God, I’m forty-eight today. How did this happen? My body looks much the same as it did for the last twenty years—to me. We never see our reflection quite the way someone else does, right? But there are subtle differences. I see my once athletic build retreating into a slightly pillowy physique, my sharp jawline looking more and more like it was sculpted by crayon. Another change I hadn’t planned on—I’m somehow back in the place I grew up working the same job Pop had for more than thirty years. Granted, the job is a good one. I’m the sheriff in Lincoln County, Nevada, and being right next door to Area 51 and all those aliens and their spacecraft makes for some interesting cases. I’m kidding!

Or am I?

We are what we inherit, I guess. I came home from the Army to help care for Pop, whose slide into dementia has been painful to watch. He’s not the man I thought he was. He’s not even the person I thought he was. He’s something…more…and I really want to get to know this Joe Beck while there’s time. I’m also dealing with not being able to see myself sometimes, as well as the rest of my surroundings. I have Retinitis Pigmentosa, so when the sun goes down, I can’t see much of anything. I got this from my mother, a ridiculous gene mutation, and the disease is progressive. It got me booted from the Army a bit before I was ready, and as you might imagine, being blind for half of every day can be a challenge for a county sheriff.

I’m not married. Never have been. I do have a girlfriend, and her name is Charlie Blue Horse. She’s a detective with the Department of Public Safety, and she’s driving down today from her place in Reno for another long, hopefully quiet, weekend. I’ve never really considered tying the knot. The service kept me on the move, and it was hard finding Mrs. Right when most of the women I met worked for our enemies. But now, today, my birthday, staring into this mirror while I can, I wonder if Charlie Blue Horse is the one. I think she might be.

Brinley thinks so too. She’s my sister, adopted when she was still a little girl, knocked around like a punching bag by her real dad and chained to the nearest piece of furniture until Pop rescued her in the mountains. I hate to rank people by their importance in my life—it seems silly—but Brin continues to be at the top of my list. Maybe that’s changing now. I don’t want to saddle either her or Charlie with the prospect of taking care of a blind man at some point. It just doesn’t seem fair.

Columbo loves Charlie as much as Brin does. He’s one of my deputies, and he’s an absolute hound when it comes to the women in my life. A real skirt-chaser, this one. Loves the girls. He’s a Fox Red Labrador, and I’ve been working on training him to be a guide dog, but he’s not learning a lot from the YouTube videos we’ve been watching.

So we are what we inherit. I’ve just been handed a case wild horses couldn’t drag me from. And by that I mean it’s literally about wild horses. And murder, which lately goes without saying around here. I hope you’ll come along for the ride!

Shades of Mercy, A Porter Beck Mystery Book #2
Genre: Traditional Mystery
Release: July 2024
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Purchase Link

In the usually quiet high desert of Nevada, Sheriff Porter Beck faces one of his greatest challenges—a series of unlikely, disturbing and increasingly deadly events of unknown origins.

Porter Beck is the sheriff in the high desert of Nevada, doing the same lawman’s job his father once did now that he’s returned home after decades away. With his twelve person department, they cover a large area that is usually very quiet, but not of late. One childhood friend is the latest to succumb to a new wave of particularly strong illegal opioids, another childhood friend—now an enormously successful rancher—is targeted by a military drone, hacked and commandeered by an unknown source. The hacker is apparently local—local enough to call out Beck by name—and that means they are Beck’s problem.

Beck’s investigation leads him to Mercy Vaughn, the one known hacker in the area. The problem is that she’s a teenager, locked up with no computer access at the secure juvenile detention center. But there’s something Mercy that doesn’t sit quite right with Beck. But when Mercy disappears, Beck understands that she’s in danger and time is running out for all of them.

Meet the author
Bruce Borgos lives and writes from the Nevada desert where he works hard every day to prove his high school guidance counselor had good instincts when he said “You’ll never be an astronaut.” He has a degree in political science which mostly served to dissuade him from a career in law while at the same time tormenting his wife with endless questions about how telephones work. When not writing, you can usually find him at the local wine store.