Ricker Allemand is a scammer. A cheat, a thief, a liar. He’s also very good at it. He only has one rule; he doesn’t shit in his own nest. Scamming his fellow Americans is out. That’s just in case it bites him in the ass.
His first scam was at university, one that he on-sold to a Swiss company in less than a year, but now, years later, he has perfected the art of taking only small amounts that fly under the radar, but he takes hundreds of thousands of them. It works; those tiny percentages add up, and he is now rich. Then four men and one woman from the US Treasury come calling. All to ask questions about that very first program he wrote, the one he sold. They want all the details. They don’t get them.
“See the Swiss owners,” reply from Ricker only went so far; he was taken down to Treasury headquarters for questioning; his computer and mobile phone were confiscated. He refused to cooperate, insisted on his lawyer being present, and that killed the interview. They had absolutely nothing, other than a hot idea based on the document that was used to set up the company. The Treasury officials had got nowhere.

Three weeks later, Sarah O’Doyle turned up at his office, returning his computer and phone, both of which he immediately junked. It would cost more to comprehensively debug them than they were worth. Ricker is relaxed with Sarah, but still wary; she was the lady in the original hit squad and obviously not impressed by the stupid performance of her Treasury pals. But despite Ricker’s reservations, they hit it off, and become friends. The ongoing Macho attitude at Treasury annoys her, and Ricker offers her a job, doing the boring and mundane task of code checking before launching a new program. It’s a task he hates; Sarah is good at it, way better than him, and he   promises her of a share in the new program’s profits.
But Ricker has a pet gripe. Belarusian State sponsored hackers had ripped him off, and a program he and Sarah developed had enabled revenge; Ricker cleaned them out, just to teach them a lesson, and under the deal he had with Sarah, he paid a third of the money into a bank account in her name. He then informs her. She is stunned.
“Ricker, what the fuck have you just done?”
He suddenly realizes that Sarah is still Treasury, and was there to find out about what he was really doing. With him paying the scammed money into her account, she is compromised; her job at Treasury is gone.
She leaves, but finds Ricker has done nothing wrong. But one of his programs, an arms dealing one, has uncovered an American importing some serious arms; rockets and launchers, grenades and launchers. He flags it to the FBI and names the person involved. The FBI are too slow and the ex-soldiers now zero in on their target; a school to be held to ransom. The lives of children are now under threat and the level of tension rises. Due to Rickers information, the attack fails, but the leader escapes, and he sets out to hunt Ricker down and kill him. The FBI hunt him, and lose him. They will now have to get in line, as the upset Belarusian secret service sends two Agents to find Ricker, just so an assassin can be sent to kill him. The FBI notices and tracks the two Agents, well aware a killer will be soon arriving. Sarah comes back to work for Ricker, but Ricker is in way deeper than she realized; he also has CIA contacts form long ago. Deadly contacts, Ricker has to sort out another mess, one that he is delighted to fix. Sarah has had enough. Sarah leaves again, this time permanently.
Despite her now being pregnant. the stress of working with Ricker has reached breaking point; she is now carrying his baby. She knows that Ricker chances of survival are now low and getting lower every day. She has done the numbers. He will get himself and anybody with him killed!

So when does the impossibly brave become the impossibly stupid? When someone dies? Or when the winner finally stands alone? Alive?