ONE-WOMAN POSSE

Part dirty-shirt cowgirl, part Apache, and part-time private eye, Arizona rancher Trade Ellis doesn't have time to waste chasing down bad boys like Eddy Gallegos. And besides, finding the runaway teen in the middle of a blistering Tucson summer swarming with kids isn't going to be easy.

But Trade's doing it anyway. She's doing it for Eddy's grandmother-a friend of a friend-and because she has this thing about justice. She believes in it.

At first Trade figures Eddy is just a juvenile delinquent who broke out of a detention center with a couple of his compadres. But when her questions get answers the fragrance of cow pies, and one of his homeboys, a senator's son, shows up dead, she realizes the barrio teen is actually running for his life.

Hot on his tail are a team of crooked cops, a suspicious homeless kid on a bike, and maybe an X-rated movie producer. For a yet-to-be-discovered reason, a dangerous race is on, leading Trade down a deadly path of violence and scandal. And from the looks of things, if the good guys finish last, they finish dead....