Would you rather be the hunter or the hunted?

That is the choice ex-CIA operative Jake Jacobs, now a comfortable history professor, must make after he discovers his name on an online hitlist. And his choice draws him back into the old game and to a former lover as he fights to stay alive.

Jake Jacobs happily put the wasted years of his CIA service behind him two decades ago. Now a history professor in Oregon, he is at work on a book about a possible mole in the Agency who was never outed. Suddenly, he finds himself pulled back into the secret world when his name and photo, along with those of four others, appears on a revenge site, Reckoning. The site promises vengeance for an op that went sideways in Vienna during the final days of the Cold War.

Ancient history to Jake, who figures someone is trolling him. Until a couple of the online photos are suddenly X-ed out, and he discovers those two, who were also involved in the disastrous op, have been killed. Left on this insider list are Jake; his one-time superior at CIA, Laurence Armitage; and his former adversary, KGB officer Yuri Vosenko.

Jake would rather be the hunter than the hunted and ultimately teams up with his old nemesis, Vosenko, to track down the Reckoning site and whoever is behind it. This takes Jake from the West Coast of the U.S. to the moors of Ireland, to the arms of Tania in Vienna, and to the Alpine passes of Austria in an explosive and emotional journey into an all too real wilderness of mirrors.