Karen Harper - Return to Grace

“So now you’re in a group that looks into murders?”

“Right, violent crimes. Amish country is the last place I thought that would ever take me. If I make it to retirement age at fifty, I don’t know if I could take a place this peaceful.”

“Age fifty? But that’s so young to retire.”

“Only twelve years away, but I’ll find something else to do. Maybe help build barns,” he’d said with a chuckle, though she couldn’t see what was funny about that. And she thought someone that busy could still be lonely, but she didn’t say so yet. Right now, as they approached the maze, that gun was making her feel more jumpy than safe.

“You sure you need the gun?” she asked as her courage wavered again.

“Just a precaution, since I can’t see around the next corner. So how scary are the displays in here?”

“I came through once with Seth in our rumspringa years, though we weren’t supposed to because the bishop—my father—didn’t approve of this place with its witches and fake dead bodies. It’s not like things jump at you, at least not back then. They’re mostly stuffed, but some look real, even though most folks come through in the daylight, unless you make special arrangements with the Meyerses for a group after dark and then they watch you like a hawk.”

“Yeah? Then I’ll bet they would have been upset at unannounced night visitors, especially weird-looking ones making noise.”

Despite fitful moonlight and Linc’s flashlight beam, it was instantly darker inside the maze. The dry cornstalks rustled and seemed to press in on them. Shadows leaped from everywhere.

“Okay, so the guys probably turned to the right here,” he said, darting his beam into the blackness.

“I’m not sure, but they did eventually emerge from the right side of the maze, over this way. But they were inside here long enough that they could have gotten a lot farther than this.”

“The Meyers brothers must know this labyrinth in their sleep. They could have been in here, nearby, and Kevin and Mike wouldn’t even have known it.”

Hannah gasped when they walked through fake, suspended cobwebs—yarn?—around the next turn, but Linc just shoved them away with the flashlight. The beam bounced across his face. It almost made his features look like a fright mask she’d seen uptown in the drugstore near Halloween. While Hannah hung back a bit, Linc peered around another corner. It was all she could do to keep from taking his arm, clinging to him.

“Don’t look here,” he said, stepping back almost into her. “It’s a gross ghoul or zombie in an open coffin. Tell you what, let’s do this backward since you do know where they emerged from. They should hand out maps of these paths.”

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