"A Posadas County Sheriff's Department Dispatcher sticks a Post-It note on an incident report. What he meant to write was, "Not for news," hoping that the newspaper reporter who drops into the Sheriff's Office each morning would ignore the report. But what he unintentionally wrote was, "Note for news," and so the arrest of Quentin Torrez, nephew of Posadas Sheriff Robert Torrez, goes public. And Quentin, who has applied for a job with the NightZone...

In this prequel to the series, "it's 1986 [and] Undersheriff Bill Gastner is enjoying his usual insomnia alone inside his old adobe when jolted by a horrendous noise. Dreading what he will find, he hastens to the nearby interstate exit where a violent crash has occurred. Not only is the vehicle that struck the support pillars totaled and the driver and a passenger crushed inside, a dead boy has been ejected. As the appalled Gastner recognizes the...

"Good cops have no use for coincidence When a driver slams his pickup truck-twice-into a tandem bike being ridden by Carlos Guzman and his fiancée, Tasha, in Briones, California, it's more than a simple hit-and-run; the driver clearly intended to harm them. Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman gets the call with the news of her son's accident and wastes no time racing to his side. She is greeted by Police Captain Eddie Mitchell, formerly of Posadas...

What do you do when you inherit $330 million after taxes? If you're New Mexico rancher Miles Waddell, you build NightZone, an astronomy-based theme park. Waddell's dream begins to sour when two eco-terrorists make an opening statement by chain-sawing power lines that feed the development. One of the terrorists is killed by a bucking power pole. When fleeing conspirator is stopped by a cop and guns the lawman down, retired Posadas Sheriff Gastner becomes...

"When a county employee is found shot to death in sun-drenched daylight while sitting in his county road grader, Undersheriff Bill Gastner is faced with puzzling questions. The simplest explanation--that an errant bullet from a careless target shooter's rifle blew out Larry Zipoli's brains--is soon discarded as inconsistencies surface. The fatal bullet shows no rifling marks, and investigation reveals that the shooter walked directly toward the road...