When a sudden rainstorm disrupts an archeological dig at a remote Mayan site, site supervisor Deborah Miller makes an astonishing discovery: a collection of rubies so precious that generations of men have died -- and killed -- to possess them. Some believe the jewels harbor occult power; others believe they are the key to the arms race; still others see merely their potential for profit. But Deborah doesn't want power or money -- she only wants the truth. And so she sets out to trace the stones' complex history across four centuries and two continents, from Mexico to northern England, where the rubies once played a harrowing role in the Lancashire witch trials of 1612. But she is not the only one obsessed with the jewels; close on her heels is a notorious arms dealer who will stop at nothing, not even murder, to claim the prize for himself.