Arkansas Special Agents: Cyber Crime Division

Arkansas Special Agents: Cyber Crime Division is a three-book series by Little Rock (Pulaski County) novelist Margaret Ethridge (writing under the pen name Maggie Wells). It was released in 2025 by publisher Harlequin under the Harlequin Intrigue imprint, which specializes in romantic suspense novels. The series is a follow-up to her 2023 Arkansas Special Agents series.

The first book, Shadowing Her Stalker (February 2025), opens with Cara Beckett—a founding partner and the voice of meditation app LYFF, which is about to have its stock launch—arriving at the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock. Beckett has just left Los Angeles, California, after being doxxed (having her private information publicly released), thus becoming a target for many online men who feel that she does not deserve the credit for the app’s success over co-creators Chris Sharpe and Tom Wasinski. After she procures her rental car, a balaclava-clad man with a gun enters her car and orders her to drive down Interstate 30. However, she manages to escape from him at an off-ramp.

Agent Wyatt Dawson of the Department of Public Safety’s Cyber Crime Division is put on the case. Wyatt sets up a new phone for Cara to reduce her likelihood of being tracked and to allow the police to monitor her messages. Cara reaches out to her personal assistant, Zarah Parvich, with a small request, and soon enough her personal email address is being spoofed to send messages to Cara’s parents, who operate a cattle ranch in the vicinity of Snowball (Searcy County). Cara’s mother, Betsy, is old friends with the current lieutenant governor, Paul Stanton, and reaches out to him for help, with the result that Wyatt is assigned to Cara’s detail full-time. The police soon track down Cara’s assailant, who had been receiving funds from an unknown person, but he kills himself before they can arrest him.

Zarah later calls Cara to reveal that Cara’s short-term rental house in Little Rock has been trashed. Soon thereafter, an arsonist sets fire to her house in California. Cara asks Zarah to book a plane ticket home. While Wyatt and Cara are shopping in Harrison (Boone County), Betsy calls to reveal that Lieutenant Governor Stanton is at their house. Cara bails from Wyatt’s SUV while he is crossing the pasture land, arriving to find Zarah, with Stanton, holding her parents hostage. Zarah reveals she is planning to become engaged to Tom Wasinski, whom Stanton hopes to recruit as a major donor for a future run for the U.S. Senate. Cara agrees to sign the documents turning her shares of LYFF over to Zarah and sends her mother out of the room to find a pen, but Betsy returns with a pistol. Wyatt arrests Zarah, and Cara beats Stanton with an iron skillet. In the epilogue, Cara returns to Little Rock a few weeks after the public stock launch for LYFF, reconnecting with Wyatt and planning to buy some property near Pinnacle Mountain State Park.

The next book, Catching a Hacker (March 2025), centers upon Agent Emma Parker, who is assigned to the case of Kayleigh Hughes, a Harvard University–bound senior at the private Capitol Academy recently suspended for allegedly engaging in online bullying of her friend Patricia Marsh. Kayleigh’s father, Max, is a venture capitalist and president of the school board, as well as a longtime friend of Simon Taylor, section chief for the Cyber Crime Division. Emma quickly discovers that Kayleigh’s laptop has been compromised, with someone using the computer’s camera to capture various photographs of her, and ends up staying over at the Hughes house to monitor Kayleigh’s computer and trace the hacker.

More social media accounts mirroring Kayleigh’s are used to harass other students at school. Emma and Kayleigh start to grow close, and Emma confides in her about how she herself was bullied in school, began cutting herself, and was caught hacking into the school mainframe to alter the records of her tormentors. Emma also learns that Max briefly dated Amy Birch, an information technology teacher at Capitol Academy who had previously worked for a software company called Syscom. Emma’s team traces the origins of the malicious social media posts as coming from a computer inside Capitol Academy from someone with administrative access. She and agent Wyatt Dawson attempt to retrieve the computer, but Amy is attacked and the computer stolen.

Amy had been using a security program called SecuraT—produced by Steve Severin, father of Tia Severin, Kayleigh’s best friend. She had acquired the software when she worked for Syscom. Max had helped his friend Steve arrange for the sale of the program to Syscom. Emma and her team discover that Dr. Samuel Blanton, the principal of Capitol Academy, had apparently learned about Syscom’s purchase of SecuraT through his stockbroker, Michael Pierce (the father of Kayleigh’s prom date, Carter). Expecting Syscom’s stock to go up with the release of SecuraT, Blanton had invested heavily in the company, but Syscom’s purchase was, instead, a “capture and kill” operation, the software being so good it proved unprofitable to release. Deep in debt, the school principal apparently decided to seek revenge upon those whom he felt had wronged him. Emma arrests Blanton, and the book ends with Emma and Max kissing.

The final book, Ozarks Conspiracy (June 2025), begins with Hannah Miller in her Eureka Springs (Carroll County) flower shop, Flora’s Florals, where she is designing the floral spray for the funeral of a family friend, Grace Templeton. The shop is raided by the Arkansas State Police led by Special Agent Simon Taylor and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The authorities suspect Hannah of heading up a bootlegging racket, organized through a website attributed to the shop, but she insists she has no website, and the agents find nothing at her shop, in her van, or at her house, although her storm shelter is oddly immaculate and appears to have been used recently for storage without Hannah’s knowledge.

That evening, a motorcycle, headlight off, repeatedly cruises up and down Hannah’s street. Simon and his team discover that whoever is overseeing the bootlegging operation is using the names of 1954 graduates of the local high school to disguise the receivers of the shipments. Suspicion starts to fall on Russell Whitman of Whitman Development, who has a motorcycle and apparently is part of the Ridge Riders, a local motorcycle group. Russell is romantically involved with Darla Ott, owner of the Downshift Bar and Grill, where many of the Ridge Riders congregate, and he has recently hired Micah Jones, the twenty-two-year-old brother of Hanna’s best friend, Mia, to run errands for him. Mia, whose father founded the Range Riders, produces a list of current members for Simon.

When Hannah goes home, she finds that her house has been broken into and her dog is missing. Russell is there in one of his company’s work trucks and kidnaps Hannah and takes her to the Downshift; he is panicked because one of his co-conspirators, Billy Aikens, has recently been arrested making a delivery to an unoccupied house in Little Rock. Simon goes to Hannah’s house and learns from a neighbor that Russell drove her downtown. Simon goes to the Downshift, where Russell offers to trade Hannah for Billy Aikens. However, Hannah escapes with Darla’s help, and the police quickly arrest the entire gang. The epilogue finds Simon showing up at Hannah’s shop, which Hannah is planning to sell in order to make use of the architectural degree she had earned at the University of Arkansas (UA) in Fayetteville (Washington County). The book ends with Hannah and Simon kissing.

For additional information:
Clancy, Sean. “Ozarks Gets Triple Threat Thriller Treatment.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, July 15, 2024, pp. 1D, 3D. Online at https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2024/jul/14/books-ozarks-gets-triple-threat-thriller/ (accessed October 10, 2025).

Maggie Wells–Margaret Ethridge. https://maggie-wells.com/ (accessed October 10, 2025).

Wells, Maggie. Catching a Hacker. Toronto: Harlequin, 2025.

———. Ozarks Conspiracy. Toronto: Harlequin, 2025.

———. Shadowing Her Stalker. Toronto: Harlequin, 2025.

Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas