Missing with Bonus Material: The Secrets of Crittenden County, Book One (20 page)

The Search
Book Two in The Secrets of Crittenden County Series

Available wherever books are sold June 19, 2012

Prologue

December 10

P
erry Borntrager was on drugs again.

Frannie Eicher had suspected it when she first spied his glazed expression, then had known it for sure when she heard his slurred words. Now, here she was, alone with him in the outskirts of the Millers’ property. Not a soul knew where she was, or that once again she was meeting him in secret in a place where they weren’t supposed to be at all.

Oh, she was sure he wouldn’t hurt her. Perry wasn’t dangerous. But knowing that they were completely alone, that no one would hear if she cried out for help, was unsettling.

Especially since at the moment Perry wasn’t acting like himself.

The Perry she’d known all her life had been patient. Methodical. A man who was easy to get along with, a steady kind of man.

That was not the case anymore.

“Glad you finally made it.” His voice was snide, clipped.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said. “I had a terrible time getting out of the inn, everyone wanted ‘just one more thing’.” Frannie smiled sheepishly. Then waited, half hoping he’d take her bait and ask about her cherished bed-and-breakfast.

He didn’t.

“It didn’t matter if you came on time or not. Nothing would change my feelings. I hate it here. I always have.” A low laugh erupted from his chest. “But you knew that, right?” He was walking in a zigzag way. Almost as if he was having trouble placing his feet just so on the uneven ground beneath them.

“You hate being here on the Millers’ farm?” she joked as she struggled to keep up with his awkward pace.

He didn’t realize she was kidding.
“Jah,”
he said over his shoulder as they approached the abandoned well on the edge of the property. “The Millers’ farm, Marion, Crittenden County. Kentucky . . .” His voice grew louder. More hostile. “What’s the difference, anyway? I hate it all.”

She stopped a few feet away from him—where it was safe—though she reminded herself that he would never hurt her. “If you don’t like it here, what are you going to do?”

“Get away when I can.”

She shouldn’t have been shocked, but she was. “And go where?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere. Someplace else.” Slumping against the stacked rocks that surrounded the top of the well, he looked at her contemptuously. “What about you, Frannie? Don’t you want to get away?” The cold air made his breath appear like little puffs in the sky. It also served as a reminder about how cold she was.

And how much colder their relationship had become.

She felt his gaze skim her whole body, as if he was looking at her from the top of her black bonnet covering her
kapp
to the toe of her black tennis shoe, and she’d come up wanting. “I’ve never thought about leaving here,” she said hesitantly. “Crittenden County is home. Besides, I just took over the Yellow Bird Inn.” Unable to stop herself, she added, “I refinished the wood floors, you know, and it looks so pretty . . .”

Perry merely stared.

She swallowed. “Um. I . . . I could never leave it.”

“You could never leave it.” His blank stare turned deriding. “That inn ain’t nothing special.”

She’d spent the last month helping two men paint the outside a wonderful, buttery yellow. The yellow color went so much better with the name of the inn than the white and black paint ever did. The Yellow Bird Inn needed yellow paint, surely.

Because it was a special place. And very special to her. “One day it might be.”

He spit on the ground. “It’s not going to make any money. No one comes here unless they have to.”

She fought to keep her expression neutral. As if he hadn’t hurt her feelings. “My aunt seemed to do all right with it. And some people have come to visit and stay.” Lifting her chin, she said, “Why, just the other day an English couple all the way from Indianapolis said they’d tell their church friends about my B&B.”

His voice turned darker. “The only reason the English come here is look at the Amish.”

“They come for the scenery and the greenhouses, too.” She bit her lip. “We are blessed to live in such a pretty place, you know. Why, we are surrounded by trees and hills and valleys.”

He laughed softly. “Frannie, you need to get your head out of the clouds. The English come here to gawk. To take our pictures with their camera phones.” His voice deepened. “You’re not going to make any money, Frannie. You ought to leave that place.”

“And do what?”

His mouth opened, then shut again quickly. As if he was having trouble forming his thoughts.

She waited. As she stood there, her toes began to burn from the cold ground. Her eyes watered from the brisk wind.

And once again she wished Perry would get away from those people who supplied him with the drugs that made him unrecognizable to her . . . to all his friends.

“The guys I’ve been working with, they’ve promised me big things,” Perry finally said, his voice strained tight with emotion. “You . . . you could come with me. If you changed.”

Frannie knew the men he’d been working with were
Englischers
.
Englischers
of the worst sort. They weren’t local. They only came to their area with the intent of causing trouble, of encouraging more people to take the drugs Perry was now so fond of.

“I don’t want to change, Perry.” Feeling her way through the conversation, she looked beyond him, looked into the dense, lush woods on the outskirts of the Millers’ property. “I like it here. And I like how I am.”

And though she didn’t want to be prideful, she felt disappointed that he didn’t see her attributes. Most boys had found her light blue eyes and auburn hair pleasing. Most people found her efforts to continue her aunt’s bed-and-breakfast to be commendable.

It was obvious he did not.

“You are stuck in an old boarding house in the middle of a county down on its luck.”

“Perhaps.” She smiled slightly, determined not to let him see how nervous she was becoming. “I guess I’m still the same Frannie I’ve always been.”

For a moment, his gaze softened. Just like he, too, remembered how they’d once played tag in each other’s yard after church. How they’d been friends before he’d ever courted Lydia. Before he’d finally looked her way with new eyes, finally saw her as though he hadn’t realized that she’d been there all along, just waiting for him.

“You aren’t the same. Just like me, you’re different than the way you used to be. Change always happens. It can’t be helped.”

“I suppose you’re right.” She bit her lip. How much did she want to say when he was in this condition?

But how much did she dare keep inside? Didn’t her heart mean anything? Didn’t her soul and conscience count just as much?

“Perry, I don’t want you to move away. And I don’t like the men you’ve been keeping company with. I wish you’d rethink your decisions.” She ached to tell him more, to beg him to seek help.

But his thunderous response stopped all that.

“What are you? My mother?”

“Of course not,” she said quickly.

His gaze darkened. “I don’t need another mother, Frannie. One nagging woman in my life is more than enough.”

“I know. I mean, I know that, Perry. I’m only offering my opinion. That’s all.”

“Don’t.”

There was a new anger in his voice, and she knew she’d put it there. It was time to go. Perry had chosen his path and he certainly wasn’t going to change it for her.

Perhaps he wasn’t even able to make the changes for himself. Maybe the drugs weren’t ever going to loosen their grip on him.

She stepped backward. “I’m going to go back home now.”

“Alone?”

“
Jah.
I . . . I think it’s best. I mean, I don’t think we have much more to say to each other.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then held up his hand. “Hold on. I . . . I brought something for you.” He fumbled in a pocket in his coat, pulled out a pair of sunglasses. “These are for you.”

“You brought me sunglasses?” She couldn’t imagine a more peculiar gift. Especially on such a cloudy, wintery day.

“Yeah. They’re nice, ain’t so? Expensive, too. Cameron, one of my friends from St. Louis, picked them up for me. He got two pairs.” He threw off the comment, just as if she were no more important to him than an afterthought.

She was becoming even more confused. He’d brought her men’s sunglasses, given to him from one of his drug dealing friends? “Whatever would I do with them?”

“Wear them, of course.” Crooking a finger, he motioned her closer. “Come here and try them on.”

They were only sunglasses. Though it wasn’t in the norm for Amish to wear sunglasses, it wasn’t unheard of, either.

But these sunglasses looked expensive. And looked so worldly. These screamed English and were built for a man’s face, not her own.

They seemed to stand for everything she was not.

And right then and there, she knew she couldn’t accept them. Couldn’t touch them.

All they would do was symbolize everything that was wrong with them. With her. With Perry.

“No. I don’t want them, Perry.”

“You’re not even going to try them on? Not even going to touch them?” He held the glasses by one of the handles. “What’s wrong, Frannie? Afraid you’re going to get tainted?” His voice was loud now. Loud enough to reverberate around them.

But still not loud enough for others to overhear.

She stepped farther back. “I just don’t want them. You should keep them.”

His eyes narrowed. Then, with one swift motion, he tossed the glasses with an arc.

Frannie followed their path with a lump in her throat. “Perry! You shouldn’t have done that.”

“If you don’t want them, I don’t, either. We’ll leave them for the Millers. Maybe their cows or something can use them.” He grinned as if he’d made some joke. “Go, Frannie. Go on, now.”

“Perry, don’t be like this. Maybe we can get you some help . . .”

“I don’t need
help
, Frannie. And I don’t need you. Just go. And let’s hope we never see each other ever again.”

She turned. And ran.

And realized as she heard his laugh behind her that finally . . . finally they once more had something in common.

She, too, hoped she’d never see him again.

But of course, she doubted she would ever be that lucky.

Found
Book Three in The Secrets of Crittenden County Series

Available wherever books are sold September 4, 2012

Prologue

Jacob Schrock knew how to keep a secret. It was the way he had been raised. His parents ran Schrock’s Variety, which was in a lot of ways the center of their community.

Since he was his parents’ only child, he’d always known he would take over the business. Even when he was small, sitting by his parents’ side at the front counter, he felt a part of things. He also learned that selling merchandise to most of their friends and neighbors meant being privy to a lot of information they’d just as soon keep private.

“It’s not our place to comment on purchases, Jacob,” his father had told him all his life. “We offer things for them to buy, not gossip about.”

By the time he was six or seven, he had taken that advice to heart. He became adept at going about his business with only half an ear to the private conversations floating around him.

Now, though, he wished he hadn’t gotten so good at hiding his emotions.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come over tomorrow night?” Lydia Plank asked. “My mamm’s going to make popcorn and hot chocolate.”

“And probably another hundred things,” Frannie Eicher said. “Your mother is a wonderful-gut cook.”

As Jacob sat, listening to his friends chatter, he felt the iron grip with which he’d held himself tight slowly lessen. He’d missed this. He missed this...normality.

He and a group of his friends-Lydia, Walker Anderson, Beth Byler and Frannie-sat on the store’s porch, some in rockers, some sitting on the porch railing, drinking hot apple cider, eating day-old donuts, and basically doing what people his age did when they could...gossiping about life.

This slice of normal was just what he needed.

He craved it after what had happened during his last argument with Perry.

Still talking food, Lydia grinned. “My mother has a reason for making so many treats for me and my friends. She knows if everyone’s there, she’ll be able to know what we’re doing.”

“We are all over eighteen,” Beth said. Looking around, she added, “Most of us are over twenty. Your mamm shouldn’t care what we do anymore.”

Frannie grabbed another donut and scoffed. “Parents always care, Beth.”

“My mamm is interested, but she’ll stay out of the way, I promise,” Lydia said. “It will be fun.”

“Sounds exciting,” Walker Anderson said sarcastically. But not in a mean way. Just because he was English didn’t mean he was stuck up like that. But he didn’t hang out with them much.

Jacob considered accepting Lydia’s invitation, but only for a minute. If he went, the conversation inevitably would turn to talk of Perry, of his recent exploits, his new friends, and of how Jacob’s father had fired him.

Jacob definitely didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole. “I don’t think I can make it, but thanks for asking,” he said.

Ever since his father had fired Perry Borntrager for stealing money out of the cashbox, Jacob had been feeling more and more out of sorts. Perry had been angry and hurt that Jacob had never warned him that he was going to be let go.

And though his daed had been right, and Jacob had been mad at Perry about the thefts, it had been uncomfortable. After all, he and Perry had been friends all their lives.

To make matters worse, everyone in the county seemed to know what had happened. And Jacob, used to keeping others’ secrets, had been having a difficult time dealing with how everyone knew one of his.

Now, a few weeks later, things hadn’t gotten much easier. Perry lurked around the store with new Englischers. Sometimes even wearing fancy sunglasses-of all things-even when it was dark outside.

The two of them, once close friends, had become distant. There was a lot of anger pulsing between them. Misplaced on Perry’s part-he never was one to take responsibility for his actions.

And as Jacob watched his father struggle with firing a boy he’d practically help raise, Jacob’s resentment grew. He was so angry that Perry had taken advantage of his family, of their friendship.

He’d never even apologized.

Bringing him back to the present, Lydia shrugged. “All right, Jacob. But if you change your mind...”

“If I change my mind, I’ll let you know,” he replied. He breathed deep, desperate to push away his dark thoughts. Desperate to concentrate on the friends he still had.

But then one glance over Lydia’s shoulder proved that goal was going to be impossible. “I can’t believe he had the nerve to come around here,” he muttered.

Of course, his barely suppressed anger brought everyone else to their feet and turning around. Perry was walking toward the store with his sister Deborah at his side.

As if any of them would want to talk to the Borntragers.

Lydia closed her eyes and sighed at the sight of her ex-boyfriend.

“You don’t have to talk to him, Lydia,” Jacob blurted. He knew breaking up with Perry had broken her heart. “We should go inside and ignore them both.” In two seconds, all of them could be inside and pretend the Borntragers weren’t a stone’s throw away.

“You want to ignore Deborah?” Frannie asked, her tone horrified. “Jacob, we can’t do that. It wouldn’t be right. Deborah’s never done anything wrong.”

Still more concerned with Lydia who had tears in her eyes, and, selfishly, himself, he said, “I don’t want to talk to them.”

But Beth-being Beth-couldn’t seem to let it go. “That don’t make sense, Jacob. You can’t blame Deborah for her brother’s actions.”

Sure he could. He’d always taken responsibility for his family and their actions. He expected the same of others. Plus, he’d watched enough people in the store to know that most family members were aware of what other people in their homes did even if they pretended to turn a blind eye.

There was no doubt in his mind that Deborah had known that Perry was stealing from the store. For that matter, she’d probably known all along and had been protecting Perry.

“Don’t make a big deal out of nothing, Jacob,” Walker said. “It’s still a free country. You can’t expect Perry to never walk on your store’s sidewalk.”

Jacob knew Walker was probably right. And when he spied Deborah casting a quick, longing glance their way, he knew Beth was probably right, too. It was wrong to shun Perry’s sister for his crimes.

But just because he knew what the right thing to do was, didn’t mean he had to do it. So instead of relaxing, he rose and stood near the door to the store. Watching and glaring. Waiting for them to walk by. In just a few minutes, they’d be gone. Then they could relax and pretend that they’d never seen Perry and Deborah.

But Frannie ruined everything. She rushed down the steps. “Hi Deborah. Hey, uh...Perry.”

The siblings stopped and looked at her warily. Beside Jacob, Walker groaned.

Jacob held his breath, hating that he had no control over the situation.

He felt completely ineffectual as Frannie barreled on. “Deborah, you want to join us?”

Both siblings looked startled by the invitation. “Well, I don’t know,” Deborah said, looking at Perry.

Jacob gritted his teeth. He ached to tell Frannie to take back the invitation. Or to just leave with Perry and Deborah.

After a split second, Perry turned his head. Met Jacob’s gaze. Jacob stared right back. Daring Perry to approach him.

“Go ahead, Deb,” Perry finally murmured. “I don’t care.”

After another pause she nodded. “Okay, then, danke.”

Frannie hooked her arm around Deborah’s elbow and guided her onto the porch. Almost immediately, Beth walked over and hugged the girl.

All the while, Perry stood off to the side. Watching. To Jacob’s surprise, Walker brushed passed him, walked down the steps and spoke to Perry for a minute or two. Then, with an annoyed shake of his head, Walker rejoined the others on the porch. More cider was poured, more snacks consumed. Their conversation was inane and forced, not a one of them glancing Perry’s way.

Jacob knew they were trying to pretend everything was just fine, but Jacob thought their actions were stupid. Perry was standing right there. On his property. He’d stolen money from his parents, he’d sold drugs to other kids in their community. He was bad news, he was trouble and he deserved nothing. Not even to be ignored.

How could his friends look past that?

When another minute passed and Perry still stood on the sidewalk, Jacob walked down the steps. “What are you still doing here? You know you’re not wanted, don’t you?”

“I know. After all, you’ve made sure of that, Jacob.” Laughing softly, Perry added, “I don’t think I would be welcome to even buy a stick of butter in your store.”

“You’d be correct.”

A look of pain flashed through Perry’s eyes. Surprising Jacob. And, for an instant, making him feel guilty.

Though he sensed his friends behind him were listening-and maybe didn’t even completely approve of the way he was acting- Jacob didn’t give up. “You need to go. I don’t want you here.”

Perry walked closer. Now only a few feet separated them.

Perry was at least thirty pounds heavier than Jacob, and had a good two inches on him, too. A prickly sense of fear inched up Jacob’s spine.

With a hard glare, Perry said, “So is it now against the law to stand here?”

“I don’t know if it’s against the law or not. It don’t matter, though. My father doesn’t want to see you ever again,” he retorted. Though his father had never said that. “I sure don’t.”

An expression flew across Perry’s face. Perhaps it was disdain? Maybe more like disappointment?

After another second, Jacob added, “If Deborah wants to stay without you, I’ll make sure she gets home safely.”

Jacob waited for Perry to argue. To refuse to budge. But instead, he just shrugged and walked away, his shoulders drooping slightly.

Almost as if he had been the one with a reason to be hurt.

Again, Jacob felt guilty. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so mean? Maybe there could’ve been a better way to remind Perry that he’d been the one to ruin their friendship, not Jacob?

His mind on that, he turned around and walked back up the steps. But when he looked at Deborah, sitting calmly there on his family’s front porch...just like her family had done nothing wrong...his anger and frustration got the best of him again.

“Listen, I’m going to start locking up. If you all want to hang out together, that’s fine. But do it someplace else.”

Walker stood up to him. “Jacob, I know you’ve got a grudge against Perry, but you need to settle down. I don’t understand why you’re acting so crazy.”

Walker didn’t understand. None of them did. And, maybe he was acting a little crazy.

Actually, he probably was. As he grabbed a plate of donuts and strode into the dark store, he fought to control his temper.

Prayed for guidance.

Because one thing was sure. If he didn’t find a way to control his temper very soon... he would do something he would regret.