A call to her doctor husband is Estelle Reyes-Guzman’s unwelcome reminder that it may be Christmas Eve, but it’s still her job as undersheriff to deal with things not as pleasant as welcoming friends and relatives and listening to her two small boys put their storybook tales to music. Shortly after her husband hurries off to see the patient, Estelle gets a call of her own from the dispatcher at headquarters. An anonymous person has called the emergency line to report seeing two men fleeing a motel where another is lying dead on the ground. It is the patient who called, and he is now Estelle’s responsibility.

The information relayed to the police was incorrect, though; the man is not dead, although he is close to it. On top of that, the sheriff, still recovering from injuries from a previous encounter with a criminal, is threatened with an embolism and must be flown to Albuquerque for investigation and treatment, and the fiancée of one of Estelle’s men has gone missing. When her body is found on Christmas Day, this tops the alarming combination of events that have Estelle and Bill Gastner, former sheriff of Posadas County, spending their Christmas “holiday” chasing through the countryside to find the young woman’s killer and remove the suspicion that hovers over the young deputy.