Eli sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. He looked around for Melba, remembered she’d gone to question Shallie Hollister about Russ’s sister, Bethanne.

Five minutes later, the cop convention had gathered in the department’s small meeting room. It was standing room only.

The discussion that followed raised a great many questions and very few answers. The municipals wanted Russ picked up for interrogation, and so did the state people. The coroner’s assistant, a fiercely intelligent young Asian man named Sam Wu, stated that the autopsy was underway and he would report on the results as soon as the coroner—Alec Storm, a retired GP—had finished his assessment of the victim’s condition.

Condition? Eli thought grimly. She was dead. That was the victim’s “condition.”

It took until noon to settle what could be settled, and then—finally—the crowd dispersed and Eli could breathe again.

Until the first media van pulled into the lot, that is.

As he’d predicted, the whole cluster grew into an instant crap circus, complete with flying monkeys.

Connie, a sweet-faced woman in her mid-forties, kept them at bay for a while. Eli left the department to check in with Doc Storm—Sam Wu’s promise aside, no information had been forthcoming from the town’s ill-equipped little morgue, conveniently located in the basement of the Sweet Rest Funeral Home. The media vans followed him.

Reporters hounded him as soon as he stepped out of the SUV, and he waved them off, ducked his head and burrowed his way to the main entrance, where Sam Wu waited to admit him, then relocked the door.

Oddly, given the circumstances, he thought of Brynne. Had it really only been last night that he’d kissed her? That everything in his world had been made right during those electric moments when their lips were joined and their tongues sparred?

Yes, it had. And before that kiss, he’d confronted the Lansings and damn near been torn to shreds by their dogs.

Now it was the first day of a brand-new year, a holiday for most people. Anything but for Eli and his deputies, not to mention Doc Storm and Sam Wu.

It seemed impossible that so much could happen in such a short time, and Eli wondered with a touch of sadness when he’d get a chance to breathe again. When he’d get to see Brynne Bailey, simply be in her presence, never mind when he’d get to kiss her again. Take her on a real date—somewhere fancy, like she deserved—instead of just a snowmobile ride.

He realized he was starting to feel sorry for himself, and that wouldn’t do.

He was the sheriff of Wild Horse County.

A young woman, a Jane Doe, had been murdered.

And the ball was in his court, whether he liked it or not.