Heel Strike
Hira Verick
Type: ARC
Genre: Thriller
Word count: 44,000
Warnings: Graphic violence, graphic sexual content, swearing
A subtle flaw in the world’s digital plumbing surfaces—and analyst Cadence N. Gait won’t let it pass. What begins as a routine check becomes a cross-border chase through consulates, back rooms, and mountain switchbacks. Heel Strike blends credible cyber-espionage with a traveller’s eye: design details, culinary anecdotes, and dry humour. Tradecraft over theatrics; atmosphere you can taste.
What’s this?
Heel Strike is a globe-spanning techno-thriller about what happens when the systems built to move us start moving us where they want—in plain sight. Cadence N. Gait is a sharp-eyed designer with a second life in the shadows, posted to Munich for a simple data lift: copy a file, make a drop, disappear. Instead, a stolen USB, shattered glass, and an unexpected MI6 operative, Jasmine Jaffrey, turn a routine run into a cross-border escape.
The file points to Pathweaver—an unseen platform threading together reservations, identity checks, baggage routing, and “random” delays. From Munich to the Alps and onward, every border becomes a test. As airports, hotels, and consulates become levers of control, Cadence and Jasmine race through the world’s transit corridors to learn who’s tuning the friction—and why.
Fast, grounded, and unnervingly plausible, Heel Strike blends tradecraft, contemporary tech, and a traveller’s eye for detail into a chase you’ll feel in your stomach.
I’m a dual Australian–Swedish citizen of Scottish-Indian descent. My path has been anything but linear: from working in a secure facility for a Canberra-based defence contractor, to traveling globally as one of Australia’s first professional climbers, to advising major companies on design and technology. I’ve lived in Australia, the UK, Sweden, the USA, and Germany. I’ve also lectured on digital technology at Oxford Brookes University. Alongside peer-reviewed work on innovation and entrepreneurship, I co-invented a US-registered digital video patent.
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