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Pete Garrison is a
U.S. Secret Service agent who saved a president's life by jumping in
front of a hail of bullets, over twenty years ago.
Well-liked
and respected by his colleagues in the Secret Service, Garrison is a
career agent who now heads the First Lady's detail. He lives in a
high-level, orderly world of hierarchical structure, plans, maps,
motorcades, code names, lingo and procedures. It's a universe that
makes sense, until secrets begin to tear it apart. Pete's fellow agent
and friend, Charlie Merriweather, hints at wanting to share critical
and confidential information. Before that can happen,
however, Merriweather is shot dead at his house in a crime that is made
to look like a botched robbery.
The
investigation falls to the Secret Service's top investigative agent,
David Breckinridge, a volatile combination of by-the-book and hothead,
Garrison's prot?g?, and, until recently one of Garrison's best friends.
Breckinridge follows the evidence and only the evidence and
scrupulously tries to avoid working from his gut. That's what being a
great investigator requires. Garrison, as perhaps the greatest
protective agent in the service, often has to work from gut, from pure
instinct. In protective work that is often all you have.
Garrison's
and Breckinridge's recent falling out was triggered by Breckinridge's
mistaken belief that Garrison was having an affair with Breckinridge's
now ex-wife.
Jill
Marin, a tough, sassy and ambitious young agent who just graduated
second in her class at the Secret Service Academy, arrives for her
first field posting. She has requested a work detail with Breckinridge
because Garrison, while leading a field instruction exercise at the
Academy told Jill that Breckinridge was the best investigator in the
entire Service.
Together
the trio begins to uncover what appears to be an inside job to
assassinate the president ? a traitor in the ranks of the Secret
Service. It's never happened in the institution's 141-year history.
Suspicion
ultimately falls on Garrison, who's going to find it extremely
difficult to clear his name because someone is framing him.
Whoever
is framing Garrison knows he's vulnerable because he's devoting
considerable effort to hiding a monumental secret. Suspected of being
treasonous, Garrison goes on the run, pursued by Breckinridge and Marin
? his own colleagues ? as he tries to nail the real mole and save the
president's life.
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