Don’t miss the JOE PICKETT series—now streaming on Paramount+ The Red Desert of Wyoming is a beautiful and punishing place for anybody, even for game warden Joe Pickett and his friend Nate Romanowski in this #1 New York Times bestselling thriller... Nate is off the grid, recuperating from wounds and trying to deal with past crimes, when he is suddenly surrounded by a small team of elite professional special operators. They’re not there to threaten him, but to make a deal. They need help destroying a domestic terror cell in Wyoming’s Red Desert, and in return they’ll make Nate’s criminal record disappear. But they are not what they seem, as Nate’s friend Joe Pickett discovers. They have a much different plan in mind, and it just might be something that takes them all down—including Nate and Joe. Praise for Off the Grid “With this exceptional entry, Box solidifies his place at the upper end of the crime fiction pantheon.”— Publishers Weekly (starred, boxed review) “Picking up a new C. J. Box thriller is like spending quality time with family you love and have missed...It’s a rare thriller series that has characters grow and change. An exciting reading experience for both loyal fans as well as newcomers.”—Associated Press “Filled with high suspense, formidable characters, and an action-packed ending more vivid than most movies. Off the Grid  never falters as Box again delivers an exceptional thriller.”— South Florida Sun-Sentinel “You can’t help turning the pages and holding your breath until you find out where this scary, all-too-plausible caravan is heading.”— Kirkus Reviews “A terrorist thriller with a uniquely western flair...This is a breakneck story that Pickett fans will want to read in one sitting.”— Booklist More Praise for the C. J. Box and the Joe Pickett novels   “One of today’s solid-gold, A-list, must-read writers.”—Lee Child   “Box is a master.”— The Denver Post “Box knows what readers expect and delivers it with a flourish.”— Cleveland Plain Dealer   “Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett strides in big boots over the ruggedly gorgeous landscape of C.J. Box's outdoor mysteries.”— The New York Times Book Review   “Riveting...[A] skillfully crafted page-turner.”— People   “Will keep you on the edge of your seat.”— The Philadelphia Enquirer C. J. Box is the author of twenty-five Joe Pickett novels, eight stand-alone novels, and a story collection. He has won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, Gumshoe, and two Barry awards, as well as the French Prix Calibre .38, the Western Heritage Award for Literature, and two Spur Awards. An avid outdoorsman, Box has hunted, fished, hiked, ridden, and skied throughout Wyoming and the Mountain West. He has been executive producer on television series based on his books, including ABC TV’s Big Sky and Joe Pickett on Paramount+. Chapter One Nate Romanowski knew trouble was on the way when he saw the falcon’s wings suddenly flare in the distance.  Something beyond his eyesight was coming fast. It was cool and crisp in the desert and the light dawn breeze smelled of dust and the rotting carcasses of dead wild horses who had drunk at a poisoned spring. The rising sun bathed the eastern sky ochre and silhouetted the rock haystacks and hoodoos into a dark snaggle-toothed horizon.  It was the best time of day, he thought: the anticipatory moment before the morning light lifted the curtain on the terrain to reveal the reds, pinks, oranges and beiges of the striations in the bone-dry rock formations and revealed the rugged broken terrain.  The desert was made up of canyons, arroyos, and vast sheets of hard-packed clay that had been sculpted through history first by magma, then water, now wind. Nate had learned that in the morning the desert didn’t wake up.  Instead, it shut down.  Herds of pronghorns moved from the sparse grassy bottoms where they’d been grazing through the night to the high desert plateaus where they could be seen for miles – and they could be on the lookout for predators.  Herds of wild horses, with their cracked hooves and woolly jug-heads, trotted across openings headed for the shade of wind-formed rock oddities that looked in the right light like Doric columns that remained from ancient ruins. It was the early morning hours when cottontails retreated to their dens and upland game birds moved from feeding on seeds and grass to structure and safety. That was why Nate chose this time to hunt. But he wasn’t the only predator in the area. The gyrfalcon , the largest and most formidable falcon of the species, was a horizontal hunter.  Unlike the prairie falcon, which struck its prey fast and low and often in the air from a perch or promontory, or the peregrine that screamed down from the heavens at 200 miles an hour with balled fists and intercepted its target in a mid-flight explosion of meat and feathers, the huge gyr cruised silent and white above the desert floor.  When the gyrfalcon sighted its prey