The monitor above Brent’s head showed a flat, straight line. He was in asystole. He was going to die. He couldn’t die. She clenched her fists, shifting her weight off her bad ankle as she studied the monitor.
Come on, Brent.
When Tim reached thirty, Beth administered two breaths, pumping the bag against Brent’s mouth. The doctor applied gel to Brent’s chest and pressed the ultrasound wand to his skin. There was the whooshing sound of the machine as the doctor studied his heart on the monitor.
“He’s got tamponade,” the doctor said, sounding discouraged.
“Pericardiocentesis?” Beth asked.
The doctor gave a brief shake of his head. “He’s got no cardiac activity.”
“Should we try?” Beth asked.
The doctor paused, then said, “Give him one milligram epi.”
“I’m on it,” Beth said and looked to Lily. “Can you bag him? Do you feel well enough?”
Lily hesitated. She had no memory, but she could perform CPR. Two breaths administered at every thirty compressions. She was a nurse. That was why she knew how to do it, why the people here recognized her.
“I could call someone else,” Beth said, looking around.
“No, I can do it,” Lily said, moving in beside Beth to stand at Brent’s head as Tim continued compressions.
Beth returned with a syringe and pushed the epinephrine into Brent’s IV.
Tim reached thirty again, and Lily pumped two breaths. All eyes watched the monitor. The line was still flat.
“Come on, buddy,” Beth said to the man on the table.
Lily closed her eyes and prayed from the book of Isaiah. Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God.
The doctor moved in with a long syringe, and Beth swabbed Brent’s chest. The doctor inserted the needle and drew out the stopper. The syringe filled with blood.
Lily gasped, and Tim stared at her. “You okay?” he whispered.
Nodding, she averted her gaze. Brent had blood around his heart. The fall had done it. If she could have gotten him out before that . . .
“Twenty-eight, twenty-nine . . .”
Lily administered two more breaths.
The doctor drew more blood from his chest. Beth prepared a second syringe of epinephrine. Tim and Lily continued CPR. Beth pushed more epinephrine. Three minutes passed on the clock. The monitor showed no P-waves, no sign of QRS complexes. The line remained flat. Lily understood the monitor easily. Brent was dying. Brent was dead.
Again, they went through the motions, driven by some tiny thread of hope. The doctor pulled the syringe and watched the monitor.
Slowly, the room fell quiet. The doctor shook his head.
“One more,” Beth said and nodded toward the hallway. “For Brent’s family.”
Tim looked at the doctor, who nodded.
They continued CPR and breaths, pushed another dose of epi.
No change.
Tim’s motions slowed. Beth turned her back to dispose of the needle in the sharps-disposal container. No one spoke. Tim stopped compressions. When Beth turned back, her eyes were glassy.
“Time of death,” the doctor said. “Ten forty-seven.”
Beth reached up and shut off the monitor.
Lily set down the bag mask valve on the table and turned for the door.
Brent was dead.
“Let’s get you cleaned up and have that ankle looked at,” Beth said, looping her arm in Lily’s.
Lily allowed herself to be led through the double doors.
As she entered the hallway, the front doors hissed open, and a petite woman ran in, out of breath and crying, her reddish-blonde hair loose and wild around her face. Another woman trailed behind her, a hand on the woman’s back. “It’s going to be okay, Pamela. We’re here now.”
But Pamela halted in the middle of the hallway, gripping her stomach, looking like she might double over. “I got a call—an accident. Brent Nolan.” Her words came out in bursts like air leaking from a tire. “I’m his wife. In from Fargo.”
The receptionist, Sandra, crossed to them, but the doctor stepped forward, raising his hand. “Mrs. Nolan, I’m Dr. Morrison. If you will follow me, please.” The doctor pushed open a door across the hall, and Lily saw a couch and chairs. He was about to tell Pamela Nolan that her husband was dead. Lily could feel the fear coming off the woman, raw and sharp. Brent Nolan was dead, and Lily had been in the car with him.
Lily stood in the hallway, frozen and numb, as Brent’s wife sat on the couch. The woman focused on the doctor’s face, her eyes wide and hopeful. His voice too soft to hear, Lily studied the shift in the woman’s expression, watched as it crumpled.
Lily pressed her hands to her stomach as some piece of her twisted back onto itself. Suddenly light headed and short of breath, she stumbled backward until her knees hit the bench and she sank, fighting back her own panic.
Brent Nolan was dead because she’d let him die.
CHAPTER 11
KYLIE
Seated at her desk in the station, heavy down coat over her shoulders, Kylie worked through the to-do list she’d written on a yellow legal pad: FB pictures, sex offender registry, research on Derek Hudson, survivors, coroner report. She was still cold from that morning. There had been something unnerving about being in the woods. Even in the bright light of day, it had felt dark and dank, like a cave. And then her near heart attack when Gilbert sneaked up on her. Had he sneaked up on her? Or maybe she was simply unsettled by the fact that the dead woman had been a victim of Derek Hudson’s house of horrors. Five girls kidnapped and held for sixteen months. Blindfolded and tortured, a block of each of their backs covered in tiny wounds.
Only three girls had come out of that cabin alive. One of them—Abigail Jensen—was currently at Dahl’s Funeral Home, awaiting the coroner. Then there was Hagen’s very own Lily Baker. The third woman, Jenna Hitchcock, who’d been injured in the escape, now lived in Glendive, in eastern Montana.
No one knew exactly what had been done to them. The three survivors had been unable—or unwilling—to talk about it. But there remained a nagging question: How had Derek Hudson managed it alone? The police had never discovered an accomplice, but had there been someone else who was finally resurfacing after a decade to kill off the survivors?
Why now?
The most common reason criminals reemerged after periods of dormancy was release from prison. If she could get her hands on any suspects, the first thing she would do was check their records. There was also the possibility of a traumatic event—the death of a loved one, loss of a job, or divorce. Any big stressor could cause an offender to become violent again. But most criminals didn’t have the self-control to stop once they had started, which made her wonder if she was dealing with a copycat, someone who’d discovered Hudson’s crime and had become fixated on the survivors.
After finding no new registered offenders in the area and no recent prison releases with records that linked to Hagen, she shifted to social media. A search for photos taken the night before that had tagged Skål yielded nothing, which was unusual since there seemed to be images every other night.
Kylie wondered if the three survivors had stayed in touch. She dialed the number she had for Lily Baker, but no one answered. Anxious to get hold of her, she requested Dispatch send a patrol car by the house. Gilbert had been in touch with the police in Elgin, who would notify Abigail Jensen’s family. When she texted the local coroner to check on the status of the autopsy, the reply read, Everest first. Your gal next. Mr. Everest was a resident who had died of old age, but he was being buried today, so his embalming took priority. The frustrations of a small-town coroner.
Kylie pulled phone records and called Hitchcock next, holding her breath as she punched the final digit. How badly she wanted one of these women to answer, to know they weren’t all . . .
“The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is . . .”
Kylie ended the call and dia
led the Glendive police, requesting a welfare check on Hitchcock.
What if he had killed them all?
A call on her desk phone interrupted her thoughts. “Milliard,” she answered.
“No one’s home at the Baker house,” the officer told her. “But the car out front is registered to her.”
It was rare to go anywhere in Hagen without a car. “Any sign of disturbance?”
“None,” he said. “We walked around the house, and everything looks fine.”
Kylie thanked him and ended the call, returning her attention to records on Derek Hudson. Hudson had grown up on the outskirts of a town called Molva, North Dakota, sixty minutes southwest of Hagen. Hudson’s father, Frank Hudson, had been an alcoholic and a recluse who lived off the grid, using money from his wife’s family to buy a parcel and set up a sort of commune. Hudson and his older brother were among six or seven kids who had grown up on the land, though most were long gone when Hudson had kidnapped those girls. Allegedly kidnapped. A lot of the language in the records suggested that no one had conclusively determined that Hudson was behind the kidnappings. Derek Hudson had never been in trouble before he was found dead on the floor of that cabin, a gunshot to the face.
The first girl to go missing had been a thirteen-year-old from the tiny town of Bowman in westernmost North Dakota. She had vanished after performing in a school play in 2007. Between then and 2010, four other girls between the ages of nine and fifteen had been kidnapped from the southwest corner of the state. Police hadn’t found any link between the cases until the day, almost exactly ten years ago, when two young girls had come tearing out of the woods near Elgin, one town east of Molva, and flagged down a trucker. The trucker had called for the police, who’d found the cabin where the girls had been held. There, they’d found Derek Hudson dead in a pool of blood. One of the girls had told police that a struggle had ensued between Lily Baker and Hudson over a gun, and two girls were injured. One of them had died.
Her phone rang again. “Milliard.”
“This is Deputy Sheriff McIntosh from Glendive. We did a welfare check on Jenna Hitchcock.”
Kylie felt herself stiffen.
“No one was home. We went in, in case she was harmed, but it doesn’t look like she’s been there for a while.”
“Like she moved?”
“No. Just like she left in a hurry. Place was pretty torn up, but no telling if there was some sort of disturbance or if that was how the place always looked,” he went on. “Last opened mail was stamped December 29.”
Today was January 7. Nine days.
“We’ve got an APB out on her car, so we’ll let you know if she turns up.”
As she hung up, the hope of finding Hitchcock alive and well faded. Because something about the deputy sheriff’s words made Kylie imagine a dead woman in a shallow grave.
CHAPTER 12
LILY
For Lily Baker, it seemed the hospital fell into a strange sort of slumber after Brent Nolan died. Eventually, Beth and Tim returned their attention to her. She was whisked to radiology for x-rays to confirm there was no fracture in her ankle. Beth wrapped her foot, and Tim cleaned the scratches on her hands and face and neck.
By then, Lily felt an overwhelming need to get away from the hospital. The moment they stopped fussing over her, she excused herself to the bathroom and found a side exit. Only outside the hospital could she catch her breath. Brent was dead. He had died. If she’d gotten him out of the car before it had gone over, he would be alive. But she hadn’t. She couldn’t. If she hadn’t been worried about his wallet and stealing his money . . .
It was like someone was sitting on her chest. She bent over and tried to breathe. She touched her purse, still looped over her shoulder, and pressed her hand protectively against its bulk. The Bible. The gun. She needed to get home. Standing tall, she shivered in the cold air, staring at the mostly empty parking lot. Did she have a car? It wouldn’t be here. Maybe it would be at her house, which was . . .
She had no idea.
The doors opened behind her, and a burst of warm air rushed across her back. She shivered against the startling contrast to the icy outside air. A hand touched her shoulder. She spun. Tim clasped the back of her neck and pulled her toward him, his voice against her ear. “You scared me,” he whispered.
She thought of his wedding ring, then the way he had pushed the hair off her face when he’d approached her in the hospital. The gesture seemed suddenly so intimate, his fingers on the back of her neck almost proprietary. But if they were together, why didn’t she remember him? Stepping back to put space between them, she shook her head. “Brent,” she whispered.
He frowned. “The guy from Fargo, you mean?”
She nodded.
“You know him?”
She shook her head. An instinct to lie. But it was true. She didn’t know him. At that moment, she didn’t know anyone.
“I guess it was a bad wreck,” he said, running the pads of his fingers gently across her cheek. “It’s amazing he made it to the hospital at all. Are you okay?”
She studied his face. Brent was dead. “I’m fine.”
He stared down at her, taking hold of her shoulders. “Are you sure? You need a little bump?”
“A bump?” she repeated. She couldn’t think what he meant.
He nodded back to the hospital before she could respond. “Let me get my jacket and keys. I’ll take you home. I assume you didn’t bring the bike?” He laughed loudly. “Joke.”
She faked a smile as he turned back to the building.
Home. Her home. She had a home. The answers would be there. She would find her sister, call her.
Tim jogged from the building a minute later, wearing a jacket and hat and spinning his keys around one finger. Brent Nolan had just died. Tim’s reaction to it, his lack of emotion, was chilling. He stopped beside her and kissed her forehead before nodding toward the parking lot. “I’m parked over here.” With a hand on the small of her back, he led her into the lot. “Pretty sure I’ve got something in the glove box.”
Was it possible that she was married to Tim? That it was her ring he wore? She should tell him about her memory. About the accident. But she hadn’t come home last night, and he hadn’t noticed—but maybe he’d been at work all night? Obviously, they had a relationship. He was worried about her. He wanted to drive her home.
They approached a white Ford Explorer, and Tim unlocked the doors. “Can I borrow your phone to call my sister?” she asked.
Tim stared over the top of the car, frowning at her. “Your—” He stopped talking as his gaze shifted to a black sedan driving toward them. “Ah, shit,” he whispered.
Lily’s first thought was that it was a police car. The instinct to run rose like acid in her throat.
The car stopped beside Tim, and the driver’s window lowered. The woman behind the wheel didn’t look like a police officer, and in the backseat was a young child in a car seat. Not the police.
“I got called in to work,” the woman said, eyeing Lily, though she was talking to Tim. “You need to take Skyler.”
“I just finished my shift,” he said. “I was just going to drop Lily at her house and head home.”
The woman’s gaze met Lily’s again. “What the hell happened to you, Baker?”
Lily said nothing.
“Well, take her home, then,” the woman snapped, cracking the driver’s door. “But you have to take Skyler now.” She stepped from the car. A long coat with a hood trimmed in faux fur covered a blue postal uniform. She pulled the girl, now crying, from the back and handed the child to Tim, casting Lily a hard stare.
Tim wrapped his arms around the little girl and bounced her gently. “Where’s her jacket?”
“It’s at home,” the woman said. “And they’re coming to look at the dishwasher at four, so you need to be there,” she told him. “I can’t go another damn day without a dishwasher.”
“I’ll be there,” Tim said.
; The woman glanced at Lily again, saying nothing, then climbed back into the car and drove away.
“Sorry,” Tim said to Lily as he loaded the child into the backseat. “She wasn’t supposed to work today.”
Lily sank into the passenger seat of the car and watched as Tim belted the little girl into a car seat, murmuring softly. His child. His wife. She crossed her arms and shivered. So what was she? She searched her memories, the vague fragments that had come to her last night. She’d had the sensation of someone holding her down, the warnings. “Get back. Nothing bad happens when we’re all here, together.” Was that voice Tim’s? It had sounded like a man talking to a child. Was that how she let herself be treated? He was a married man, she reminded herself.
Tim climbed in the front seat and grabbed Lily’s leg, his hands splaying across her thigh. “You know it’s just temporary. Housing’s too expensive for me to move out now.”
Lily nodded.
“I’ll come by later and make it up to you. I’ll get my mom to watch Skyler.”
Lily shook her head, crossing her legs to get away from his touch. “It’s okay.”
He reached around and took the back of her neck again, his grip just a little too tight. “Come on, baby. You’re not mad about last night, are you?”
She froze in her seat. “Last night?”
“I tried to get away,” he went on, lowering his voice. “Trisha was just all over my ass. I worked three nights in a row, and it was my turn with Skyler. She’d have gone apeshit if I’d left.”
She had talked to him yesterday. Yesterday she’d been having an affair. No. He and his wife were separating. Divorcing? Did that still make it an affair? It felt like it did. That wasn’t important. What mattered was that yesterday she had spoken to Tim, which meant that she hadn’t vanished for days or weeks. Whatever had happened to her memory was less than twenty-four hours old. Maybe it would come back by tomorrow. A one-day amnesiac episode.
His fingers dug between her legs, pinching the thin skin of her inner thigh. She flinched and shifted, but his hand was like heavy machinery breaking through earth. “I need to see you. Know what I mean?”
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