Brass Tag

The state pays Ryder Lane forty dollars a day to check fishing licenses. The first man he checks that spring is dead.

The ice is going out on Pardee Reservoir, and an old fisherman's jig comes up hooked through a boot. There is a man in the boot. He is chained to an ammo can, and somebody wired a brass tag to his wrist with a number stamped on it.

Then the divers go down. They find the rest of them laid out in rows, and every one of them has a number.

Sheriff Nell Tavish has one deputy left and a county that wants this to go away quietly. She asks Ryder to stay. Above Birch Creek a hungry spring grizzly is digging up graves nobody knew were there, and a rifleman half a mile out wants Ryder and his partner, Ryan Hale, to know he could have killed either one of them.

Somebody built this place to hide people. Now somebody is shutting it down, one witness at a time. And every step Ryder takes toward the truth walks him closer to the people he trusts most.

A cold Montana field thriller of rotten ice, high water, and a game warden without a badge who won't leave a dead man without a name.