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nestled on the floor near his feet, lifted her head and barked. A moment later, the front doorbell rang. Cork was surprised to find Sheriff Dross standing on his porch. He thought for a moment—hoped, actually—that she was coming to say she’d changed her mind about him applying for the position that Cy Borkman was vacating, but when he saw her face, he knew it was something gravely serious.
    “Could we sit down, Cork?”
    “Sure.” He motioned toward the living room.
    Dross wore jeans and a brown turtleneck, and Cork wasn’t sure if this was a personal or a professional call. When they were seated, she said, “Have you heard from Jo?”
    “No. Why?”
    He saw her prepare herself, a moment of resolution, and he knew something terrible had happened.
    “We received a call from the sheriff’s department in Owl Creek County, Wyoming. This morning around nine A.M ., a charter flight out of Casper disappeared from radar over the Wyoming Rockies. Radio contact was lost and hasn’t been reestablished. Jo was listed on the flight’s passenger manifest.”
    Cork sat a moment, stunned. “It crashed?”
    “They don’t know the status for sure, Cork.”
    “What happened?”
    “According to the control tower in Salt Lake City, which was tracking the flight, the plane ran into bad weather. It began a rapid descent southwest of Cody—they’re not sure why—and pretty quickly dropped off the radar over an area called the Washakie Wilderness. They’ve tried contacting the pilot. Nothing.”
    “It went down in the mountains?”
    “Not necessarily. The Wyoming authorities are calling all the local airports and every private airstrip in the northern Rockies to see if the plane might have been able to land somewhere.”
    “And if it didn’t land?”
    “You know the routine. They’ll mount a search and rescue effort.”
    For a moment he didn’t say anything. Couldn’t say anything. He struggled just to breathe. Then he looked at Dross and realized there was more. “What else?”
    She took a deep breath. “They’re in the middle of a bad snowstorm out there. Blizzard conditions. If they can’t locate the plane at an airfield, they won’t be able to begin the search until the storm passes. According to the current weather forecast, that might be a while.”
    “Oh, Jesus,” Cork said. He looked down at his hands, which he’d clenched into hard white balls. “If that plane’s gone down and Jo and the others are exposed, Christ, Marsha, you know the odds.”
    “Cork, we don’t really know anything yet. Probably we’ll hear that they made it to an airfield. In the meantime, the Owl Creek County authorities are doing everything possible. We’re in constant contact with the sheriff’s people. Anything we know, you’ll know, I promise.” She put her hand on his arm. “Cork, we have every reason to hope for the best.”
    He looked at her long and hard. “Same line I used to deliver to the loved ones when we were beating the bushes for somebody they’d lost.”
    “And more often than not you found the lost ones. Trust the people out there, Cork. They know what they’re doing.” She stood up. “I’m on my way to the reservation to deliver the news to George LeDuc’s wife.” She looked into his face, and her own was full of concern and compassion. “Cork, I’m so sorry.”
    “Yeah. Thanks.”
    He watched until her truck pulled away. He turned out the porch light and closed the door. Then his legs gave out. He sank to the floor and sat with his back against the wall. He tried to think straight, but his brain was caught in a whirlpool, spinning round and round, and every rational thought got sucked into some dark nowhere, until he was left with only a desperate, mindless repetition to cling to: Oh God, no… Oh God, no…
    Eventually he pulled himself up. He walked to the telephone and dialed the number of the Hudaceks’ home. Gordy’s father answered.
    “Dennis, it’s Cork O’Connor.”
    Hudacek