Juggling a family and a career is never easy—and it's becoming a real challenge for Sheriff Joanna Brady. Coping with the impending delivery of her second child as well as a staff short-age, the last things Joanna needs are two serious crimes.

First, the body of an unidentified man is found in the desert, all of his fingers savagely severed. Following the scant clues, Joanna learns that the victim was an ex-con who had served twenty years in prison after confessing to the murder of his pregnant wife. During his last days he was seen following and photographing a young...

Arizona sheriff Joanna Brady confronts two complex cases in this dazzling novel of suspense from New York Times bestselling author J. A. Jance

Back at home, Sheriff Joanna Brady has a newborn, a teenage daughter, a writer husband, and a difficult mother to deal with. But in the field, it turns out that she has much more. A rainstorm sweeping across the desert has revealed gruesome evidence: two trash bags stuffed with human remains.

In a separate case, an elderly couple whose car has gone off the side of a mountain leaves behind a note stating that they intended to...

A cop lies dying beneath the blistering Arizona sun--a local lawman who may well have become the next sheriff of Cochise County.?The police brass claim that Andy Brady was dirty, and that his shooting was a suicide attempt. Joanna Brady, his devoted wife and mother of their nine-year-old daughter, knows a cover-up when she hears one . . . and murder when she sees it. But her determined efforts to hunt down an assassin and clear her husband's name are placing Joanna and her surviving family in harm's way--because in the desert, the one thing more lethal than a rattler's bite . . . is the...

When drug dealers murdered her lawman husband, Joanna Brady vowed she would carry on his good work no matter what the cost. With grit, courage, and dogged determination, she challenged the status quo--and won. Now, as newly elected Sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona, she must battle the prejudice and hostility of a mistrustful, male-dominated police force and solve a grisly double homicide that threatens to tear the sleepy desert community to pieces. For the two bodies baking in the harsh Southwestern sun are connected by sinister threads that reach back generations--and by devastating...

A woman is cruelly cut down in a remote corner of Arizona, killed on her nineteenth wedding anniversary by a drunk motorist.? A year later, the driver himself dies badly, and all suspicions point to the slain woman's still-grieving husband as his murderer. But the truth is rarely black and white in the long Southwestern shadows, and one law officer is not rushing to condemn the tragic widower so quickly: Joanna Brady, Sheriff of Cochise County. Brady's convictions, however, are leading her on a twisted trail through inhospitable country--and setting her on a path that will bring her...

The little girl was a treasure who should have been cherished, not murdered. She was only five-too young to die-and Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont of the Seattle Police Department isn′t going to rest until her killer pays dearly. But Beaumont′s own obsessions and demons could prove dangerous companions in a murky world of blind faith and religious fanaticism. And he is about to find out that he himself is the target of a twisted passion . . . and a love that can kill.