Page 79 of Outsider

“I see you’ve decided to do away with the last of my sanity,” she mutters as she shuffles to the percolator on the stove and pours.

“Yup.” I chuck the empty bottle into the trash. “I hear you had a rough night last night.”

“I’ve had better.” She tosses me a sour look, narrows her eyes. “Word travels fast.”

“Stay away from Adam.”

She rolls her eyes, brings the mug to her lips, and slurps. “For God’s sake, Kate, nothing happened. We just—”

“He spent the night with you. That’s enough.”

She throws her head back and laughs. “We didn’t … We fell asleep. Although he did kiss me good night. It was sweet. Just a peck on the cheek. I didn’t realize men still did sweet.”

Her insouciance chafes all of those old Amish sensibilities still scattered about inside me. Her indifference and lack of respect for him and his ways stir my temper. I think about Adam, a young widower for going on two years now, raising a family, and running a farm alone, all of it in a society where the institution of marriage is cherished, encouraged, and expected.

I cross to her and get in her face. “He’s not some loser you picked up at a bar.”

“Do not go there, my friend,” she snaps. “I’m hungover and I already told you nothing happened. So drop it.”

It’s good advice. Advice a wiser woman might heed. But I know Gina too well to let this go without my driving home my point. “Something did happen, Gina. He spent the night with you. That’s a big deal. Something that will likely cause him a great deal of guilt and get the tongues wagging.”

She laughs. “For God’s sake, Kate, this isn’t frickin’ high school—”

“He’s Amish. He’s part of a culture you do not understand. He’s part of a community that will think less of him if he makes a mistake. He’ll become the focus of gossip that can be cruel and it will matter to him.” I jam my finger in her face. “It’ll matter to his kids.”

She smacks my hand away. “Fine. For God’s sake, get off my back.”

“Gina, he’s a good man. If something had happened between the two of you, it would have … meant something to him. You can’t play with people’s feelings that way. Not here. Not him. Not like that.”

She stares at me, blinking, nostrils flaring. For the first time since she walked into the kitchen, I feel as if she’s listening, that she heard me, and that I’m getting through to her.

“I got it,” she says quietly.

I go to the table, sink into a chair, stuff my temper back into its hole. “A neighbor saw a vehicle parked on the road in front of the house at two o’clock this morning.”

Coffee in hand, she joins me at the table, energized now, her eyes sharp on mine. “Did you get a plate? Make? Model?”

“It was too dark and too far away for him to see. He thought it was odd that the driver had turned off the headlights.”

“That is odd.”

“Maybe.” I shrug. “But in rural areas, sometimes people drive out to the back roads to drink or whatever. Teenagers park to make out. I’ve seen it a hundred times since I’ve been chief.”

“I guess hormones don’t give a damn if there’s two feet of snow on the ground,” she grumbles.

“That said, this road is a ways off the beaten path. I can’t see someone braving all the snow and risking getting stuck, especially that time of night.”

“Had a plow been by?” she asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe once. Even so, there are drifts. You can barely get through with a four-wheel drive and chains.”

She thinks about that a moment, but I see the filament of worry take up residence in her expression. “Bertrand owns a four-wheel-drive Subaru Outback.”

“I know.” At her how-do-you-know-that look, I add, “Tomasetti checked.”

“Even so, no one knows where I am.”

“Like I said, it’s not that much of a stretch for someone to have remembered that you and I were tight once and put two and two together. Cops have resources out the wazoo when it comes to finding someone.”