Dust and Ash

Sloane Bishop comes to the Double U Ranch with her brother's ashes in a jar and a question the county never asked: who set the barn on fire? Aiden Vescari owns the ranch. He has spent ten years trying to make his family's land honest and failing. He gives Sloane a bunkhouse key and no promises. Together they uncover a smuggling ledger, a ranch foreman with gasoline on his hands, and a decade of lies the whole county agreed to swallow. Sloane wants the truth. Aiden wants to be the kind of man who tells it. When the foreman comes for Sloane with a shotgun, Aiden takes a bullet for the truth and for her. In the pasture at dawn, with the ashes on the wind, they decide to build something better out of what's left. The brand on the barn is new. So are they.