“In this storm?”

“It’s just snow, Mike,” Joe said. “It doesn’t look to be as bad as they were predicting. If we only worked in good weather, we wouldn’t get much done around here, would we?”

Reed snorted.

“There’s another thing,” Joe said. “I’ve been thinking about Tilden Cudmore.”

“What about him?”

“We all wondered how he could possibly be innocent in regard to April’s attack after her stuff was found on his place and in his car, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I want you to think about something,” Joe said as he turned off the highway onto the county road that would lead him to the Lek 64 two-track. No one had driven on the road since the snow started, and it was untracked. “Think about patrolling this county every day. You—and me—always keep an eye out for anything unusual. We notice cars we’ve never seen before, or out-of-county plates. We notice out-of-state plates, or pickups with two or three men inside—that kind of thing. But what we don’t notice is normal activities. We just kind of shunt them aside.”

“I’m not quite getting what you’re saying,” Reed said.

Joe continued. “We don’t even see the propane truck making its rounds. We don’t notice the mail carrier on her route or the garbage service. We see them so often, they turn invisible, because we’re only tuned to people and activities that aren’t part of the day-to-day. They hide in plain sight.”

Reed said, “Like a sewage-service pump truck.”

“Exactly,” Joe said. “Like C&C Sewer and Septic Tank Service. I probably see that truck, or trucks like it, five times a day and never even think about it. You probably do, too. They’re all over, but we just don’t see them.”

Reed said, “Hold on.” Joe could hear the sheriff speaking to someone while he held the phone away from his mouth. “Tell the commissioners it’s going to be a minute.”

Then back to Joe: “I see where you’re going with this. You’re saying Eldon could have planted evidence at Cudmore’s place and in his vehicle and no one would have given a second glance. He could roll his pump truck onto Cudmore’s property and no one would even look up.”

“Right,” Joe said. “And I bet if you take a look at that big key ring Eldon has on his belt, you’d find a key to the front gate of the HF Bar. They probably have a contract with him and they wouldn’t even notice him when the ranch is in full swing. He comes and goes, and his pump truck is big, but it’s also invisible.”

“I hear you,” Reed said. “But if what you’re saying is true, you’re back to thinking it was Dallas who beat April and dumped her. That the Cates family was covering for him by planting evidence at the Cudmore place.”

Joe said, “Yup.”

“It also means an innocent man hung himself in my jail because of the pressure we put on him.”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Tilden Cudmore ended up like Tilden Cudmore always thought he would: persecuted by the government.”

“You said it, not me.”

“That’s a lot of speculation, Joe.”

“It is.”

“But it sort of makes sense.”

“It does.”

“We need real evidence before we can move on anything, but I’ll run this by Dulcie and see if she can shoot any holes in it.”

“Good.”

“Still, though,” Reed said, “it doesn’t account for a couple of things. One, why did they ambush Nate Romanowski? Two, what happened to Olivia Brannan?”

Joe almost overran the two-track that intersected the county road, but he recognized it and turned right.

He said, “I just found the road into the mountains and I’m taking it. We may lose our connection real soon.”

“Call me on my cell phone either way,” Reed said. “I’ll reschedule this damned meeting I’m in and call Dulcie. We’ll be ready to move if you find something.”

—

BECAUSE THE SNOW was coming from the west as the storm barreled down the mountain, it now swirled like a white kaleidoscope in front of the windshield. The volume of it had increased since he turned off the highway.

Joe couldn’t focus his vision in the distance so he concentrated on keeping his front wheels in the two-track. Daisy seemed to sense his anxiety and she put her big head on his lap. She was warm so he didn’t push her away.

The snowstorm was both good and bad, he thought. It was unlikely the Cateses would be out and about and see him on the road from their compound. But if the intensity of the snow kept building and turned into a patented Rocky Mountain spring whiteout, he ran the risk of getting lost or stuck.

Joe keyed the button on his dash-mounted GPS to record his current location. If nothing else, he’d be able to find his way back to where he started.

—

THE ONCOMING SNOW stopped swirling once he entered the trees at the base of the Bighorns. Instead, it sifted down through the pine branches like fine flour.

The lodgepoles closed in as the pickup serpentined up the mountain in a long series of switchbacks. A mile up the grade, the road got rougher and the canopy of branches closed in over the top of the cab. He remembered turning around at about this spot the first time he’d ventured up.

But it felt right, he thought. If Eldon’s camp was up ahead, the last thing Eldon would do would be to improve the access road. The grade and condition of the road itself would turn back most visitors.

Then: Whump.

Joe nearly lost control of the steering wheel when something hit the passenger side of his truck. Daisy’s head jerked up with alarm.

He looked over to see the mirror had struck a thick branch and had folded back against the passenger window. Joe looked at his reflection and observed, He looks worried.

And he was.

The tires ground over large slick rocks now, pitching the pickup right to left as it climbed. Snow-covered boughs smacked the windshield and dumped more wet snow over the hood.

Joe upped the speed of his wipers to compensate and to keep the glass clear.

“We’re going to find it and get out,” he assured Daisy. She looked up at him as if she understood.

—

HIS SITUATION CRYSTALLIZED as he shifted into four-wheel drive low to continue the ascent. Whether or not he found Eldon’s camp, he could be in trouble. He could easily imagine getting high-centered and stuck on the boulder-strewn path during an epic spring storm. He was out of cell tower range and his radio crackled with static. Even the satellite phone he kept in his gear box in the bed of the pickup would likely not get a signal through the thick canopy of snow-covered branches overhead.

There were no openings in which to turn his truck around, and there was no way he could back it out down the switchbacks he’d taken. He had no choice but to keep going up.

—

SOUR THOUGHTS came to him as he climbed.

He’d assumed the Yarak, Inc. van had followed the Suburban up the trail. But how could a two-wheel-drive van have gotten up there, considering the fact that his pickup was barely making it?

He realized he might be completely wrong about the scenario he’d laid out for Reed.

Revis Wentworth could have lied about the two vehicles, or been so drunk he got the direction and the road they were on incorrect.

Joe imagined a fruitless grind up the eastern face of the Bighorn Mountains that resulted in him getting his pickup hopelessly stuck and him traipsing back down in knee-high snow at the same time his daughter was being brought out of her coma in a Billings hospital.

Then the road leveled, and even through the thick snowfall, he could see a slot in the rock wall ahead that appeared wide enough to drive his truck through.

—

THE STRIATION THAT FORMED the granite wall stretched out as far as he could see in either direction. Behind and above the twelve-foot wall, the timbered mountain continued to climb. But on the other side of the slot, there appeared to be an opening in the timber, a clearing.