HELL IS TOO GOOD A PLACE FOR A SADIST. . . . Twenty years after ex-CIA special ops agent Ian Wallace watched a KGB colonel brutally murder the love of his life and their unborn child, he's still wishing the monster Vladimir Ivanchenko had killed him off, too. Endlessly haunted by nightmarish memories of torture, Wallace, the fanatically conservative private investigator, can't seem to escape the bowels of Moscow's Lubyanka prison, even while reaping the comforts of life in suburban Boston. But when the devil himself comes to Beantown on another twisted mission, who better to hunt down Ivanchenko--the Russian mafia don now deemed the most dangerous man in the world--than the fueled-by-guilt and hungry-for-revenge Wallace? All he must do to earn the forty grand the CIA offers him for the task is dedicate the next two weeks of his life to guarding Ivanchenko's target--an obnoxious, greedy, and big government-loving MIT professor, whose research on Ballistic Missile Defense is a matter of national security. That, and partner up with the irresistibly sexy and tough-as-nails Kathy Donahue. Straight from the bleak deserts of war-torn Afghanistan, she just might be the secret to opening up Wallace's sealed and scarred heart. Tension between the highly experienced agents builds, but Wallace's bloodthirsty desire for Ivanchenko's demise reveals his own evil nature, scaring Donahue away. And, as friends and enemies sacrifice their lives to harbor and reveal secrets, Wallace doesn't know to what maniacal extreme he will go to bury his own.