Endangered by C. J. Box Page B

could imagine her wiping away tears on her cheeks as she talked. “It’s possible she’ll never come out of it. It’s also possible that they could bring her out of it, but there’s been so much damage, she’d never really be the same. But they’re good doctors and I trust them. They have a neurosurgeon on call in case they need to do surgery. All we can do is trust them and pray for her.”
    Joe tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry.
    “How long?” he asked.
    “Days, weeks, maybe months. They use propofol because it’s easily controlled and it has a short length. That’s so they can reduce the dosage when the swelling goes down and bring her out of the coma periodically. When they do, they can measure her Glasgow scale to see if she’s responding. They also measure brain activity through catheters in her brain.”
    “Then we have to say yes,” Joe said.
    “I agree. I’ll go sign whatever it is I have to sign and I’ll call you later tonight.”
    —
    J OE WE NT INSIDE and told Lucy what Marybeth had said. Lucy nodded, wide-eyed, then got up and started toward her room to call her big sister, Sheridan.
    In the threshold of the doorway, she asked, “Did April say for sure who did this to her?”
    Joe shook his head.
    “Will she ever be able to tell us?”
    “We don’t know, Lucy.”
    Lucy closed her eyes briefly, then shut the door behind her.
    —
    W HEN J OE ’ S CELL PHONE lit up an hour later, he lunged for it. He was halfway through his first bourbon and water. The television was on, but he had no idea what network it was tuned to.
    He looked at the phone screen and scowled, then punched it live.
    Annie Hatch said, “It’s a blizzard up here, Joe. We can’t see well enough to find the road to get back to town. Revis and I were hoping you could drive up here and kind of lead us back.”
    “Did you find the site?”
    “We think so, but we’re not sure. There’s so much snow in the sagebrush—”
    “I told you not to go up there tonight,” he said.
    “I know, I know,” she said wearily. “Do you think we wanted to call you?”
    “Sit tight,” Joe said with irritation. “Don’t keep driving around. Just sit tight with your headlights on. How far did you go off the county road?”
    “Not far, I don’t think.”
    “Tell him to hurry,” Wentworth said in the background.
    She didn’t, but Joe said, “Wentworth better keep his mouth shut or you’ll both be there all night.”
    He heard her shush her partner.
    As Joe laced on his boots in the mudroom, his phone lit up again. Reed.
    “Mike,” Joe said.
    “Are you sitting down?”
    Joe braced for it, whatever it was.
    “After you left this afternoon, the dispatcher got a 911 call. The reporting party said she heard about April through someone she knows at the hospital, and she recalled seeing a man she identified as Tilden Cudmore force a girl matching April’s description into his vehicle on the highway yesterday morning. She said she didn’t call it in at the time because she thought maybe Cudmore was her father and the girl was a runaway or something.”
    Joe tried to process what Reed had just told him.
    “Who made that call?” Joe asked.
    “I don’t know,” the sheriff said. “She wouldn’t identify herself to the dispatcher.”
    “But you think it was legitimate?”
    “Yeah,” Reed said. “We’ve had run-ins with Cudmore a few times. He’s a survivalist type who lives by himself in a trailer out in the county. He’s a real piece of work. There have been rumors about him cruising the highways, driving well below the speed limit, like he’s looking for somebody, but we couldn’t hardly pick him up for that.
    “Anyway, I sent a deputy out to his place, but he wasn’t home and his Humvee was gone. The deputy happened to look in the man’s dumpster and he found a purse inside with April’s ID. There’s also a backpack and some clothing we hope you can identify.”
    Joe said, “Tilden Cudmore. You’ve thrown