Free Finding Mercy by Karen Harper Page A

a place up ahead, which looked like a good pull-off spot. Most drivers in Amish country were considerate and polite—at least the ones who weren’t out drinking, like Sam Lee might have been, or who weren’t taking the hills fast because of the rollercoaster-like thrills.
    Thunder rumbled even as the van’s engine behind got louder, vroom, vroom, like it was going to leap at her. The vehicle came closer, bumped the back of her buggy! Didn’t they see the sign that readSlow-Moving Vehicle? The van’s lights had been on low but now bright headlights popped on. Another bump, harder. The buggy jolted. She was nearly to the pull-off spot—or should she just keep going? No way she could escape, however fast Fern could go.
    Rain pattered on her bonnet as Ella leaned out and looked behind, even extended an open hand as if to say, “Keep back! Stop!” Ya, the windows of the vehicle were tinted so dark she could not see the driver. The windshield wipers whipped back and forth hard. Her heart pounding, she threw herself back inside the buggy.
    Though she wasn’t to the best spot yet, she swerved Fern to the right onto the grassy fringe of the field. Rain thudded on the fiberglass frame of the buggy like loud drums. She twisted around to stare out through her back plastic window. To her dismay, the car stopped, backed up and turned in too, this time shoving the buggy almost into Fern. Thank God, she wasn’t on the edge of a treed ravine like the one that had almost killed Ray-Lynn when she plunged over it! But that would-be killer was in prison. Out here in the open, exposed, no one around—what did this person want? Just to scare her? Or worse?
    Don’t fight back…turn the other cheek, she recited to herself. Should she leave Fern, get out and run through the field? The plowed soil and rain would make for slow going. The van couldn’t follow but a person could. She’d be a sitting duck if someone had a camera—or a gun. Some terrible attacks on the Amish she’d heard or read about increased her panic: some drunk English teens turned over a buggy with a woman inside; an Amish boy throwing tomatoes at cars was shot to death. The only thing she had to fight back with, without really fighting back, was four bags of ground oyster shells.
    When lightning crackled and struck something nearby, Ella nearly jumped out of the buggy. Had it hit a tree in the woodlot? If it struck again, what was taller out here in the open, the buggy or the van? Metal would attract the bolt, wouldn’t it? No one emerged from the van as it just sat there, rumbling low with the front windshield like a huge eye just staring at her. She should have told Daad and Andrew about that light she glimpsed on the hill. At least there was no more bumping or shoving. What did that person want?
    She fumbled on the floor for her jackknife and slit the string stitching at the top of one of the big plastic bags. If someone got out and came around to hurt her, she’d fling ground oyster shells at them, in their eyes, get out and run across the corner of the field into the trees, lightning or not. Surely, this could not have anything to do with their hiding Andrew. No one around here knew who he really was, did they? So how could anyone have found him? This had to be about something else, about her. Like Daad had suggested, was she being stalked?
    The van hulked behind her like a big beast, its hood and front bumper tight against her buggy, as if playing with its prey. She was certain her wheels would sink in the soil if she drove straight ahead into the field.
    While thunder rumbled again, this time more distantly, she dug out fistfuls of the ground shells and dumped them in her lap, ready to throw. Sweating, praying— Oh Lord, please take care of Your own —she waited. Then came a deep honk-honk! of the van’s horn. Ella jumped. Fern snorted and startled. After another hard bump of the buggy, the van backed out, turned and drove away.
    Despite the rain, Ella