For eighteen years, Will Harper, the NYPD Bomb Squad's number one man, lived by the motto, "Assume the worst and you'll be ready for it." Luckily, most bomb threats turned out to be false alarms...until the law of averages finally caught up with him, causing his young partner, Jimmy Fahey, to lose his nerve, and Harper to lose three fingers and his career.Wracked with guilt, Fahey quit the Squad for a cushy security job on the posh estate of millionaire technothriller author Rod Buckner, while Harper, forced into early retirement, resigned himself to a quiet life spent renovating the Brooklyn brownstone he shares with his wife, Laura. But when Fahey and Buckner are blown to bits by a mail bomb, it sends Harper back to the violent, nerve-wracking world where split-second decisions can mean the difference between life and death.Enter Harold Addleman, former profiler for the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit and ex-drunk, who's made a living crawling inside the skin of killers. Holed up in a slum apartment furnished with high-tech computer equipment, Addleman has his own ideas about cracking this case, and Harper needs to know them. Addleman's theory: the lethal blast that killed Buckner and Fahey wasn't an isolated incident. And when more packages are sent - each one more sophisticated and deadly than the last - it soon becomes clear that there is method to the bomber's madness, and that his murderous history dates back much further than the FBI is willing to admit. Read Less