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...

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 the night-still canyons of the Arizona desert, a girl is on the run. Alone but for her beloved red-tailed hawk, she flees from the dark shadows of her young life, the horror she has witnessed and the terror that now stalks her.

Juggling her pregnancy, family deaths, her daughter's imminent departure for college, and a reelection campaign, Cochise County Sheriff Joanna Brady investigates two suspicious falling deaths that may be the work of a serial killer.

"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 first taste of both freedom and unfettered access to the internet, Beth at war with her parents. Jenny asks to invite Beth home for Christmas, and Sheriff Joanna Brady says yes. While Joanna's department is sucked into a complex officer-involved...