Excerpt from Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

An icy breeze ribboned through the air. I slid my bare toes underneath Kona's belly and drank the rest of the coffee, the liquid having turned lukewarm. A dog barked in the distance. Kona raised his head, his ears alert. Then the crunching of large tires against loose stone. The truck's beams soon rounded the house and lit up a pathway across the tall grass toward the riverbank.

I knew it was Colm. Knew the sound of his vehicle and the way he slammed his door.

"Morning," I yelled through the screen.

Colm climbed the porch steps and lifted the screen door slightly to open it. The door needed new hinges, another item on my to-do list that I kept promising myself I'd get to.

Kona settled back down when he saw it was the sheriff.

"You're up awfully early," I said.

"No different than you."

"Want some coffee?" I started to get up.

"Stay put. I know my way to the kitchen."

I've known Colm since before my son was born. Colm would read the gas meter each month at a small rental house where I used to live. Like me, Colm isn't from Rio Mesa. He moved here as a young man, somewhere in his early twenties, taking on a job with White River Natural Gas. Then when the only television tower was shut off, when residents in the county who wished to watch TV were forced to buy into satellite, Colm began installing dishes and network boxes. His work brought him into people's homes, where he was offered coffee and beer and neighborly conversation, the kind of conversation that led to ideas. Colm became someone people got to know and liked. He listened and had a way of letting people know he'd heard what they'd said, heard it and thought about it and thought about it some more. Maybe it was the way his green eyes would fasten intently on the eyes of another, or the way he'd nod contemplatively, or the way he'd wait calmly, his whole body still, for a person to finish speaking before he'd respond. I'm not sure who first introduced the notion that Colm should run for sheriff. But once the idea got around, it spread like a rumor in a small town, the kind of rumor people get accustomed to real quickly until it is simply the way things are, or in Colm's case, the way things would be.

Colm appeared with a mug in his hand. "How was your weekend?" he asked.

"Not bad. Yours?"

"Can't complain." Colm sat in the cedar-backed chair beside me, his big knees squared out in front of him. "I saw Joseph the other day. Over by the school. He seems to be getting along all right."

"Sometimes I worry about him," I said.

Colm blew on the coffee before he took a loud swallow. "Course you do. You're his mother."

I smiled a little. And then that part of me that had curled itself deep down in my chest started to stir. That part of me that wanted to say, He's all I have, but instead I said, "It's five o'clock in the morning. My coffee isn't that good to bring you out here."

Colm took another swallow, pulled back his lips, and exhaled slowly. "A call came in last night. Missing hunter."

"Where?"

"East Douglas. She came out here with a couple of guys from Evergreen. Took the truck out by herself sometime yesterday morning. The guys she'd traveled with called a little while ago. She still hasn't shown."

"Did she have her cell with her?"

"If she did, she's not answering. Or can't get a signal."

"Where's the camp?" I asked.

"A pull-off in Pintada Draw. One of her friends thought she might have headed east toward Big Ridge. Said he thought he heard a gun go off later that morning, but he wasn't sure. Except she was hunting with a bow," Colm said. "Her friends filled their tags with rifles a couple of days ago."

Excerpted from Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets. Copyright © 2016 by Diane Les Becquets. Excerpted by permission of Berkley Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.