HAILEY floated toward Dan Ballantine’s fishing spot on Lake Mohave early in the morning on April first. When she called for help, he went to her and discovered she had been beaten. One eye was swollen closed, her lips were puffy, and her body was bruised in several places.

She described an angry and drunk fiancé she left in the Cottonwood Cove Resort three hours earlier, and she begged Dan to take her to the airport in Las Vegas.

Dan took her to his trailer, warmed her, and made her coffee. He advised her he needed to disconnect his trailer from his truck, and he stepped outside.

Just then Owen Ravenstock rode his off-road motorcycle into Dan’s campsite, dismounted, pulled a pistol, and demanded to look inside Dan’s trailer.

REN telephoned Dan several weeks later. She declared she was traveling in her motorhome toward the campsite they used on Lake Mohave when they rescued Ruth and Kathy two years earlier. She had skipped out on a lavish wedding to a new partner, Avery, when an ex-convict brother threatened to beat her to death if she ever hurt his sister.

Abandoning Avery the night before the ceremony was a hurtful thing to do, and Ren needed Dan to protect her and help her get out of an onerous contract that called for Ren to pay a million dollars to Avery’s father if the marriage did not happen or last a full year.

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