Page 1 of Defiant Hearts

Chapter One

Wyatt Rhodes had stared down armed men, fast-moving, freezing rivers and a mountain lion at twelve paces.

None of it ever made his hands sweat the way a hundred-forty pages of black text on white paper did.

He sat in the back row of the classroom at the Black Heart Tactical Training Facility, the Mountain Warfare Tactical Operations Manual open in front of him to a page he’d flipped to twenty minutes ago and hadn’t moved past since.

The letters did what they always did when he stared at a page: they swam. They doubled. They swapped places like they were mocking him.

That made him ask the same question he always did—why couldn’t he just focus?

He traced a finger under the line of text, mouth barely moving. Who wrote training manuals for elite mountain units, anyway? The least they could do was spare one page for a diagram.

This kind of thing made him edgy on a good day. Add to that the fact that their class of one hundred men had shrunk to thirty over the course of a few weeks, and the pressure was on.

Thirty candidates left, and word was only six of them would be selected for the mountain expedition. The rest would graduate with standard placements—respectable yes, but forgettable too. Six got the assignment that actually meant something.

Around him, ten other candidates read in comfortable silence, turning pages slowly. One guy picked up a highlighter and underlined something important that Wyatt couldn’t begin to figure out how to concentrate on, but he turned his own page as if he had a reason to.

If only they’d allow phones in the facility, he’d pull up the app that would read the text to him word for word. He’d sneak the manual out and tonight, alone, with his earbuds in, he’d have the flat, robotic voice read it to him while the guy in the next bunk slept.

He never expected to read this much in mountain warfare training, and worse, he lost hours of sleep every night learning the material. He was up until two most nights. Then he was up again at 0500 for PT, running on no sleep and a bad attitude.

And it showed.

He heard what others said about him—not only his fellow operatives, but the trainers.

They thought he didn’t want this.

And damn did their words eat at him.

He’d spent twelve years finding people. Hikers gone missing off marked trails. Kids who’d wandered away from campsites. Men who didn’t want to be found and needed finding anyway.

Not one of those people ever doubted that he chose to be there. But here…

The other guys called him quiet. They didn’t know how hard it was to drag himself out of bed and then run drills that made seventy other classmates drop out. He didn’t hang around after hours with the rest of them playing poker. Every free hour belonged to the manual and the app and the goddamned war he was fighting alone in his room.

So they’d decided he had a chip on his shoulder. And Wyatt decided they could think what they wanted.

He heard his own name and looked up from the black sea of letters to the doorway where two of his trainers stood. Reno’s low voice carried as he spoke to Gabe Thorne, the man who ran this whole operation. The man who decided who made it up the mountain and who got sent home.

Wyatt’s gaze fixed on the open manual, but he strained to hear the conversation in the hallway with the same focus he used in nature to keep from running into a mama grizzly bear with her cubs.

“—not saying he can’t shoot,” Reno was saying. “He shoots better than any I’ve seen. I’m saying he doesn’t want it bad enough. Look at him. He’s not even pretending to learn the material. He doesn’t do any of the team-building exercises with the others. And he comes in every morning like the day already pissed him off. I’ve seen guys wash out for less. And I sure as hell won’t put my name on a mountain roster for a guy who can’t be bothered to try.”

Wyatt’s jaw locked. He looked down at the manual, at the paragraph he’d been staring at for four solid minutes without ingesting a single word. And for one ugly second he let himself believe what Reno said was true.

Maybe they’re right. Maybe you’re just not built for this. Maybe you’re exactly what everyone said you were. What kind of idiot can’t read?

He didn’t bother pretending anymore. He just sat there, staring at a page, hating how much this skill he didn’t have—could never have—mattered when he could outdo every man here in any other test.

Gabe didn’t answer Reno. But Wyatt knew his response. He’d already pulled Wyatt aside and told him to drop the attitude.

A few minutes later, Reno stepped back into the classroom and dismissed them. The candidates filed out for a break, and Wyatt used the cover to slip the book into the backpack next to his desk.

Gabe’s voice cut through the room. “Rhodes. My office.”

Dread slammed through him.