Attorney Dismas Hardy is called to defend the least likely suspect of his career: his longtime, trusted assistant who is suddenly being charged as an accessory to murder in this instant New York Times bestseller from ';the undisputed master of the courtroom thriller' (The Providence Journal). Dismas Hardy knows something is amiss with his trusted secretary, Phyllis. Her strange behavior and sudden disappearances concern him, especially when he learns that her convict brothera man who had served twenty-five years in prison for armed robbery and attempted murderhas just been released. Things take a shocking turn when Phyllis is suddenly arrested for allegedly being an accessory to the murder of Hector Valdez, a coyote who'd been smuggling women into this country from El Salvador and Mexico. That is, until recently, when he was shot to deathon the very same day that Phyllis first disappeared from work. The connection between Phyllis, her brother, and Hector's murder is not something Dism
