Steve Vail is a maverick: a trained killer and former agent who despises authority and who never met a rule he didn't break. These days he's working as a bricklayer. Now Deputy Director Kate Bannon of the FBI desperately wants his help.Because someone is killing their operatives - in complex, subtle, twisted ways - and the body count is rising fast. Someone holds a fatal grudge against the agency: someone who knows how it works, and wants bloody revenge. And it might be an inside job.To stem the tide of murders, Vail must re-enter a world he hoped he left behind long ago - his own past...