It was love that brought young Brianna Bree O'Brien to Skeleton Canyon for a romantic tryst with her adoring boyfriend, Ignacio Ybarra - a rendezvous the beautiful teenager would never live to experience. It was love also that compelled Joanna Brady to seek - and win - the office of Cochise Country Sheriff: love of her murdered policeman husband, whose memory she was honoring; of her little daughter Jenny, for whom she was now solely responsible; and for justice and truth. It is the truth about that terrible night in Skeleton Canyon - a night that witnessed the cruel death of an innocent girl - that now concerns Joanna, even as she struggles to come to terms with her own enduring grief and loneliness. Bree's distraught parents are convinced Ignacio is the killer - that the boy was enraged by their refusal to condone his relationship with their daughter. But the sudden disappearance of a friend - combined with startling revelations gleaned from a chance encounter - suggests to Sheriff Brady that there is much more involved in this case than passionate anger and forbidden love. And her investigation is beginning to expose a complex web of crime and deception that stretches from an isolated desert canyon to the luxurious O'Brien family compound, Sombra del San Jose. For nothing is exactly as it seems in either locality. And Joanna is suddenly in danger of discovering first-hand that lies, both criminal and seemingly innocent alike, can have devastating - and deadly - consequence