Chapter 1
“No,” Haseya “Sassy” Colton mumbled when the piercing shriek of an alarm interrupted a perfectly good dream. She’d been dreaming of the warmth of the sun. It had felt glorious after a long winter.
She desperately held on to that feeling.
The alarm grew louder, rending the dream in two.
“Nope,” Sassy said, trying to shake her head…and failing because the warmth on her face felt…heavy?
Sleep slid through her fingers. It was desert sand disappearing through a grate.
She realized she couldn’t breathe. Her mouth felt furry.
Reaching for her face, her palms confronted the soft, warm form of her sleeping cat.
“Rogue,” she said, muffled. “Get off my face!”
The full-grown Maine coon growled low in her throat as Sassy nudged her. The growl turned into an aggrieved mew as Sassy sat up in bed.
Sassy gulped air. She gaped at the cat-shaped lump on the bed next to her. “Trying to smother me in my sleep again?”
Rogue lifted a dignified paw to her mouth and regally began to cleanse herself.
The volume of the music increased so loudly Rogue retreated from the bed. The racket made Sassy’s eyes water.
“What the actual hell?” she demanded, rolling over to squint at the phone on her nightstand. Fumbling blearily for the display, she rapped her knuckles on the corner then accidentally swiped the clock off the nightstand altogether—not before she caught sight of the numbers on its face.
3:23 a.m.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she groaned. She shoved the hair back from her cheeks, realized half of it was pasted there, and winced. Picking up the phone, she tapped the screen several times before the alarm fell silent.
She sighed, using her thumbprint to unlock the phone.
A black-and-white security feed instantly popped up. Words flashed across the screen.
There is a person at your back door.
“What?” Sassy asked, bewildered. She brought the screen closer to her face.
The display showed a back alley. She recognized the vacant three-space parking lot.
It was showing her the back of her art gallery in town.
Her heart lurched. She was awake now. Tearing off the bedcovers, she angered Rogue further as they piled on top of her cozy form. Scrambling to her feet, Sassy snatched up the flannel sweater she’d left on the side chair and a pair of fur-lined, slip-on boots.
As she dressed, she thought wildly of the fine art she’d carefully curated from a pool of local artists, mostly Indigenous and female crafts folk.
She thought of the priceless artworks sprinkled throughout the gallery and felt a hot flush crawl up her neck.
She grabbed a flashlight from the nightstand drawer and her purse from the dresser.
As she wove out of the bedroom to the front door, Rogue trailed behind, yowling her displeasure.
At the threshold, Sassy turned. “I’ll feed you when I get back,” she promised.
Rogue let her disappointment be known with the flick of her tail.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Sassy said. She was jittery with nerves. Holding up the flashlight, she added, “Mama’s got to go fight crime.”
The cat gave her a deadpan look.
Sassy glanced down at her mismatched pajamas—the oversize bright pink T-shirt that warned she was Cute but Feral and the pj bottoms with faded koala bears.
As an afterthought, she grabbed a trapper-style hat off the coat stand and jammed it over her bedhead. “Don’t wait up,” she told the feline before rushing out into the chilly night.
* * *
A wise person would have called the police. They’d have phoned a friend—or any one of her brawny male cousins, all of whom would have laughed at the idea of Sassy fighting crime. They’d more than likely chew her out for confronting it on her own.
The only person Sassy could think of as she drove into downtown Dark Canyon, Utah, was her best friend, Nick Malone. Normally, Nick was her go-to partner in shenanigans.
She began to punch his number into her phone and then remembered that he wasn’t home. He’d taken the week off from his job as a Dark Canyon first responder to go on a solo camping trip, the one he took every year around his birthday—and the anniversary of his father’s death.
“Okay,” she reasoned, gripping the cracked leather wheel of the 1976 Ford Bronco Wagon.
The tires hummed loudly and the springs of the old driver’s seat squeaked as she sped through the turn signal onto Elm Street.
“I have no backup, but I’m armed and dangerous.
” She eyed the flashlight alongside the hornet spray she’d snatched off her front porch. As improvised weapons, they’d do.
Still, she lifted the phone again and dialed her cousin Ryan—firefighter by day…and most nights.
Praying he wasn’t on a callout, she waited through the drone of ringing before his voicemail picked up.
“Hi, Ry,” she greeted. “It’s Sassy. I know it’s…
” She glanced at the dash clock and made a face.
“…forty winks past midnight. Ew. But I got this weird notification from security at the gallery saying someone was at the back door. If you get this message within the next few minutes, would you mind heading over to Zephyr so you can check it out with me?”
She realized that she’d futilely waited for an answer.
She swerved into the little alleyway that ran between the gallery and the bakery next door.
The windows of the boxlike 4x4 barely fit between the walls that hugged either side.
“Never mind,” she decided. “Just…call me back, ’kay?
” Ending the call, she tossed the phone on the passenger seat.
Should she switch off her headlights?
What would be the point? Unless the intruder was stone deaf, they’d heard the deep-throated Bronco coming from a mile away. They’d probably hightailed it by now.
She stepped on the brake as she reached the alley’s end and eased the Bronco into the small parking lot behind the gallery. Two blue dumpsters shared the space, one for the gallery, one for the bakery.
As soon as the driver’s mirror cleared the alley wall, she opened her door. Leaving the truck on, she kept the headlights blazing so that every square inch of the area was lit up. Holding the flashlight out in front of her, she uncapped the hornet spray. “Hello?” she called.
The words cascaded back to her on an echo. The security light over the back door of the gallery flickered drunkenly, another problem that needed fixing.
She inched toward the door. It wasn’t open. It wasn’t even ajar. She caught herself breathing a little easier.
The flashlight beamed off something on the pavement. Sassy looked around, checking her surroundings. Then she crouched to pick it up.
The item was silver. It lay heavy across her palm.
It was a bar rod, the kind found at the end of a chain lariat.
She turned the rod, looking for an artist’s mark. The light overhead flickered again, buzzing in and out. Angling the flashlight, she examined it more closely.
It wasn’t a signature or initials. It was a brand. She frowned at the grim face of the longhorn bull skull. The empty eye sockets were prominent slashes of black.
She knew most every jewelry maker in the Four Corners region of southeastern Utah. A good many of them resided between Dark Canyon and Moab, and Sassy had learned to distinguish one artist’s style or mark from another’s.
She’d never seen this one.
The sound of tinkling glass made her jump out of her skin.
The can of hornet spray fell from her grip.
It rolled across the ground before she picked it up and faced the dumpster.
“Who’s there?” she demanded, wheeling the light around.
“Come out or I’ll…” She considered her options, eyeing the dead hornet on the can’s label. “…blind you with insecticide.”
Her steps faltered at the sound of more glass tinkling. It was definitely coming from the dumpster.
If the intruder was hiding out inside, he didn’t have much for standards. Trash collection wouldn’t be until the day after tomorrow. Between the gallery, the bakery and the Tex-Mex eatery two doors down that used it for overflow, the gallery dumpster would be loaded at this point.
The smell coming off it was enough to put Sassy on her heels. The light shook slightly and her pulse jackrabbited as she approached the flip-up lid from the side. If a criminal was going to pop out like a jack-in-the-box, she’d prefer to be out of reach.
She steeled herself, silently counting to three.
Then she threw back the lid. It bounced against the side of the dumpster, making a racket worse than the screaming alarm that had woken her.
The banging echoed endlessly down the alley as Sassy held the flashlight and can in a two-handed hold in front of her like it was a real weapon.
The chittering broke through the noise in her head. The unblinking reflective eyes of the furry creatures sitting tandem in a bed of torn garbage bags washed over her.
Both she and the raccoons left the staring contest unbroken for several moments.
Sassy’s mouth formed into an O of understanding.
“Right,” she said finally. “Sorry.” She cleared her throat.
“You two…carry on.” She nodded toward the high beams of her vehicle.
“I’ll be over here.” Backing away from the dumpster, she left the lid open so the mammals could crawl out when they were ready.
Chastising herself for being overly jumpy, she stalked back to the gallery’s rear exit. She cranked the knob of the door. It didn’t budge. “Locked,” she assured herself. She eyed the unblinking red eye of the security camera over the door and said again, louder this time, “It’s locked.”
Still, the feeling of uneasiness wouldn’t leave her. She dug into the pocket of her flannel sweater for the bar rod with its skull brand.