn threatened her, Trent moved in between them, and Gavin raised his gun.

Stakehorn sneered, said something else, finally turned and walked toward the back wall.

It all happened as if from a distance.

She noticed the beam of light from Gavin’s flashlight wavering and realized her hand must be shaking.

Then she felt, more than saw, Deborah leave the room.

Where was she going?

Before she could turn to ask, before she could fully formulate any reasons to explain what might be happening, Gavin stepped forward so that he too was in the beam of light.

Callie wanted to call out, wanted to stop him, but again she was frozen—exactly like in a dream.

He lowered his gun so that he could put handcuffs on Stakehorn. Trent moved forward a step, maybe two.

And that was the moment when her dream fell away, the slow motion of sleep time dropped like a cloak, and reality snapped into events that moved too quickly, events that became a full-fledged nightmare.

The cold hard metal against her neck could only be a gun, and the voice in her ear sent shivers all the way down to her toes.

“Real quiet, and don’t drop the flashlight or I’ll shoot the officer first.”

More loudly he called out. “Drop the gun, Officer Gavin. I don’t want to cap the girl, but I will if you insist.”

Everyone in front of them froze, like in some graphic cartoon. For the space of a few seconds no one spoke. It seemed to Callie that no one dared to breathe.

Finally Gavin raised his right hand, with his weapon clearly palmed there, but his fingers well away from the trigger.

“Good. Bend down, place it on the floor, turn around, and kick it back toward me. Real slow like.”

When Gavin turned, he only glanced at her for a second. It was long enough for Callie to see a myriad of emotions in his eyes. She saw feelings she hadn’t expected to see in another man’s glance ever again—despair, concern, and something more than friendship. She felt her heart catch in her throat, but before she could understand the emotions behind his deep blue eyes, his gaze turned to the man behind her, hard as steel.

“Whatever you want, we can work it out,” Gavin said. “Everyone just needs to stay cool.”

“Exactly my sentiments. Now your back-up weapon. Very slowly. I have an itchy finger as long as someone else is armed.”

Gavin’s moves were deliberate and non-threatening. Had he been taught this in some training seminar?

“Same thing with the radio.”

Gavin did as he was told, never taking his eyes off the man who was holding a gun to Callie—though she realized too late he was staring into darkness. She was the one holding the light, and it was all pointed toward them.

“Let her go. She’s not a part of this.”

“Oh, but she is. It would seem she’s been a part of this from the beginning.”

He was going to kill them all.

The thought shot into Callie’s mind with the force of a lightning strike. Trent would never take that motorcycle ride to Sturgis. Gavin wouldn’t get a chance to settle down and have those two-point-five kids. And Deborah—

Where was Deborah?

She had left.

Had she heard him coming? Had she escaped?

Callie’s hands started shaking and the light wavered.

“Easy, honey.” The voice was gravelly, reminding her of a pharmaceutical
client she’d had who was a heavy smoker. “Remember our deal? The light stays steady, and you’ll be okay.”

She didn’t believe him for a minute, but she nodded and gripped her right arm with her left, forced the tremor to stop.

She needed to do something, needed to warn Deborah away. Deborah had children. She couldn’t die in the back hall of Daisy’s Quilt Shop.

“God has plans for us, Callie.” Deborah’s words came back to her so strongly that for a brief second it seemed she was standing there, uttering them again.

Was this God’s plan?

Callie didn’t know, but for the first time in over a year, she began to pray.

Deborah couldn’t have said why she’d ducked out of the room after Trent had opened the door. The urge had been too strong to deny.

She’d slipped into the main room of the shop at the exact moment the dark, hulking figure had entered the back door, gun raised. She’d just made out his shadow by the light of the moon, but it was all she’d needed to see.

The man locked in the storage room wasn’t the murderer. Deborah hadn’t stayed long enough to figure out who he was, but he wasn’t the person they needed to fear. The one holding the larger gun, creeping down the hall—the one now threatening her friends—was the person they had to stop.

Suddenly she understood why the pieces hadn’t fit earlier, why this entire plan of theirs had felt like a quilt she was sewing together incorrectly, tugging at the different squares, forcing them into positions where they didn’t belong. And in that moment, she realized that she couldn’t fix this—it was bigger than her. She was only a woman, who liked to quilt, who cared for her friends. She wasn’t someone who could stand up to a real killer.

It was easy to remind Esther and Melinda and even Callie about
Gotte’s wille,
but could she trust him now? Images of her
kinner
flashed through her mind even as her heart rate continued to accelerate. Panic flooded her bloodstream.

Then Jonas’s words came to her, soft and low, or was it
Gotte’s?
“Small steps …”

She couldn’t escape out the front door; the bell would ring and alert him.

She couldn’t flee out the back. He’d hear her step on the broken glass.

This man was a professional at what he did. She could tell that by the way he’d slid along the wall, holding the gun with the same confidence Jonas held his farming tools. The gun to him was second nature.

No, he would hear the smallest sound.

She couldn’t escape either of those ways, and she had to escape.

Finding help for her friends would be their only hope.

Slipping her flip-flops off her feet, she turned the corner into the hall and crept up the stairs. Once in Callie’s apartment, she opened the side window, praying the old wooden pane would raise silently. If she remembered correctly, there was a lattice work trellis on this side of the building.

She put her shoes back on, and started down in the darkness. Daisy’s white roses had made healthy progress up the trellis, reaching well past the first floor. Deborah didn’t worry about them biting into her fingers, though she was careful not to let them tangle her dress. She had to hurry.

She didn’t have long now.

She landed softly in the grass below, saw a car on the far end of Main, and began to run.

Not caring how she looked or what the Englisher driving the car thought, but knowing that they were down to a few minutes, she ran down the middle of the road. Arms waving, her
kapp
knocked askew, Deborah ran with all her might.

She didn’t realize it was Shane Black until he screeched to a halt in front of her and jumped out of the unmarked car.

“Deborah, you’re bleeding. What happened? Tell me what’s wrong.” He grabbed her hands, tried to wipe away the blood from the thorns.

“Callie and Trent and Gavin. You have to hurry.” Deborah sucked in a breath. “He’s going to shoot them.”

Shane looked in her eyes, and then he did the one thing she knew she could count on Shane Black to do. He acted first, and left the questions for later.

“Get in the car.”

“No, he’ll hear us. We need to run.” Deborah turned and took off back down the street. Shane ran beside her.

They left the car, sitting there, idling in the middle of Main Street.

Gordon Stone had rarely been so glad to have a job finally finished. At last he could leave this hick town behind him, hit the toll road going eighty, and never look back.

He should have been finished weeks ago.

He would have been too, if his boss had picked a normal place for the drop. But no, he had to pick the flea market in Shipshewana. The place was like stepping back in time. Everything about it gave Gordon the willies—from the clip clop of the horses to the absurd way people had of dressing.

“Walk forward.” He tapped the brunette lightly with the gun. If he had time he would have talked her into going with him. This was one broad who did not belong in a do-nothing town. Unfortunately he needed to grab the boss’s package quick and split.

“Hand the flashlight to your boyfriend.”

When she started to look at him, he pushed the gun a little bit harder into the flesh on her neck. “Don’t turn around, hon. Hand it to McCallister, like I told you.”

She moved forward, did as instructed.

That was another thing he liked about this one; she followed directions well. Maybe he would take her with him.

“Don’t worry, Callie. We’ll be all right,” McCallister said as he accepted the flashlight.

Gordon raised his gun and cuffed the editor on the side of the head.

“If I want to hear from you, I’ll ask you a question.”

While he didn’t say anything else, Gordon noticed the guy did give Harper a weak smile. The last thing he needed was a hero in this group. At least the officer knew how to keep his trap shut, though he suspected the cop was simply biding his time, waiting for a chance to make his move. No problem there; he’d dealt with the law before this assignment. He’d be long gone by the time Gavin figured a way out.

“Okay, Harper, first I want you to take out Officer Gavin’s handcuffs and cuff his right hand to those utility shelves. They look like someone had the sense to weld them to the floor.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the officer as she took the cuffs off his belt and did as Gordon directed her.

“Now take the other half of the cuffs and secure our burglar to the same shelf.”

Stakehorn growled but didn’t argue. Apparently he’d learned from McCallister’s example.

“You want this, I guess.” She took the package of one dollar bills from Stakehorn’s other hand, though he looked like he might fight her for it.

“Nah. It was yours to begin with. You keep it. I’m guessing there isn’t that much in there anyway. Now tell her where the keys to the cuffs are, Gavin.”

“Front shirt pocket, Callie.”

Harper retrieved them. As she unbuttoned his pocket and pulled the keys out, Gordon noticed her hands were shaking. He thought that was kind of sweet.

“All right. Toss them over here to me.”

Catching them, he pocketed them in the front pocket of his jeans. “Here’s the easy part, and listen carefully or I’m going to have to kill everyone in this room. I need to know what you did with the package that old man Stakehorn found. If you give me the bag, then I’ll take it and leave. That’s all my boss wants.”

Harper looked at the blond guy. He shook his head slightly and cut his eyes to the younger Stakehorn. Gavin was trying to catch Harper’s attention.

Gordon figured he’d seen enough sleezeballs in his life to know one, and Roger Stakehorn qualified. As soon as everyone looked at him, he started singing prettier than the canary Gordon’s mama had once kept in the house.

“Don’t start staring at me. You know I don’t have any package.” He tried to stand, tripping when he forgot that he was handcuffed to the shelf. “She probably stole it, just like she stole my old man’s money. She killed him too.”