Excerpt from "Cast the First Stone" by Rebbie Macintyre

Here's the flap blurb:
Using a divining rod or a crystal pendulum, dowser Trini Bates can locate the unseen: underground water, buried minerals, lost valuables.

Some claim she’s a wonder worker.

Others say she’s a liar, a cheat, a fake.

Trini is neither saint nor charlatan. Recently widowed, she only wants to be left alone to grieve. However, when her brother’s bootlegging partner disappears, Trini is summoned from her seclusion to dowse for his whereabouts. She finds his body at the bottom of a Colorado canyon, but she’s devastated when the sheriff accuses Parn—the brother she raised after their mother’s death—of murder.

Trini admits her brother is wild and reckless, but he’s not a murderer.

And if he’s innocent, then who is guilty?

Trini’s investigation plunges her into the bloody Prohibition world of moonshine and machine guns. She discovers Sheriff George Mallis hides a secret. Before he wore a sheriff’s badge, he spearheaded the largest illegal liquor trade in Colorado—a trade that cost him the lives of his sons. Mallis blames Parn for their deaths, and Trini is terrified he will wreak his vengeance on an innocent man.

Mallis isolates his prisoner in jail. Her only link to Parn is through the chief deputy—a man willing to risk his job for Trini’s affection, a complication that rocks her fragile emotional balance. Trini bonds with the murder victim’s children, and with their help, unearths disturbing truths about her brother’s life. When her dowsing fails to find a friend’s missing daughter, Trini realizes her doubts about Parn’s innocence have sabotaged her ability. Even when the children are threatened and someone tries to kill her, her precious gift lies dormant. Somehow, Trini must reclaim her power if she’s to save the children, her brother and finally, her own life.

And a short excerpt:
Merle Woodson is missing, and Trini’s brother is questioned about his disappearance. Here, Trini uses her dowsing talent to locate Woodson’s body. She hopes her discovery will prove her brother’s innocence, but of course, it has the opposite affect, and her brother is accused of murder.

The crystal swiveled at the end of the twine like a child’s toy spin-top in motion.

“Where is the man?” Trini said.

A tickle on the ends of her fingers signaled the talent was awakening. She moved the crystal an inch west so that it hovered above the town of Jackson. The instrument became a tiny pendulum swaying above the map, an infinitesimal movement that she wondered if she felt more than saw. Not yet. Not yet.

She moved the crystal again, an inch to the north, over the hamlet of Walsh’s Hole. Just keep open. Keep loose. It’s coming now. It’s coming.

“Show me the man,” she repeated.

The energy surged into her hands, and the crystal increased its sway. The whorls on Trini’s fingertips swelled and throbbed, her hands flamed crimson and the skin appeared to stretch near bursting. At the end of her motionless fingers, the string and the crystal turned in a perfect circle the size of silver dollar. Her veins jutted like mountain ranges winding their way up her forearms into her biceps, and she felt pinpricks along the top of her arms.

As the crystal turned, the sensation deepened; the pinpricks became deep talons that dug into her flesh. Heat, then burning ice, seared her arms, her shoulders and chest, and the muscles in her neck. She didn’t know how much more she could take. In the back of her mind, she registered surprise; the dowsing had never hurt like this. She must be more nervous than she thought.

One final surge of her energy to her reddened fingertips and she knew she’d found her target. She withdrew the crystal, set it on the desk and massaged her bloated hands.

“Holy God,” whispered Taggert.

“Trini, are you all right?” asked Roy.

“Yes, I’m all right. And I think you’ll find Merle Woodson right here.”