Lee Carruthers is an agent with the CIA.
She has been for a short while but in that not too long a period she has made an impressive name for herself as someone who goes far beyond her job description. That job is as an analyst and she is very, very good at it. She specializes in money movement and learning how the transfer of funds can indicate if not prove upcoming events. Some of the time the people she looks into or the organizations they head deal in criminal behavior and sometimes they go much deeper by funding terrorists. Regardless, Carruthers is tenacious at getting to the truth.
But the going beyond her job description deals with something other than just putting in extra hours in front of computer screens or bank ledgers. Quite often she willingly puts herself out into the field dodging bullets and bombs and, when necessary, giving as good as she can and she can really well.
She would be the first to tell you that she is not a trained field operative. She tells others that on more than one occasion and she reminds herself of it a time or three, like when she is a prisoner locked in a dark room in a Moroccan holding facility being interrogated. But if you asked the numerous people she has confronted from time to time whether she was a "real agent", those still breathing might not agree with her denials.
Carruthers is single, attractive, and quite human in all normal desires but though she would not mind a lasting relationship, she has yet to find someone she would give up her job for. She is not an action junkie, she would declare, but the thought of a nine-to-five job forever behind a desk makes her shiver. And though she has had a couple of relationships that might make her reconsider for a moment or two, she remains alone.
As the series progresses, her job description will change a bit but who she is inside and how to handles herself will not. She remains a very effective, very self-reliant agent.