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Chapter One

A friend in need was a pain in the ass, even when that friend was his best friend and older brother.

However, at the moment, the greater pain was in Eric Law’s head: an intense throbbing behind his eyes that competed with the big brass drum playing timpani on the back of his skull.

"‘Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong,’" he groused as he opened the glove compartment and reached for the bottle of Bayer. At least according to Murphy’s Law. He tapped two of the aspirin into the palm of his hand, threw the pills into the back of his throat and washed them down with the last few drops of tepid water left in the bottle he had found underneath his car seat.

He wasn’t a patient man, but Eric knew better than to fight a headache. Part of his winning strategy in life—sometimes as the result of an intelligent and well-thought out decision on his part; sometimes by following his gut instincts; at times, to be perfectly honest, through sheer dumb luck—had been knowing when to fight and when to forego that pleasure.

He leaned back against the leather headrest and closed his eyes, trying to give the aspirin time to work its medicinal magic. A few minutes later he opened his eyes, sat up straight and demanded of himself, "Okay, what the hell did you do with it?"

He patted down the front of his tuxedo shirt. There weren’t any pockets, just formal pleats sewn into vertical rows on either side of the pearlized buttons.

He tried his black dress pants next. The right front pocket contained an eighteen-carat-gold money clip engraved with his initials: E. A. L. The "A" didn’t stand for Alan or Andrew or even Anthony as everyone assumed. It was for Anscomb, a name his mother, a dyed-in-the-wool romantic, had once read in a book.

His father, always the pragmatist of the family, had warned her that their youngest offspring would pay a price for having such a distinctive name. Devoted teacher and Anglophile that she was, Judith Law had insisted that Anscomb was an honorable name, a proud name, a noble name that meant "an unusual man who dwells in a special place."

In the end she’d gotten her way (his mother usually did) and he had been christened Eric Anscomb Law. But his father had been right, too. Growing up he had been taunted with a variety of nicknames, including everything from "ants-come" to "ass-comb."

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

Whoever had coined that piece of traditional folk wisdom obviously didn’t have a degree in modern psychology, or a clue about kids. Kids could be cruel. Vicious. Merciless. In the first dozen or so years of his life he’d fought and won more than one bloody battle over his unusual middle name.

On the other hand, Eric reflected as he dug deeper into his pants’ pocket, maybe a certain amount of adversity in childhood was a good thing. Maybe it had helped to prepare him for the adult world in which he lived and worked: the sometimes ruthless, always highly a competitive world of corporate attorneys, ambitious politicians, and society’s "movers and shakers."

He rummaged around and found a package of Listerine cool mint breath strips, a handful of loose change and a small Swiss army knife with a miniature corkscrew. Never know when you might need to open a miniature bottle of wine, he thought.

In his left front pocket was a ring box in Tiffany & Company’s signature blue color. It was empty. He had already fulfilled one of his primary duties as best man: he had handed over the custom designed wedding ring at the appropriate moment during the ceremony so Sam could slip it onto his bride’s finger. As a matter of fact, his brother now wore a matching gold band.

Eric tossed the empty Tiffany’s box onto the passenger seat and kept looking.

In his back right pocket was his billfold. Fashioned from the finest Italian leather, the tri-fold wallet was as soft and smooth as a baby’s bottom. He usually kept his driver’s license, some cash, and his credit cards inside his suit jacket to foil pickpockets, but, according to the signs posted at the outskirts of town this was SWEETHEART, INDIANA, WHERE EVERYONE IS YOUR FRIEND, POPULATION: 11,238 (give or take), not Boston or New York.

Besides, he understood that pickpockets and petty criminals were pretty much nonexistent around here thanks to his cousin, Ben. Benjamin Law was a breed apart. He was also smart, tough-as-nails and determined to do his job to the letter of the law. Most criminals, petty or otherwise, quickly learned that it was better not to have a run-in with the newly elected sheriff of Sweetheart County.

Eric continued with his search. His back left pocket contained a folded linen handkerchief. Clean. Pressed. Monogrammed. Ready in any emergency. As a matter of fact, he had everything on him but the one thing he needed.

No phone.

A thorough inspection of his car was the next order of business. He rummaged through the glove compartment. He checked the space between the bucket seats. He dug down into all the creases and crevices. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

That’s when it hit him. "Brilliant. Just brilliant, Law. You left your cell phone in the jacket of your tuxedo. And where is your jacket? Back in town, of course."

Which was where he was supposed to be.

Murphy’s Corollary: "Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse."

It had all started less than an hour ago with a small favor, an innocuous favor: Leave the celebration just long enough to drive out to the Flying Pig, retrieve a briefcase, containing his brother’s passport and the airline tickets for his honeymoon, and bring it back to the wedding reception. Not too much to ask.

Eric had climbed into his Porsche 911 and inserted the key in the ignition. He had listened with satisfaction as the powerful engine sprang to life. Then he’d shifted into gear and driven off down the street, heading west out of town.

One touch of a button on the center console, and the side windows had descended, the hood had opened and the roof over his head had folded into the back compartment. The whole process had taken a total of twenty seconds. Tops.

The drive out to the Flying Pig had gone quickly and smoothly. With no one else in sight he had pushed the pedal to the floor. Even going ninety, the Porsche hadn’t broken a sweat.

The briefcase had been precisely where Sam had told him it would be: dead center on the kitchen table of the farmhouse, right next to a basket of plastic purple plums.

Eric had retrieved the forgotten leather case and headed back toward Sweetheart. He had been humming along at a good clip when the car’s engine had suddenly started to make never-before-heard noises. He’d pulled over to the side of the road just as the engine sputtered twice and quit on him.

Another goddamned Murphy’s Corollary: "If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then." "Eighty thousand dollars worth of powerful, precision-engineered sports car and you conk out on me now, Red," he said aloud to his customized tomato-red Carrera Cabriolet.

Eric got out of the sports car, slammed the door shut behind him—the sound rattled his teeth—and gave the front tire a jab with the toe of his dress shoe.

"Sonofabitch," he swore under his breath, reaching up to tug the formal bow tie from around his neck; he pitched it onto the passenger seat beside the empty ring box.

Without a car or a cell phone, he was pretty much up shit creek without a paddle.

The sun was a blazing yellow ball high in a bright blue sky. There was only the merest suggestion of a cloud here and there on the horizon. The afternoon temperatures had soared well into the eighties: warm for mid-June in Indiana.

He took off his dark-tinted sunglasses for a moment and mopped his forehead with the monogrammed handkerchief. His dress shirt was already damp and clinging to his back. He undid the top button or two. His shirtsleeves were next. He rolled them up to his elbows.

Well, this was a fine how-do-you-do. Here he was playing the Good Samaritan, trying to help his brother out of a jam and now he was the one in a jam. A pickle. A hell of a fix.

Eric told himself to relax and breathe, just breathe. He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs and his nostrils with the scent of country air: a mixture of dark, dank earth, thick green vegetation and sweet clover that grew wild alongside the road. Then he slowly exhaled.

Actually it was the first time today he’d felt like he could take a deep breath. That wasn’t quite true, he realized. It was the first time since he’d driven into Sweetheart three days ago.

The problem was weddings.

He hated weddings.

They were right up there at the top of his list with root canals, traffic jams and exorbitant taxes. Ironically, there had been a virtual epidemic of weddings in the past eighteen months since his divorce was final. He’d personally been a member of no less than four wedding parties in the last year alone.

"It must be something in the air, or the water, or maybe it’s the result of global warming," he said cynically, turning and leaning against the car door. The metal was hot at his back. He pushed his sunglasses up his nose and stared off into the distance.

Let’s be honest, Eric. It isn’t just weddings that make you uncomfortable. It’s Sweetheart, Indiana. You definitely have a love-hate relationship with your hometown.

Little wonder. Growing up he’d been wild, undisciplined, incorrigible, the black sheep of the family, the bad apple in the bunch, the kind of boy mothers warned their daughters about. Teachers, ministers, neighbors, even law enforcement officials—including his own father, who had been the sheriff of Sweetheart County at the time—had thrown up their hands in frustration when it came to the youngest of the Laws.

Stifled. Smothered. Suffocated. Bored. Restless. Misunderstood. Rebel without a cause. That’s how he would have described himself as a teenager.

He’d been the exact opposite of Sam and his sisters. In fact, the differences between himself and his three older siblings had been like night and day. They had all been excellent students, star athletes, and model citizens.

In his senior year Sam had been captain of the football team and had earned a full-athletic scholarship to Purdue. A year later Allie had been the editor of the school newspaper, on the honor roll and headed to the University of Chicago, while Serena, her twin, had been the president of the student body and voted most likely to succeed, which she did at Stanford. Two years later, he’d had the dubious distinction of being voted the numero uno "party animal" of his senior class.

At the time Eric knew his family had been disappointed in him. Hell, he’d been disappointed in himself.

The turning point had come the summer after graduation. He’d taken a job in a local factory. The pay had been excellent at eighteen dollars an hour, plus overtime and incentives, but he had found himself slaving away twelve hours a day, six days a week, on an assembly line building truck transmissions.

The worst part wasn’t the physically demanding labor, although on a typical summer afternoon, even with huge fans blowing the air around, the temperature had soared above the one-hundred-degree mark inside the outdated manufacturing plant.

No, the worst part had been the mind-numbing monotony. It had driven him crazy.

He’d realized that he had reached that proverbial fork in the road. There had to be a better way and a brighter future for him. The very next week he’d applied to military school and been accepted on probation for the fall semester. For the first time in his life he’d worked hard at his studies, become a disciplined student, and earned straight A’s. A year later he had the grades to transfer to Purdue University. Three years after that he had graduated summa cum laude in pre-law. Then, following in his brother’s footsteps, it had been on to Harvard Law School.

Funny how everybody had always wanted him to be like Sam, Eric thought, and now in many ways he was. He’d succeeded beyond his wildest dreams or anyone else’s. In fact, to the outside world he appeared to be more successful than his older brother.

After graduating at the top of his class at Harvard, he had been inundated with job offers on both coasts. In legal circles from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., he’d been reputed to be worth his weight not in gold, but platinum. In the end, he had accepted an invitation to join one of Boston’s most prestigious law firms.

His rise within the legal field had been meteoric. He had been on the winning side of one high-profile court case after another. He’d been written up in the ABA Journal, The Young Lawyer, and the Boston Globe. He had even been featured in a regional publication as one of New England’s "fifty most beautiful people," a takeoff on the People magazine list.

And the crowning glory: he’d become the youngest partner in the history of Barrett, Barrett & Hartmann, with offices overlooking the city and the harbor.

Eric knew what was said about him behind his back: He wasn’t just good at his profession, he was brilliant, gifted, fearless, and utterly ruthless. Within the hallowed mahogany halls of Barrett, Barrett & Hartmann, he was referred to as "Eric the Red," not for the color of his Porsche, but for his killer instincts. There weren’t many in or out of the courtroom who had the guts to take a shot at the hotshot of BB&H.

Murphy’s Military Law (learned firsthand during the year he’d attended military school): "There is nothing more satisfying than having someone take a shot at you, and miss."

Anyway, once his career was on track, he had set similar goals for his personal life. He’d married one of the senior partner’s daughters: an educated, accomplished and socially prominent young woman. Soon after they had moved into a million-dollar home in an exclusive Beacon Hill neighborhood. He’d bought an expensive sports car. He had been making an obscene amount of money. By anyone’s standards he had finally been doing everything right.

Then two years ago it had all started to unravel . . . beginning with his marriage.

Don’t go there, buddy. It’s water under the bridge. Nobody can change their past.

Eric suddenly realized his headache was fighting back against the aspirin. He opened the car door on the driver’s side, reached across to the glove compartment and took out the Bayer again. The water bottle he had found underneath the seat was empty, so he tossed two more pills into his mouth and chewed them up dry. The bitter taste suited his mood perfectly.

So why was he in Sweetheart?

Because Sam had called him up on the telephone last November and asked him to come, that’s why.

"I’m getting married next summer," his older brother had announced without preamble. "I want you to be the first to know."

Eric had leaned back in his sleek European-designed office chair and swivelled around to gaze at the spectacular view he had of Boston Harbor. He couldn’t resist teasing Sam a little. "I hope I’m not the very first to know. You have informed the bride-to-be, haven’t you?"

Sam’s laughter had echoed in his ear. He sounded happier than Eric could ever remember. "Okay, you’re the second to know, although I think Mom has her suspicions."

"Then I assume the lucky lady is Gillian Charles."

"How did you guess?"

He had snickered softly into the telephone. "You’re kidding, right? There aren’t any secrets in Sweetheart. There certainly aren’t any secrets in our family."

He could almost imagine Sam smacking himself on the forehead with the flat of his hand. "What was I thinking, little brother?" They had both chuckled at that since Eric was the taller of the two by several inches; he’d sprinted past his "big" brother sometime during their college years. Then Sam had turned serious. "I’ve waited a long time for this."

Eric had responded in kind, his voice soft, emotion-charged. "I know you have."

"I’d like you to be my best man."

A funny lump had formed for a moment in his throat. "I’d be honored, Sam."

It was true. Only for Sam would he agree to be the best man. Only for Sam would he return to Sweetheart. Not just return for the wedding, but agree to take some long-overdue vacation time and stay for a few weeks, maybe for the rest of the summer, and keep an eye on things while the bride and groom went on an extended honeymoon to Tuscany.

"Yeah, well, Sam won’t be going to Tuscany, or anywhere else for that matter, if you don’t get back to town pronto with his plane tickets and passport," Eric said, pushing off from his car and doing a three-hundred-and sixty-degree turn.

Behind him there was a cornfield not quite "knee high by the Fourth of July," but then it was only June sixteenth. There was another field across the asphalt road, and row upon row of corn or soybeans as far as the eye could see.

Overhead, a flock of black birds swooped in formation and then silently lighted on a steel cable strung between two utility poles; they were lined up like some kind of macabre scene out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. The only sound was the distant caw of a single crow.

There hadn’t been a car or a truck or even a tractor drive by since his Porsche had stalled. That was going on thirty minutes now. Apparently his chances of being rescued anytime soon were somewhere between slim and none.

Murphy’s Last Word on the Subject: "‘You never run out of things that can go wrong."

Eric stood there at the side of the deserted road, folded his arms across his chest, and muttered under his breath, "I’m beginning to think Murphy was an optimist."