Cochise County sheriff Joanna Brady investigates the death of a handicapped woman who had wandered away from a care facility with a suspicious track record, and the deaths of an elderly couple who were presumably consenting partners in a suicide pact.

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.

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.

When her daughter, Jenny, stumbles across the dead body of her high school principal, Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady's personal and professional worlds collide, putting her in the difficult middle ground between being an officer of the law and a mother. While investigating murders means discovering unpleasant facts, Joanna is not prepared for the knowledge she is about to uncover. Though she has tried to protect her children from the dangers...

"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 homeschooled Beth, college is her first taste of both freedom and unfettered access to the internet, and Jenny is concerned that she's too naïve and rebellious for her own good. Her worries are well-founded because one day Beth vanishes, prompting...