Two of Jance's most compelling characters come together in this suspenseful novel. When the Washington State attorney general's star witness is brutally murdered in Arizona--Sheriff Joanna Brady's turf--the AG sends his newest investigator, former homicide detective J.P. Beaumont.

Juggling the demands of her career and her family, Southwestern Sheriff Joanna Brady faces her most unsettling case yet in the disturbing murder of a loner and her seventeen dogs.

This time Sheriff Joanna Brady may expect to see her maternity leave through to completion, but the world has other plans when a serial homicide case surfaces in her beloved Cochise County. Rather than staying home with her newborn and losing herself in the cold cases to be found in her father's long unread diaries, Joanna instead finds herself overseeing a complex investigation involving multiple jurisdictions.

As if juggling a family, including the impending birth of a second child, a career and a staff shortage at the Sheriff's office aren't enough, Sheriff Joanna Brady has to deal with two serious crimes. The first is the dead body of an ex-con who was found in the desert with all his fingers severed. The second is the brutal attack of one of her officers while on unauthorized stakeout. Being a sheriff is what she is and Joanna will stop at nothing to...

Protecting a brilliant freshman whose homeschooled life has left her unprepared for the outside world, Jennifer invites the vulnerable girl home for a Christmas break that embroils Sheriff Joanna Brady in a volatile missing-persons case. Returning to Northern Arizona University for her sophomore year, Jennifer Brady becomes a big sister to her new roommate, Beth Rankin, a brilliant yet sheltered, homeschooled, sixteen-year-old freshman. With her...

Sheriff Joanna Brady investigates a series of deaths in Cochise County, Arizona, where the victims were shot and scalped. Suspicion centers on a nearby ranch where European tourists come to play at Indians.

"Driven by a compulsion that challenges his self-control, the man calling himself Charles Milton prowls the rodeo circuit, hunting young women. For years, he has been meticulous in his methods, abducting, murdering, and disposing of his victims while leaving no evidence of his crimes--or their identities--behind. Indigenous women have become his target of choice, knowing law enforcement's history of ignoring their disappearances. A cold case has just...