The trails are open. The river is running. And someone is using both to move the dead.

Claire Caron knows the Androscoggin River Valley by its old roads, private gates, washed-out cuts, and places locals pretend not to remember. She also knows better than to trust summer in the North Country.

The tourists come for dust, engines, mud, and bad decisions - but this year, the trails are carrying more than riders.

When a missing ATV rider's machine is found near the river without him, Fish and Game Officer Reid Boucher is pulled into a search that turns dangerous fast. Claire wants nothing to do with another investigation tied to old motel rooms, dead girls, and the secrets her family barely survived.

Then the river gives back a body.

As Claire and Reid follow the trail through swollen banks, dusty rail beds, private land, false route maps, and the kind of local events where everybody knows everybody and nobody sees enough, they uncover a system older than any one killer.

Room 9 was not the beginning. Room 12 was not the end. And the people who kept the records may be just as dangerous as the men who committed the crimes.

Reid is steady, controlled, and far too good at seeing through Claire's sharp edges. Claire is furious, stubborn, and not interested in being saved - especially by a man who makes restraint look hotter than it has any right to be.

But the closer they get to the truth, the more personal the danger becomes.

Because Victor Arsenault may have vanished into the Androscoggin, but the river never promised he was dead.

And in the North Country of New Hampshire, every route leads somewhere.

Even the ones marked in blood.

When the River Runs is Book Three in the Androscoggin After Dark romantic suspense novella series - a gritty, steamy, small-town mystery where summer trails run hot, old secrets run deep, and the river always keeps score.