"Females usually take pills or slice their veins open. And she wouldn't need to cut the brake line to drive into a live oak. Did I tell you the brake line was cut? Anyway, she could speed up to a hundred and slam right into that tree on her own if she wanted to die."

I nodded my agreement, noting his tone had hardened. We walked in silence until we reached the waiting area for the neuro ICU, which was across the hall from the forbidding doors that would allow us in. Boyd told me to have a seat and he'd arrange for us to visit her.

When he came back to get me, he said, "We've got five minutes."

We were admitted into the ICU and Boyd led me to the mystery woman's room. She was covered with a white thermal blanket and was so tiny she seemed lost in the small space crowded with medical machinery, all of the equipment either beeping or blinking. An IV dripped slowly into tubing that fed her bruised arm. But that wasn't all that was bruised.

Her thick dark lashes rested against the purple cres cents under her eyes. She had a battered forehead, a split lip and stitches above the largest lump on her forehead. Any skin not bruised was as pale as the sheets.

"Heck fire," I whispered. I blinked several times, wondering how anyone would recognize this young woman, even someone who knew her. Seemed a miracle to me that she wasn't already pushing up bluebonnets.

I'd stopped a few feet into the room, but Boyd urged me toward the bed with a gentle hand on my back. "Get closer. Try to picture her without all the damage."

"Kinda hard, Cooper, but I'll give it a try."

When I came up beside her, I tilted my head, hoping to get a feel for a profile, maybe. That helped a little. Then I squinted, mentally thinning her face. That seemed to work, too. I could envision the person who might lie beneath the injuries. A sweet face, late teens, early twenties maybe.