Joe's eighteen-year-old ward, April, has run off with rodeo champion Dallas Cates. And then comes even worse news: the body of a girl has been found in a ditch along the highway-alive, but just barely, the victim of blunt force trauma. It is April, and the doctors aren't sure if she'll recover. Cates denies having anything to do with it-but Joe's going to find out the truth, even if it kills him. But this time, it just might.