The lights flickered as thunder boomed, rattling the windows. Immediately, heavy sheets of rain pelted the glass. Distracted, Elise St. Clair glanced at the lights running the length of the ceiling as she pressed the button to answer the next call.
Her customary greeting of “Nine-one-one. What’s your emergency?” was swallowed up in the intensity of the noise that blasted back at her.
The woman on the other end of the phone was shouting, the sound deafeningly loud. And worse, she couldn’t understand a word the woman was saying. She was yelling in Pennsylvania Dutch, the language spoken by the Amish community. Elise didn’t quite recognize the voice, although there was something familiar about it. She glanced down at the screen nearest her and felt her world tilt.
She might not have recognized the voice on the other end of the phone, but she knew the address that flashed across one of the three computer monitors at her station.
It belonged to an old, slightly creaky farmhouse on the edge of town. The paint was peeling in places, and there were some shingles missing. It was hidden in the middle of nowhere. The kind of place people would drive by without a second glance.
It was also her house. The house she had lived in for the past two years with Mikey, her nephew who was now three years old. And the phone number belonged to her babysitter, Diana Mosher, who was definitely not the person on the phone. Where was Diana? Who was calling her?
Something horrible had happened, and she couldn’t understand a word of it. The urge to throw down her headset and dash out the door was fierce. Her hands were already on the headset, ready to snatch it from her head before she realized that she was the only one who could notify the authorities of the need for help. But who should she call? Police? Ambulance? Fire department? As head dispatcher, it was her job to send the call to the correct department.
The shouting on the other end eased off as the woman on the line started sobbing. She sounded younger than Elise had first thought. Wait a minute. Her cleaning girl, Leah, was due in today. Elise had hired her because she herself was allergic to dust, and there was dust everywhere in a farmhouse in rural northwestern Pennsylvania. Leah was Amish. She spoke English and was able to communicate with Elise perfectly well—but if she was upset, and she definitely sounded upset, she might default to Pennsylvania Dutch.
“Leah?” A sob answered her. “Leah...it’s Elise. What happened?”
“I think she’s dead,” Leah answered through her tears.
Diana? Fear and grief started to collide. Not again. Please, God. Not again.
Forcing a calm she didn’t feel, Elise said, “Leah, what happened to Diana? Do you see Mikey? Is my nephew there?” She clamped her lips against the flood of hysteria threatening to break free.
On the other end, Leah sucked in a harsh breath. In the distance, Elise could make out a crash on the other end of the line. Not thunder—something else. Something more frightening. Then another crash. Something was happening.
“Leah? What’s going on?”
Then a whisper. “I think someone’s in the house.”
The line went dead.
Elise froze for a second, gagging on the fear that closed her throat. She’d been too complacent. Tricked into a sense of false security. And now the danger she should have been expecting all along had found her again. Yes, it was possible that a complete stranger was breaking into her house, but she doubted it. Every instinct she possessed was shrieking that the attack was deliberate, and she was the intended target.
The memories she’d been running from swamped her. Her sister, Karalynne, murdered. Elise believed with all her heart that her overly possessive brother-in-law Hudson had killed Karalynne. But he’d disappeared. And she’d taken Mikey and moved away from the memories.
Could Hudson