“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 dialed 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.”