Kirjahaku

When Marley Deercorn is fired from her job at the Montana Fish and Wildlife office and blamed for tipping off a ring of poachers before a big bust by the local game wardens, her reputation is shot and her prospects look grim. The last thing she wants to do is crawl back home and accept charity from her over-protective father, but she doesn't have a choice. Back in Killdeer, she takes a job working as a landscaper to make ends meet, certain that she is the focus of her small hometown gossip. After a savage windstorm hits Killdeer, she heads for the closest house to make sure her neighbor made it through the night, only to find him dying on his kitchen floor. Marley does what she can to save him, but when he doesn't survive, something makes her suspect that there is more to his death than a simple heart attack. True to her nature, she takes it upon herself to dig deeper. An ominous warning shows up on her property making her realize that someone doesn't want her asking questions, and they are willing to do almost anything to make her stop. Maybe she is determined to clear her name; maybe she wants to see justice served, but either way she can't let it go. But is her reputation in Killdeer something worth dying for?

The last person Marley Dearcorn ever expected would have an enemy was the gentle-natured Crow Indian teenager from Killdeer high school named Little Joe. But on a cold December morning, she gets a frantic phone call telling her that someone has left his body lying on the front deck of her old house. Little Joe didn't die accidentally. The hunting arrow buried deep in his chest tells her that the boy's death was deliberate, and vicious. She's baffled why someone would leave the boy's body on her family property, but if the past has taught her anything, it's that snooping into a homicide is a good way to get yourself in serious trouble. She vows to stay out of the mystery and let the local sheriff deal with it. A string of unlikely coincidences leads her to believe that Little Joe's killer may have fled town to take refuge in the wilderness area high in the mountains above Killdeer. But when the local sheriff informs Marley that her good friend Dean Tisdale, who just happens to be a master marksman with a bow, is under suspicion for the killing, she wavers in her promise not to get involved. After four rowdy cowboys from the Lazy Ox-Yoke ranch take it upon themselves to go after her friend Dean and hunt him down, Marley starts her own determined investigation into Little Joe's murder. She is convinced she knows who to trust, but will her determination to uncover the truth clear an innocent man's name, or put her into the hands of a ruthless killer?

Folks in Killdeer, Montana like the quiet life. When a paleontologist from the University of Wyoming makes an impossible discovery on the Dearcorn Ranch, Marley and her father are ground zero for the circus that follows. BLM agents, reporters and a world-famous archeologist descend on Killdeer, all fighting for a chance to get in on the action. All the hubbub about dinosaur bones and arrowheads reminds Marley's father of a similar sequence of events that happened over thirty years ago, and culminated in the still unsolved murder of Marley's grandfather. Marley decides she isn't about to let history repeat itself, but history might just have other ideas...

Killdeer, Montana seems to be a magnet for wealthy businessmen from big cities who want to buy a piece of the old, authentic western life. The trouble is, they bring their big-city ways with them. Marley Dearcorn tries not to judge her new neighbors too harshly, until one of their cowboys ends up dead. It looks like he's been mauled by a wolf, but Marley is suspicious and thinks that's unlikely. Something is stalking the prairie not far from the Dearcorn Ranch, and her instinct tells her that whatever it is probably walks on two legs, not four. In order to unravel the mystery, she decides to start digging for the truth. The closer she gets to it, the more she starts to wonder what knowing the truth is going to cost.

It seems to Marley Dearcorn the harder she runs away from her troubled past the quicker it catches up. Losing her job with the Montana Fish and Wildlife office forced her to reinvent her life after returning home to tiny Killdeer, and she has managed to thrive. But the unexpected arrival of her ex-husband, and his shocking news, throws her quiet existence into a tailspin. A recently uncovered telephone message casts doubt over the theory that a poacher her old office was investigating slipped out of town before he could be arrested, and now it looks like he may have disappeared under sinister circumstances. The last place the poacher was seen alive isn't a place Marley wants to be. The rugged mountain range, known for its hearty bear population and a ranch known for hiring desperate cowboys, is where she has to go in order to uncover the truth. What starts out as a fact-finding mission turns into a fight for survival when Marley discovers that she isn't the only one hunting for the truth, and if she isn't careful, the poacher might not be the last person to vanish in the Montana wilderness.

Marley Dearcorn is still recovering from a devastating loss when she comes across the body of a young woman by the side of a remote stretch of road. She knew the dead girl personally, and the discovery is a harsh reminder of recent tragic events in her own life and she's motivated to investigate. Killdeer is a small town, even by Montana's standards, and chances are if Marley knows the victim of this hit-and-run, she probably knows who the killer is too. She's no detective but that's never stopped her before. Step by step, she traces events backwards, hoping to see some pattern in the victim's daily routine that might reveal who killed her. In the process, Marley ends up learning more about the underbelly of Killdeer nightlife than she ever wanted to know. Biker bars, strip-clubs and half-crazy conspiracy nuts who only come out at night have always been a part of the fabric of Killdeer, but until now she never had a reason to wonder what really happens after the sun goes down. The problem with hunting someone who's used to living in darkness is that you can't see him, but that doesn't necessarily mean he can't see you.

When Marley Dearcorn finds the Houston brothers settling an argument over irrigation water by swinging fists and pointing guns, she isn't worried. The brothers have always solved disputes by punching first and talking later, so she leaves them to it. Then word reaches her someone on their ranch was killed after she left, and she wishes she'd intervened. Marley starts digging into the past strife in the Houston family, and she gets a lot more than she bargained for. A decades-old dark secret hangs over the Lazy Ox Yoke Ranch and the closer she gets to it, the more she begins to realize that years ago someone in the family tried to take the secret to their grave. Knowing the truth might reveal the reason behind the murder, but Marley is about to discover that if a secret is worth dying for, it's also worth killing for.