Jackie Michenaud is a brilliant archologist and professor at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. She has a loving but often strained relationship with Frank Collins, a successful young lawyer on a fast track with a posh law firm in nearby Phoenix. Franks work-a-day life is dramatically changed when his friend, noted author Patrick Nelson, is threatened with eviction from his idyllic cabin in Central Arizona. Frank suffers an accident in his private plane under suspicious circumstances while en route to Patricks cabin. Frank and Jackie unite in an effort to protect their threatened friend. They form a team including Franks boss, Abe Sackman, friend and retired air force aviator, Peter Billingsley, and Jackies assistant, Mary Hendrix. Together the group is drawn into a dangerous investigation which leads them from an apparent Aztec temple (hidden for centuries within Arizonas Prescott National Forest) to the ruins of el Templo Mayor in the center of (Tenochtitln) Mexico City.