Brand Blotters
He collapses in the desert, starving and hunted, with nothing but a dead man's name. That's where James Diller's story begins, not with heroism but with desperation so profound he'll wear a stranger's face to survive. When he stumbles upon a corpse in the Sonora heat, the choice is simple: become someone else or die as no one. So he takes the dead man's identity and rides into a landscape of cattle barons, rustlers, and a woman who sees through his lie the moment she meets his eyes. Melissy Lee isn't fooled by his borrowed name, but she's drawn to him anyway, or perhaps because of the danger his deception represents. As the noose of his past tightens and the present grows more treacherous, James must choose between the man he's pretending to be and the man he might actually become. Raine writes the Southwest as a place that strips away pretense, leaving only the raw question of who you are when no one knows your name.
