Home by Dark

THE PAST CAN CATCH UP TO YOU…

Rachel Weaver Mason is finally going home to Deer Run, the Amish community she left behind so many years ago. Recently widowed, she wants desperately to create a haven for herself and her young daughter.

But the community, including Rachel’s family, is anything but welcoming. The only person happy to see her is her teenage brother, Benjamin, and he’s protecting a dark secret that endangers them all.

Determined to keep Benjamin safe from a suspected killer, Rachel has no choice but to turn to the one man she wanted to get as far away from as possible. Colin McDonald was her late husband’s friend, and the man who came between them. He’s never forgotten her and would do anything to keep her and her family safe.

Rachel doesn’t know if she can trust Colin, or her growing feelings for him. But as they hunt for the killer, the tension between them builds and soon both their lives, and their hearts, are on the line.

Praise for Marta Perry

“Perry skillfully continues her chilling, deceptively charming romantic suspense series with a dark, puzzling mystery that features a sweet romance and a nice sprinkling of Amish culture.”

—Library Journal on Vanish in Plain Sight

“Marta Perry illuminates the differences between the Amish community and the larger society with an obvious care and respect for ways and beliefs…. She weaves these differences into the story with a deft hand, drawing the reader into a suspenseful, continually moving plot.”

—Fresh Fiction on Murder in Plain Sight

“Leah’s Choice, by Marta Perry, is a knowing and careful look into Amish culture and faith. A truly enjoyable reading experience.”

—Angela Hunt, New York Times bestselling author of Let Darkness Come

“Leah’s Choice is a story of grace and servitude as well as a story of difficult choices and heartbreaking realities. It touched my heart. I think the world of Amish fiction has found a new champion.”

—Lenora Worth, author of Code of Honor

“Marta Perry delivers a strong story of tension, fear and trepidation. Season of Secrets (4.5 stars) is an excellent mystery that’s certain to keep you in constant suspense. While love is a powerful entity in this story, danger is never too far behind.”

—RT Book Reviews, Top Pick

Home by Dark

Marta Perry

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

Thank you for choosing to read the first book in my new Amish suspense series, which is set in a fictional community in my own part of Pennsylvania. I’m finding it a delicate balancing act but also great fun to combine the real places I know with my fictional community.

The Amish attitude toward nonviolence plays a large role in Home by Dark. It’s sometimes difficult for people in the larger community to reconcile the very law-abiding nature of Amish life with the reluctance of the Amish to become involved with the law and its representatives. This attitude dates back to the earliest years of the Amish faith, when Amish were persecuted and killed by the law and government of the time. For the most part, an Amish person is more likely to forgive and/or ignore a crime against them by an outsider than to seek help from the police, and that attitude permeates the events of my story.

I hope you’ll let me know how you felt about this story, and I’d love to send you a signed bookmark or my brochure of Pennsylvania Dutch recipes. You can write to me at Harlequin HQN, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279, email me at [e-mail] or visit me on the web at www.martaperry.com.

Blessings,

Marta Perry

This story is dedicated to my grandson, Bjoern Jacob. And, as always, to Brian, with much love.

The gem cannot be polished without friction,

nor the person perfected without trials.

—Amish proverb

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

PROLOGUE

THE DESERTED BARN loomed ahead of them, broken beams jutting up toward the darkening sky like menacing fingers. Benjamin Weaver shivered, and the gas cans Will had made him carry clanked together.

Will’s head jerked around at the sound. “Keep it quiet.” His voice was a low mutter of Pennsylvania Dutch. “You want to get us arrested?”

“Told you we shouldn’t’ve brought him.” Joseph Stoltz frowned at him. Both the older boys wore Englisch clothes, and they’d snickered at Benj for showing up dressed Amish.

All very well for them to put on jeans and T-shirts. They were both old enough to have started their rumspringa, and parents turned a blind eye to such clothes then. But he was only fourteen, and Daad would skin him if he found Benj in a getup like that. Daad had been upset enough lately with Benj’s oldest sister, Rachel, coming back to town and not being Amish anymore.

He shivered again, half with cold, half with fear of where this adventure was taking him. It grew chilly at night this early in June, especially out here on the wooded hillside. He hadn’t thought to bring a jacket when he’d crawled out his window and slid down the roof of the woodshed. He’d been too excited that Will and Joseph were letting him come along to think about that.

Now his mind was churning, and he didn’t like what it was telling him. That it was a mistake for him to get involved, that he’d be shaming Daad and Mammi, that—

A loud creak sounded through the trees, and Benj didn’t need Will Esch’s gesture to drop to his knees behind the closest fallen log. Another sound from up ahead, one that he couldn’t identify. Why would anyone be up here in the woods overlooking Deer Run at night? Nobody’d be interested in that falling-down old barn.

Nobody but Will, who figured it would make a fine blaze up there on top of the hill for the whole village to see. Benj eased his hands away from the gas cans and rubbed clammy palms on his pants. He’d thought they were just going to splash paint on the barn, not start a fire. He should have had better sense than to get involved in one of Will’s schemes.

Will leaned over. “I’ll go check it out,” he whispered. “Wait for my signal, ja?”

With Will’s eyes on him, Benj could only nod. Too late now for second thoughts.

Will slipped over the log and slithered through the trees toward the barn. Benj leaned against the rough bark, wishing he was home in his bed. Will was moving quickly—Benj could see him, a dark shadow weaving through the trees. He’d be at the barn in a minute.

Benj turned away, sliding down to sit on the ground. In no time they’d hear Will whistle. Benj would have no choice but to pick up the gas cans and go along. Will was right about one thing. That dry old wood would make a fine blaze. But if they got caught...

He’d never seen an Englisch jail, but it seemed a pretty fair guess he wouldn’t like it.

“What’s taking so long?” Joseph muttered, peering over the log. “I can’t see him—”

He broke off at the sound of a motor. Lights swept through the trees, and Benj’s heart stopped. A vehicle was coming up the old logging road toward the barn. If Will was seen—

A man’s voice, shouting. Then, incredibly, a shotgun cracked through the woods, sending crows lifting in a noisy cloud from the trees. Benj was frozen, wits dazed by the sound.

And then Will vaulted over the log, shoving him with a hard hand. “Run,” he ordered.

Benj scrambled to his feet, following Will, with Joseph a step behind him, bolting through the brush. Another report, a branch crashing to the ground, and he was running as hard and fast as he could, running as if the devil himself were at his heels, crashing through the undergrowth heading down the hill and toward the road, if they got to the road they’d be safe, no one would shoot there.

An eternity later they stumbled out onto the macadam of the two-lane road that wound through Deer Run. Across the way was Mason House, where his sister Rachel lived now. He could go to Rachel, he could tell her—

Will grabbed his arm, shook him. “Where’s the cans?”

Benj blinked, then jerked his head toward the hillside. “Back there.”

“Dummy.” Will shoved him. “Ach, they can’t tell who we were from that. All we’ve gotta do is keep quiet.”

Joseph, always more cautious than Will, moved nervously. “But they were shooting. We should—”

“You should be quiet, like I tell you,” Will snarled. “You didn’t see anything, you don’t say anything, not to anyone. Got that?”

He spun, grabbing Benj by the shirt. “Answer me. You got that?”

Benj nodded. He hadn’t seen anything—that was for sure. Just a dark shape, wielding what had to be a shotgun. And right now he didn’t know whether he was more afraid of Will or the man with the gun.

CHAPTER ONE

SOMETHING WAS WRONG with her little brother. Rachel Weaver Mason swept the paint roller along the wall of what would be the registration area for her bed-and-breakfast, darting a sideways glance at her brother Benjamin.

Benjamin knelt on the drop cloth, straw-colored hair hiding his eyes, as he carefully cut in the edge of cream paint next to the woodwork. Benj might be only fourteen, but like most Amish youth, he possessed a number of practical skills, along with a strong work ethic. He’d said he’d help her with the painting, and he’d turned up bright and early this morning for what he called a work frolic.

Rachel suppressed a faint twinge at the expression. With any ordinary Amish family, a dozen or more relatives would have shown up at the word she needed help with the house her mother-in-law had so surprisingly left her.

But she was not Amish any longer. Running away to marry Ronnie Mason at eighteen, leaving behind her home, her family and her faith, had put a period to that part of her life. Even though she’d come back to Deer Run in the end, a widow with a nine-year-old daughter to support, she couldn’t expect to be treated as anything other than an outsider.

Only Benj, the little brother she’d hardly expected to remember her, looked at her as if she were family. The one time she’d seen her father since she’d returned, Daad had been as stiff and polite as if he’d never seen her before, and her heart still ached at the pain of that reception.

Was Daad hurting at the distance between them as well? Maybe so, but he’d never show it, and Mose, the brother who’d always been as close as a twin to her, copied Daad’s attitude.

Maybe that was better than seeing the pain and longing in her mother’s eyes. Mamm wanted her daughter back, wanted to be close to the granddaughter she barely knew, but Rachel’s return couldn’t wipe out the grief of her leaving. As for the two younger sisters who were little more than children when she’d left—well, Naomi and Lovina watched her as warily as a robin might eye a prowling cat.

“New paint makes it look better, for sure.” Benj sat back on his heels, glancing up at her with eyes as blue as her own.

Innocent eyes, but holding an edge of worry that didn’t belong there. Benj shouldn’t be jumping at sudden sounds and glancing warily around corners. That wasn’t normal.

“Was ist letz?” The question came out of her without conscious thought in Pennsylvania Dutch, maybe because that was the language of her heart. “What’s wrong, Benj? Are you worried about something?”

His hand jerked, depositing a drop of cream paint on the woodwork, and he bent to wipe it off with concentrated care. Benj was outgrowing the blue shirt he wore, his wrists sticking out of the sleeves, and the back of his neck was as vulnerable as her daughter Mandy’s.

“Worried?” he said finally, not looking at her. “I got nothing to worry about, ain’t so?” He tried to make it sound light, but his voice shook a little.

Rachel wanted to touch his shoulder, to draw him into her arms for comforting the way she would have when he was four. But she’d left then, abandoning him as she had the rest of the family. The fact that he seemed willing to start fresh with her didn’t mean she could go back to the way things once were.

“I don’t mean to pry,” she said, choosing the words carefully. “But if you ever want to tell me anything at all, I can keep it to myself.”

Benj seemed frozen, brush poised an inch from the wall. She held her breath, willing him to speak.

Then Mandy came clattering down the stairs, jumping the last few as if in too much of a hurry to take them one at a time, and the opportunity was gone.

“My room is all cleaned up,” she announced. “Can I help paint now?”

Mandy had obviously fixed her own hair this morning. The honey-colored braids were loose enough that strands already worked their way free of the bands, and the part was slightly erratic.

“No pictures of puppies on the wall?” Benjamin grinned at Mandy, his troubles apparently forgotten for the moment.

“I’m way past that,” she said loftily.

Rachel caught back a chuckle before Mandy could think she was being laughed at. Only nine, and Mandy sometimes sounded more like a teenager than Benjamin.

As for Benj, he treated Mandy like a little sister rather than the niece she actually was, to the obvious pleasure of both of them. He even had Mandy saying a few phrases in Pennsylvania Dutch.

“You can paint if you’re careful.” Rachel reminded herself that she’d wielded a pretty mean paintbrush at Mandy’s age. Amish children learned to work alongside their parents almost from the time they could walk. “You can use this roller, and I’ll go up the stepladder and do the top part.”

“It’s going to look so neat.” Mandy grabbed the roller, and Rachel steadied her arm for the first few strokes. “It was nice of my grandmother to leave us her house, wasn’t it? I wish we could have visited her.”

Rachel used climbing the stepladder as a pretext for not answering the implied question. She certainly wasn’t going to tell Mandy that the grandmother she’d been named after hadn’t ever invited them to come, not even when Ronnie died.

Amanda Mason had known how to hold a grudge, and Ronnie had been just as bad. Well, he’d been hurt, and he’d tried to mask it by insisting he didn’t care. His mother had always taken such pride in him that he hadn’t expected her iron opposition to his marriage. He’d been so sure she’d come around, but she never did. Rachel’s throat tightened, and she swallowed, trying to relax it.

Mandy swept the roller along the wall. “When it’s all finished, then we’ll start having guests, won’t we, Mommy?”

“I hope so.”

If they didn’t... Well, she wouldn’t go there. Ronnie had left nothing for his widow and child but a few debts, and his mother’s gift of the house hadn’t included an income to run it on. But Mrs. Mason had left a trust fund to cover Mandy’s education, to Rachel’s everlasting gratitude.

Mandy wouldn’t be tossed out into an unforgiving world with an eighth-grade education, the way Rachel had been, per Amish custom. That was a little fact neither she nor Ronnie, wrapped in the glow of first love, had taken into consideration.

“That’s not so bad.” Benjamin was studying Mandy’s efforts. “Chust don’t go too close to the woodwork, ja? I’ll do that with the brush.”

“Ja,” Mandy echoed, her face serious and intent. Usually Rachel thought Mandy looked like her father, with that honey-colored hair and those changeable green eyes, but sometimes, as now, her expression was like looking into a mirror.

Benjamin moved over to paint next to Mandy, grinning at her, his face relaxed as he said something teasing to her about finishing first. His expression reassured Rachel. Surely there couldn’t be anything seriously wrong, or he wouldn’t be laughing with Mandy, would he?

She’d been jumping to conclusions, maybe putting her own worries and fears onto him. He was probably—

The front door rattled with a knock and opened. Rachel turned, brush in hand, and whatever she’d been about to think was forgotten when she looked at Benjamin. Eyes wide with fear or shock, body rigid, a muscle visibly twitching by his mouth.

She’d been right to begin with. Something was very wrong with her little brother.

Rachel forced herself to glance aside. Benj was at a sensitive age—he wouldn’t like knowing he’d given himself away to her.

And she found her stomach jolting as she looked instead at Colin McDonald. He stood in her hallway, seeming as cool and relaxed as if he were in his own house. But then, nothing ever did ruffle Colin. Whether he’d been driving his truck far too fast up a mountain road or winning a bet by climbing to the top of steep slate roof on the Presbyterian church, he’d never betrayed a tremor. A challenge might bring a little added spark to his cool gray eyes, but that was all.

“Colin.” Belatedly realizing she was on the stepladder, paintbrush in hand, she climbed down, telling her nerves to unclench. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”

Or any other day, for that matter, but that was wishful thinking. Now that she was back in Deer Run, seeing Colin would be inevitable.

He arched an eyebrow, giving her the smile that had charmed most of the females in the township at one time or another. Even her, for a few brief moments, until she’d realized what he was really like.

“How could an old friend like me not come to welcome you back?” He glanced at the paint she’d managed to accumulate on her hands. “Don’t think I’ll offer to shake hands, though. Or give you a hug.”

Same Colin, always just a bit superior. But she wasn’t a shy little Amish girl any longer.

“Afraid of getting your hands dirty?” She let her gaze sweep over the spotless khaki pants and blue polo shirt he wore. Perfect as always. That strand of blue-black hair tumbling onto his forehead and the laughter in his eyes just added to the image of someone who had it all together.

It was that exterior, so Ronnie said, that had fooled adults into believing that whoever had caused a particular bit of mischief, it couldn’t have been Colin.

His expression seemed to grant her a point. “Just not dressed for painting, that’s all.” He let his gaze move on past her. “Hi, Benj. And here’s Mandy, all grown up.”

“Mandy, this is Mr. McDonald, an old friend of your daddy’s. Benj...” But her brother was gone, sliding through the door to the kitchen with an unintelligible murmur.

Colin looked after him. “What’s wrong with Benjamin? He and I are old friends, and he’s looking at me as if I were a zombie.”

“A zombie?” Mandy inquired. “What’s that?”

“Like an ogre,” Rachel said quickly, before Colin could attempt to explain. “From a fairy tale.” She hadn’t been able to give Mandy the safe, protected childhood she’d had, but she’d tried to guard her from the worst of current culture.

Mandy nodded, small face serious, and Rachel could practically see her storing that information away. Then Mandy pinned Colin with an assessing gaze.

“You don’t look like an ogre,” she observed.

“I’m not,” he said quickly. “That was a joke, because Benj ran off when I came in.”

“He didn’t run off,” Rachel said, exasperated at the turn the conversation had taken. “He’s gone to the kitchen for some lemonade, that’s all. Mandy, you can go and have a snack, too, while I talk to Mr. McDonald. Then we’ll get back to work.”

With a lingering glance at Colin, Mandy walked toward the kitchen and disappeared from view. And, Rachel trusted, from earshot.

She turned back to Colin, hoping he’d take the hint and make this visit brief. She found him surveying her quizzically, making her uncomfortably aware of her frayed jeans and the oversize old shirt of Ronnie’s she’d found in the closet. Why couldn’t he have come when she was looking her best, not her worst? Not that she cared, she reminded herself.

“Trying to protect your daughter from my bad influence?” he asked.

Rachel felt her cheeks grow warm. “What makes you think that?”

He ignored the question, taking a casual step closer to her. She’d thought the past ten years hadn’t changed him much, but she was suddenly aware that he was taller and broader than he used to be. The athletic boy had matured into a man.

Physically, maybe. Somehow she guessed that the teenage hell-raiser wasn’t far under the civilized surface.

“You always did think I was a bad influence on Ronnie, didn’t you?” Those cool gray eyes pinned her in place, and Rachel found her pulse fluttering erratically.

She’d had good reason to know it, but before she could attempt an answer, he stepped back with a rueful smile.

“Never mind. There’s seldom any point in revisiting the past, is there?”

“I guess not.” Too bad she did so much of it, especially now.

“Anyway, to business. You know I’ve taken over my dad’s real estate firm, don’t you?”

“No, I didn’t.” She hadn’t been back long enough to get caught up on all the local news, and this particular item was a surprise. “What happened to the guy who said he’d never come back to this one-horse town?”

“He grew up.” Colin clipped off the words, as if that might be a sore subject. “So Amanda Mason left this mausoleum to you, did she?” He sent a disparaging glance around the high-ceilinged hall, a few shreds of floral wallpaper still visible that Rachel had missed in her scraping. “Was that her way of punishing you for marrying her precious boy—to saddle you with this white elephant?”

“I don’t know what was in her mind,” Rachel said carefully. Colin didn’t need to know how astonished she’d been to be contacted by her mother-in-law’s attorney after all those years of pointed silence. “But it was very kind of her.”

“Kind?” He looked at her as if she were crazy. “How would you like to list it with me?”

“List...?” Her mind went blank.

“Put it on the market.” He said the words slowly, as if she were deficient in understanding. “You probably know it’s a terrible time to be selling, but I think I can still get a decent price for you, as long as you’re not expecting the moon and the stars.” He paced toward the stairwell, as if mentally measuring the hallway.

Real estate market, of course. “That’s kind of you, Colin, but I don’t plan to sell.”

Colin stopped in midstride, turning to give her an incredulous look. “You can’t intend to live here.”

That was a comment she’d made to herself a number of times in the past month, but hearing him say it made her bristle. “Why not? It’s my house now.”

“It’s a wreck,” he said bluntly. “I don’t know what Amanda was thinking, but she let the place go in her final years. You’d have to sink a fortune in it to get it back the way it was, and I don’t suppose she left you that.”

“No.” Just the house, a small yearly amount to pay the taxes and enough in a trust fund for Mandy’s education.

“Well then, the only thing to do is sell the place.” He made it sound as if she had no choice, but she did.

“I’m not going to sell. I’m going to run it as a bed-and-breakfast.”

Colin stared at her, expressionless. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said finally. “Unless you’ve got an independent income, you can’t expect to get by that way.”