Jareth Hicks is a former agent of the CIA.
Well, he was officially never an employee of the Agency; he was serving in the Armed Forces at the time being asked (by them supposedly, ordered by his superiors in the Army) to handle some very nasty matters. While he is all done permanently with that sort of work, or so he believes, he will find that the skills he had and the experiences he gained will be called upon more than once. This is what makes his adventures so interesting to read.
When we first meet him, when he is also being met by operative Acid Vanilla in a bar he was tending in Montana, she observes that he was "He was good-looking, in an obvious, not-her-type kind of way. Tall, broad shoulders, clean hair. Yet as he leaned over the counter now, she noticed he held a certain rugged charm. It was there in his stubble and crooked grin. In the glimmer of mischief shining behind his eyes." For his memory of her not many months later, he describes her as a "mad, bad woman with the cute face and the devil in her smile".
Hicks tells Vanilla a bit of his history in broad strokes, "U.S. Army...Three tours of duty as combat deployment, then a good few years with Special Forces, before... Well, it's in the past. Seems like an age ago now. I even made colonel, but not anymore. Now I'm a plain old civilian. Still feels weird to say that." That "before" which is now "in the past" will have been spent handling very tricky assignments given him while seconded to the CIA.
"Ever since I left the army I've felt out of place everywhere I go. I'm hoping the time away will help me work out what to do with the rest of my life." While he tries to figure all that out and because he needs to pay the bills as well as just plain keep busy, the now 43-year-old Hicks often works behind a bar slinging potent beverages. It is a shame (for him, not for the readers) that life pulls him out from back there on several occasion.