Mason Hawke just wants to be left alone. Born with a musician's hands, Hawke has spent the past decade using his lightning-quick fingers to deal death instead of tunes, moving from one town to the next hoping to mute the voices of the dead that continually ring in his ears. But while playing piano in a two-bit saloon in Nebraska, Hawke witnesses a couple of roughnecks gun down a friend of his, and a few seconds later, the killer falls, by Hawke's hand. To honor his dead friend, Hawke travels to her home in New Orleans, but trouble seems to follow Mason Hawke like a hungry dog, and within days, he has put a bullet into a gun-toting thief.

But what should have been a simple act of justice becomes the beginning of a hunt. The man who Hawke shot was part of a business, part of a group, and that group is now determined to take revenge on Mason Hawke. That last tune in Nebraska began a trail that would take him on a winding road, to New Orleans, Missouri, and finally Kansas, before the vendetta that began in Nebraska can finally be put to rest.