Rielly couldn't think of a friend who didn't have at least one big blowout with her fiancИ, or mother, or mother-in-law while planning her wedding. For her part, Anna had always clung to the romantic notion that one day she'd fall in love and have a big wedding back at St. Ann 's in Chicago. It was where her parents had been married, where she'd been baptized and confirmed and where she and her brothers had gone to grade school. But in the months after they got engaged she could see that this was an idea Mitch was less than enthusiastic about.

It wasn't that he was uncooperative. He told her that if she wanted a big wedding back in Chicago, that is what they'd do, but she could feel his apprehension. He didn't have to state it.

Mitch Rapp did not like being the center of attention. He was a man who was used to working behind the scenes. The strange truth was that her husband had been a covert operative for the CIA since the age of twenty-two. And the harsh reality was that in some circles he was known as an assassin.

In the months before their wedding, during the confirmation hearing for Mitch's boss at the CIA, a member of the House Intelligence Committee had leaked Mitch's story to the press in an attempt to derail Irene Kennedy's nomination as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The President had come to both Rapp and Kennedy's defense and a version of the truth was released to the media.

The President told the story of how Rapp had led a team of commandos deep into Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from joining the nuclear club. The President called Rapp the single most important person in America's fight against terrorism and overnight the politicians lined up to shake his hand.

Rapp had been thrust into the spotlight, and he didn't do well.

Having survived for years because of his ability to move from city to city, and country to country, without being noticed, he was now recognized virtually everywhere he went. There were photographers and reporters who hounded him. Rapp tried to reason with them at first.