Hell to Pay: Emily Bernal 3 — A What Doesn't Kill You Super Series Mystery

For fans of Janet Evanovich, Lisa Scottoline, and Kristin Hannah — the series finale, where the militia has a target on Jack's back and Emily has a snake in each hand.

Emily Bernal is engaged to Jack Holden, close to adopting Betsy, and representing Phil Escalante — their most lovable client — who has just been charged with murdering his best friend at his own engagement party. The witness says she saw him do it. The victim was involved in a property deal with the prosecutor. The prosecutor looks like she hasn't slept in a week. Nothing about this case is what it appears to be.

The investigation leads Emily from Amarillo's seedier corners to a property along the Canadian River with marijuana growing in the fields, to a Mighty is His Word church compound outside Sanford, Texas that turns out to be an armed militia with an underground armory, venomous snakes, and a very specific grudge against Jack Holden. The woman running it lost her son to Jack's death-penalty prosecution fifteen years ago. She has been planning her response ever since.

When Jack goes undercover into the compound and Emily tracks him there, she finds him bound to a wooden cross with kindling at his feet and a torch being lit. Her choices: the armory across the hall, or the room full of rattlesnakes. Emily Bernal grew up handling snakes with her grandfather. She picks the snakes.

Hell to Pay is the exhilarating conclusion to the series where every thread pays off in full, and where it ends the only way it could: with a wedding in a courtroom, a judge who's had enough, and Betsy finally, legally, home.

She came to Texas with nothing. She's leaving with everything — and she's not going anywhere.

Buy Hell to Pay and hang on tight for a high-stakes mystery with a wickedly fun edge.

The Emily Bernal Series is Part 2 of Hutchins' What Doesn't Kill You Super Series.