The Bone Orchard

The town smiles with cider on its breath, but Detective Cass Ryder knows the soil is sour. Transferred from the city to farm country, she thought she was chasing small-town drunks and cattle rustlers — not graves planted like crops.
When teenagers stumble on a skull beneath the apple trees, the orchard answers with more bodies, each buried upright, each arranged with a farmer’s patience. Locals whisper about the Orchard Man, a ghost story Cass once laughed at. But as the pattern stretches back decades, it knots around her own childhood — and the brother who vanished without a trace.
Every clue points inward. Every secret roots deeper. And when Cass uncovers a fresh grave with her own name scratched on the lid, she realizes the orchard isn’t just a crime scene. It’s a legacy.