Kathryn Scott opened the oven door and extracted a meat loaf with a pair of blue flowered oven mitts. “A murdered woman, an ex-husband with no alibi and a baby. This case sounds a lot like the one you worked in Kansas City just before your father died.”

      Mandy didn’t need to be reminded of that fact. It had been rolling around in her mind all day. “It is similar to the Wallace case.”

      “Whatever happened to him?” Kathryn placed the pan on an iron trivet on the table.

      Mandy, standing at the counter in her mother’s cheery white-and-yellow old-fashioned kitchen, continued filling two glasses with iced tea. “He’s serving life in prison for smothering his baby daughter. I—We were never able to prove he killed his wife.”

      “Life can be so terribly sad. Sometimes, it seems as if evil is winning.”

      “Sometimes it does,” Mandy agreed softly.

      She’d only been a homicide detective in Kansas City for a few short months when she caught the Wallace case. In spite of the fact that her partner thought the husband was guilty of his ex-wife’s murder, Mandy believed the man’s story and released him after questioning him only briefly.

      If she’d been less trusting, less gullible. If she’d dug a little deeper, tried harder to break him, maybe his daughter would still be alive.

      “Do you think Garrett did it?” Kathryn asked.

      Mandy considered the question as she carried the glasses to the table. She’d sensed Garrett’s unease, but he seemed genuinely shaken when he heard his ex-wife was dead.

      Her conscience pricked her for the way she’d delivered the news, but gauging his reaction was part of her job.

      She still didn’t know what to believe. His shock was the only bit of emotion she’d seen in the man. Something wasn’t right about that.

      But he hadn’t asked about the baby. That as much as anything made her think he hadn’t seen his ex-wife that day.

      “I’m not ruling him out.”

      Mandy sat down and waited as her mother dished up slices of meat loaf. The mouth-watering smells of cooked onions, spices and barbecue sauce filled the kitchen.

      Mandy had sent paint samples from Garrett’s truck along with scraping of the paint transfer from Judy’s car to the crime lab in Topeka. It would be a few days before she had the results.

      “What’s he like?” her mother asked suddenly.

      Mandy thought about it before answering. He was a tense and disturbing man, but there was something about him, something she couldn’t put her finger on.

      He seemed so alone. As if holding still could hold him separate from what was going on around him. He seemed incredibly lonely.

      She shook off the fanciful notion. She wasn’t about to share that image with her mother. Instead, Mandy said, “He’s not what you’d call the friendly sort.”

      Her mother paused in the act of passing a bowl of green beans. Alarm widened her eyes. “And you went there alone?”

      Mandy sought to reassure her mother. “Don’t worry. I know how to handle myself.”

      “That’s what your father used to say.”

      Mandy watched as a sad faraway look filled her mother’s eyes. Kathryn Scott had been devastated by her husband’s death. A decorated police officer with nearly thirty years on the force, he’d been shot and killed during a drug raid two years ago.

      For months afterward, Mandy had worried that her mother’s frail health would fail and she would lose another parent. When the job of undersheriff in Timber Wells became available, it seemed like a gift from heaven.

      The move back to her mother’s hometown had been a good idea. With the help of old friends and caring members from the community’s tight-knit church, Kathryn had slowly regained her health and her interest in life.

      Less than a month after accepting the job, Mandy found herself promoted from undersheriff to sheriff when her predecessor died of a sudden heart attack.

      Kathryn leaned forward to squeeze her daughter’s arm. “I pray the Lord will look after you, and I know your father’s giving Him a hand with that.”

      After saying grace, Kathryn began a monologue of her day. Mandy listened with only half an ear. Garrett’s face kept intruding into her thoughts.

      There was something perplexing about the man. For one thing, what right-minded cowboy kept a roving dust mop as a ranch dog? The little black-and-white ball of fur might make a coyote fall over laughing, but it sure wouldn’t be able to chase one away from the livestock.

      Kathryn began to butter a roll. “Have you had any luck solving the farm supply store robbery?”

      Mandy forced her mind away from the puzzle that was Garrett Bowen. “Not yet.”

      Mandy might not miss the hectic pace of the Kansas City Police Department, but she did miss the crime lab people. It normally took days, even weeks to get reports on prints and evidence she had to send to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation labs for processing. The turnaround time on evidence was one of her biggest frustrations.

      “Why would anyone steal so much camping fuel?” Kathryn asked.

      Mandy knew and it sickened her. “To make meth. Illegal methamphetamine labs are a major drug problem. It’s easy to make, easy to transport and so addictive that a person has to use it only once or twice to become hooked. Yet, the stuff they make it with is poison. I don’t know why people don’t get that.”

      Just thinking about the havoc the drug caused was enough to stifle Mandy’s appetite. Last month, she had arrested a couple so high on speed that they were lying on a railroad track screaming in paranoid terror while their two young children watched. The kids hadn’t been fed in days. They’d been living on scraps while their parents spent every dime they could beg, borrow or steal on the drug that was destroying them.

      Unless Mandy could stop the flow of meth into her county, she was afraid she was seeing only the tip of the iceberg. Rural crime was on the rise, and her department had seen a sharp increase in drug-related arrests in the town. Far too many of those crimes involved teenagers.

      Kathryn took a sip of her tea, then said, “I thought the number of meth labs dropped off once the state passed stricter controls on over-the-counter cold medications.”

      “They did—for a while. Instead of stealing the pseudo-ephedrine or ephedrine from the local drugstores, they’re getting it off the Internet from Canada or Mexico.”

      Reports from narcotic units in both Kansas City and Wichita pointed to the fact that large shipments of meth were coming out of Mandy’s area. She knew she had a major drug ring operating almost under her nose. She