It was a summer morning in 1982 when soldiers ravaged the Guatemalan village of Chupan Ya, raping and killing women and children. Twenty-three victims are said to lie in the well where, twenty years later, Dr. Temperance Brennan and a team from the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation now dig. They are packing up for the day when an urgent satellite call comes in. Two colleagues are under attack. Shots ring out, and Tempe listens in horror to a woman's screams. Then there is silence. With this new violence, everything changes, both for the team and for Tempe, who's asked by the Guatemalan police for her expertise on another case. Four privileged young women have vanished from Guatemala City in recent months, and one of them is the Canadian ambassador's daughter. Teaming with Special Crimes Investigator Bartolome Galiano and Montreal detective Andrew Ryan (who may have more than just professional reasons to join her on the case), Tempe soon finds herself in a dangerous web that stretches far beyond Guatemala's borders as power, money, greed, and science converge.