C. Box - Endangered

Before Joe could answer, Reed gestured to Dallas tied onto the back of the machine and said, “Never mind. I can see that she did. I’ll call for another ambulance.”

Joe was puzzled.

“Brenda Cates is still alive. She’s on her way to the clinic in the ambulance. She’ll probably never have the use of her limbs again. I guess she’s just too mean to die.”

“Eldon, too?”

Reed shook his head. “He didn’t make it.”

Joe said, “Mike, I know there’s a lot to sort out here, but I’ve got to get to Billings. Mind if I borrow one of your trucks?”

Reed groaned, and said, “You’re hell on trucks, Joe. But sure. Take Deputy Boner’s.”

“Thank you.”

Reed looked out over the compound and shook his head sadly. “The whole damned family,” he said. “Except one.”

31

Timber Cates waited in the maintenance closet after he’d seen the three Pickett females leave the hospital room. They’d left with their coats on and had walked together to the elevator.

Timber didn’t know much about women, but he did know they always forgot something.

Three minutes after they’d left, the elevator chimed and the oldest daughter got out and returned to the room. She emerged clutching her phone.

He gave it another ten minutes, then he pushed his service cart through the door and let it shut behind him. The hallway was empty and the nurses’ station was temporarily vacant.

The clock at the end of the hall said it was seven-fifteen p.m.

—

TIMBER DIDN’T GO STRAIGHT to the target room. Earlier that evening, he’d noted the closed-circuit camera located in a mirrored half-moon housing. If someone was monitoring the hallways, he thought, he didn’t want to dash toward April Pickett’s room and give them any reason to notice him.

He dry-mopped his way up the hallway, working the baseboards and keeping his face turned away from the camera. The open door to his target was less than twenty yards away.

Timber could feel the hard flat blade of the ceramic knife against his skin where his sock held it to his right ankle. He’d learned in Rawlins to always be aware of his hidden shiv and to practice pulling it out as swiftly as possible, but at the same time to never look down at it, even instinctively.

—

ONCE, he’d had a confrontation with a beaner who’d just arrived in the general population and didn’t know enough to show Timber the deference he deserved. The two had squared off in the corner of the yard. Words were exchanged, and Timber held his ground. Then the man had glanced down toward his shoe right in the middle of the stare-down.

The beaner hadn’t gone for it, but he didn’t need to. He’d all but told Timber that, yes, he had a knife.

Timber hadn’t hesitated. He’d pulled his own shiv and slashed the beaner’s throat with one swift move, then discarded his knife through the chain-link fence. The beaner went down. Timber stood back and saw the guards pull a sharpened toothbrush from the beaner’s sock.

They’d suspected Timber for the attack but couldn’t prove it. And the beaner knew if he talked to them he’d never talk again.

—

SO TIMBER NEVER LOOKED down at his right ankle, even as he parked the service cart in front of the hospital room doorway, leaving just enough space for him to enter behind his mop.

She was in bed, of course. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing softly. Her face was slack and bruised, but he recognized her from the photo they’d provided him. She was a hottie, all right.

Dallas, he thought, was a damned fool.

—

TIMBER THOUGHT HE HEARD a door open out in the hallway, the door that was marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, so even though he was now in the girl’s room, he bent his head down and concentrated on mopping. If the person coming down the hall looked over the cart into the room, all they’d see was the hunched-over back of a janitor.

When he didn’t hear footsteps, he guessed that whoever had opened the door had turned around and gone back down the hall. Probably a woman who’d forgotten something, he thought.

He leaned his mop handle against the foot of the girl’s bed and bent to retrieve the ceramic knife. He fixed his eyes on her exposed white throat.

Timber started to hitch up his pant leg when he sensed a presence behind him. He rose quickly and reached for the mop handle to look the part when he felt a heavy blow on the right side of his head that disoriented him and made him let go of the mop.

Suddenly, roughly, he was physically turned around and shoved into the hallway. He ran into his cart and it rolled away. He tried to turn his head to see who was behind him, but another sharp blow created an explosion of stars in his eyes.

He was stunned and moving fast now—pushed and prodded so quickly he nearly tripped. He instinctively held his hands out in front of his face because he still couldn’t see through the stars and he didn’t want to be slammed into a concrete wall.

Timber felt a strong grip on the back of his belt, shoving him forward and guiding him at the same time. He shouted, “Hey! Who are you?”

His forearms thumped into a glass door, but he protected his face. It didn’t matter, though, because the door gave way and it was cold and fresh-smelling, and whoever had him by the belt suddenly lifted him up just as his abdomen struck a metal rail of some kind.

The railing didn’t stop his momentum and he was lifted up and over it, and he couldn’t see or feel a thing for several seconds as he dropped through the air.

Then he did.

32

Joe winced as the emergency room doctor looped another stitch through his scalp to close the bullet wound. He kept his eyes averted and on Marybeth, who had marched him directly to the ER when he arrived at two in the morning. The doctor was a young South Asian man with a starter mustache and hipster glasses.

“Tell the financial people to put this on our tab,” Marybeth said to the doctor, who smiled but indicated with a shrug he had nothing to do with billing.

“Don’t worry,” she said, sounding exasperated. “I’ll tell them.”

It was clear to Joe by the way she said it that the insurance coverage was still a mess. He tried not to worry about it now.

—

AFTER THE DOCTOR CONFIRMED that Joe hadn’t had a concussion, he peeled off his gloves and said, “You look like you’ll make it, but you’ll probably have a pretty good scar.”

Joe nodded.

“We’re required to report bullet wounds.”

“Go ahead,” Joe said, “but I think they’ve got that part covered back in Wyoming.”

“You people shoot each other a lot, don’t you?” the doctor said with disdain.

“Not really.”

“Don’t you all have guns?”

“Yup. So do you folks in Montana.”

“I’m from Islamabad, Pakistan,” the doctor said.

“Ah, that peaceful place.”

“I’ll leave you two now,” the doctor said haughtily. “There will be somebody in here in a few minutes to dress that injury.”

“Thank you,” Joe said. “You probably did a better job than I did in a truck mirror.”

“Obviously, yes,” the doctor said, rolling his eyes, as he turned and walked out the door.

“Pleasant fellow,” Joe said to Marybeth.

“I have to say I like the doctors upstairs much better,” she stated.

—

“I’M SO GLAD you made it here,” Marybeth said, sitting on the raised vinyl half-bed with him. “April could regain consciousness any minute. She’s coming out of the coma quicker than they thought she would. I called the girls and they’re getting a ride here on the hotel shuttle.”

She said, “It’s been a crazy night here. Some hospital janitor jumped off the balcony on our floor—the same balcony Sheridan and Lucy were standing on earlier. It happened while the three of us were at dinner. They found him dead on the pavement five stories below. The local cops and hospital security were all over the place for a couple of hours.”