The Brutal Pasture

Oksana Marchand has run the Bitterroot operation alone since her father died — forty thousand acres mortgaged to a syndicate that has never once set foot on it. Then Dax Reyes arrives with a clipboard and a pistol and a family name she doesn't recognize. He's supposed to be the new regional manager. He reads the land like she does. He talks water rights at three in the morning like it's poetry. He was also sent here to kill her. When the family sends a crew from Missoula instead, Oksana and Dax have one hay barn, two hired hands, and a deputy who isn't coming. By dawn the mortgage and the ledger will burn in the same branding fire — or they will. Some ranches you inherit. Some you take.