Discovering time travel ended up being the easy part. Unfortunately, along the way Dr. Jeff Jacobs also discovered how expensive time travel research can be. But he's developed a unique scheme to fund his experiments: pinpoint specific moments in history where there is "reliable" documentation of vulnerable treasure and take it. His first target is gold rusher Joe Wilton, whose historically-preserved diary details his loss of 60 gold bars during an ambush in 1849 California. When Jeff returns from a successful mission, he and his team get lots of attention for their "historical" find. He meets Dr. Erica Danforth, a well-known historian with an obsessive passion for the Wilton heist.

She has doubts about how gold lost for over a century-and-a-half has mysteriously reappeared and despises him when she learns the truth. But when a member of his team is marooned in Colonial Philadelphia on a subsequent mission, Erica is the only person Jeff can turn to for help.