Following the instant # 1 New York Times bestseller Stone Cold, Oliver Stone and the Camel Club return in David Baldacci's most surprising thriller yet . . . Known by his alias, "Oliver Stone," John Carr is the most wanted man in America. With two pulls of the trigger, the men who destroyed Stone's life and kept him in the shadows were finally silenced. But his freedom comes at a steep price: The assassinations he carried out prompt the highest levels of the U.S. government to unleash a massive manhunt. Behind the scenes, master spy Macklin Hayes is playing a very personal game of cat and mouse. He, more than anyone, wants Stone dead. With their friend and unofficial leader in hiding, the members of the Camel Club risk everything to save him. Now, as the hunters close in, Stone's flight from the demons of his past will take him from the power corridors of Washington, D.C., to the small, isolated coal-mining town of Divine, Virginia-and into a world every bit as lethal as the one he left behind. *Starred Review* Readers who have been holding their breath since the end of Stone Cold (2007), the previous Camel Club novel, can inhale: Oliver Stone did survive his plunge into the water. For the uninitiated, Baldacci’s Oliver Stone isn’t the noted film director; he’s a former government assassin who has made a risky living foiling government conspiracies. Now, having eluded capture after committing a pair of necessary assassinations, Stone (or John Carr, if you prefer to use his real name) is on the run, hiding out in rural America, where he discovers that small-town intrigue is at least as intricate and dangerous as anything he’s come up against previously. Combining the Camel Club series’ wit and fast pace with a Fugitive-like story (casting Stone as Richard Kimble, the man on the run who risks his life to protect the lives of strangers), Baldacci shows once again that he is a sort of thriller Renaissance man: a master of plot, dialogue, and character. It’s fascinating to observe how Stone operates when he’s entirely on his own, too. Not only is he evading his pursuers, especially Macklin Hayes, whose obsessive determination to capture Stone may be based more on personal reasons than professional ones, but he’s also cast himself adrift from his comrades, who are working feverishly behind the scenes to find him and keep him safe. A rousing success, although this should come as no surprise to faithful Baldacci readers. --David Pitt David Baldacci lives with his family in Virginia. He and his wife have founded the Wish You Well Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting literacy efforts across America. He invites you to visit him at www.david-baldacci.com and his foundation at www.wishyouwellfoundation.org, and to look into its program to spread books across America at www.FeedingBodyandMind.com. Divine Justice By David Baldacci Grand Central Publishing Copyright © 2008 Columbus Rose, Ltd. All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-446-19550-8 Chapter One The Chesapeake Bay is America's largest estuary. Nearly two hundred miles long, its watershed covers an area of sixty-five thousand utopian square miles with more than a hundred and fifty rivers and streams barreling into it. It's also the home of myriad bird and aquatic life, and a haven for legions of recreational boaters. The bay is indeed a creation of remarkable beauty, except when you happen to be swimming in the middle of the damn thing during a thunderstorm in the veiled darkness of early morning. Oliver Stone cracked the surface of the water and gulped in the thick salty air, a thirsty man in the center of a trillion-ton ocean. The long dive had caused him to go farther down than was particularly healthy. Yet when you throw yourself off a thirty-foot cliff into an angry ocean, you should be thankful just to have a heartbeat. As he treaded water he looked around to gauge his bearings. Nothing he saw was too appealing right now. With each streak of lightning sparking to earth, he eyed the three-story-high cliff he'd been standing on. He'd been in the bay less than a minute yet the chill was already drizzling into his bones despite the full-body wet suit he wore underneath his clothes. He stripped off his waterlogged pants, shirt and shoes and then kicked off swimming east. He didn't have much time to get this done. Twenty minutes later he cut toward shore, all four limbs cement. He used to be able to swim all day, but he wasn't twenty anymore. Hell, he wasn't even fifty anymore. Now he just wanted land; he was tired of impersonating a fish. He pointed himself at a cleft in the rock and shot toward it. He slogged free of the breakers and jogged toward a large boulder where he snagged the cloth bag he'd previously hidden. Tugging off his wet suit, he toweled dry and changed into fresh clothes and a pair of tennis shoes. The sodden articles were pushed into the bag, tied to a rock and hurled into the storm-swept b