From the Publisher

Widower Luke Brand is a leader in the peaceful Amish community of Maplecreek. But now his people are under attack from unknown assailants — and the main target appears to be the children. Although the community is reluctant to turn to the outside world for help, a particularly vicious assault leads Luke to the local police.

Policewoman Kat Lindley is running from the big-city job that nearly got her killed, and from the memories of the abused boy she failed to save. Now she agrees to undertake a dangerous masquerade within the Amish community, desperate to save Maplecreek's children.

Together Luke and Kat are determined to bring justice to the perpetrators, while struggling to suppress the unspoken and forbidden feelings growing between them. But when the case takes a deadly turn, Kat must race to uncover the menace that threatens the people she has grown to deeply respect — before Luke becomes the next target.

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

Dark Harvest

Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

Chapter One

The kids were always the best and worst parts of Kat's job as a cop. Mike Morelli, her veteran partner who was always full of advice, insisted she cared too much and tried too hard to help them, as if she were some sort of social worker with a gun. "In the long run, you can't do jack about how bad some kids get treated today," he'd said.

Still, in her two years on the job, when she wasn't putting in eight hours on the streets, twenty-six-year-old Officer Kat Lindley volunteered to do elementary school talks about traffic safety and stranger danger. However strung out she was from working nights or overtime, it always helped her feel she was making a difference in a dark world.

"I'm glad to see all of you in Miss Noll's and Mrs. McGirty's classes again this afternoon," she said, smiling at the group of nearly sixty second graders seated cross-legged on the gym floor in a circle around her. The students had been in school since the week before Labor Day, so they were pretty antsy already. She'd come in full uniform, though it was so warm she'd left her hot Kevlar vest in the squad car. Sweat dampened her upper lip and brow and made her white shirt cling to her back. Her seventeen-pound equipment belt seemed especially heavy.

"First, we're going to review some of the things we went over last week," she told the kids. "Who can tell me what a circle of safety means? Raise your hands if you remember."

A boy she especially recalled had moved much closer to her today. Thin and blond, with ragged-cut hair, he wore the same faded Batman long-sleeved pullover shirt as last week. Though he sat in the crunch of kids, he seemed so alone. She'd asked that the children wear name tags, and his said, JOHN. Kat silently named him John Doe, not only because he seemed anonymous, but because his expression reminded her of a deer caught in headlights.

"A circle of safety is what we have to keep around us!" Tiffany, a cute girl with cornrows in her hair, shouted out when Kat called her name. "And we role-played to say 'No!" and walk or run away from strangers. Not to be afraid, but be confident," she added as she drew out the last word.

"Very good, Tiffany," Kat said, still smiling at her little audience as she swung around to scan the gym. The Police Academy courses, as well as nights on the streets in this precinct, had taught her to watch her back. She didn't even like the kids sitting in a circle around her, but it allowed them to hear and see better.

"We'll do some more role-playing in a few minutes," Kat said, "but first I have a couple more questions."

Why, she wondered, was John wearing a long-sleeved shirt on such a warm day? Long pants, too, when the other kids were mostly in shorts. When he wasn't biting his fingernails, he kept fooling with the cuffs of his shirt, tugging them over his bony wrists.

Frowning but watching her intently, he scooted even closer.

A jagged, broken memory of her younger brother Jay flashed at her. He used to cling to Kat at night, after one of Daddy's bad spells where he'd been drinking and had taken it out on both of them. Jay cried real tears, but Kat always sat there dry-eyed, holding him in the dark, just waiting for the chance to get them away. In her dreams she was always knocking on tall doors, trying to find someone to take them in and love them like moms and dads should. She'd seen it on TV, she'd heard about it in school - families who hung together and took care of each other. And smiled and laughed, too.

"Boys and girls -" she went on with her lesson, trying to shut out the waking nightmare. "You can all answer these questions out loud together. Let's think about who really is a stranger. If someone knows your name, is he okay to trust?"

"No!" they chorused.

"That's right!"

John had shaken his head no, but had not called out with the others.

"Can you trust someone who even knows your street address and your brother's name and says he's friends with your mom?"

"No!"

"That's right, because he - or she - could just be hanging around and could have learned those things without really being a friend to you or to your family. Even though we're supposed to tell the truth, some people don't. But what if the person says he loves dogs and his is lost and he just needs some help to find it?"

"No-o-o!"

A lost dog. Little John looked like a lost dog. She felt better when she saw he was answering the questions now, at least moving his lips to say "No, no."

She admitted the truth to herself then. John resembled her brother Jay as he'd looked those years ago, before she'd lost him, before she'd caused their separation and, in a way, his death.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Dark Harvest by Karen Harper Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---