Alex Thornton is an agent with Unit 28.
That is a small department inside the huge umbrella of Homeland Security. It is said to be one of the elite sections of the huge Cabinet Department. The 5-cent description of their mission is that they "were tasked with gathering recon information to protect the homeland. Often, their field agents and research staffs were [loaned out] to other agencies to help them on projects".
Alex Thornton is described by one person as being a vixen, something that is readily agreed to but that individual also mentioned that "she barely scrapes five-three. But I'd never want to run tinto her in a dark alley". She is also mentioned as being both a "good-looking cookie" and a "smart cookie" but the use of the term cookie is not one she would have appreciated. Her father is David Thornton, Congressman with some senority in the House.
We first meet Roya Alexandra Thornton in the prequel short adventure taking place in 2007 in which Unit 28 operatives, one of whom was the "newly minted Unit 28 agent Alex Thornton", were taking part in a sting operation to net the capture of terrorist bigwig Hashim al-Hassan. She will prove to be successful in that assignment though it will leave her with a very powerful enemy.
Our following of Thornton picks up a decade later. During the first six of those years, Thornton had continued to be a valued member of Unit 28 and shown herself capable and competent on several occasions but then an action on her part apparently deviated from the script and she was 'let go', or was fired depending on the teller. It happened during a press conference which not only made it official but also pretty public.
One important fact from that trouble was that the man she had become quite close to, fellow agent Jabir al-Omri, had, to her thinking, abandoned her in the process.
In the four years since then, she has had some changes in her life. Right after the separation, she met someone, had a brief courtship, got married, and then divorced three months later. Then she moved back to her home state of North Carolina and went to work for her parents. She tells herself she has left all the past behind but she knows the truth. She also knows she misses the excitement. Since her new job is with her sister-in-law as a building contractor, she lamented once that "helping someone choose the perfect design for their house or the perfect paint color doesn't compare to collecting intelligence that will foil a bomb plot".
What will bring her previous life back is the kidnapping of one of her best and longest friends. And with that problem will come old enemies and old loves and suddenly, as the saying goes, everything old was new again.