Chapter 1
“Gah.” Jenn Canaday knew what the calendar said—it was the last week of September and a week into autumn—but that didn’t matter. The thermometer outside the door of the New Mexico hotel where she’d be staying told an entirely different story. In spite of the fact she’d been born and raised near Schieffelin, Arizona, a hellhole on the outskirts of the Mohave Desert, she loathed the heat.
“I’m melting, Ma,” she complained before she left to drive herself to the community college she attended.
“You’ve lived here all your life, young lady. This is a dry heat,” her mother assured her. “It’s endurable.”
“But Ma—”
“Endure it, Genevieve.”
“Endure it, hah,” she muttered, but softly so her mother didn’t hear her. Unlike Jenn, her mother loved everything about her home—the heat, the d
