Excerpt: 'Above The Law'

June 29, 2009— -- Dallas lawyer Casey Jordan takes on illegal immigrants and abuse of power in this legal thriller written by Tim Green.

It begins when a U.S. senator from Texas shoots an undocumented worker and fakes the death as a hunting accident. Casey, who practices law from an abandoned gas station, takes the widow's case.

Read an excerpt from "Above the Law" below and head to the "GMA" Library to find more good reads.

HEADLIGHTS CREPT UP THE WALL BEFORE JETTING ACROSSthe ceiling and blinking out. Elijandro stiffened at the familiarpurr of the engine and clatter of rocks off the undercarriageas the white Range Rover descended the hillside lane. He left thesagging bed and the warmth of his young wife's body, skirted pastthe crib, and eased open the front door, letting himself out into thedark of predawn.

Elijandro clutched himself and stepped gingerly across the dirtyard until he stood shivering beside the Range Rover. The hillsand the thick clouds above glowed in the orange flare from somedistant lightning. Damp ozone floated on the small breeze. Thenew leaves on the lone willow tree shifted restlessly and the windowhummed down, muffled now by the rumble of the approachingfront. White teeth shone out at Elijandro, but the spade-cutsmile and the familiar face of not the wife, but her husband and hisboss, staggered him.

"You come good to the call," his boss said, grinning like a mask.

"The call?" Elijandro said.

"Like a tom turkey," the boss said, grinning, then clucking likea hen with a puck, puck, puck. "The sound of this Range Rover.The sound of my wife."

Elijandro stuttered until the boss interrupted.

"Screw her. Get your camo on, Ellie," he said. "Kurt said youput a flock to bed in the oaks out on Jessup's Knob and there was abig bird in with them. That right?"

Elijandro nodded eagerly and could see now that the boss worecamouflage from the neck down.

"Then let's go get his ass," the boss said. From the passengerseat he raised a bottle of Jack Daniel's and took a good slug beforesmacking the cork home with the palm of his hand.

Elijandro peered at the western sky. "Rain coming."

"So we'll get wet," the boss said. "Bird'll come to the call rainor shine. Lightning gets 'em excited. Go on."

Elijandro turned for the tenant house, scratching the stubbleon his head, hopping barefoot through the stones, picking his wayuntil he reached the porch.

The house had been built along with two dozen other shacks formigrant workers some sixty years ago. Like them, it sagged wearilyunder its rumpled tin roof, propped up off the dirt and more or lessleveled on four cinder-block stacks. Being drenched in weather andheat for all those years had rendered each of the houses gray andhad shrunken the slat-board siding like an old man's bones. Unlikethe others, theirs squatted in the lowland by the Trinity River,where cattle inevitably got bogged down in the muck and hadfrom time to time to be roped and dragged free with a mule. Theboss's father was the one who had this shack sledged away fromthe company of its brethren by a team back in '67. By tradition, theplace went to the top Mexican, a worker trusted enough to quicklyshepherd the livestock free from the muck as soon as they began tobray and before they could do harm to themselves.