Center Line - Christopher Dale;C Lowry

CENTER LINE

A routine bounty hunt in the West Texas badlands just became a one-man war for survival.

Harlan Kessler is a skip-tracer who reads the dirt to find the people who don't want to be found. But when a Dallas conglomerate hires him to track down an embezzling corporate accountant, the trail ends in a dry riverbed with a burned-out truck, military-grade shell casings, and the blood of an innocent woman.

Kessler quickly realizes he hasn't been hired for a rescue-he's been hired as a smokescreen.

Apex Resource Holdings is systematically bleeding local ranchers dry, using a ruthless private military contractor to seize the land and the billion-dollar lithium aquifer buried beneath it. The accountant Kessler is hunting holds the encrypted ledger that can bring the corrupt empire down, and the mercenaries have taken him to an impenetrable, abandoned fracking compound deep in the unmapped canyons.

Worse, they've taken Marisol Garza, a fierce local rancher's daughter who got too close to the truth.

Cut off from the law and vastly outgunned by a rogue tactical team, Kessler could walk away and cash his check. Instead, he drives his Ford Raptor north into the labyrinth of the badlands. To save the girl and secure the digital evidence before the morning foreclosure deadline, Kessler must orchestrate a deadly prison break against a fortified fortress.

Getting inside will take deception. Getting out alive will take a massacre.

Packed with relentless pacing, tactical action, and razor-sharp dialogue, CENTER LINE is a gripping modern Western Noir. Perfect for fans of Lee Child's Jack Reacher, C.J. Box's Joe Pickett, and gritty hardboiled crime thrillers.