

Sending Hubble's family into hiding to protect them from Kliner, Reacher kills his son and several other associates after luring them into an ambush. He then realizes that the opposite is true: the Kliners have been hoarding the money in response to a Coast Guard operation cutting off their supply of bills from Venezuela, and plan to resume distribution once the operation is shut down as a cost-saving measure. Roscoe theorizes that the Kliners are using Margrave as a distribution hub for their counterfeit money, but this is eventually disproven when Reacher searches one of their trucks and finds it empty. A second body, belonging to truck driver Sherman Stoller, is found, and Morrison and his wife are brutally murdered shortly thereafter. Reacher learns that the murdered man is his brother, Joe, who was running an investigation into a counterfeiting ring operated by the Kliner family under the protection of Morrison, several dirty cops, and the corrupt mayor, Grover Teale. Suspecting that the deputy warden set them up, Reacher joins Finlay's investigation, while Hubble is presumed dead after vanishing from his house in the middle of the day. Before Reacher can be released, he and Hubble are transferred to a state prison in Warburton, where Reacher manages to thwart an attempt on their lives by the Aryan Brotherhood.

Reacher persuades Finlay to call a number on a piece of paper found in the dead man's shoe the number leads them to Paul Hubble, a retired banker who instantly confesses to the murder. While in custody, Reacher meets Finlay, the chief of detectives, and Roscoe, a female officer who believes him to be innocent. Much to his surprise, shortly after his arrival, he is arrested in a local diner for murder on the orders of the sheriff, Morrison, who falsely claims he saw Reacher leave the scene.

Jack Reacher gets off a Greyhound bus in the town of Margrave, Georgia, because he remembers his brother mentioning that a blues musician named Blind Blake had died there.
