Everybody has somewhere they want to go...
It was for her killer.
Seventeen-year-old Emily Cross had been planning to leave town the night she died. Her backpack was packed. Her savings were gone. Her mother insists she had no reason to run away. Her boyfriend swears they were happy. Her closest friends insist she never told them she was leaving.
But someone knew.
As Ruth reconstructs Emily's final days, she discovers that the teenager had been secretly helping people disappear. An abused woman. A frightened boy. An undocumented worker desperate to escape the men controlling him. People trapped in lives they couldn't safely leave had somehow learned that if they reached Emily, she would find them a bus ticket, some cash and somewhere to go.
Nobody knows why she started doing it.
Or who was helping her.
Then one of the people Emily helped escape is found dead hundreds of miles away.
Another is missing.
And Ruth realizes somebody isn't trying to discover where Emily was sending these people.
They're following them.
The investigation leaves Ruth with an impossible choice. The only way to find Emily's killer may be to uncover the identities and locations of vulnerable people who trusted a murdered seventeen-year-old to make them disappear. Hand that information to the wrong person—even another cop—and Ruth could finish the killer's work for him.
But withholding it could destroy the case.
Now Ruth must decide which matters more: catching a murderer, or keeping a dead girl's promise to people she never even knew.
And somewhere at the end of the line, someone is waiting to make sure Ruth never gets the chance to choose.
Genre: Mystery
When a teenage girl is found murdered behind a lonely bus station in rural Texas, Texas Rangers Ruth Baker and Aaron Tate expect a tragically familiar investigation. Then Ruth discovers the dead girl bought a ticket shortly before she died.
The ticket wasn't for herself.It was for her killer.
Seventeen-year-old Emily Cross had been planning to leave town the night she died. Her backpack was packed. Her savings were gone. Her mother insists she had no reason to run away. Her boyfriend swears they were happy. Her closest friends insist she never told them she was leaving.
But someone knew.
As Ruth reconstructs Emily's final days, she discovers that the teenager had been secretly helping people disappear. An abused woman. A frightened boy. An undocumented worker desperate to escape the men controlling him. People trapped in lives they couldn't safely leave had somehow learned that if they reached Emily, she would find them a bus ticket, some cash and somewhere to go.
Nobody knows why she started doing it.
Or who was helping her.
Then one of the people Emily helped escape is found dead hundreds of miles away.
Another is missing.
And Ruth realizes somebody isn't trying to discover where Emily was sending these people.
They're following them.
The investigation leaves Ruth with an impossible choice. The only way to find Emily's killer may be to uncover the identities and locations of vulnerable people who trusted a murdered seventeen-year-old to make them disappear. Hand that information to the wrong person—even another cop—and Ruth could finish the killer's work for him.
But withholding it could destroy the case.
Now Ruth must decide which matters more: catching a murderer, or keeping a dead girl's promise to people she never even knew.
And somewhere at the end of the line, someone is waiting to make sure Ruth never gets the chance to choose.
LAST STOP is an unrelenting, high-stakes mystery thriller packed with nail-biting suspense, shocking twists, and the trademark emotional punch Baker & Tate fans have come to love.
Each book in the Baker & Tate series is a complete story that can be read on its own.Genre: Mystery