All it took was a split second for Secret Service agent Sean King's attention to wander and his third-party presidential candidate, Clyde Ritter, to die. Eight years later King hears the news that once again a third-party candidate has been taken out of the presidential race, abducted from under the nose of another Secret Service agent, Michelle Maxwell. King and Maxwell form an uneasy alliance and begin a search for answers that leads them into the government's Witness Protection Program and the mysterious past of Clyde Ritter's assassin.