Tough Going

TOUGH GOING

A Mercer Sample Thriller

They burned his solar farm.

They shattered his arm.

Then they kidnapped his nine-year-old daughter.

Garrett Hayes built a hard life on thirty isolated acres in the high desert. Off-grid. Independent. Untouchable. But when a ruthless corporate security outfit called Apex Solutions decides his land sits on top of the most valuable water rights in the basin, Garrett becomes a problem that needs to disappear.

The local sheriff is bought and paid for.

The law looks the other way.

And the clock is running out.

Desperate and out of options, Garrett turns to Mercer Sample — a ghost-like drifter living out of an old Airstream trailer at a forgotten desert airfield. Mercer is a man with a dangerous past, a tactical mind, and zero patience for corporate mercenaries hiding behind lawyers and political corruption.

What starts as a rescue mission quickly becomes an all-out war.

Deep inside an abandoned copper mine fortified by heavily armed contractors, a little girl is being held hostage while powerful men gamble millions over stolen land and water rights. Mercer plans to hit the compound from the one direction nobody expects: straight down a three-hundred-foot cliff in the dead of night.

Outnumbered.

Outgunned.

And running out of time.

But Mercer Sample didn’t come to negotiate.

Packed with relentless action, savage close-quarters combat, razor-sharp dialogue, and cinematic tension, TOUGH GOING delivers a modern western thriller loaded with corrupt lawmen, corporate greed, tactical warfare, and frontier justice in the spirit of classic hardboiled action heroes.

Perfect for readers who love:

Modern western thrillers

Vigilante justice stories

Tactical action and survival fiction

Desert noir suspense

Antihero loners with deadly skills

High-stakes hostage rescue missions

Fast-paced rural crime thrillers