The Soft Target: The Haven Protocol - Book One - Softcover

Cern, Darren

9798193477228: The Soft Target: The Haven Protocol - Book One

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798193477228

Publisher: Independently published, 2026

View all copies of this ISBN edition

0 Used

2 New

From US$ 18.00

The numbers didn’t lie. They just didn’t talk. Insurance investigator Brandon Keeling has spent eleven quiet years dismantling fraud one spreadsheet at a time — until a Tacoma warehouse fire exposes a discrepancy so precise, so engineered, it couldn’t be an accident. When he circles a customs weight mismatch in blue pen, he unknowingly steps into the crosshairs of a criminal network that eliminates problems before they become threats.

From the moment Brandon receives a midnight call — “You should have shredded the Hartwell file.” — his life detonates. Two masked men break into his home. His daughter Mia is nearly abducted. And the only reason they survive is the intervention of a stranger who moves with the lethal calm of someone who’s done this before.

His name is Mark Waverly — former federal operator, now part of a covert, off‑books tactical group known only as Haven. Waverly sees what Brandon refuses to: the Hartwell Logistics case isn’t fraud. It’s a pipeline. A shell-company labyrinth. A smuggling architecture. And Brandon’s discovery has triggered a response from the Novak Network — a syndicate that doesn’t bluff, doesn’t warn twice, and doesn’t leave loose ends alive.

Brandon freezes the night the men come for Mia — a failure that costs him custody, safety, and the illusion that his life is ordinary. Determined never to freeze again, he enters Haven’s brutal training program: pressure simulations, tactical drills, counter‑surveillance, and the psychological rewiring required to function under lethal stress. He fails constantly. He improves slowly. And when the Novak Network escalates — tailing him, stalking Mia’s school, and killing a Haven intelligence officer — Brandon volunteers for the operation he’s nowhere near ready for.

Because the danger isn’t waiting for him to become ready.

The Soft Target is a relentless, character-driven thriller about an ordinary man forced into extraordinary danger — a story of fear, failure, grit, and the slow, painful construction of a new self. It blends the forensic intrigue of Reacher, the tactical realism of Terminal List, and the emotional stakes of Taken into a grounded, high-velocity narrative.

Brandon Keeling wasn’t built for violence. But violence has decided he’s part of the equation.

And Haven doesn’t let its people face the dark alone.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.