In the novel, retired military police officer Jack Reacher is asked by the Secret Service to help track down assassins who are threatening the Vice President-Elect.

Jack Reacher arrives in Atlantic City after hitching a ride cross-country with a couple of aging blues musicians who dream of playing at B.B.

Froelich hires Reacher to conduct a "security audit" of the Secret Service's protection of Vice President-elect Brook Armstrong, the junior senator from North Dakota.

The would-be assassins kill two men, one in Colorado and one in Minnesota, who resemble the Vice President and also have the name "B. Armstrong," as a warning message.

Ten agents look over the homeless people as they line up to get food from Armstrong, and snipers are posted on the only rooftop that has a clear shot at the Vice President.

Against the recommendations of Stuyvesant and Bannon, Armstrong agrees to Reacher's demands to publicly announce he will attend a funeral for Froelich in her hometown of Grace, Wyoming, to lure the killers out into the open.

Reacher remembers seeing the Thanksgiving Day shooter running with a badge during the assassination attempt in Bismarck, and concludes that the killers are policemen.

The Vice President confesses that, as a teenager in rural Oregon, he stood by as his father brutally beat two local bullies with a baseball bat so hard it broke.

Armstrong reveals that he received a miniature broken baseball bat in the mail (from the killers), which is something the Secret Service did not pick up on during their postal screening as they were not aware of the significance.