Sheriff Lew Ferris has a new partner in crime in the fourth installment in Victoria Houston’s atmospheric mystery series, perfect for fans of Marc Cameron and Nevada Barr.

It’s early September when a competitor in a high school fishing tournament is approached by a stranger who threatens him and his family in an attempt to blackmail him into throwing the first round of the tournament. The boy flees into the woods, where at night he sleeps with wolves watching him from the shadows. 

When the boy’s father asks Lew’s deputy Ray Pradt for help finding his son as well as the man who threatened him, they’re thrown into a world of illegal betting that’s more dangerous than either could have imagined. Meanwhile, Lew Ferris learns that a couple who went on a wolf-watching trip has disappeared without a trace, right near an old log cabin that her deputy Ray remembers from his childhood.

Sheriff Lew Ferris finds herself challenged more than ever before: arms dealing, sports betting, blackmail, and wolves. Is she under threat from predators, too?