They thought the river would finish him.
Dragged into the cold shallows at Rattlesnake Ford, Marshal Luke Tanner felt the current close over his head and the weight of betrayal settle in his chest. The men who ambushed him weren't just rustlers. They were protected. Funded. Shielded by power that ran deeper than the riverbed.
Pulled from the water by a rancher's daughter who saw more than she should have, Tanner survives long enough to understand one thing:
The crossing wasn't chosen by accident.
It was a message.
Now he rides back toward the ford with a wound in his side and iron in his spine. The men waiting there believe the river washed their sins away.
But justice doesn't drown.
And at Rattlesnake Ford, someone will answer.
