The Memory Keepers

Bee Adkins goes out each morning the way most men go to work: practical, precise, and with the little rituals that keep a dangerous life from seeping into the rest of it. Hired to stop a mountain lion that’s been killing calves on the Briggs place, Bee expects a routine trap, a clean kill, and a payday that will keep shoes on his girls’ feet. Instead he follows a trail of blood that ties the cat to a wounded man—and to a string of crimes and brutal trophies that point to something far darker than a simple predator.

With the local rancher’s money on the line, the mountain closing under old mining timbers, and two dogs that know the country better than most men, Bee teams with Nantan, a silent Yaqui guide, and meets Tohua—the ridge watcher who holds the valley’s old memory. The hunt becomes a reckoning: the lion guards the final act; the wounded man carries evidence of human cruelty; the mountain threatens to swallow them all. Bee must decide what justice looks like when the earth itself chooses the judge.

A visceral, landscape-driven thriller about memory, small-family stakes, and the savage bargains the frontier demands—this is a story that asks: what price will a man pay for justice?