xerioxo
Harland Pike is just a normal lawman, used to quiet nights and routine calls. But the Palo Duro case-an eight-year-old mystery of vanished victims and erased evidence-never stays buried.
Whispers across dusty saloons and rattling jail cells speak of a shadowy outlaw called "Big Iron," a name once dismissed as frontier legend. Previous sheriffs chalked up missing victims to wanderlust or bad luck, but the pattern is too precise-each disappearance follows in Big Iron's cold, calculated wake.
There's no shattered vaults or missing cash, only empty homes and terrified families. His victims vanish in the dead of night, swallowed by shadows before anyone can raise an alarm. No ransom notes surface, no bodies turn up; just the cold certainty that whoever saw him once is never seen again.
Sheriff Pike has sifted through every rumor and rumor's rumor, and he's convinced that Big Iron's kidnapping spree stretches back decades. Pike still follows the faintest trail-clues scrawled on half-burned diaries, a battered horseshoe imprint in dry clay, and that lone locket. He's the only one left hunting a phantom, and he won't rest until he uncovers where Big Iron hides his prisoners... and why.
WARNING!!!: contains swearing & mentions of death, suicide, kidnapping, murder, abuse, etc.