In spite of all the adversity involved, McAllister’s experience on the Hacha Project proves to be successful and he confides to Lawton that his true quest is The Prize,  a treasure he fully expects the reluctant and leery Lawton to help him find.  In Lawton’s previous published works, McAllister has seen in one of Lawton’s fictional characters, a resolve and determination that he identifies with and believes that Lawton can help him in his life-long dream and ambition.
            
In contrast to McAllister, Granger Lawton is caution, methodical, and steadfastly opposed to extreme force of any form of impulsiveness.  He is often appalled by McAllister’s audacity and spontaneous reactions and always seeks calculated alternatives.  He is not necessarily a coward, merely pragmatic and practical.

Determined to act as McAllister’s Devils’ Advocate, but more concerned that he doesn’t have enough material for a book, Lawton agrees to accompany McAllister in his search for The Prize. Their investigation takes them to Seville, Spain, the home of the Archives of the Indies and, perhaps, wherein lays the answers to the unsolved two-hundred and fifty-year old mystery.  While touring the Spanish countryside, McAllister comes across a dusty and deserted old mansion that contains one-hundred year old evidence of the identity of the haunting apparition that has been McAllister’s obsession since his teen-age years.  The portrait of a beautiful woman distracts his pursuit of The Prize and sends him on what Lawton characterized as a “wild-goose-chase” up the Oronoco River in Venezuela.

On a regal, yet struggling cattle ranch outside Ciudad, Bolivar, a gentleman rancher, whose daughter steals McAllister’s heart, entertains McAllister, and Lawton.  Just to remain in the presence of the captivating Larkin Tumbas, McAllister fabricates a story in where Lawton is supposedly writing a historical novel that will be translated into a movie by McAllister’s non-existent production company.

Out of a combination of disgust and boredom, Lawton takes to Orinoco River Valley when he stumbles on evidence of not only the existence of The Prize, but it’s actual location.  It takes McAllister, however, to finally locate the cargo she carried by carefully piecing together all of the clues, evidence, cryptic conditions of the island priestess, and even the phantoms of his past to lead him to the treasure.

In a final, violent confrontation with criminal elements, who also seek the riches of the plundered loot, key characters are killed or wounded in a fierce gun battle on the shore of a South American River.  When the battle is over, McAllister is able to uncover the incredible bounty and plan a future with the woman of his dreams:  the “Real Prize”.

Granger Lawton returns to Arizona to write his book.  It’s not until long after the novel is published that he receives one final bout of proof that there is a difference between destiny and fate, vitality and dreams, and, that there are sometimes, outside forces that unaccountably and mysteriously, direct the lives of individuals who are not afraid to dream . . .

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