Three years ago in 1867, Julia Jackson was a well to do young woman from Boston whose fiancé, Jonathon, was killed right before her eyes. Obsessed with finding the killer, a man whose face she saw only in a flash as he walked up and shot Jonathon, she leaves her family and her life behind. She starts a new life as 'Jacks' Jackson-a cigar smoking, dead eye, female Pinkerton agent...pretending to be a man. Now Allan Pinkerton needs Jacks to find the man who kidnapped the wife and son of a railroad official, David Boyd. Their only clues are the severed finger from the man's wife, complete with wedding ring, and a map of the Qualla boundary, the Cherokee reservation in North Carolina. Jacks doesn't like the way the whole thing sounds from the beginning. David Boyd isn't important enough to target for a kidnapping. And why travel so far with two hostages? But Pinkerton tells her that he believes the man responsible for the kidnapping worked with Jonathon's murderer in a train robbery five years ago. Jacks agrees to go after the kidnapper with hopes of catching him before he can reach his home grounds. Pinkerton insists that Jacks bring three men with her-Boyd, her new partner, and a Cherokee guide named Running Wolf, who's always watching her, like he's trying to figure it out. Can Jacks catch the kidnapper with her secret-and her life-intact?