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lights.
    “Do you see it up there?” McFadden asked
    “No. Can you? Call, I mean, and check ...”
    McFadden shook his head. “Even if they knew, Joanna, they wouldn’t tell me one way or the other. Not over the air.”
    She nodded, knowing it was true.
    The speeding truck was nearing St. David and Benson now, the halfway point of the trip to Tucson. McFadden radioed ahead to warn local officers in each little burg that a speeding vehicle was on its way through. McFadden raced through both hamlets with his truck’s blue lights flashing, barely slowing for Ben-son’s single stoplight. Once they made it up onto the I-10 freeway outside Benson, Joanna finally found the courage to ask the one question that was uppermost in her mind.
    “Do they live?” she asked, her voice tight and little more than a hoarse whisper. “Beg your pardon?”
    “When people are shot that way—gutshot the way Andy is—do they live?”
    In the reflected light from the dashboard she watched the grim set of Walter McFadden’s lean jaw before he answered. “Not usually,” he said. “Especially when they don’t get treated right away and lose a lot of blood. But then again, you can never tell.”
    “That’s why whoever did it locked the doors, isn’t it,” Joanna said. “So he couldn’t radio for help, so they couldn’t get to him in time.”
    McFadden shot her an appraising look. “Could be,” he agreed. Then after a pause, he added, “Miracles do happen.”
    “But not that often,” Joanna returned. “Otherwise they wouldn’t be miracles.”
    At that grim prospect, she hunched herself into the far corner of the seat, crying softly and trying to keep Walter McFadden from hearing. Finally, though, she straightened up and wiped her eyes. Tucson was close now. Where once there had been only a faint glow on the horizon, there were now individual pinpoints of light. “Do you know how to get to the hospital?” Joanna asked.
    “Yes,” Walter McFadden answered. “I’ve been there a time or two before.”
    An hour and twenty minutes after leaving High Lonesome Road Walter McFadden’s Toyota 4 X 4 pulled into the Emergency Room portico at University Health Sciences Center more than one hundred miles away. A helicopter was parked on the landing pad nearby.
    “You go on inside,” Walter said. “I’ll find a parking place and then come in, too.”
    One of the EMTs, Rudy Gonzales, met Joanna at the door. “This way,” he said quietly. “The clerk you’re supposed to talk to is over here. They’re prepping Andy for surgery right now.”
    Rudy led her through a maze of cubicles to where a stern-faced older woman waited in front of a computer terminal. “Here she is,”
    Rudy said. “This is Joanna Brady, Deputy Brady’s wife.”
    Joanna took a seat. The last few miles of the ride between Bisbee and Tucson had given her a chance to marshal her resources. She answered the clerk’s rapid-fire questions in a quick, businesslike fashion. When handed a sheaf of forms, she worked her way through them, signing each with an insurance agent’s swift efficiency.
    “Good,” the clerk said, taking the papers and glancing through them. “You can go on tip to the surgery waiting room if you like.”
    Walter McFadden appeared behind her. He took off his hat and nodded politely to the clerk who pointedly ignored him.
    “One of the forms is missing,” Joanna said.
    Annoyed, the clerk peered at her over the tops of her half-rimmed reading glasses. Clearly, she didn’t like having someone else finding fault with her procedures. “Really? Which one?”
    “The organ donor consent form,” Joanna answered firmly. “His heart’s already stopped once. I want to go ahead and sign the form now, just in case.”
    The clerk frowned. “That’s not a very positive attitude, Mrs. Brady,” she sniffed disapprovingly. “Our surgeons are very skillful here, you know.”
    “I’m sure they are, but I still want to sign it, if you don’t