The Hunting Ground

Kate Soren is leaving for the Pacific Northwest. Two weeks later, a new handler arrives, and she didn't come to Elk Creek for the search and rescue work.

The goodbyes are barely finished before Shelby Tate walks through the station door with a black Labrador named KK and a professional composure that reads, to someone who knows how to look, as something other than calm. She's former military. She handles KK with the economy of someone who has worked under fire. She asks too many questions about old cases.

At the same time, two bodies have been found in Elk Creek's backcountry, both staged as accidental falls, both in locations that require local knowledge to access. Both victims are women who hiked alone. The staging is too precise, the timing too deliberate. Someone who knows these mountains is hunting in them.

By the time Gemma understands who Shelby really is and why she came, Lori Carrico was a veteran who vanished from a rehabilitation program called Stillwater two years ago, and the trail of that vanishing leads directly into the backcountry where two women have now been found, three investigations are running simultaneously, and they are not separate cases.

They are one case. And it is far larger than anyone in Elk Creek has understood.

Perfect for fans of Nevada Barr, Kendra Elliot, and Dana Stabenow. The Hunting Ground opens the series' final arc - darker, more complex, and built for the long game.

Book 12 of 14. Kate departs. Shelby and KK arrive. The Stillwater conspiracy begins. Start with Book 1: Trail Gone Dark.