Billy Summers characters

Also known as David Lockridge

Appears from the start

A former Marine sniper who now kills for money, but accepts contracts only when he believes the target is a seriously harmful person. Billy presents himself to employers as less intelligent than he is, keeping his judgment and reading habits private. For one last lucrative job he agrees to live under the identity of an aspiring writer while waiting for a precise opportunity to shoot a prisoner.

Appears from the start

An organized-crime figure who has hired Billy before and offers him an unusually large fee for a final job. Nick is polished, persuasive, and able to arrange identities, weapons, surveillance, and local assistance, but Billy knows that the relationship rests on money rather than trust.

First appears in chapter 2

The local businessman assigned to establish Billy's cover and manage the practical details of the assassination. Ken supplies an office and introduces Billy to the community as David Lockridge, a writer working on a novel.

First appears in chapter 2

A contract killer jailed on a murder charge and expected to be transported to the county courthouse. Billy is hired to shoot him during that transfer. Nick insists that Joel has committed enough violence to meet Billy's moral condition for accepting the job.

First appears in chapter 6

Billy's younger sister, remembered in the account of his childhood that he begins writing under his cover identity. Her death and Billy's violent response to it shaped his early understanding of protection, guilt, and people who prey on the weak.

First appears in chapter 14

A young woman whom Billy finds unconscious and injured after three men abandon her in the street during a rainstorm. He brings her into his hiding place and cares for her while she recovers, creating an unexpected responsibility at the moment when he most needs to remain invisible.

First appears in chapter 18

A trusted friend from Billy's military past who lives in rural Colorado. Bucky is one of the few people Billy believes will offer practical help without selling him to the criminal network now hunting him.

First appears in chapter 21

A wealthy and influential media executive whose private interests emerge behind the contract on Joel Allen. His resources allow him to use professional criminals to keep damaging information inside his family from becoming public.

First appears in chapter 22

Roger Klerke's adult son. Evidence connecting Patrick to sexual abuse supplies the secret that powerful people have killed to suppress.

First appears in chapter 24

A loyal employee in the Klerke household. She appears to be a peripheral domestic worker when Billy and Alice enter the estate, but her personal gratitude to the family makes her more committed to them than they anticipate.