February 2 - March 13, 2026 Virtual Book Tour
In bounty hunting, clean jobs are a myth. Dot knows—she’s seen the blood.
Dot Ybarra doesn’t bluff. Fresh into her bounty hunting career, she’s already earning a reputation for results. But when a “routine” rogue bounty—taken as a favor to her lawyer cousin—turns lethal, she’s staring down a case with international reach, bodies in its wake, and the stench of power.
Her business partner, T.J. Roman, is hiding a secret. If Dot finds out … well, she can’t find out. It would end the effective partnership they’ve built. But the trail won’t wait. What should have been a clean pickup of a fellow military veteran spirals into a hunt through the shadows, where one wrong move could see them both buried in an unmarked grave.
To stop the predators at the center of a violent trafficking ring, they’ll have to go straight into its core—and make themselves the bait. Every step makes them vulnerable to each other as well.
The devil’s coming for them.
Dot plans to be the one still standing after he bites.
Book Details:Genre: Modern Western Thriller
Published by: Tule Mystery
Publication Date: January 19, 2026
Number of Pages: 285
ISBN: 9781969218651 (ISBN10: 1969218657)
Series: A BOUNTY OF SHADOWS, Book 2 {Amazon, Tule}
Book Links: Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books | Goodreads | BookBub | Tule Mystery
From Chapter 1
Two hours later, they had managed to corral the quickly sobering Freddy into the back of the Suburban, with no more eventful chases, and turn him over to the county jail. Freddy’s bail bondsman paid out their fair share of the bond and a huge tip after some hard pressing on T.J.’s part about the circumstances leading up to Freddy’s apprehension. Once the check was cashed, a celebratory late lunch at one of the best Basque eateries Dot had found in Boise was the best way to top off a successful day of bounty hunting.
Parked behind the Bar Gernika, she and T.J. sat in the back end of the Chevy Suburban with the hatch up eating chorizo sandwiches with smoked cod croquetas and a bowl of green olives dripping in garlic olive oil. Dot slurped down half of her Coke, then shook the ice in her cup.
T.J. pointed the remains of his smoked beef chorizo at her. “We should register for the SHOT show in Vegas.”
“Why?”
“Because we can.” T.J. pulled his duh face.
Dot rolled her eyes and bit into her sandwich.
“Have you ever been there?” T.J. asked.
She shook her head, wiping smokey chorizo juice from the corner of her mouth.
“The woman raised to be a hunter and a firearms collector has never been to the great SHOT show?” He lowered his reflective sunglasses and eyed her over the top of the rims. “Never?”
“You do realize my family wasn’t made of money.” Dot popped one of the croquetas into her mouth. “And that’s in the dead of winter, when we couldn’t just up and run off while we were in the middle of lambing season.”
“All the more reason you should go now.” T.J. grinned. “A lot of the best bounty hunters meet up there.”
Dot scowled at her partner and sometimes bunk buddy. “Lemme guess. You wanna show off your shiny new partner to the boys?”
“Maybe.” His grin turned devilish. “Or maybe I wanna see you kick their asses.”
Dot wadded up the sandwich wrapper and chucked it at T.J.’s head. “I’m not a toy.”
The crumbled ball of waxed paper bounced off his forehead and landed on the Suburban floor between them.
“Really? Then why are you so easy to wind up?”
“You sonofa—” Dot lunged for his throat but was quickly subdued.
Their moment of levity was interrupted by a shrill ring from T.J.’s phone.
“Damn it,” he snapped and patted down his body in search for his cell.
Dot found it lying on the makeshift floor behind his hulking frame. She snatched it up and checked the screen. She batted her eyelashes at T.J.
“Don’t you dare,” he snarled.
She pressed the green icon to answer the call. “Well, hello, cousin dearest.”
Lawyer-extraordinaire and covert purveyor of information, Vivian Montgomery was Dot’s second cousin. And apparently had earned a spot on T.J.’s contact list under the moniker of Hot Ass Lawyer.
“Dot? When did you start taking business calls?” Vivian asked, her brisk tone underscored by the sound of her heavy breathing.
“What are you doing?” Dot asked. “You sound like you’re saving the horse and riding a cowboy.”
“Oh, grow up. I’m on a treadmill. Put T.J. on the phone.”
“You shouldn’t run on those things. They destroy your knees and back,” Dot chided.
“When I want health advice from a cigar smoker who jumps from helicopters for fun, I’ll call.”
“I don’t jump from the helo. Unless it’s crashing. Even then, that’s sketchy shit.”
T.J., giving a rumbling growl, jerked the phone from Dot, and pressed it to his ear. “Vivian, what do you need?” He waited a moment, then with another low growl, pulled the phone from his ear and put it on speaker. “You’re on speaker.”
“I need a huge favor from the two of you.”
“When you say huge favor, how huge are we talking?” Dot asked.
“You know, I think I liked you better when you were a brooding, isolated eremite whose main goal in life was equal parts trying to piss off her mother and keep her out of trouble,” Vivian shot back.
“Love you too, coz.”
“Now shut up and let me finish.” The whining sound of the treadmill belt slowing echoed over the phone connection. “I just got a call from one of my colleagues. She had a client fail to appear today.”
“Shouldn’t the defendant’s bail bondsman be calling us?” T.J. asked.
“It’s … complicated.”
Dot smiled as T.J. groaned.
“Vivian, every time you rope us into one of your firm’s problems with their unruly children, we’re out money, time, and patience. We’re called bounty hunters for a reason. Bounty is in the name.”
“Roman, if you keep up the condescending behavior, I’ll expose your dirty little secret.”
“Dirty secret, huh,” Dot piped in. “What’s that?”
He thrust a finger at her nose. “None of your business. Vivian, if you so much as breathe out of line, I’ll make you regret it.”
“Will you do me the favor?”
T.J. stared at Dot, who shrugged as if to say, Why not?
“Fine. Mark my words, I’ll be cashing in on this huge favor sooner than you think.”
“I wouldn’t have bothered you with this, expect the guy is a veteran, and you two being veterans yourself, I figured he’d be more likely to work with you than anyone else.”
“What’s on his file?” Dot asked.
“That’s the complicated part. Officially, his file says he was picked up a third time for carrying with the intent to sell. Unofficially, he’s … classified.”
Dot frowned as she and T.J. locked eyes. As a former army ranger who spent a lot of time flying in and out of forward operating bases in Afghanistan, T.J. knew all about classified situations. Dot, as the main helicopter pilot shuttling him and his team back and forth, though never read in on his actual missions, typically was under strict orders of her own.
“Vivian, I’m not getting fuzzy feelings about this,” T.J. said.
“Neither am I. It’s why I’m calling the two of you in. The judge wants to issue a bench warrant. My colleague was able to ask for a delay before it’s submitted. She was given three hours to present her client or the warrant is released. If you’d rather, you could consider this job PI work instead of fugitive recovery.”
The shingle hanging outside their business office did say private investigators. At this point, that title belonged to T.J. and T.J. alone.
“Still not selling me on this,” he said. “If there’s no bench warrant, there’s no cash for catching him.”
“Hang on.” Vivian spoke to someone, her voice muffled, then she was back. “The firm will pay you a finder’s fee.”
T.J. continued to stare at Dot. She could sense what he was thinking. He was torn. Take this off-the-cuff job and cash in on the favor department with Vivian to help a fellow veteran? Or say fuck it and play hooky for the rest of the day like he’d planned?
Dot didn’t really have much of a say in the business dealings of their partnership since she was eight months into the training phase as a fugitive recovery agent and she wasn’t a licensed PI. It didn’t stop T.J. from pressing her for her opinion, who argued that, because she was about to start taking bounties on her own, she needed to take the reins more often.
“If it helps you make a decision, I’ve got his last known address and a phone number along with a photo,” Vivian said. “This won’t be a hard catch.”
“Stop saying that. Every time you tell me it’s an easy one, it turns into a disaster,” T.J. snarled.
“He’s right,” Dot added.
“Okay, I retract my statement. But, please say yes. Huge favor to me. I’ll do anything.”
“Anything?”
Dot glared at him.
“Within reason,” Vivian shot back.
“We’ll do it,” Dot said, tired of T.J.’s runaround. “Send us the four-one-one, and we’ll go check it out.”
T.J. glared at her; his dark eyes flashed a warning. Dot returned his glare with a smug look of her own that dared him to bring it.
“Thank you, coz. Hurry. There’s only two hours left before the bench warrant goes out. Then it’ll be a free-for-all.”
“You couldn’t have called us about this an hour ago?” T.J. groused.
“Shut your yap, Roman,” Vivian said. “There. Info sent.”
His phone dinged.
“His name is Cade Porter. He was a staff sergeant in the Marine Corps.” Vivian sucked in a breath. “Oooh.”
“Oooh, what?” T.J. insisted.
“If this is right, he was in an artillery unit.”
“Oh my God.” T.J. groaned.
Dot grinned. Not only did acting on a favor for Vivian chafe T.J. in the chaps, but doing it for a Marine with explosives expertise was going to make that chafe burn. Throughout their long, storied history, there had always been a deep-seated friendly animosity between the army and the Marines. Push came to shove, however, they still had each other’s backs.
“If that crayon eater blows us up, I’m going to haunt you,” he said.
“I look forward to the visits. Now get going.” Vivian ended the call.
T.J. shoved his phone in a side pocket of his cargo pants. “Tell me again why we let Vivian help us out?”
“Because,” Dot said as she scooted out of the SUV’s backend, “she’s good for the money. And I trust her intel more than I would some of your bail bondsmen.”
“You say that because you’re biased.”
“Nire familia da. Garrantzitsua da.”
T.J. paused before closing the hatch. “I speak Pashto, Arabic, some Spanish, and Oklahoman. I do not speak Basque.”
Dot chuckled. “Time to learn, Danger Ranger.”
“Load up and let’s roll.”
***
Excerpt from Bait the Devil by Winter Austin. Copyright 2026 by Winter Austin. Reproduced with permission from Winter Austin. All rights reserved.
INTERVIEW:
If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
It’s going to take a long time to get to your goal, but you never give up. It’s a lot harder than it looks too.
Favorite childhood memory involving books?
Most every memory I have involved books. When I went horseback riding, I pretended to be reliving scenes in the westerns I was reading at the time. (I rode alone most of the time for this work and had a fantastic horse who knew where he was going.) Books have always been a part of my life even from an early age. My parents read to me when I was a baby, and when I was strong enough to sit on my own and crawl around, my mom would find me with a book in my lap and babbling out the story to myself.
If you could dine with any literary character, who would it be and why?
Only one?! If I had to choose only one, I guess it would be Walt Longmire from the Longmire series. I have a penchant for getting old war dogs to tell me their stories, some they have never revealed to anyone else, and I think I’d get Walt to reveal a few. Also, he’s so much like one of my great uncles it would be like reliving my childhood all over again. A few drinks at the Red Pony with Henry and I’d be in heaven.
Did you want to be an author when you grew up?
Yes, I did. It’s a part of me and it all stems back to reading my first Walter Farley Black Stallion book and learning he had become an author at a young age. Then I earned the right to go to a young writer’s conference with a mystery, all very 4th grade-ish. The love of writing and a sense of purpose was cemented. And here I am today, living my dream.
If you could own any animal as a pet, what would it be?
Well, since I’m a farm gal, and have had a lot of the animals that were actual pets and some that became pets that probably shouldn’t be. Hopefully one day here very soon, I’ll be on my own farm property where I plan to keep a herd of goats, some as show goats for my nieces and the rest as working goats, and keep a few horses and cattle, along with a huge flock of chickens and dogs and cats for pest control. Yeah, nothing really out of the norm here.
How do you select the names of your characters?
Names are usually picked in regard to family heritage and setting location. Once I have a few narrowed down, I let the characters tell me who they really are and go from there. But sometimes, a name will come to me out of nowhere, and I know who that belongs to.
If you could live in any time period, what would it be and why?
1850-1900’s As bad as death and sickness were along with war and hate, I feel this was my time period. I’ve always wanted to brave those wilds of western America and live among the people there. I’d love to hope that I would not be a product of my upbringing and be exactly like I am now, but it’s hard to say.
When did you write your first book?
I want to say it was the handwritten western I wrote the summer before I started high school. I wrote a lot of stories and fan fiction—though I didn’t know that was what I was doing at the time—but my first real book had to be that western.
What sparks your creativity/how do you get your ideas?
Reading and watching shows that are inline with what I’m writing at the time. I need that creative outlet and that’s where I get it. Listening to music while I’m driving to and from work helps a lot with the imagination and fuels future scenes in my books too. Real life will filter in as well, adding to that adage of What if?
What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
Just nap. I’m so busy all the time with work, family, my animals, upcoming goat show schedules along with fairs and writing, just decompressing and taking a nap is nice. I love to cook and bake too, and have taken a serious turn into preserving and canning in the last few years, which is tedious, but extremely satisfying for me because I’m always looking to learn new things and excel at it.
Winter Austin perpetually answers the question: “were you born in the winter?” with a flat “nope,” but believe her, there is a story behind her name.
A lifelong Mid-West gal with strong ties to the agriculture world, Winter grew up listening to the captivating stories told by relatives around a table or a campfire. As a published author, she learned her glass half-empty personality makes for a perfect suspense/thriller writer. Taking her ability to verbally spin a vivid and detailed story, Winter translated that into writing deadly romantic suspense, mysteries, and thrillers.
When she’s not slaving away at the computer, you can find Winter supporting her daughter in cattle shows, seeing her three sons off into the wide-wide world, loving on her fur babies, prodding her teacher husband, and nagging at her flock of hens to stay in the coop or the dogs will get them.
She is the author of multiple novels.
AuthorWinterAustin.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads
BookBub - @WinterAustin
Instagram - @iasuspensewriter
Facebook - @author.winteraustin
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