Now Mark is caught between a legal system gone mad and a mob killer desperate to cover up his crime. And his only ally is a woman named Reggie Love, who has been a lawyer for all of four years.
Prosecutors are willing to break all the rules to make Mark talk. The mob will stop at nothing to keep him quiet. And Reggie will do anything to protect her client -- even take a last, desperate gamble that could win Mark his freedom...or cost them both their lives.
By the time Rudy gets to court, a heavyweight corporate defense team is there to meet him. And suddenly he's in over his head, plunged into a nightmare of lies and legal meneuverings. A case that started small is exploding into a thunderous million-dollar war of nerves, skill, and outright violence -- a fight that could cost one young lawyer his life, or turn him into the biggest rainmaker in the land....
In a seedy D.C. porno house a patron is swiftly garroted to death...
The next day America learns that two of its Supreme Court justices have been assassinated. And in New Orleans, a young law student prepares a legal brief...
To Darby Shaw it was no more than a legal shot in the dark, a brilliant guess. To the Washington extablishment it was political dynamite. Suddenly Darby is witness to a murder -- a murder intended for her. Going underground, she finds there in only one person she can trust -- an ambitious reporter after a newsbreak hotter than Watergate -- to help her piece together the deadly puzzle. Somewhere between the bayous of Louisiana and the White House's inner sanctums, a violent cover-up is being engineered. For some-one has read Darby's brief. Someone who will stop at nothing to destroy the evidence of an unthinkable crime.
Now Patrick is coming home. And in the Mississippi city where it all began, an extraordinary trial is about to begin. As prosecutors circle like sharks, as Patrick's lawyer prepares his defense, as Patrick's lover prays for his deliverance and his former partners wait for their revenge, another story is about to emerge. Because Patrick Lanigan, the most reviled white-collar criminal of his time, knows something that no one else in the world knows.
He knows the truth....
Because Troy Phelan's new will names a sole surprise heir to his eleven-billion-dollar fortune: a mysterious woman named Rachel Lane, a missionary living deep in the jungles of Brazil.
Enter the lawyers. Nate O'Riley is fresh out of rehab, a disgraced corporate attorney handpicked for his last job: to find Rachel Lane at any cost. As Phelan's family circles like vultures in D.C., Nate is crashing through the Brazilian jungle, entering a world where money means nothing, where death is just one misstep away, and where a woman --- pursued by enemies and friends alike --- holds a stunning surprise of her own....
For ten days, as burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spread through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as young defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his clients's life... and then his own....