With her housemate Blake away and her lover Chase also absent, Sam Westin, at loose ends, embarks on a backpacking trip in the North Cascades, hoping to photograph the elusive gray wolves. Blake, reeling from a recent breakup, has taken a six-week job far away in Evansburg, caring for three gorillas while their owner, Dr. Grace McKenna, is on vacation. But events take a dark turn when the baby gorilla is shot by an intruder, prompting Grace's lover, Detective Finn, to investigate.

Sam's impromptu trip becomes dangerous when she finds a corpse and then stumbles upon an injured immigrant and pack horse carrying drugs. After a gunshot forces her to flee her campsite, Sam faces a perilous cross-country journey with the injured man and horse in tow.

In Evansburg, while following the trail of the gorilla shooting, Detective Finn stumbles upon a murdered woman in a nearby abandoned house and her child hiding in the gorilla barn. With both investigations going nowhere fast,...]]> Fri, 24 Jan 2025 07:20:35 +0200 https://graycity.net/pamela-beason/460902-the_only_one_left.html https://graycity.net/pamela-beason/460902-the_only_one_left.html
What does a human finger bone found by a signing gorilla have to do with Detective Matthew Finn's case of two missing girls? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.Memorial Day starts off strangely when a signing gorilla hands Detective Matthew Finn a human finger bone, and then explains the bone's origin with the mysterious clues of up, bird, and Snow, a favorite white cat. Finn's day gets far worse when his small police department in Evansburg, Washington, loans him to the adjacent county to investigate the case of two missing teenage girls. Adding to the chaos, an arsonist is torching abandoned buildings in the area, and Finn soon discovers a troubling history of young women who have vanished in the rural area. Frantic parents and demanding reporters are breathing down his neck. Can Finn fit the puzzle pieces together in time to save the girls?]]> Mon, 12 Nov 2018 14:11:05 +0200 https://graycity.net/pamela-beason/621705-cascade.html https://graycity.net/pamela-beason/621705-cascade.html

Just as society is celebrating the fade of the COVID quarantine restrictions, Sam Westin suddenly finds her life in shambles. While she and her friends were enjoying a spring snow outing in the North Cascades, an earthquake launches multiple avalanches to wreak destruction on the slopes. Now skiers are dead and Sam's lover, Chase, is fighting for his life.

In her logical mind, Sam knows that she can't blame two wolverine poachers for the cascade of events that killed and injured so many in the mountains. But if she hadn't needed to answer the call to rescue a trapped wolverine, she wouldn't have been buried, and her friends would have been safely off the mountain and back home. And criminal associates of her troubled young protégé Maya wouldn't have trashed her unoccupied house and injured her cat.

Why did two teens want to capture a wolverine, and why has nobody come forward to claim their bodies? Are baby wolverines, still hidden beneath the snow,...]]> Mon, 31 Oct 2022 18:36:38 +0200 https://graycity.net/pamela-beason/621706-borderland.html https://graycity.net/pamela-beason/621706-borderland.html

Wildlife photographer Jade Silva's last text message is a photo of a rare jaguar at the US-Mexico border wall. When Jade vanishes, her fellow Southwestern Research Station volunteer, Sam Westin, agonizes that something terrible has happened. But finding Jade seems an almost impossible mission in a rugged area overrun by undocumented immigrants, Border Patrol agents, vigilantes, construction crews, human traffickers, drug smugglers, and violent cartel thugs. Meanwhile, the ever-increasing militarization of the Arizona-Mexico border is destroying ecosystems and trampling the rights of US citizens. Trying to rescue her friend, Sam is sucked into a maelstrom of desperation, deceit, and danger.