Coping with the impending arrival of her second child, Sheriff Joanna Brady is suddenly confronted with the killing of an ex-con, who served twenty years in prison for the murder of his pregnant wife.

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.

When Jennifer Brady returns to Northern Arizona University for her sophomore year, she quickly becomes a big sister to her new roommate, Beth Rankin, a brilliant yet sheltered sixteen-year-old freshman. For a home schooled Beth, college is her first taste of both freedom and unfettered access to the Internet, and Jenny is concerned that she's too nave and rebellious for her own good. Her worries are well-founded because one day Beth vanishes, prompting...