Dark Crossings Read Online Free PDF

door
behind her, and ran outside.
    Darkness was descending, but the sunset still silhouetted the
Hanging Bridge in streaming reds. Not stopping to get Fern, she fled toward the
bridge and Ben’s house. Bann or not, she needed
help, and he was it.

CHAPTER FOUR
    A BBY ’ S INSTINCT WAS TO shout for Ben, but she kept quiet in case her intruder was nearby. At least she
could see Ben’s lights across the river. She’d noticed his truck in the driveway
earlier, so he’d beat her home. The bridge loomed ahead, and she ran into its
dark, cavernous depths.
    Sounds outside muted instantly. Panic pounded in her ears as
her feet thudded on the floorboards. Her bonnet bounced off, held by its strings
around her neck, and she felt her heavy braid come loose from its hairpins under
her prayer kapp . As she burst out the other side, an
owl’s hoot demanded Who? Who? as if echoing her own
fears. Who would break into her house and why? All these years out here, so
safe. Now everything had changed, since Ben came back.
    Gasping for breath, she tore up onto his porch and knocked hard
on the door. He peered out the closest window. Frowning, he yanked the door
open.
    “Abby, what hap—”
    “Someone broke into my house, though the cellar. I don’t know
if he’s still there or not!”
    He came outside fast, stooped and squinted across the creek,
but she could tell he couldn’t see much. A breeze had come up, and the trees
shed more leaves. “Did they steal anything?” he asked, taking her elbow. A
lightning bolt shot clear up her arm. Ben, forbidden. Ben, touching her. Verboten, but what could she do?
    “I don’t know,” she answered, panting for breath and pulling
slightly away. “I saw the open window and footprints and ran.”
    “Stay inside here while I go over to look around.”
    “No, I can’t—shouldn’t. I’ll come with you.”
    “Wait right here.”
    He ducked inside and came out with a leather jacket and a
rifle.
    “Ben—a gun. You can’t—”
    “It’s my old hunting rifle, and I haven’t used it since I left
here. It’s not even loaded, but it could be useful, even as a club.”
    “I don’t mean for you to do violence—you know what I’m saying,”
she insisted as he frowned at her.
    “We’ll just be sure your place is safe,” he said. “Come on
then.”
    He locked his front door and started off at a jogging pace,
with Abby holding up her skirt a bit to run behind him. He called back to her,
“I’d like for you to put this jacket on, but I know you can’t take it from me.
You’re sweating but shivering.”
    “I ran out so fast without a coat—just nerves.”
    “You have anything valuable over there? You had any trouble
with this kind of thing before?”
    “Never. Never in all these years.”
    But he’d asked about something valuable. Her stomach
cartwheeled. What if the person who lost that diamond had come back to look for
it and broken into her house? Should she tell Ben about shining the light on
that couple?
    As soon as they entered the bridge, he threw his leather jacket
on the ground. He must mean for her to put it on, though she could not take it
from his hand. He’d waited until they were hidden on the bridge.
    She stooped to pick it up, and swirled it around her shoulders,
then hurried to catch up with him again. Even in the dark—a half moon was now
tilting over the treed horizon when they ran from the bridge—Ben seemed to know
the trail to her house.
    Did that mean he’d explored here before? Without breaking
stride, he followed the sawdust path past her stacked logs and around the
irregular mushroom patches. She saw now that, in her panic, she’d left the
lantern in the cellar. Wan light shone from the two low, closed windows on this
side of the house.
    “Do you want to just peek down into the cellar first?” she
whispered, out of breath. “I know the window the person used to get in.”
    “Okay. Show me.”
    She took him around the back of the house, which faced