by Alice Zogg

Twenty four-year-old Elena Campione seemed to have vanished into thin air. She had apparently left her South Pasadena residence suddenly, without telling a soul. The police traced her to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she had boarded the shuttle bus to the Balloon Fiesta Park on the last day of the annual balloon festival, but there the trail ended. Bruno Campione hires R. A. Huber and her young assistant, Andi, to find his missing wife.

The investigation takes Huber from Prescott, Kingman and Phoenix in Arizona to Gallup and Albuquerque, New Mexico, while Andi pries into matters closer to home. When Elena’s body washes up at Lake Havasu, it is clear that the case no longer involves a missing person, but in fact murder. As the events continue to escalate, the women’s probing puts them both in harm’s way. Huber ends up in the hospital in critical condition, and when Andi takes over where her boss had left off, she also barely escapes with her own life.