Endangered by C. J. Box Page A

for the signal to open it. Dallas had a certain something, Joe noted as he watched. He had a presence about him, real charisma. As much as Joe hated him, he couldn’t take his eyes off the man. No wonder the jeans company chose him as a spokesman, he thought.
    Almost imperceptibly, Cates nodded to the men in the arena that he was ready.
    Bushwhacker and Dallas exploded into the arena in a whirling combination of twists and bucks. The crowd went wild. Although the videographer missed part of it, Dallas Cates was thrown forward on the front shoulders of the bull, then rocked back. The cowboy flew through the air and landed flat on his back in the dirt behind the bull.
    While the announcer said,
“Dallas Cates gets Bushwhacked in two-point-eight-seven seconds!”
the bull wheeled and lowered its head and charged Dallas, who scrambled backward like a crab.
    Bullfighters dressed as clowns swooped in a second too late to distract the animal, and the bull either hooked or head-butted Cates with enough power to send him airborne again. There was an audible gasp from the fans, but despite the unreliable camerawork, Joe could see Cates roll to his feet and scramble up the chute boards to safety.
    Then it was over.
    “Let’s see it again,” Joe said.
    They watched it three more times. It was April, all right, and it didn’t look like the two of them were at odds. After all, Dallas had looked over to her for last-second encouragement. She’d been beaming. Joe had rarely seen her look so happy or so excited.
    “I told you,” Lucy said. She was focused on the relationship.
    Joe was focused on the wreck of the ride.
    The last glimpse of Dallas was of him climbing the chute boards and vaulting over the top into the ready area.
    “That bull got Dallas,” Joe said, “but he looks pretty darned healthy when he runs away. I know adrenaline can make a man do all kinds of things, but I also know how much it hurts to get your ribs broken. There’s nothing worse. Dallas doesn’t look like he’s got broken ribs the way he’s flying over that chute gate. Plus, he was wearing one of those flak vests they all have to wear these days.”
    Lucy looked over and said, “Does that mean those Cates people are lying?”
    “I think it does,” Joe said.
    —
    H E WAS FEEDING THE HORSES in the barn after dinner when Marybeth called. She sounded shaken.
    “The doctors say April has severe brain damage. She was hit multiple times in the head. There’s swelling around her brain.”
    “Oh no,” he said, once again feeling his knees wobble.
    “They say they want to put her into a medically induced coma.”
    “A what?”
    “A medically induced coma.”
    “How bad is it, Marybeth?”
    She said, “They really don’t know. They say she’s on the low end of the Glasgow Coma Scale, whatever that means. There’s no eye, verbal, or motor response. They need our permission to put her under, so I wanted to talk with you first.”
    Joe shook his head. As if Marybeth could see him do it, she said, “The idea is to keep her unconscious and healing until the swelling in her brain goes down. They want to give her a drug called propofol to put her into the coma. The doctors say shutting down her functions will lower her blood pressure and reduce the swelling in her brain in case they have to do surgery later. It’ll give the brain time to heal. It’s what they did for Gabrielle Giffords, the U.S. representative who got shot in the head in Arizona, and what they do with other victims of blunt force trauma.”
    Joe recalled the Giffords incident. He asked, “What do you think?”
    “If they leave her the way she is, her body may shut off blood flow to the damaged parts of her brain. She’d be brain-dead.”
    “Oh, man.”
    When Marybeth didn’t speak for a moment, he realized she had lowered the phone to cry. He waited.
    “It’s not a sure thing, so we have to brace ourselves,” she said after a moment, once she’d gathered herself together. He