I stopped. “How’d you hear that?”

  She laughed. “I don’t think you understand how life in a small town works.” Chief Rose removed her mirrored sunglasses. I wondered, for the second time, if she chose those to wear while in uniform because they were so popular on cop shows. Maybe she thought the sunglasses would make her more attractive to the sheriff’s department as a deputy.

  I shook my head and started walking again.

  “And Timothy Troyer was with you.”

  I froze. How could she know that?

  The police chief put her sunglasses back on. “I would be careful about how close I got to the Troyer family, Chloe. You may think they’ve let you into their world, but you will never completely fit. Trust me. I have lived around the Amish my entire life. What makes you think you can break into their family in such a short time?”

  That is none of your business. I gritted my teeth. “Is that all?”

  She tipped her hat at me, that smirk still squarely on her face. “For now.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  As I walked onto the Harshberger campus, my thoughts turned from Chief Rose to the Computer Services Department.

  My cell rang. “Miss Humphrey?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Tyler Hart. Becky’s public defender brought me up to speed on her case. Her case is set to be heard at the Knox County Courthouse on Tuesday.”

  “So soon?”

  “There was a cancellation on the court’s calendar, so I was able to get her in. It shouldn’t take long since she is pleading guilty to all the charges.”

  “There are no new charges?”

  “No. She needs to be there at eight thirty Tuesday morning. I know the judge. He usually makes up his mind quickly. We should know her sentence within the hour.”

  I pressed my lips together, taking in all that Becky’s lawyer told me. “What do you think it will be?”

  “Like I told you and Becky in my office, I’ve asked for community service and probation. I think the prosecutor will go for it. He doesn’t want to send an Amish girl to jail.”

  My breath caught in my chest. “Is jail possible?”

  There was a pause. “If the prosecutor decides to add auto theft to the list of charges, yes, she would get at least six months in jail.”

  My knees went weak. “She didn’t steal the car!”

  “I know, I know. Don’t worry. I’ve seen a draft of the charges. It wasn’t on there. If it shows up, we’ll fight that. Just make sure Becky’s there on Tuesday. The best thing to do is keep the prosecution on our side and the judge happy.”

  I stepped into the department to find Miller and Clark hovering over their laptops at the conference table. Joel wasn’t in the office yet. Why was I not surprised?

  “Good morning,” Clark said.

  Beads of perspiration gathered on Miller’s upper lip and the crease of his brow.

  I put the cookies and pie on the conference table.

  Clark eyed it. “Is this like a last meal before the execution?”

  I sighed. “No.”

  Clark grinned. “I’m not saying I won’t eat it. I love strawberry pie.” He nodded toward Miller. “You can have the cookies. I’m not wasting my time on those.”

  Joel arrived as Clark was slicing the pie in half. He pointed at one half. “This is my share. You can divide the rest among yourselves.”

  Joel glared at the table, then at me. “Is that from your little Amish friends?”

  I ignored his comment and went into my office.

  “Dude,” Clark said. “You’re making it worse for yourself.”

  “I already know how this is going to go,” Joel snapped.

  So do I. The decision had been clear from the beginning. At ten o’clock, my office phone rang. It was Dean Klink’s secretary, Irene. He wanted to see me again.

  I walked to the dean’s office as if to the executioner. Inside Dean Klink’s office, fishing lures reflected colorful light around the room. He smiled at me from his seat. “You have to make a decision.”

  “I . . .”

  “I know this is hard, Chloe, but we need to do this for the college.”

  The decision was made, but I had a question of my own before I gave the dean my answer. “Why did you hire me?”

  The short man pushed away from his desk and peered at me with narrowed eyes, as if taken aback. “What do you mean?”

  “There are plenty of qualified candidates out there looking for work who would love this job. Most of these people have much more experience than I do. Why did you choose me?”

  He licked his lips. “I knew you were the best person for the job.”

  “How?”

  He stood and began to pace. “Chloe, did you make your decision or not? Who is it going to be?”

  I took a deep breath and told him.

  He smiled. “I knew you would do the right thing. That’s why I hired you.”

  I felt sick. As much as I disliked Joel, I knew he needed the job.

  “I knew who you would choose,” the dean said. “I’ve already spoken to human resources. The sooner we take care of this, the better. Let me call security.”

  My eye brows shot up. “Why do we need security?”

  “It’s a precaution, one we have to exercise with all our employees, especially considering his access to sensitive information. Joel works for you. You know he has access to everything.”

  I chewed off my lip balm. Dean Klink was right.

  “You will have to kill his access to all the servers and computer networks. Can you do that?”

  I inhaled another deep breath. “Yes.”

  Two hours later I watched as Joel cleaned out his desk. Clark and Miller sat at the table and solemnly watched too. The pudgy sunburned security guard observed Joel from the department’s entrance.

  Joel set a picture of his family into the box. My stomach clenched. “Do you need help carrying anything?”

  He glared at me. Obviously not the right question.

  Miller jumped up and picked up a box. “I’ll help him.”

  I nodded and retreated into the doorway of my tiny office.

  Joel picked up his briefcase, and Miller and Clark each took a box. After twenty years of working at Harshberger, his entire career fit into two boxes. Nausea overwhelmed me. Miller and Clark left the office first.

  Joel turned at the doorway. “Klink didn’t make a mistake when he hired you after all. You did exactly what he wanted. The only surprise is that you don’t scare easily.”

  He left, and the security guard closed the department door behind them. I pushed the taste of bile back down my throat and erased Joel’s access from every part of Harshberger’s computer system. You don’t scare easily resounded in my head with each click of the mouse.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  At one o’clock, Clark peeked into my office. “I’m going to run to the cafeteria for lunch. Do you want anything?”

  I tore my eyes from my computer screen. “No, I’m all right.”

  He leaned against the door. “You don’t look all right. Why don’t you come with me? It will be good for you to get out of the office, away from the place of execution.”

  “I wish you’d stop calling it that.”

  He grinned. “So, how about it?”

  “All right. Can Miller come too?”

  “Naw, he already left. He usually goes home for lunch. Poor guy is pretty shaken up.”

  I gave him a pained expression. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Miller will be fine by Monday. Now, let’s go.”

  Clark and I walked in companionable silence across the green to the cafeteria, which was located directly across from Dennis. The only students on campus were volleyball and soccer athletes here for practice. Harshberger was too small for a football team. The students elbowed each other as they moved down the line to fill their trays. At twenty four, I was only a few years older, but felt worlds away. The teams sat together on the far side of the cafeteria close to the entrance to the college bookstore.

  Staff and faculty dotted the rest of the large room. None of them seemed to relish their meals. The culinary options were a salad bar that could double as a biology experiment—I bypassed that—greasy pizza, or overcooked hamburgers and limp french fries. I settled on the hamburger and fries, hoping a thick layer of ketchup would overpower the burnt taste.

  Clark was already seated at a table by a window that overlooked the gymnasium and student dorms when I paid for my lunch. As a staff member, the whole meal only cost me two dollars, so it certainly had price in its favor. I slipped into the beige plastic molded seat across from Clark.

  Clark sawed his hamburger in half with a white plastic knife. “What do you think of the food?”

  “Well . . .”

  He laughed. “You don’t have to pretend to like it. No one does. When the semester starts, it will be fifty percent better. Notice I didn’t say one hundred percent. However, fifty is a marked improvement.”

  After slathering the burger with ketchup, I took a bite. It tasted like charcoal dipped in ketchup. I set it back on the ceramic plate.

  Clark put down his burger. Despite his complaints about the meal, most of the burger and fries were gone. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.” I popped a soggy fry in my mouth, swallowing hard to force it down my throat.

  “How long are you going to be here?” Clark squinted in the sunbeam that cut through the window. The legs of his chair made a horrible screeching sound as he scooted away from the glare.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dean Klink may look harmless, but he’s done this many times before.”

  “Done what?”

  “Restructured a department.” He made quotation marks with his fingers when he said “restructured.” “Not that firing Joel was wrong. The dude had a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore.”

  “Joel wasn’t fired,” I corrected. “He was let go,”

  “Whatever. We knew when our old boss resigned that it was just a matter of time for us.” He sipped from a paper cup. “Klink hires some young hotshot like you—someone who won’t be here too long—to take over a department.

  “Then the hotshot leaves for bigger and better things, and the department is how Dean Klink wants it. Now he hires the person he really wanted for the job because having fired one or two people means he can now afford the expert with more experience.”

  The bite of french fry lodged in my throat. I took a big gulp of water.

  “So how long are you going to be here?”

  I didn’t answer right away.

  “Your silence is all the answer I need.” He popped another fry into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “What, one year? Two years?”

  “I don’t know.” After meeting the Troyer family, leaving after two years didn’t sound as good as it once did.

  He wiped mustard off his chin. “At least Miller and I know what to expect.”

  I leaned forward, unable to eat another bite. “Are you going to tell Miller about this conversation?”

  He thought for a long minute while dragging the tip of his knife along the rim of his plate. “Naw. The kid is spooked enough as it is.”

  “Can I ask you a question now?”

  He nodded.

  “What can I do to make it better for you guys at work?”

  He dropped a french fry. “No one has asked me that before.”

  I pushed my plate away. I would eat the lunch that Becky packed for me when I got back to my office.

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

  I gave him a nod. “Ask Miller to think about it too.”

  AT A QUARTER AFTER two, I waited at the entrance to Harshberger, checking my cell phone for the time every few minutes. Will the girl from the bakery show? I wished I knew her name.

  “Miss Humphrey?”

  I turned to find the girl from the bakery. “I’m so glad you came.”

  She nodded, her expression shy. She was still wearing her apron from the bakery. A smudge of chocolate marked her pocket. She picked at it with her thumbnail.

  “Do you want to sit down?” I pointed to a bench.

  She glanced inside the college’s grounds. “No, I can’t stay long. My brother will be showing up to the bakery soon to take me home.”

  “I’m Chloe.” I held out my hand. She squeezed my fingers but didn’t shake my hand. “What’s your name?”

  “Sadie Hooley.”

  “What did you want to tell me, Sadie?”

  “I haven’t seen Becky in awhile, not since she left home. My family wouldn’t like it if they thought I was talking to her.” She adjusted her glasses. “But I know Becky and know she could never hurt anyone, especially Bishop Glick. Some of our customers at the bakery say it wasn’t an accident. They think Becky hit the bishop’s buggy on purpose. I know that’s not true.”

  “I know it would mean a lot to Becky to hear you say that.”

  “Can you tell her for me? I can’t talk to her. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  “You came to the bakery to talk to Esther.”

  I nodded.

  “Esther and Becky don’t get along. They never have, even when we were in school. It has always been over Isaac.” She picked at the chocolate smear on her apron.

  “Does Esther plan to marry Isaac?”

  Sadie nodded. “She always planned to marry Isaac, even when he was courting Becky.”

  “Isaac courting Becky must have made Esther mad.”

  Sadie laughed. “It made her furious. I don’t know how many times I had to hear her rant about Becky in the bakery. Once I told her she should be more upset with Isaac because he chose Becky over her. She didn’t talk to me for a week after, which was a relief really. Esther can talk a person’s ear off, especially if she’s angry.”

  “Could Esther be angry enough to want to hurt someone?”

  Sadie removed her glasses and cleaned the lenses on her apron. “No.”

  “Then why are you telling me this?”

  She thought a moment. “Esther can be bristly, even short with people, but I know she could never hurt anyone just as I know that Becky couldn’t. I wanted to talk to you to tell you that. It’s the truth, no matter what you might hear around town.”

  “Are there rumors going around about her?”

  Sadie shrugged. “People coming into the bakery like to talk. It doesn’t matter if they are Amish or Englisch. They want the news, and the biggest news in town now is the bishop’s passing.”

  “Thank you for telling me, Sadie.”

  “I should go. My brother must be waiting for me.”

  I nodded.

  She placed her glasses back on her nose. They didn’t look any cleaner than before. A bit of chocolate marred the edge of one lens. Just before she started down the sidewalk, she turned. “You seem like a nice girl. Becky can use all the friends she can find right now. I’m glad she found you.”

  As she walked away, I whispered, “Me too.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  After work, a black buggy sat in front of my rented house. Had Grandfather Zook brought the children? As I got closer to the buggy, it became clear it wasn’t Grandfather Zook’s. This buggy was smaller, and dust covered the back end. Grandfather Zook would never drive his buggy if it was less than pristine.

  The main tip-off, though, was the horse: a black and brown mare. No white star on the forehead. Definitely not Sparky. I walked around the empty buggy, and then glanced at my house, seeing no movement. To my right, the crunch of coarse gravel caught my attention—as did Deacon Sutter stomping down my driveway.

  I crossed my arms. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you, Miss Humphrey.”

  He took a few steps closer to me, but I held my ground.

  He towered over me, deep sun lines etching his face. “You have no place to speak to the people in the district.”

  My brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Did you stop in the bakery in town today?”

  “I did.” I held up my chin. “I bought some cookies. Is that a crime?”

  “You weren’t there to buy cookies.”

  I didn’t deny it.

  “My brother-in-law told me how upset my niece Esther was by your visit.”

  “You’re Esther’s uncle?”

  “Yes.” He glared at me.

  I blew out a breath. “I’m sorry I upset her, but I wanted to know what she may know about the accident.”

  “So you admit it.”

  “I never denied I want to know how my car was sabotaged.”

  His eyes bored into mine. “Did you talk to anyone else?”

  Sadie came to mind, but there was no way I would tell the deacon about her. She took a big risk by speaking to me. “I don’t have to answer that.” I started for the front door, feeling for the cell phone in my purse.

  The deacon reached out and grabbed my upper arm. His long slender fingers dug into my flesh. “Don’t walk away from me.”

  I jerked my arm away and glared at him. “I thought the Amish were nonviolent. Maybe you should listen more closely to the rules that you preach.”

  His eyes narrowed, but he took a step back. “Stay away from my district. You’ve already tricked the Troyers into accepting you, but it won’t work for anyone else. I blame their worldliness on Zook’s influence. Simon Troyer would have never behaved this way before his father-in-law moved to the county. Perhaps they need to be reminded of the error of their ways.”

  “How would you do that?”

  “That’s a matter for the church.”

  I bit the inside of my lip and tasted blood.

  He stopped and wagged his index finger at me. “Don’t come around my family again.” Then he climbed into his buggy.

  As the horse pulled the buggy away, I wondered what he could do to me if I did. Nothing. I wasn’t Amish. He had no control over me.

  The Troyers were another story.

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER, I parked outside Little Owl Greenhouse and found Becky sweeping the parking lot. Even with only one good arm, Becky’s broom kicked up huge clouds of dust. There was mulch everywhere.