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.

Rochelle Baxter was a promising artist, and now she's dead. But the worst part is that she was supposed to be under government protection. Arizona county Sheriff Joanna Brady resents having to work with a member of the state Special Homicide Investigation team, but when they uncover a deadly conspiracy of silence, trusting each other is all they have to stay alive.

Cochise County sheriff Joanna Brady investigates the death of 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.

In Arizona, two teenagers meet in secret because her Anglo father cannot stand Hispanics. When the girl is murdered, her father accuses the boy, but Sheriff Joanna Brady thinks that is too simplistic.

"While cleaning out the house of her deceased mother, who was a hoarder, Liza Machett discovers a fortune in hundred-dollar bills hidden in the book stacks and magazines that crowd every corner. For Liza, a waitress, the money is a blessing--until an older man she's never met before warns her that she's in danger. Soon her mother's house is torched, Liza's apartment is broken into, and her elderly landlady is murdered. Terrified, Liza leaves Massachusetts...

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.