In the fall of 1865, Confederate prisoner of war Cole Terry returns to post-war Mississippi consumed with anger and hellbent on vengeance. Spurning his wartime promise to the beautiful Annabelle Gardner, he sets out to thwart the stepfather who betrayed him and the Confederacy. Fate hands Cole the means to intercept Sam's long-sought settlement of an old Revolutionary War claim amounting to a fortune in Yankee gold. But Cole and cohorts' theft is threatened by the fact that Sam's acquisition of the money was itself a convoluted heist conceived deep within the bowels of the Treasury Department, and Treasury wants the money back. Complicating matters, Treasury's investigation is mired in the disappearance of James Petersen, the politically connected Union officer who, working with Sam Caruthers, took Cole prisoner back in 1863.But as the Radical design against the defeated South takes shape, Cole realizes there is more at stake than personal vengeance, now overshadowed by the cause of liberty and the realization that his tossed-away Annabelle, no stranger to the war-time machinations surrounding his capture, harbors secrets of her own, and those secrets have placed her in the crosshairs of ruthless men. How much does Annie know regarding the stolen money and the missing James Petersen, and truth be told, is she friend or foe?