Scorpion rain

the long version

Laura Winslow is the name she chose for herself -- a false identity the part-Hopi cyber-investigator can hide behind to escape a reservation past too dangerous and too painful, to acknowledge -- as she plies her trade in the vast, anonymous frontier of the web. But now a friend has been kidnapped following a bloody shootout on the Arizona border that left a wake of unthinkable carnage and Laura asking why. Like a hungry predator, the merciless Sonoran Desert has swallowed up another life, one that Laura is not going to give up on. In the company of a tough reporter who once escaped the wilderness, she is about to cross the line where civilization ends -- entering a majestic wasteland where corruption, lies, and violence are bred and nurtured. But the secrets waiting for them in this hopeless place may be Laura's worst nightmare ... and impossible to escape alive.