With her brother jailed on a charge of homicide, Claudia Rose takes his place when his teenage daughter goes missing from an archaeological dig in Egypt. Traveling to Cairo and Luxor, Claudia discovers that her sheltered niece, Monica, is behaving entirely out of character. She's taken off on a romantic weekend getaway with Colin Vine, an archaeologist with a shady past that seems to be spilling into the present. Her search for Monica takes her into a tomb, to Gibraltar, and to the UK, where her skills as a forensic handwriting expert of international renown are needed to help foil a terrorist plot-if only she can find her niece before she and Colin are used as pawns in a deadly game.