BRED

a DevotedSub novel

Chapter 1: Dust & Deeds

The dust came first, before I even saw the house.

It rolled over the highway in a wall the color of dried blood, and my little rental sedan shuddered when it hit, grit hissing against the windshield like something alive trying to get in. I gripped the wheel with both hands and drove straight into it, because turning around would have meant admitting I'd made a mistake, and I'd already made the mistake of coming at all.

Black Hollow Ranch. Sixty thousand acres of West Texas nothing, left to me by a grandfather I'd met exactly twice. The lawyer's letter had said sentimental value and a fresh start and your grandfather loved you very much, which was a funny thing to say about a man who sent me a birthday card once when I was nine and never called again.

The dust thinned as I turned off the highway onto a dirt road that went on until it got tired of going on. And then there it was — a sprawling ranch house the color of bone, a barn big enough to swallow my apartment building, fences running to the horizon, and cattle, hundreds of them, dark shapes moving slow through the haze.

A man stood in the middle of the road.

I braked hard. Dust boiled up around the car. He didn't move. He just stood there, arms crossed, hat low, watching me through the windshield like he'd been waiting all day to be unimpressed by me.

I got out. The heat hit me like a slap — dry, vicious, smelling of dust and manure and something green underneath. My city shoes sank into the dirt.

"You lost?" he called.

"Are you the welcoming committee?" I called back.

He walked toward me, slow, unhurried, boots crunching. Up close he was worse. Taller than the doorway of my old apartment. Shoulders that looked carved. A face all angles and shadow under the hat brim, eyes so dark they were almost black, and a mouth that wasn't smiling.

"Dario Reyes," he said. "I run this place."

"Selena Vargas. I own this place." I stuck out my hand. "As of three weeks ago, anyway."

He looked at my hand like it was something he'd scrape off his boot. Then, finally, he shook it — one hard pump, his palm rough as sandpaper, swallowing mine whole. A jolt went up my arm that had nothing to do with static.