Twenty seconds in a young man’s life has followed him like the shadow of a curse for 27 years. Did he crack under pressure or was it simply good reflexes? Aaron Hemingway still doesn’t know and nobody ever told him because the Army had buried the massacre in a black hole.

But in an ironic twist of karma, it was those close to Aaron who paid the price. He sometimes questioned whether the two were connected, but after his 14-year-old daughter was taken hostage by a murder suspect and then watched three men die in her bloody rescue, that was pretty much the end of the argument for Aaron, a former Denver cop and newspaper reporter. So he became a recluse, avoiding people he cared about to protect them. But after three years of that, he was ready to eat his gun. Then an old friend called and offered him a temporary job as a small town deputy marshal. Knowing what was at risk, he nevertheless took the job. Surprisingly, things seemed to be going well, including his handling of a couple of situations that were ripe for disaster. Then, in an unprovoked but not random attack, his dog was killed and his woman friend was left in a coma with a gunshot wound to the head. Aaron discovered the identity of the man behind the attack and, breaking a vow he made after Vietnam to never kill again unless in self-defense or to protect the innocent, he swore vengeance against the man. He only saw three outcomes: he would be killed, he would succeed and be arrested or he would get away with murder. In the Malpais lava fields of western New Mexico, he found that things are not always that simple.

Ron Baird won an award from the Society of Professional Journalists for a 1996 series on the U.S. government’s cover up of the causes of Gulf War Syndrome. He has had two fly fishing books published – Fishing Colorado; A Falcon Guide, 2001, and Fishing the Seasons in Colorado, the Lyons Press 2012. Dark Angel: The first Aaron Hemingway mystery was published in 2002. He is currently working on Cottonmouth, the third book of the Aaron Hemingway series.