Ian Grayson's priority is to protect the artifact which could be the answer to all his questions, but he has already been chased across Belize and Mexico by those who would take it from him by any means necessary and he is desperate to find a way to escape from them and get home to Chicago. When he persuades a trucker to give him a ride he has no idea that his life was about to take a whole new direction. When Mackenzie Wallace picks up an unlikely hitch-hiker he soon discovers one should never go by first appearances, Ian Grayson was certainly not what he expected from a Doctor of Archaeology.

Ian’s experiences with Christmas have never been particularly good and Mac wants their first Christmas together to be something special, a time Ian will always treasure. As ever, things don't quite go according to plan.

Tomcat Line 2: The Lost Temple

Tomcat Line 3 West of El Pilar Tracking another of Uncle Roger's more outrageous theories concerning a special crystal skull, Ian takes Mac back to Central America where together they search for a hidden temple near the huge archaeological site of El Pilar which straddles the border of Belize and Guatemala. After searching for weeks, Ian knows he is close. He has found the plaza and the causeway and now the palace, the temple has to be here! Whatever Ian hoped for it most certainly was not an attack by two determined thieves who will stop at nothing to get their way

Ian needs a vacation and what better way than joining Mac for a week on one of his trucking runs. Mac has a surprise planned for his lover but it seems that Mac is the one in for a surprise when Ian finds a Native American Kiva in an ancient pueblo. But then Mac begins to act out of character and Ian finds each day becoming harder as Mac's behavior becomes stranger and more threatening. Ian has to discover more about the Anasazi as he comes to suspect there was something dark hidden in the ancient Kiva.

A stranger leaves Ian a bequest that starts him on a search which begins five hundred years earlier and takes him further back in time until his hunt leads him to TeotihuacA n in Mexico. However, even Ian didn't realize where his search would finally lead him as he and Mac dig beneath an ancient palace. They discover a pair of skeletons who are guardians to a goddess and a crystal spider that takes them on yet another journey. All the time they are being stalked by a man who believes he has been cheated out of his inheritance.