One
Most of all she regretted the drink.
Sour tequila clogged her throat as she stumbled through the desert. The rocks were sharp under her feet, but she kept going, moving through the darkness with her cell phone gripped in her hand.
Something sliced her thigh, and she tripped to the ground. An agave? She scrambled up, clutching the phone like a lifeline. She checked the screen. Still no signal.
Somewhere behind her, an engine groaned. He was getting closer. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw twin white beams bobbing in the distance.
She ran through the blackness, knowing that at any second she could fall off a cliff. How could it be so dark out here? She kept going, ignoring the cramp in her side as her lungs started to burn. Spears of yucca stabbed at her, but she ignored those, too. She had to hide, to make herself invisible. If she could just flatten herself into the ground.
She thought of Jordan's worried face. Are you sure?
I'm fine. Really.
Headlights found her, and the world lit up white. Panic took hold, and her breath came in shallow gasps. No escape now. Still she plowed through the brush until her heart wanted to burst.
Then the roar filled her ears. Right on top of her, nowhere left to run. She hunched her shoulders and braced for impact, but the truck veered wide and skidded to a stop.
Everything went still. She didn't move, didn't breathe.
A spotlight hit her face. She blinked at the brightness as fear sucked the air from her lungs. She couldn't see him-only the blinding beam and the glint off the gun barrel.
"You shouldn't have done that." His voice was low and tight. But calm.
Jordan was right. He really was crazy.
"Please," she squeaked. "I'm sorry."
No response. Just a soft click as he cocked the gun.
Two
The day Leanne Everhart's life changed forever, she'd been cleaning out the garage.
Not that you could tell. After an hour of heaving paint cans and rearranging junk, she had barely cleared space enough to walk, much less set up a home gym. She was surveying her lack of progress when the call came, and she jumped into her truck without even bothering to lock up. Five minutes later, she pulled off the highway and rolled to a stop behind a patrol car.
Will Akers, twenty-four. Six weeks on the job. Relief filled his young face as she slid from her Chevy and slammed the door. The rookie walked over. His boots were dusty and his desert brown uniform fit snugly over the Kevlar vest.
He gave a crisp nod. "Ma'am."
She managed not to flinch. "What happened?"
"I was getting coffee at around oh ten hundred-"
"Where?"
"The Texaco." He glanced over his shoulder at the dinged white Volkswagen parked ahead of him on the shoulder. "This lady runs in. Said she saw my car and starts telling me how she found this girl. So I called it in and followed her out here."
A woman got out of the VW. Tall, thin. Curly brown hair twisted up in a knot. She fisted a hand on her hip and shot them a hostile look.
Leanne glanced at Will. "Where exactly?"
"Over there. Right by that bridge."
Leanne turned toward the parched patch of desert, empty for miles except for this narrow highway and a lonely stretch of train tracks. The routes paralleled each other to the east side of town before diverging at the water tower.
A wind whipped up, and Leanne pulled the sides of her flannel shirt together. In jeans and worn sneakers, she was dressed for swatting cobwebs and hosing down rat crap. With her hair yanked back in a messy ponytail, she hardly looked like a senior detective.
Will was watching her now, probably thinking the same thing.
"It's Patty Paulson," she told him.
"What?"
"The lady. That's Patty Paulson. She's an Angel."
He looked blank.
"The Desert Angels," she said. "You know, with the jugs of water."
Leanne glanced at the railroad tracks as dread filled her stomach. Then she studied Will's face. Beads of sweat slid from his temples, and the armpits of his uniform were soaked through, despite the cold.
"You call Izzy?" she asked.
"I haven't-"
"Call her," she said, giving him something easy. "And tape off this perimeter. We need fifty yards in every direction. I've got extra tape in my truck, if you need it."
She set off through the scraggly plants. Her shirt snagged on an ocotillo, and she yanked it free. As she neared the train tracks, her gut tightened. The "bridge" Will had mentioned was really just a few feet of tracks spanning a rocky culvert that today-like most days-was dry as a bone.
Leanne scanned the area, noting the marks in the dirt left by Will's department-issue all-terrain boots. Bits of trash fluttered in the breeze-scraps of plastic that to the untrained eye might look like flowers or butterflies. She paused at a set of tire marks. Deep impressions, wide wheelbase. Pulling out her phone, she snapped a photo before carefully approaching the culvert.
The dark rectangle of shade was a stark contrast to the sunbaked earth. Leanne crouched and took a moment to let her eyes adjust. The smell hit her, rank and pungent, and she was transported back to a sterile autopsy suite with a cohort of green-faced cadets about to lose their breakfast on the tile floor.
Flies buzzed around her head. Clamping a hand over her nose and mouth, Leanne waited for the form to emerge from the shadows.
She noticed the shoulder first-a round protrusion. Then the neck, the chin. As the image came together, Leanne's breath whooshed out.
She was small. Almost childlike.
Leanne scooted closer, startling a beetle that scuttled behind a rock. She searched the ground for more insects. Blinking into the shadows, she made out the bare, splayed legs, the thin arm bent backward at an impossible angle. She forced herself to look at the face-a distorted mask that had once been a person. The side of the skull was crushed, and shards of bone peeked through strands of dark hair. The place where the nose should have been was all torn up, probably from scavengers.
Fighting nausea, Leanne shifted focus to the body, clothed in only a T-shirt that had once been white but was now a dusty gray. She tried to make out the wording across the front, but the fabric was ripped.
Like the arm, the hand was bent at a weird angle, and the skin of the wrist had been gnawed on by something.
Leanne stood up. Shuddering, she glanced at the sky, where a pair of buzzards circled. Back at the highway, Will was rolling out yellow crime scene tape as Patty Paulson looked on and the occasional big-rig truck blew past without slowing.
Leanne looked at the body again, studied the maimed face. A faint ringing sound filled her ears. This is you. It's yours. No going back now.
She realized her phone was chiming. She dug it from her pocket and checked the screen.
"Everhart."
"You there yet?" the chief asked.
"I'm here." She turned north, so their conversation would be lost on the wind.
"What do we got?"
She took a deep breath. "Young female. Teens to twenties, I'd say."
"Dehydration?"
"No."
Jim McBride muttered a curse. "How long?"
"No idea." She glanced at the buzzards. "A day? Maybe two?"
"Call Isabella," he told her. "Do it direct, no radio."
"We did."
"Get her to photograph everything."
"Roger that." Something blue glinted from an ocotillo branch. Leanne stepped closer to take a look. "There are some tire marks here. I'd like to get a CSI down from county to make a cast."
No response.
Leanne knelt beside the branch. A scrap of blue duct tape was caught on the spines. She glanced around, wishing she had some evidence markers. She stood and waved at Will, but he was busy cordoning off the scene with the yellow spool.
"Chief?"
"It'll take hours to get them there," McBride told her. "There's a jackknifed eighteen-wheeler near Alpine. Everyone's busy."
"Well, you'll see when you get here. I think-"
"Have Isabella get a photo," he said. "And I want you and Akers to do a grid search. I'll send Cooper and Rodriguez out, too. Comb the entire area. Get everything, even if it looks like garbage. Collect whatever you can, and we'll go from there."
"Yes, sir."
"Any press yet?"
"Press? No." The town of Madrone wasn't exactly a sizzling-hot media market. "Nobody but us and the witness who called it in, Patty Paulson."
"Christ."
Leanne didn't comment. The Desert Angels were a thorn in the chief's side for multiple reasons, including that the organization had been founded by his sister-in-law.
"Sir, about the tire marks, I really think-"
"Not happening. We don't have time to wait on county. The ME's people are almost there. Collect what you can and then clear the scene."
Leanne gritted her teeth. Without help from the county crime lab, they had only a part-time CSI who moonlighted as a nature photographer. Izzy was good, but she could only handle so much, and this was a major crime scene.
"Okay, I just texted Cooper, and he's on his way," McBride said. "You guys get that grid search done and get back here. We're having a shit morning, and it's about to get worse, so don't talk to reporters. About anything, understood?"
"I got it."
"No press whatsoever."
"I understand."
The ringing was back in her ears, only louder now. This is what you wanted.
"I'm making you the lead on this, Everhart. You got that?"
"Yes, sir."
"This one's all you."
Three
Madrone was the sort of place where everyone knew everything about everyone, for better or for worse. People looked after one another's homes. Their kids. Their wandering dogs. People waved at intersections and drove through town without using a turn signal, because what was the point if everyone knew where you were going? Having grown up in Madrone, Leanne was accustomed to the inherent intrusiveness of life in a small town. She hadn't minded so much as a kid, but eight years in Dallas had shown her the allure of privacy and the life-altering freedom of being able to shop for groceries without someone peering over your shoulder.
"Thanks, Bip." Leanne collected her sixteen-ounce coffee as Bernhard Nielson, aka Bip, slid two packets of sugar across the counter.
"I heard about the gal out by the tracks." Bip watched her closely from underneath fuzzy gray eyebrows. "Migrant?"
"We're investigating."
"Coyotes?"
"We're investigating."
One of the eyebrows lifted, a giant caterpillar arching its back.
"Say hi to Mel for me." She turned and left the store before Bip could squeeze in any more questions. Nestling her coffee in the cup holder, she pulled out of the parking lot and dialed Josh Cooper.
"Where are you?" she asked when the detective picked up.
"The station. I just pulled in and-"
"Is Izzy there?"
"I thought she was with you. Aren't you still at the scene?"
"I had to run up to county and drop off something. I thought she'd be there by now."
"It's just me and Rodriguez. Akers is back on patrol, and the chief is in his office with the door closed."
Leanne slurped the coffee, scalding the roof of her mouth.
"Crap!"
"What?"
"Nothing. Hey, if you see Izzy, could you tell her not to go anywhere? I'm on my way," she said.
"Roger that."
Leanne tapped the brakes at an intersection, scanning the sidewalks along Main Street. The cafés and shops were busier than usual as stragglers wrapped up their weekends before heading back to Austin and Santa Fe in their fancy SUVs. January was high season for Big Bend National Park, and Madrone had seen a boom in tourism in recent years as they diverted some of the visitors bound for Marfa and Alpine on their way to the park. Madrone was an up-and-coming travel destination, but it hadn't quite found its groove yet. It didn't have Alpine's university or Marfa's art-scene vibe. But the town's railroad museum, coupled with its quaint adobe bungalows, gave Madrone a burgeoning charm of its own. Plus, the craggy red canyons nearby had attracted some of the artists and nature lovers who'd been priced out of Marfa as rents skyrocketed.
Leanne slammed on the brakes as a cyclist cut her off. Yet another thing they'd managed to steal from Marfa-an abundance of mountain bikers who took over their roads every weekend.
It wasn't only tourists in town today. Two men in slacks and dress shirts stood in front of the chamber of commerce. And the woman in line behind Leanne at the gas station had been wearing a black pantsuit and full makeup. Reporters, all of them-she would bet her badge on it.
As Leanne pulled into the police station parking lot, her stomach started to churn, and not because she was on her third cup of coffee. She grabbed her cardboard cup, along with a thick brown accordion file, and headed for the low brick building that housed the Madrone Police Department.
The station house was the same chilly temperature as outside. Leanne made eye contact with Nadine, who was in her usual weekday spot even though it was three o'clock on a Sunday. Her extra-tall blond hair told Leanne the receptionist had come here straight from church.
"He in?" Leanne asked.
Nadine covered the phone with her hand. "He's looking for you. He's in a meeting, though." She craned her neck to peer through the plexiglass window that divided the reception room from the bullpen. "Door's closed, so you'd better wait."
"Thanks. Heater out again?"
"You betcha."
Nadine returned to her phone call, and Leanne noticed the stack of pink message slips at her elbow. She pushed through the door to the bullpen.
The department's newest detective, Mark Rodriguez, sat pecking away at his computer, no doubt typing the first of many reports that would result from this morning's discovery. Leanne wended her way through the sea of cubicles and dropped her accordion file on her desk, which was already piled with paperwork. She'd planned to spend part of her Monday catching up, but that wasn't happening now.
"Leanne."
She turned to see Josh Cooper coming at her like a missile. "Hey, Coop. What's up?"
He stopped in front of her and glared down, hands on hips. Like her, he was in flannel and jeans today, but he wore shit-kickers, too, and she figured he'd been helping his dad around the ranch when he got this morning's call.
"You seen the chief?" he asked.
Copyright © 2025 by Laura Griffin. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
