The worst was past.

John Worthy thought he had conquered his demons. Gotten over his guilt over Roni Keller’s death. Banished regrets about the boy he’d been: a kid forced to make an impossible choice. Yes, he was doing just fine until Hank Patterson showed up.

But now the worst is yet to come.

Sent on a covert mission to Afghanistan’s remote Wakhan Corridor, John and his Brotherhood Protectors partner, Taz Davila, are tasked with retrieving Roni Keller’s remains. Plagued by delays, rockslides, and the weather, there is also a clear and present danger which John, a man with more than his share of secrets, is determined to keep.

And the past is only prologue.

As they drive further into the mountains, John delves deeper into his own tortured past: from the trauma of 9/11 to the disastrous explosion at Abbey Gate—and the reasons behind the doomed, off-the-books rescue mission which cost Roni her life.

But when Taz is gravely wounded, John is left with yet another impossible choice: abandon his partner or lose his one shot at redemption.

John Worthy knows a thing or two about loss.

For starters, he's a fiction. A made-up man. A phony with a past spun out of thin air. He's lost his parents, his brother, the place he called home. John isn't even his real name. Before he was John, he was Danny. Before he was Danny, he was just a freaked-out kid with a singular talent: a boy forced to make an impossible choice.

Now, an Army surgeon, he's a loner—until he meets Roni Keller. The daughter of a Marine, Roni is stubborn, determined, a fearless physician. Closer than friends, not quite lovers, they are deployed to assist in the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan…

Where he makes a single, fatal mistake during an unsanctioned mission which costs Roni her life. Where John loses everything, even Roni's remains which are never found.

Adrift, broken, John has checked into Brighter Days, a rehabilitation ranch for wounded warriors, and remade himself—again. He's ready to leave when, out of the blue, Hank Patterson, a man he's never met, shows up with an offer: return to Afghanistan with Taz Davila on a retrieval mission to recover Captain Keller's remains from the forbidding mountainous terrain of the Wakhan Corridor, far to the northeast of Kabul.

How and why Roni's body ended up hundreds of miles from where she died…no one knows. And just what is in the mountains that's got the Russians—and even the Chinese—so interested?

In a race against time and enemies both known and hidden, John Worthy must confront present dangers and past demons to find redemption—and recover what he has lost.