Читать книгу Plain Refuge - Janice Kay Johnson - Страница 3

A slender Amish woman wearing the usual black bonnet stepped off the bus, reaching back to help a young boy down.

The boy pressed himself to his mother as she scanned her surroundings, her gaze stopping on Daniel in what he thought he read as alarm.

He straightened on a jolt of anger. One side of her face was discolored and swollen; the eye on that side opened only a slit. And something about him clearly triggered fear in her. Was it because, like most Amish, she was unwilling to report an assault and he was clearly a law enforcement officer?

The driver unloaded the last piece of luggage from under the bus and got back on board. With a deep sigh, the bus started down the street. None of the buggy horses so much as flapped an ear. It took something much stranger than that to bother them.

Daniel ambled forward, greeting folks he knew, stopping when he reached the Grabers and a cluster of Yoders who were enveloping the two newcomers.

Looking him in the eye, Samuel Graber stepped away from the group.

Protecting the woman and child? Daniel wondered.

“Sheriff.” Samuel’s greeting was pleasant but he didn’t smile. Behind Samuel, his wife was hugging the woman from the bus, while the blond boy gripped her skirts. His straw hat fell to the sidewalk. One of the many relatives picked it up.

Samuel’s message was not subtle: this is none of your business. But Daniel thought Samuel was wrong. Chances were the woman was escaping trouble of one kind or another. In his experience, trouble had a way of following people.

And the Amish were defenseless.