A Fistful of Rain

No names. No feds. No trace evidence. That's how Jonathan Grave operates. As a freelance specialist in covert rescues, he has to work outside the law to get things done--especially in highly sensitive hostage situations. But when an Indiana college student is abducted, and Jonathan's meticulous plan explodes into a deadly shooting spree, the local authorities are out for blood--and they're not alone. Someone wants to control a devastating secret . . . someone rich and powerful . . . someone willing to capture, torture, and kill anyone to get it. Even the people Jonathan loves most. . .

"Gilstrap hits the accelerator and never lets up."--Harlan Coben

"A gut-grabbing, pure-adrenaline rush."--Jeffery Deaver

"Gilstrap pushes every thriller button." --San Francisco Chronicle

It’s not even a clue. It’s a whisper, a trace, a ghost echo, drifting down through the decades via chance connections so fragile that they would disintegrate in the puff of a breath. But it’s enough to get legendary former Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger interested in the events of November 22, 1963, and the third bullet that so decisively ended the life of John F. Kennedy and set the stage for one of the most enduring controversies of our time.

Swagger begins his slow night stalk through a much-traveled landscape. But he’s asking questions that few have asked before: Why did the third bullet explode? Why did Lee Harvey Oswald, about to become the most hunted man on earth, risk it all by returning to his rooming house to secure a pistol he easily could have brought with him? How could a conspiracy that went unpenetrated for fifty years have been thrown together in the two and a half days between the announcement of the president’s route and the assassination itself?

As Bob investigates, another voice enters the narrative: knowing, ironic, almost familiar, that of a gifted, Yale-educated veteran of the CIA Plans Division. Hugh Meachum has secrets and the means and the will to keep them buried. When weighed against his own legacy, Swagger’s life is an insignificant expense—but to blunt the threat, he’ll first have to ambush the sniper.