Two boys with a get rich quick scheme end up in prison, but when they meet a famed treasure hunter named Blake West with a plan to break out they agree to journey out into the unforgiving desert to uncover a mysteriously cursed artifact. Blake West's former employer, a Japanese industrialist, is determined to beat our hero to the treasure and stop the boys by any means necessary.

Dr. Temperance Brennan and her colleagues at the Jeffersonian's Medico-Legal Lab assist Special Agent Seeley Booth with murder investigations when the remains are so badly decomposed, burned or destroyed that the standard identification methods are useless.