Safe Hearts (Amish Safe House, Book 3) by Ruth Hartzler

said as they passed each other.
    “ Good night,
Bill!”
    As soon as she walked out into the
cool, night air and the door shut behind her, Kate took off toward
her cottage. She took long strides as she rushed home, but she
wanted to avoid looking suspicious in case the man was watching the
property at that moment. She watched her cottage as it slowly grew
larger with each step she took.
    When she got to the front porch, a
tingling sensation tickled her skin. What was that? Kate looked
down to see her dress shaking. “Oh!” she gasped. She reached under
the fabric and wrapped her fingers around the vibrating phone. She
looked up, hesitated briefly, and then ran inside.
    Closing the door behind her, Kate
pulled the phone from her pocket and looked at it. She clicked the
green button and then lifted the phone to her ear.
    “ Kate, thank goodness you
answered.” She could hear a strange sound in the background as he
spoke, and she couldn’t place her finger on what it might be, but
it almost sounded like trees blowing fiercely in the wind. “I
decided to check a few things internally, and you won’t believe
what I found.”
    “ Go ahead,” she replied.
Kate wasn’t quite sure what he was going to say next, but she was
all ears. Even though she was anxious to tell him about the news
she had learned at dinner, she wanted to hear what he had to say
just as much.
    “ I’m in the car, driving to
Pennsylvania right now, so if the call drops, just give me a few
minutes and I’ll call you right back.” He cleared his throat and
then continued. “So, after doing a bit of digging, I went through a
list of names and dates of everyone in the agency who’s recently
taken time off. I figured it could be useful to determine if
someone right under our noses might be involved in the death of
that private detective.”
    “ Did you find anything?”
she interrupted.
    “ Actually, I did. Glen
Tryston went on leave, citing his sick mother as the
reason.”
    Kate gasped. She knew Glen Tryston
well; they had partnered on more than one occasion, relocating
WITSEC witnesses. “Let me guess; he’s still on leave now, isn’t
he?”
    “ Yes. According to his
time-off request, he initially went on leave about four days before
you called me about the murder,” Harper explained.
    “ So, you think he might be
the one behind it?”
    “ It’s possible. It would
make sense if the killer was the same person that hired the
detective in the first place.”
    “ You think so?” Kate
asked.
    “ It probably wouldn’t be
smart to involve too many people in such a plot. The only
apprehension I have, however, is the question of why Glen would be
involved in such things. Why would he be looking for
you?”
    Kate thought back to the one time
where WITSEC almost failed its clients. “Remember that job with the
two lawyers that Glen and I worked on?”
    “ Yes, that was the one
where we almost had our first deaths in the program?” His tone was
solemn.
    Kate sighed as the memories of the
case flooded her mind. “Yes. It happened a few months back. We had
that assignment to relocate the lawyers, but someone was still able
to track them down. That whole ordeal was a nightmare. We came so
close to losing them both, but I never even put two and two
together to figure out that Glen might have been behind it.” The
realization caused her stomach to churn. “It all makes sense now.
After that close call, I had to relocate them on my own, because
Glen had injured his wrist and you put him on desk duty. That’s
probably why they were never compromised again.”
    “ That’s right. I remember
that now, and because of his reassignment, he wouldn’t have had
access to any of the new information in that case.” David Harper
let out a loud sigh. “This is extremely troubling, and it all
definitely fits, but until we know for sure that he’s the one
behind this, we need to be careful about everything we do and
say.”
    “ Oh, I almost forgot! I