Finding Mercy Read Online Free PDF Page A

her head. Its sickle shape didn’t give them much light but, in the midst of his fear, it seemed strangely like a celestial smile.
    * * *
    At the bottom of the hill, the side of a small, red sports car was wrapped around a big tree. And the hood of the car was evidently on fire. As they trudged toward it together, their awkward gait—Alex was now half hopping, just putting pressure on his good leg—reminded Ella of a three-legged race.
    When they got there, they both gasped. It looked as if the red car itself bled strings of blood. No—Ella saw it was spools of shiny, red cord that had been thrown out of the car.
    “Stay back,” Alex ordered her, and took his arm from her shoulders. “I’ll see if someone’s still inside.”
    “You can’t—your ankle. I’ll check.”
    “No! If that fire spreads, the gas tank might blow!” he shouted, and made a grab for her. He missed and only snagged his fingers in her prayer kapp, which pulled off and yanked her long, pinned-up braid free. The weight of it slapped between her shoulder blades as she ran. She was pretty sure she heard a couple of curse words from Cousin Andrew.
    He was right about a possible explosion. She smelled gas. She’d have to hurry. Passenger side crunched in. Driver’s door open. No one in the car, maybe got out, but to where? Been thrown out?
    “No one here!” she started to shout back to Andrew, but he’d come up right behind her. He tugged her back so hard by an elbow that she almost flew off her feet. She banged into him. He fell back, but she balanced them before he pulled her away. His face, lit by the fire, looked like a mask of anger. What was this man really like?
    “Get back, I said! You could be killed if that blows!”
    Limping, he managed to drag her across the road and shoved her into the ditch, just as the car went up in flames with a big boom! Clinging together, they huddled in shallow water among grass and weeds. The light and heat slapped them, a hundred times worse than an open oven door or roaring fireplace log. Light all over—no, that was headlights up on the road. Someone was here to help! And here she was in Andrew’s arms, clinging to him.
    Ella clambered up and out of the ditch, dripping wet, her snagged braid spilling her hair loose. Despite the headlights in her eyes, she could see someone was getting out of a van.
    “Ella? Ella, you okay? It’s Ray-Lynn. The sheriff’s on his way. What happened? Whose car?”
    “Don’t know, but he didn’t burn up with it. I went to get him out but he was gone.”
    “We’ve got to find him, like you and Hannah found me, saved me. I— Oh, who’s that?”
    “This is our cousin, Andrew Lantz from Pennsylvania, visiting us for a while. We were— We both heard the crash.”
    Ella could see Andrew was already searching among the charred trees along the road, using a Y-shaped branch he’d found for a crutch. “Here!” he shouted to them. “He’s back here!”
    They ran to him, bent over a prone form. It seemed one unwound spool of the crimson cording pointed right at him. A young, dark-haired man lay sprawled half in the ditch on this side of the road. When Andrew turned him over to see if he was breathing, they saw he looked Asian. Andrew gasped.
    “You know him?” Ray-Lynn asked.
    “No—just surprised. Chinese, I think, and here—in Amish country.”
    They could hear the sheriff’s siren coming closer. Andrew’s head jerked up, turned toward the sound.
    “It’s all right,” Ray-Lynn said. “Just the sheriff. He’ll call the authorities for help, and we can tell them what happened.”
    Ella took off her apron and covered the unmoving man.
    “He’s breathing, has a pulse,” Andrew said as he rose and moved away.
    Ella bent over the injured man while Ray-Lynn walked away to flag down the sheriff. He jumped out of his squad car with a bright flashlight. Ella saw him give Ray-Lynn a quick, one-handed hug and whisper to her, though his words carried on the