He drove nearly ten minutes without passing another vehicle. Lights winked in the distance, and he frowned, slowing. Charley Youngblood owned a handful of rental properties in and around Tuba City. The place ahead belonged to Charley, but Joe knew that it should have been empty. He’d personally escorted the former tenants off the property himself after they’d failed for months to pay rent.

His grandfather had a weakness for sob stories and false promises, but after twelve years on the job, Joe was far more cynical. Either the former tenants had sneaked back in or someone else had decided to take advantage of a vacant building in a remote area.

Joe eased off the road several hundred yards from the house, and cut the lights. Switching off the ignition, he got out and jogged up to the property. There wasn’t a vehicle out front, so he continued around the house. He didn’t find one in back, either.

Silently climbing the porch steps, he peered in the window. He had a partial view into the kitchen, which appeared empty.

Retracing his steps, he circled around the front and knocked on the door. When no one answered, he pounded again, this time with restrained force.

Still no answer.

Joe smiled grimly. If the unlawful occupant inside meant to ignore him, he or she had a very big surprise in store for them. He reached up for the porch roof overhang. Finding the extra key always kept there, within moments he had the door swinging open.

Delaney Carson was lost in a world of her own making, seventies rock screaming through the headphones of her iPod, a computer screen full of images, and her mind flooded with half-formed ideas. Each new project was like this, an exciting, gut-clenching anticipation of possibilities. But this one represented her return to the land of the living, after existing for far too long in a self-induced numbed haze.