Policewoman Charlotte Monroe has a near psychic ability to read people's faces and body language and the FBI wants her in the worst way, maybe even to the point of blackmail. Still, Charlotte's gift fails to prepare her for the stranger who shows up on her doorstep with a chilling warning for her husband, a mysterious not scrawled in Cherokee hieroglyphics, and a promise of things to come: "You're next." When Charlotte's deeply troubled teenage daughter runs away with the stranger, she follows the two of them into the mists of the Great Smoky Mountains and into a 150-year-old blood feud that will endanger everything she loves.