CHAPTER 48
Kori satwith her hands in her lap and watched the road unspool through the windshield. The mountains rose on either side, white and still in the early light.
She and Wyatt were headed to the hospital and should arrive by eight. Wyatt had gotten a call, and the woman they’d found injured in the woods the day before was stable.
Maybe today she’d be more willing to talk. She was their best chance at proving law enforcement was headed in the wrong direction.
She kept turning everything over in her mind.
Why would Bartholomew be out in the woods? What could he be planning? How did Mackenzie and this woman they’d found connect to all of it?
“You’re doing it again,” Wyatt said.
Kori snapped from her thoughts and glanced at him. “Doing what?”
“Thinking so hard I can hear it.”
She almost smiled. “Occupational hazard.”
He kept his eyes on the road. The truck climbed a long curve and the trees opened briefly, offering a view of a snow-covered ridge against a pale sky before closing again.
“Do you think she’ll talk to us?” Kori asked.
“I don’t know.” He shifted in his seat.
“She was out in the forest alone.” Kori looked out the side window. “What if she was trying to escape? If someone chased her, and then she got discombobulated or exhausted?”
Wyatt said nothing, which meant he’d already thought of both.
Thunder shifted in the back seat and rested his chin on her shoulder. She reached up and put her hand on his head without thinking about it. How strange that she found comfort in an animal she used to fear.
The hospital was twenty minutes out. Twenty minutes to figure out what questions mattered most—and how to ask them in a way that didn’t send a frightened woman further into silence.
Because if the task force was headed toward the wrong location this morning, every hour counted.
And Mackenzie didn’t have hours to spare.
Wyatt pulled open the hospital entrance and held it for Kori and Thunder.
The lobby was quiet at this hour. A few people sat in the chairs along the far wall, security stood near the door, and a woman worked behind the reception desk without looking up. The overhead lights were flat and colorless, the kind that made everyone look like they hadn’t slept enough.
He continued scanning the lobby when automatic doors from the cafeteria opened and a woman nearly walked straight into him.
Kendra Williams, he realized. She worked at Refuge Cove, helping with the dog kennels.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.” She stopped short when she recognized him.
Her gaze went to Wyatt first, then Kori, then Thunder. She looked as if she’d been here for hours. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her hair pulled back unevenly, and she held a paper coffee cup.
“Hey.” Wyatt slowed. “This is Kori. Kori, this is Kendra.”
The women nodded hello to each other.
“What are you doing here?” Wyatt asked.
“It’s my mom.” She swallowed. “She had a diabetic episode last night. I had to bring her in around midnight. Her sugar levels dropped so low she almost went into a coma.”
Compassion pulsed inside him. “I’m sorry, Kendra. Is she stable?”
