A retired Alabama businessman just wanted peace on his land. What he found instead was a fight for everything he held sacred.
This Hallowed Ground
Retirement was supposed to be about finding new hobbies. Turns out, my new hobby is staying alive.
I’m Warren Hapner. After selling my business, the biggest decision of my day should have been which fishing lure to use. Then I saw them, a gang of thugs about to put a bullet in a young trooper’s head. One shot from my deer stand, one dead criminal, and suddenly my quiet life with my wife, Mary, was over.
The men I crossed are the kind that hold a grudge. They started with my peace of mind, but now they’re coming for my wife. When they discover that the law can’t always reach the darkened corners of our property, they push too far. They didn’t count on Mary being as tough as the woods she lives in, and they certainly didn’t count on me.
My retirement plan changed from fishing trips to funeral arrangements, and I intend to be the one making them.
A Hollow Vow
Witness Protection gave us new names. The cartel didn’t forget the old ones.
As a retired businessman with a government-issued identity and a slight limp, I tried to blend in as a hunting guide near Raton, New Mexico. Mary cooks for the lodge, keeps the cabins spotless, and for a little while, we almost believe the Feds when they say we are safe.
Then I come down out of the hills and find our cabin wrecked and my wife gone. No note, no call, just a familiar cigarette butt on the floor and the cold certainty that the men I crossed back in Alabama found us.
The sheriff wants me to stand back. The cartel wants me dead. My name on the paperwork may have changed, but in my head, I am still Warren Hapner. This time, my new hobby is freeing my wife and hunting down the people who thought they could steal my life twice.
The Hard Reckoning
On paper, the cartel already took everything I had. Out here, they are coming for everyone I know.
My Warren Hapner bank accounts are sitting at zero thanks to some slick cartel auditor in Zurich, and my name carries the stink of a fake thirty‑year‑old criminal charge. Mary and I came home to our Alabama place to rebuild, figuring the land and the woods would still be ours if nothing else.
Before long, the talk at the diner shifts from football scores to missing livestock, suspicious barn fires, and strangers waving cash at folks for the back corners of their land. Troopers pull more traffickers off our stretch of interstate, but the flow keeps coming, and everybody knows where it starts.
Starting over will have to wait. With Robert Danforth’s shadow crew in the tree line, Mary at my side, and a town full of stubborn locals who are done being scared, I plan to rip every last cartel root out of our soil and shut down the drug route that runs through our home.
They stole my future, but now we intend to take back what’s ours in the Alabama pines, no matter the cost.
About the author
Wayne Harrell still believes in a good drink, honest work, and newspapers you can hold in your hands. A former sports videographer for a major college team and longtime sales rep for a U.S. corporation, he’s spent a lifetime chasing motion on the field, on the lake, in the woods, and now across the page.
An avid outdoorsman and lifelong resident of Alabama, Wayne writes a regular column for his local newspaper, one of the few still putting ink to paper in this digital age. His years behind the camera taught him how to catch the quiet before the storm, the moment before everything breaks loose, and the truth hiding in plain sight.
Those same instincts shape his Southern thrillers—stories about hard men and harder choices, where faith is tested, violence leaves its mark, and doing what’s right can come at a steep cost. When he’s not writing, he’s usually outside before daylight with a camera or rifle in hand, watching the first light cut through the fog.
Reader Reviews
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