Murder at Granite Falls

Tightening her grip on the steering wheel, Carrie Randall glanced again in her rearview mirror. The vehicle was still behind her. Billy? It couldn't be. She'd been so very, very careful.

She'd caught a better glimpse of the car while negotiating a set of hairpin turns at a higher elevation. Not close enough to identify the make and model. But close enough to be fairly certain it was the same one that had tailed her for the past two hours.

She palmed her cell phone, checking the number of reception bars on the screen. Zero. No surprise in this isolated part of the Montana Rockies, where bears probably outnumbered the two-footed residents three-to-one.

She frowned at the odometer. Ten miles to the town of Granite Falls. The lane leading to her new home should be coming up in less than a mile. But if her ex-husband was following her, the last thing she wanted was to lead him right to her door.

An earsplitting yowl erupted from the cage on the seat behind her, followed by the frantic scrabbling of paws. "It's okay, Harley. Just hang on."

She stepped on the gas and rocketed past the little gravel lane that wound into the pines off to the left. Then she headed straight for town.* * *

Granite Falls was as picturesque as its tourism website claimed.

The mountain highway widened into a charming six-block-long main street flanked on both sides by historic storefronts, boardwalks and hitching rails straight out of an old Western movie. The center of town was filled with upscale shops and quaint restaurants geared to the tourist trade, while the dusty pickups nosed up to the feed store and cafe on the far edge of town revealed where the locals gathered. Would that be a safe place to stop?

A maroon Lawler County sheriff's deputy patrol car parked face-out in front of the cafe made her decision easy.

She checked in her rearview mirror once more, turned sharply into the par