Off the Grid (Amish Safe House, Book 1) (2 page)

“What is it?”

“Something with my mail. A plain, white
envelope, and inside were five pictures of me.”

“What do you mean, pictures of you?”

Kate looked at the photos again, and then
shuddered. “Just pictures of me, one leaving a hotel, one pulling
out of a fast food place in my car.”

“That’s odd.”

“Yes, I know,” Kate said.

“I can send someone if you want. I could get
hold of the police out there.” David lived in Texas. Kate hadn’t
seen him in a while, but she spoke with him once a week. The life
of a WITSEC agent was a lonely one, but Kate had always thought of
David as a father figure.

“Kate, are you there?” David asked. “Would
you rather leave?”

“No, I want to stay,” she said. “We don’t
need to bother the police.”

“Don’t be a dumb kid,” David said, and she
didn’t take offense. It was simply how he had always spoken to her.
“I’ll call someone; they’ll send someone out.”

“Okay,” Kate said. “Thanks.”

“All right, let me call them. We need to
figure out who did this, and why.”

“Okay. Thanks, David.”

Kate hung up. She moved to the kitchen and
pulled open her fridge. Helen knew when Kate was back each time,
and she always went to the grocery store so Kate had a few things
before she could get there herself. Really, Helen was a life
saver.

Kate pulled a bottle of water from the
fridge and opened it, drinking half. She was going to make a
sandwich, but then she thought once more of Helen and felt ashamed.
This odd thing had come in the mail for her, the mail Helen always
brought in, and Kate was only now thinking to go and thank her
thoughtful, elderly neighbor.

Helen pulled the door open after Kate
knocked, and she smiled, even though she was in her nightgown and
had obviously been sleeping.

“Hello, dear,” Helen said. “Do you want to
come in?”

Kate shook her head. “Sorry, you were
sleeping. I just wanted to thank you for everything. I’m sorry to
bother you.”

“Well, it’s not your fault; a young person
like you wouldn’t know us old folk are in bed by eight.”

Kate laughed, and then she got serious. “Is
everything okay? Was everything all right while I was gone?”

The old woman nodded slowly. “Yes, of
course. Why? Is something wrong?”

“I got a weird piece of mail.”

Helen’s eyes widened. “The envelope,” she
said. “There was nothing on it. Yes, I thought it was weird.”

“It had pictures of me in it, pictures I
didn’t know someone had taken.”

“That’s horrible!” Helen’s hand flew to her
mouth.

“The police are coming, but I wanted to
check on you.”

“I’m fine, really. Do you want to stay here
tonight?”

Kate thought for a minute. She hadn’t wanted
to flee her home, but she was concerned. She nodded after a moment.
“That would be great.”

“I have a guest room all set up. If you need
to go home and get anything, I can go with you.”

“No, that’s okay, let me go get a few
things, and wait for the police, and then after I talk to them,
I’ll be over.”

The older woman nodded. “I’ll be waiting.
I’ll make a pot of coffee if you want.”

“No, that’s okay; please don’t go to the
trouble.”

“Well, I made some coffee cake today, and
you can’t have it without coffee, can you?”

Kate laughed. “Your coffee cake is so good,
Helen; you’d better put a pot of coffee on I guess. Thanks.”

Kate returned to her house in the darkness
and turned on the light of every room she entered. She took her gun
and tucked it into the back of her jeans, and then packed a small
bag with her pajamas and her toothbrush and toothpaste. She took it
downstairs and made that sandwich after all, which she ate
hurriedly on the couch in the light of the lamp beside her and the
blue haze of the television that was still on. Within a few minutes
of finishing the sandwich, there was a knock on her door. She
pulled it open, to see two police officers standing there, with two
squad cars parked at her curb in front of the house.

“Marshal Kate Briggs?” one of the cops
asked. They were young guys, both with brown hair peeking out from
under their caps, but while one had dark eyes, the other’s were
bright blue.

“Yes,” Kate said.

“I’m Officer Coy,” the one with the blue
eyes said. “This is Officer Landis.”

Kate stood aside. “Come in, both of
you.”

For the next fifteen minutes, Kate told them
about coming home and finding the envelope.

“Well, we can keep someone out here all
night,” Landis said. “We’ll come by in shifts, have someone at your
curb the whole night. Meanwhile, we’ll take those pictures and see
if we get any prints off them.”

Kate nodded and rose, and the cops did as
well. She got the pictures, handed them to Coy, and he dropped them
in a plastic baggy. “I’m staying with my neighbor, if it makes a
difference,” Kate said to the cops as they left.

“No problem. Having us out here will
certainly deter anyone anyway, but it’s probably good if you’re not
here for a night or two.”

As soon as the police left, Kate took her
bag and turned off the television. She then shut and locked her
door and went over to Helen’s. They had coffee and cake for an hour
or so, and then both women headed for bed.

Kate lay on Helen’s comfortable guest bed,
looking up at the off-white, stucco ceiling. There was a shaft of
blue moonlight coming through the window next to the bed and it ran
across the blanket and over to the far wall. Kate turned her head
to focus on it.

After trying to sleep for some time, Kate
finally accepted that she wouldn’t be able to. She got up quietly
and crept downstairs for one more small piece of coffee cake. She
ate it at the kitchen sink and then went out into the living room.
She peeked out of the bay window there just in time to see Officer
Cody returning to his vehicle after a walk around her home. He
climbed in, sat behind the wheel, and then the dome light went out
in his car and it was hard for Kate to see him.

She went back upstairs and used the
restroom, killing fifteen minutes in there flipping through a three
year old
Good Housekeeping
magazine that was sitting on top
of even older periodicals in a wicker basket near the toilet.

Kate stole a glance at her house through the
guest bedroom window, and what she saw froze her in her tracks. The
window looked out toward the side of her house, and into her own
bedroom. There in the bedroom, was a sweeping shaft of yellow
light. It was someone walking with a flashlight.

Psalm 37: 39 – 40
.

The salvation of the righteous is from the
Lord; he is their stronghold in the time of trouble. The Lord helps
them and delivers them; he delivers them from the wicked and saves
them, because they take refuge in him.

Chapter
3
.

For a moment Kate froze, but seconds later,
she decided to take action.

Kate turned and rummaged in her overnight
bag, pulling her gun from it. She wished she had thought to bring a
jacket, because she didn’t want to waste time dressing. She went
back down the stairs in just her pajama pants and tank top. She
pulled on her sneakers, having left them with Helen’s shoe
collection by the front door, and then she pulled the front door
open and slipped out into the night.

The air was cold, and goose bumps erupted up
and down Kate’s arms. The cop car was there, the engine running, a
small but steady plume of exhaust coming from the tailpipe. Kate
crept to the car, bending at the waist so no one would see her from
her house as she came up along the driver’s side.

“Officer Coy,” she called, as she neared the
driver’s side window. The glass was up, and the cop sitting beyond,
his head down a bit. Kate thought he had fallen asleep, though he
didn’t wake when she used two knuckles to knock on the window. She
tried the door handle, found the door unlocked, and pulled it open.
The slight movement of the car made the officer shift, and he came
spilling sideways out of the car.

Kate jumped, knowing right away that the cop
was hurt. She heard a gun fire and looked up to see a masked figure
on her porch.

Kate thought fast. She pushed the injured
Officer Coy into his car and then hopped in as well. It was awkward
because he was still half in the driver’s seat, and half in the
passenger, but Kate pulled the door shut and threw the car into
drive. The masked figure came from the porch after her, but after
she had driven a block away, she didn’t see him anymore. She turned
around quickly, suddenly thinking of Helen. She raced back to
Helen’s house, skidding to a stop with the tires squealing.

Kate leaped out, hand on her gun, and raced
for Helen’s door. She banged through it, and raced up the stairs.
The elderly lady was coming out of her room, unharmed.

“What is with all the racket?” Helen asked,
and Kate shooed her back into her room.

“Shut and lock the door,” Kate said before
turning and racing back outside to the police car. Kate grabbed the
radio and pressed the button on the side.

“Dispatch, officer down, civilian calling
for help,” she said, thinking it prudent to call herself a civilian
for speed and clarity.

“What’s your location?” the dispatch woman
asked, her voice tense and urgent.

Kate at once gave her address.

“Copy that, are you in any immediate
danger?”

“Possibly,” Kate replied.

“Cars are on their way; what’s the situation
with the downed officer?”

“He’s been hit with a blunt object, I
think,” Kate said, looking down at Officer Coy.

“The nearest car is two minutes away,” the
dispatcher said, and indeed Kate could hear a siren blaring in the
distance, and growing louder.

“I hear them,” Kate said.

The first cop car pulled quickly to a stop
in the middle of the street.

“Hands where we can see them!” one of the
two cops, a woman in her forties, screamed.

Kate lifted her hands into the air while she
sat in the car, forgetting she had a gun. The cop noticed straight
away and drew her own.

“Put the gun down!” she screamed and Kate
let it fall to the pavement outside of the car.

“Get out of the car,” the other cop said. He
came forward, kicked the gun away, and then put his hand on Kate’s
arm and pulled her out of the car.

“Did you call this in?” he asked her, his
tone somewhat apologetic.

“Yes,” Kate said. “Do you have an ambulance
coming?”

“Yes,” the cop said, and then he let Kate
go. The female cop came forward and took Kate by the arm, pulling
her away from the scene of the crime. She opened up the passenger
side rear door of her cruiser and had Kate sit in it, with her legs
still outside. And then for the first time out of many that night,
Kate spoke to a police officer about what had happened.

A cop went up to get Helen, and when the
police were finally done with her, Helen took Kate back into her
home, where Kate finally fell asleep.

2 Timothy 4: 18.

The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed
and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory
forever and ever. Amen.

Chapter
4
.

Kate was relieved to see her boss. “We have
jobs that are more exciting if you’re looking for something like
that,” he said by way of greeting. “You didn’t have to go get a
stalker.” He then turned serious. “How is that cop?”

“He’s going to be fine,” Kate said.

“Thank goodness for that,” David said. “I
know a lot’s happened, but we have some things to discuss.”

Kate knew that he was going to say that, and
she nodded. “Let’s sit in the kitchen.”

“I’ll put some coffee on,” Helen said.

The three of them sat in the kitchen,
sipping coffee from mugs that had steam curling overtop them, and
eating coffee cake.

A little while later, Helen excused herself
and went to bed, and then the conversation turned serious. The
first course of action was figuring out who exactly would want Kate
dead. Someone had stalked her, threatened her, and made her feel
uneasy by sending the pictures, and then the very night she was
home, had tried to shoot her. The way they had attempted to
dispatch her police protection made both Kate and David sure the
person wanted to end her life.

“I don’t know,” Kate said after being
pressed by David for about the tenth time. “I have no idea who
would stalk me, who would do this.”

“No jilted ex boyfriends?”

Kate sighed and looked across the Formica
topped table at her boss. “Come on, David. Did you have any
girlfriends at all back when you were an agent who traveled, before
you got your cushy desk job?”

David let one corner of his mouth curl up,
despite the seriousness of their talk. He nodded and took a sip of
coffee. “Fair enough,” he said. “And that leaves us with a
possibility I didn’t even want to consider, although we need
to.”

“What?”

“We have a mole somewhere along the line.
Whoever did this, knew where you lived. I’m afraid to say that I
suspect that someone on the inside of WITSEC is behind this,
whether they were the person here last night or not.”

Kate took a moment to process that
information, and as she did, she felt like crying. If it was
someone on the inside, they knew everything about her. She lifted
her mug to her lips and tilted it back, swallowing the last
lukewarm dregs of coffee and milk.

“I’ve made some calls,” David said, but Kate
barely heard. She had fallen asleep with her head down on top of
her crossed arms that were resting on the table. David lightly
touched her on the shoulder.

Kate opened her eyes and yawned, before
stretching her arms over her head. “Sorry, I didn’t sleep much last
night.”