Chicago. 1992. A hospital patient wakes to find two strangers by his bed.
They show him a list of names and ask a simple but impossible question. Minutes later he falls to his death from his twelfth-floor window - a fall which generates some unexpected attention.
That attention comes from the Secretary of Defense, who calls for an inter-agency task force to investigate. Jack Reacher, recently demoted from Major, is assigned as the Army's representative. If he gets a result, great. If not, he's a convenient fall guy.
Reacher may be an exceptional military investigator, but office politics aren't what gets him up in the morning. As he races to identify a cold-blooded killer and uncover a secret that stretches back 23 years, he must navigate around his new partners.