Joe smiled at Lucy. “Hungry? It’s past dinnertime.”
Lucy, who was always hungry, shook her head no.
“How are you doing?” he asked her.
She shrugged and pursed her lips, the precursor to crying herself. “I’m sorry I got so mad at you and Mom,” she said.
“It’s okay. You just wanted to help.”
“I wanted to see April again,” she said, and the tears came.
Joe said, “Come here,” and held out his hand. She slid away from Sheridan and sat next to him and burrowed into his side. He put his arm around her and his muscle memory told him it wasn’t Lucy at all but a much older girl. The Lucy he remembered was small, a thin stalk with downy white-blond hair. It was as if she’d grown into an adolescent overnight.
“How can it not be her?” Lucy asked after a while.
“I don’t know.”
“Does it mean April is still out there somewhere? Is this the wrong girl you found?”
He squeezed her tighter. “I don’t know who she is or why she said she told us she was April. I don’t know if the real April is out there or not. For whatever reason, she pretended to be April to all of us.”
“It’s just so unfair,” Lucy said. “To make us believe like that.”
Joe said, “There has to be a reason, but we don’t know what it is. Maybe your mom will find out something.”
“I hope so. If anyone can, it’s Mom.”
WHEN MARYBETH AND LUCY had arrived in Marybeth’s van, he’d had a few moments alone with his wife without Sheridan or Lucy. Marybeth’s first thought, that they’d simply located the wrong girl, was dispelled when Joe explained what had happened. How he’d called out the new cell phone number to Coon, how Coon had been able to get his people in Cheyenne to contact the phone company and track it under the original judicial authorization. “For once,” Joe had told Marybeth, “she didn’t turn her phone off right away after she sent the text. The FBI was able to pinpoint a tower. Luckily, there was only one road in the area and we were able to get there fast. Fifteen more minutes and…” he left the sentence to hang there with meaning.
Coon and Portenson had loaded the girl on their chopper and taken off en route to the nearest large medical facility: Rapid City. According to Coon, Janie Doe had lost consciousness in the air. The Crook County Sheriff’s Department arrested Corey Talich and sent for a state helicopter to airlift Chase’s body to town. Joe had climbed back up the mountainside, dreading Sheridan’s reaction when he told her.
“What about Nate?” Marybeth asked him. “Where is he?”
Joe said, “As soon as the chopper came over, Nate vanished. He didn’t want Portenson to see him and grab him. He knew we had to get April-or whoever she is-out of there fast.”
“Where is he now?”
Joe shrugged. “You know Nate. He’s probably hiding out with some falconer buddy of his. Those guys take care of each other.”
WHILE THEY WAITED for Marybeth to return, Joe looked up at the silent wall-mounted television and was surprised to see a visual of Leo Dyekman’s ranch house. He didn’t need to turn up the volume to follow the story. A local correspondent did a stand-up on the front lawn of the ranch house and theatrically gestured behind him. The camera zoomed in on the front door and panned across the crime scene tape. The initial on-the-scene report was followed by a clip of Portenson, flanked by local law enforcement, speaking behind a podium. Coon was at his left, avoiding the camera lens and looking uncomfortable. There was a photo of a handsome older man in a tuxedo identified as David Stenson, aka “Stenko,” who looked remarkably like Ernest Hemingway, Joe thought. Then came a grainy, poor-resolution photo of Robert standing in what looked like a rain forest. Joe guessed the image had been taken from the ClimateSavior.net website. A graphic read ARMIED AND DANGEROUS. Joe guessed “armied” instead of “armed” was a result of the news staff’s hastily assembling the report.
The reporter on Dyekman’s lawn threw it back to the anchor, an attractive brunette who looked all of twenty-five years old and was obviously reading from a teleprompter by the way her eyes tracked across the screen. The face of Leo Dyekman filled the screen, followed by a Chicago Police Department booking photo of Nathanial Talich.
There was a long-distance helicopter shot of the mountains that zoomed in on the overturned vehicle on the floor of the canyon. Under the graphic IN CUSTODY was an old booking photo of Corey Talich.
Joe waited, hoping there would be news of the arrest of Stenko and Robert. Instead, the local news switched to an interview with a rancher complaining about his fences being knocked down by buffalo from Custer State Park.
MARYBETH FINALLY came back shaking her head, her face ashen.
Joe and Lucy looked up expectantly.
“She could almost be April,” Marybeth said. “She’s fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, it’s hard to tell. But she’s blond, tall, and attractive. I tried to convince myself that it might be her, that her looks had just changed as she got older. But no, it’s not her. Not at all.”
Joe said, “Is she awake?”
Marybeth was stoic. “No. She’s just out of surgery for her leg injury so she’s still under. But it isn’t the bullet wound that’s the problem. It’s the loss of blood. The doctor said blood loss was severe.”
Joe waited for a beat, said, “Is she going to be okay, then?”
Marybeth’s face twitched and her eyes filled with tears. “Maybe. Doubtful. They don’t know for sure. The emergency doctors said the blood loss could create something called hypovolemic shock. That’s when not enough blood flows through the organs. It made her heart beat too quickly and made her blood pressure drop. It could have long-term effects on her brain. When someone loses that much blood… they just don’t know what kind of internal damage was caused. It could be days before she wakes up, if she wakes up at all. And if she does, well, they just don’t know.”
Sheridan stirred and sat up rubbing sleep from her eyes. She said, “Who is she?”
“We don’t know,” Marybeth said. “She had no identification on her of any kind.”
Said Sheridan, “Why did she chose me? Why did she even start sending me texts?”
There was no answer to that.
“I mean, she knew all about us. Our pets, Lucy, everything. How could she know all that if she isn’t April?”
Joe and Marybeth exchanged looks. Joe hoped Marybeth had an answer.