Chapter 1
Mitch
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I swore I’d never set foot on the West Queensland cattle ranch I walked away from a decade ago. I wouldn’t be heading back now if my father hadn’t disappeared without a trace.
Not that I gave a damn about him.
I’m here for my sister, Cassidy. When she called three days ago, asking for help, her voice hadn’t sounded like the girl I’d grown up with. Cassidy had always been fierce, sharp-tongued, and more likely to throw a punch than ask for a favor. If she was worried, it had to be bad.
Six days ago, my father had saddled his horse and ridden out alone.
And the bastard had never come back.
My old man, Frank Branson, was the sole owner of Koolaroo Ranch, a sprawling beast of a property, stretching over a million hectares of Australian Outback cattle country. The Bransons had held onto this land for more than one hundred and thirty years. Five generations had sweated, bled, and had buried pieces of themselves in this red dirt, building a cattle ranch that looked damn impressive on paper. But some days, living there was more like a prison sentence than a legacy. That had little to do with the land, though, or my siblings, or even the livestock.
No, it was Frank who made living there hell. Our father ruled with an iron fist and a temper that could crack stone.
That bastard had taught me how to hate so deeply and hard that it had nearly hollowed me out.
I pulled my Harley to a stop in the red dirt just shy of the cattle grid marking Koolaroo's entrance. The engine rumbled beneath me as if it wanted to keep running. Hell, so did I. The driveway stretched another six kilometers to the main homestead, a distance that felt both too far and not far enough.
For three days, I'd been making my way from Brisbane to my childhood home, dodging my Harley around kangaroos, emus, road kill, and road trains, praying Cassidy would call and say Frank had been found. Preferably face-down, bloated and beyond saving, in one of the two rivers that crossed the property. I felt zero guilt over that thought.
But Cass hasn’t called. And here I am.
The front gates stood unchanged. Same rusted iron bars that groaned in the wind. Same dangling brass plate, reading Koolaroo Ranch, Est. 1889, like it was some goddamn legacy I should be proud of.
They even got the name wrong. No one in Australia called a cattle property like ours a ranch. We called them cattle stations. However, my great-great-grandfather had come from England, and he’d had big dreams and bigger delusions when he’d carved this place out of the dirt and tried to sell the world a fantasy of who the Bransons were.
I had once been proud of this place. Proud of what generations before me had built on this isolated stretch of earth, two hundred kilometers from the nearest town, Winton.
But my asshole father had taken that pride and crushed it to dust.
The sun had only broken the horizon two hours ago, yet it seared through my black T-shirt and helmet as if warning me to stay away. I wished I could listen.
I heaved a breath that tasted of dirt, fired up the Harley again, and readied myself to face whatever wrath my siblings would be justified in throwing at me.
My heart thundered as I drove my motorbike across the cattle grid. Metal clanged beneath my tires, and the sound echoed across the flat scrubland. That same sound had made my stomach clench when I’d been sixteen, returning late from a muster, knowing Frank would be waiting with his belt and his rage.
The long, dusty road stretched ahead, flanked by gum trees parched from months without decent rain. That wasn't unusual for January. The Outback summer meant scorching days and only the occasional afternoon thunderstorms that turned the sky into hellscapes similar to the ones I'd witnessed while trying to save victims from battlefields in Iraq and Syria.
My old man didn't need bullets to make Koolaroo into a war zone. Yet the same damn dread I'd had in Syria crept over me.
I may not make it out of here alive.
The homestead emerged from the red earth, looming against the horizon. The sprawling building remained as imposing as ever, more statement than family home, designed to make arriving guests feel small before they reached the front door.
I pulled over, killed the engine, and checked my phone one more time, praying for a miracle message from Cassidy.
Frank's been found. False alarm. Go home.
Nope. Nothing.
Before last Friday, I hadn't heard from Cassidy in over a year, and I hadn't spoken to my younger brothers, Declan and Kayden, in a full decade. I didn't blame them for their silence. The last time I’d torn out of Koolaroo, I’d left without a goodbye, with Frank's blood on my knuckles and rage burning so hot in my chest I’d thought it might actually kill me.
Red dirt and dying grass stretched endlessly around me. Somewhere out there was Frank Branson, either dead or wishing he was if he’d been bucked off his horse and was lying broken in the brutal sunshine.