Rifle Season

Book : Mace Winters Series

by Pat Kelly

Genres: Spy Thrillers; Political Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

A game hunter is in a race against time to save his family from the most dangerous predator on earth—other people—in this high-stakes thriller in the vein of Jack Carr and Peter Heller.

Mason “Mace” Winters, with his acclaimed reputation as one of the best big game hunters in Colorado, lives for the thrill of the hunt. His lucrative career guiding the wealthy on intense hunts through the Colorado mountains is suddenly brought to a stop when an accident hangs an involuntary manslaughter conviction around his neck. Now he’s relegated to a life of trash pickup in the very wilderness where his prowess as a tracker and killer was the stuff of legends.

At rock bottom, Mace descends into a haze of Tito’s and sativa when two strangers seek him out. They wave enough cash under his nose to convince him to help them up into the mountains he knows so well on the opening day of Colorado’s rifle season. An innocent enough request, and the perfect cover for the trip’s true purpose: to assassinate an infamous warlord. All at once, Mace goes from unwitting to unwilling accomplice and it will take all his now dusty skills to outfox his patrons in their deadly game.

Release date: January 27, 2026

Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Print pages: 272

Sample

Chapter One

ONE
A year had come and gone since Mace ignored his vaunted gut and demolished his life from the foundation up. It was early on a Monday morning and he was bagging trash on the shoulder of Highway 62 west of Ridgway sporting a yellow safety vest and a noticeable weave to his step. Off to the south, an October storm had left the summit of Mount Sneffels laser-white and hanging in a cobalt sky that beggared description but he was immune to the spectacle. Just kept snagging litter with his county-supplied grabber stick and working on a pint of Tito’s with a nifty sleight of hand.

His beard had gone biblical and his chore jacket couldn’t hide the belly he’d tacked on over the previous winter. His eyes had dulled along with his figure. They no longer cut glass, which didn’t matter because he was done getting people in killing range of wary animals for a living. This diminishment, combined with a maintenance dose of vodka and weed, caused him to step on the dead mule deer before he saw it. The carcass was the same brown as the grass and his boot sank in putrefied organs as easy as pie. His cell rang from somewhere on his person but he didn’t notice.

Disposing of roadkill was outside Mace’s purview so he wiped his footwear on a post and kept working his way up Dallas Divide. The joint trial had been held in Montrose District Court and Hodges fainted during the autopsy exhibits. The DA accused Mace and his client of being more focused on success than safety but Hodges’s lawyer was first-rate. Both men ducked the involuntary-manslaughter charge. Hodges reached a financial settlement with the dead man’s family and changed his hunting venue to Utah. Mace, being the person who explicitly authorized the misbegotten shot, was sentenced to three hundred hours of community service and open-ended pariah status.

When he got even with Dallas Park Cemetery, Mace studied the burial ground. Seeing no visitors, he dropped the garbage bag and crossed the road. He found the headstone of the guy killed by his blip of inattention in the newer section of graves and laid his hand on the white marble with a practiced motion. Robert R. Martinez had been a lance corporal in the Marine Corps, hence the scarlet flag with the eagle and anchor flapping in the wind. Next to that was a vase of wilted columbine. According to the words in stone, he lived almost twenty-seven years and the anniversary of his passing would fall on Saturday, a date now in everlasting lockstep with the dawn of rifle season.

Ridgway had a bunch of cliques for a puny town and the vets were easily the most empathetic. They went out of their way to exonerate Mace, saying Martinez did his time in the sandbox and came back broken and reckless and maybe that was true. But it didn’t absolve Mace of anything or begin to heal the runny gash in his soul. That wound had a mind of its own.

Mace never met the person boxed beneath his feet until he was too busy dying to chat. Saw him drinking with hermetic indifference at the True Grit Café but had no occasion to exchange pleasantries. Now he visited the same man’s grave with furtive regularity, communing with all that was mortgaged in that split second of shit judgment. Only dumb luck and bleary vigilance had kept him from bumping into Martinez’s parents since the broad-daylight nightmare of the funeral.

Mace drained the pint, hearing his dad hold forth on cut corners, magic meteorological thinking and lapses in situational awareness when rounds were chambered. All the slipshod urges capable of turning the most meticulous hunt into the disaster he now personified. So he didn’t register the brown Subaru Outback with the Semper Fi decal parking behind him until the driver emerged and shut the door. The sound made him turn and the sight of the trim woman with the graying ponytail and bright brown eyes shoved him backward. The Tito’s bottle shattered at his feet.

Anna Martinez, mom of the dead bowhunter, was fifty-nine years old and assumed the man in the safety vest was a cemetery worker. When she recognized her son’s de facto killer, she yanked the door open and got back behind the wheel but couldn’t for the life of her get the key into the ignition. Her husband Gabriel was slumped in the front seat with a hollowed-out mien and paid the panic attack no mind. His hair was thick and white, his body brittle in repose. When her hands stopped shaking, Anna grabbed the fresh-cut columbine off the back seat and got out, eyes on the ground.

She switched out the flowers, tossed the broken bottle in a trash can and walked up to Mace with her jaw set and a tornado of livid grief roaring through her head. Then she got a good long look at the wrecked soul standing next to her son’s marker. And what came out of her mouth surprised even her. “Did you know Robert loved guns before he joined the Marines?”

“No, ma’am,” said Mace, staring at her nose to maintain his balance.

“Got his first rifle when he was ten. And after that, opening day was his Christmas Day. Didn’t matter if it was rabbits or deer or elk. Shot anything he could eat. I heard you were a lot like that.”

She waited for Mace to acknowledge that statement but he had his hands full just standing there so she focused on the jagged sweep of peaks behind his head and kept unpacking her point.

“Two tours over there changed everything. He came back hating guns. Then summer before last he got into bowhunting. Started disappearing for days at a time. Never took anyone with him. Never told us where he was going. He was so quiet and different, we were scared to death he’d kill himself up there. But we were wrong. Face paint and camo became his magic medicine. He loved being invisible. Loved seeing how close he could get to a big buck or bull. And when he talked about it, his eyes would light up and he’d be our sweet boy all over again.”

Mace cleared his throat. “He ever harvest any of those animals?”

“Never shot a living thing with that bow. I asked him why. Know what he said?”

She gave Mace a ten-second chance to answer like it was a pop quiz. He shook his head and her eyes drifted down to the grave. “Just because it wasn’t stupid easy like pulling a trigger didn’t make it right. Anyway, here’s the thing I want you to take with you. The main thing. Nobody on earth would have known Robert was there that day. Nobody. Not even you. Mason Winters.”

Then they heard the metallic creak. Anna turned and Mace looked past her. A frail hand was pushing the Subaru’s passenger door open. “Don’t do this to him,” she whispered. “Please.”

Mace ducked his head and cut toward the highway, not stopping until he was a mile down the shoulder next to a brush-strafed black Tundra with an empty gun rack and a toolbox in the bed. He got in, dug a tallboy from the console and drank it, staring through a windshield so scummy with bug juice and dope smoke the world looked sepia. Then he twirled the FM dial until “Far Away Eyes” sucked him into a twangy daydream and off he went sans seat belt. A bit later, the six-thousand-pound Tundra slipped the leash and mowed down a split-rail fence before coming to a debris-decorated halt in the ditch on the right. His face punctuated the impact by bouncing off the steering wheel.

Deputy Glenn Frazier was driving a blue Tahoe with a light bar down Dallas Divide dwelling on the buffalo cheeseburger at the Grit he intended to devour for lunch. A double with sweet-potato fries. Some darker things were messing with his head, like his paycheck being inhaled by a raft of bad decisions made in concert with his dick but that’s what made hunger so fun. It was easy to fix. Glenn was a red-haired, six-four bruiser with a passing resemblance to a supersize Russell Crowe. He played defensive tackle at Mesa University in Grand Junction until ACL tears sank the dream. He’d added some girth but could still wreak havoc in a hurry if pissed. He was thirty-five years old and rocked the tan slacks, chocolate shirt and gray Stetson of the Ouray County Sheriff’s Department.

When he saw the black Tundra churning dirt in the ditch full of busted railing, he pulled over ten yards back and studied the shit show. After determining the driver was more interested in digging a giant hole than getting clear of the ditch, he dismounted and rapped hard on the truck’s window. Mace gave the cop a hostile appraisal before rolling the glass down.

“Fuck you want?” he said curtly, left eye slit to nothing under a purple golf ball–size knob.

“How about you turn that engine off and exit the vehicle,” suggested Glenn.

“Watch your feet,” said Mace, gunning the V8 and rocking the gears between drive and reverse.

Glenn hopped on the running board, shot his arm into the cab and snagged the keys. Then he hauled Mace out the window, slipping punches aimed at his face and threw him on the ground. When the cuffs clicked, he tossed Mace in the caged back seat of the Tahoe, deftly jimmied the Tundra out of the ditch, parked it on the far side of the road and wiped the debris off the hood. Satisfied with his handiwork, he got in the Tahoe, made a U and headed west back up the Divide.

After cresting the summit and dropping into San Miguel County, Glenn checked the rearview and saw his prisoner lying face-down, arms bent behind his back. “Don’t be drooling on that seat.”

Mace sat up and looked around, accepting his situation like he’d been there before. “Shouldn’t you be out chasing homegrown terrorists with high-capacity magazines?”

“Bagged one yesterday,” said Glenn. “Came out of Mountain Annie’s smelling like sativa and shoutin’ about the Second Amendment in Texan.” Then he snapped his fingers. “Hey. Whatever happened to that sweet Sako 85 the fat cat from Odessa gave you? Had all that checkered walnut. Shot a .30-06 Springfield. Had your initials engraved on the receiver.”

Mace frowned at the floor and dredged up the answer. “Sold it at a swap meet down in Cortez.”

“You’re shitting me. A fine personalized firearm like that?”

“Didn’t need it.”

Glenn traced the rim of the Uncompahgre Plateau with a pained expression because that’s where he and Mace had hunted since they were runts. He’d stopped reminding Mace he wasn’t the guy who shot the stoner bowhunter lurking in camo on the first day of rifle season. Stopped trying to reason with him about any damn thing because it turned out self-loathing was tougher than Kevlar.

After turning right on 60X Road, they climbed the flank of the plateau then headed west through broad parks and forested moraines. On a gravel straightaway a dirt bike bore down on them at terrific speed. The machine was green and white. The guy on board was brawny and wore a black helmet with a mirrored visor. He flashed a peace sign as he screamed by. Mace twisted around and saw an American flag plastered across the rider’s back before he disappeared in a plume of dust.

“Future donor,” said Glenn, eyes on the side mirror.

Three miles later, Glenn turned onto Clanton Road and shortly thereafter drove through a gate onto the track that ran into Mace’s 160-acre parcel. It ended at a pretty two-story log home with a steep tin roof and covered porch. A squat barn rose beyond that, weathered gray and set against a meadow. Next to the barn was a woodshed and a fenced garden gone woolly with inattention.

Glenn parked in the yard, yanked Mace out, uncuffed him and blithely scratched the head of the sizable German shepherd that charged up, tail wagging. “Good boy, Vince. Good boy.”

Then he threw Mace the Tundra keys and punched a thick finger into his chest, rocking him backward like the wobbly drunk he was. “No more next time.”

Mace watched Glenn drive off, rubbing his wrists where the cuffs cut his skin, dug a roach from his pants and torched it. After that he went up the steps and into the house with the shepherd trotting at his heels, not bothering to close the front door. He was halfway across the living room when a Kodachrome snap of his parents drew him over to the mantel. Randy and Kay Winters were young and strong and standing on the porch of the same log home on a pure blue June day in 1983.

Randy was a legendary zero-nonsense outfitter and spitting image of their son. He was squinting at the photographer like his pocket was being picked. Kay Winters was dark-haired and raw-boned pretty. She wore a work shirt with the cuffs rolled over sunburned arms. An axe was slung over her shoulder. Her smile was serene. Kay taught English at Ouray High, ran the food bank and was considered a saint shacked up with cordial savages. One week before Mace’s twenty-first birthday, an asshole in a hurry would pass on a blind curve outside the Gunnison and kill them both. Kay bequeathed her boy a curious, open-minded world view. Randy planted decades of hunting insight in his son’s skull. The latter now hibernated in Mace’s hippocampus like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Mace stopped wondering what his folks would think of the dreary mess he’d made of his life and shifted his gaze to the arrowhead collection mounted over the fireplace in three sixteen-by-sixteen frames. Seventy-two complete points from Middle Archaic to Ute, all plucked from the deep past with his own hands. But his passion had waned and now his mind drifted toward booze and food.

He went into the kitchen, grabbed a rib eye from the fridge, dropped it in a skillet with a slab of butter and cranked up the burner. He downed three shots of Hornitos and watched the meat fry until a nagging detail sent him back into the living room. He stood before the fireplace a minute before spotting the unbelievable. There was a blank space in the dead center of his arrowhead collection. The crown jewel of his assemblage, a four-thousand-year-old Mount Albion point in green jasper was missing. Which was about as inexplicable as a thing could get. He searched the floor and under furniture knowing he wouldn’t find it because he’d never leave such a superb projectile point lying around. Then it occurred to him that never was an obsolete concept. He could have used the point to open a bottle of red. Or taken it from the frame intending to saw his wrists open and blacked out first. Relieved by the wealth of pathetic possibilities, he torched another pre-roll. Took him a minute to isolate Vince’s barking in the numbing roar of his high. Then a bit longer to notice the oily smoke crawling along the ceiling and the dancing radiance coming from the kitchen.

He ran at the fiery fat arcing from the skillet thinking smoke inhalation wasn’t a bad idea. The curtains over the sink and the pine cupboards were burning nicely. The Braun coffee maker was dripping blue flame. He’d be dead in short order. Then it dawned on him that Vince would drag him clear or die trying. He grabbed dish towels, sopped them under the faucet and beat the conflagration into smoldering submission. Then the greasy particulate and liquor ganged up on him and the floor heaved. He made it to the sofa in front of the fireplace and pitched face-first into nothing.

Jamie Winters drove her olive-green Rubicon through the gate and up to the house. The sun had set but no lights were on and no truck or dog was in the yard. The front door was wide open. She grabbed pepper spray and a maglite from the glove box and was about to punch 911 when Vince came flying out in a state of maximum agitation. When he saw Jamie behind the high beams, he turned on a dime and led her into the meat-fire stink. She was leggy and fast and wore blue scrubs.

She checked Mace’s vitals and hit the lights. Found the charred-to-hell kitchen and stood there, jaws clamped, fighting heartbreak and volcanic anger simultaneously. Her chestnut hair was cut mannish short and her eyes dark brown. She was thirty-one years old and could still spike a volleyball through a wall. To say she was swan-necked and beautiful wasn’t wrong but her poise dominated. It kept people on their toes. Then Vince planted his paws on her chest and reminded her dogs were put on earth to shortcut self-pity. She kissed him between the eyes. “You’re right, big man.”

She grabbed the extinguisher from the closet and blasted the embers. After that she flushed all the booze and pot she could find down the toilet. She was standing over Mace pondering life without him when his cell rang. She dug it from his pants as it went to voicemail and saw ten missed calls coming from the same guy. She stabbed redial and a gruff male voice answered.

“Figured you were incarcerated or dead,” said Will.

Jamie looked down at her comatose husband. Realized he reeked of roadkill. “Not quite.”