Page 1 of Hard Pursuit
PROLOGUE
The first thing Archer Carmichael noticed wasn’t the applause. It was the exits.
Two doors behind the crowd. One on the left, partially blocked by a catering table. Windows lining the far wall—fixed, but breakable if it came down to it. A narrow hallway leading to restrooms for the guests could bottleneck movement if things went bad.
He swept his gaze around the training hall in a single pass, cataloguing every detail without giving away that he was calculating how fast he could clear the room if he had to.
Archer sat in formation with the rest of the operators graduating today from the Black Heart Tactical Training Facility. The clean rows mirrored the discipline drilled into them. They were all here to celebrate surviving the most grueling training of their lives, but their uniforms were pristine and their shoes were polished.
On the outside, he fit in with the men who’d made it through—guys who’d spent weeks climbing at altitude with seventy-pound packs digging into their shoulders and lungs burning thanks to air that never felt like enough.
They’d learned how to move fast across loose scree without sliding, to trust crampons in ice even when it shifted under their weight. And to push past the shake in their legs halfway up a vertical ascent.
Sleep came in short, broken stretches, if it came at all. Food was rationed. When the price of every movement cost energy, wasting it wasn’t an option.
The applause swelled again, bouncing off the high timber ceilings of the training facility. The place smelled like the baked chicken the caterers waited to feed the group of graduates and their guests after the ceremony and the warmth of bodies seated too close together.
His senses were heightened, because before he was accepted into the mountain warfare program…before he was just another troubled vet in the Black Heart Therapy Program…he’d spent thirteen months in a single room with only the smell of his own stale sweat and fear.
He shut the memory down before it could take hold of him.
The guest speaker finished his speech to another round of applause. Archer scanned the exits one more time, his gaze snagging on the familiar faces of his family sitting in the third row.
Here to celebrate his achievement were his three brothers and his baby sister Ellory, the only family member to see him after he was freed from the hostage situation. He didn’t want any of them here, but family was encouraged to attend and Archer didn’t want to buck the system.
The speaker congratulated the operators and announced them as graduates to the sound of cheers and applause. He drifted to the middle of the open space with the men he’d clawed his way through drills with for the past three months.
While the families milled around, searching for their person, he swept a look over the group. He was a good six inches taller than average, so he easily picked out his sister’s shining dark hair and those of their brothers flanking her like a royal guard detail.
Someone pressed a glass into his hand, and he clasped it, waiting for his family to battle their way through the crowd.
As soon as Ellory spotted him, her face lit up with a big smile. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. He patted her back and accepted her smoothing a hand down his uniform jacket, fussing over him before stepping back and wiping away a tear.
He greeted his brothers next. When their parents started popping out kids like rabbits, they decided that they should be named in alphabetical order. So Archer greeted Bram, Cross and Dray after his sister Ellory.
It had been a long time since he’d seen his brothers, and he could feel them assessing him. Thankfully, they didn’t discuss what brought him to this place, only urged him to the buffet and started filling their plates with chicken.
While his family talked and laughed like it was a family dinner, Archer excused himself and drifted to the windows. He didn’t belong here with them.
The sound faded to background noise, and he lost himself in the view. Out there, there was only the mountain and sky.
“Archer.”
He turned to see the founder of the therapy program, Oaks Malone. He stuck out a hand, and Archer clasped it, callus on callus, and met Oaks’s gaze.
The man offered him a crooked grin. “You did it. Top of the class.”
He shook his hand, firm and brief. “That was the goal.”
Being the best had always been his goal. Not just passing. Not just finishing.Winning.Because anything less meant weakness, and nothing about Archer was weak.
“You earned it.” Oaks clapped him on the shoulder. “Time to bask in the glory.”
That brought a quirk to Archer’s lips. Convincing his therapist to release him to enter the training program as partof his recovery had been the best decision he’d ever made. Of course, some people doubted that he could do it, but Archer wasn’t broken.
He hadn’t been tortured, not in the way people expected. No fingernails ripped out. No waterboarding. Just isolation. Neglect. Time stretching thin until it barely existed at all.
Thirteen months of being forgotten.
