Jefferson Shaw never picks up hitchhikers. But when he sees a fifteen year old girl thumbing a ride in the middle of the night, he’s compelled to break his rule and delivers her into the safe hands of local law enforcement.

But then the hitchhiker goes missing, leaving a couple of dead bodies in her wake, and Shaw finds himself drawn into the investigation of a double homicide, butting heads with a willfully ignorant police detective whose theory of the case is all wrong.

So Shaw decides to follow his own path—a path that leads him to a charismatic but sadistic cult leader, a violent biker gang, and a psychopathic killer who soon has Shaw directly in his crosshairs.

“Browne has a gift for creating other worlds so believable that one would swear they exist.”

~Gayle Lynds

New York Times Bestselling Author

Voted Best Mystery and Book of the Year by Authors on the Air.

On the anniversary of his wife’s passing, Jefferson Shaw—ex-cop, retired Marine, and grieving widower—packed a duffle bag and climbed into his pickup truck to take the road trip they had been planning together before she died.

Now, when engine trouble temporarily strands him in Rosewater, Texas, an impulsive act of chivalry toward a battered young woman lands Shaw in more hot water than he ever could have anticipated.

Before he knows it, he’s caught up in a decades old family drama, a senseless murder, and the search for a missing grandson that soon has him staring down the barrel of a malignant narcissist’s gun.

“Browne’s thrillers are lean, mean and thoroughly entertaining.”

~Allison Brennan

New York Times Bestselling Author

Robert Gregory Browne is a bestselling author, Nicholl Fellow, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Gold Alumnus, and a Thriller Award nominated member of the International Thriller Writers.
 
He has written teleplays for Showtime, Saban, Marvel, and Fox Kids, and has published multiple novels under multiple names in multiple countries with St. Martin’s Press, Penguin Dutton, Signet, and Harlequin. His short stories have appeared in Lee Child’s Killer Year and Sandra Brown’s Love is Murder.
 
His novel Kiss Her Goodbye was produced for television by CBS TV/Sony Pictures. His novel The Paradise Prophecy was optioned by Temple Hill Productions for ABC Television.
 
He lives in California with his wife, cat, two dogs, and Jura coffee machine.