Introducing... The Bone Tree by Greg Iles

Introducing books through the first chapter or so...

Special Agent John Kaiser stood at the window of the FBI's "tactical room" in the Hampton Hotel and stared at the lights of Natchez twinkling high over the dark tide of the Mississippi. After struggling silently with his convictions for more than an hour, he had decided to use the authority granted him under the Patriot Act to take a step that under any other circumstances would have been a violation of the Constitution-- the unauthorized invasion of computers belonging to a public newspaper. He had not done this lightly, and Kaiser knew that his wife-- an award-winning journalist and combat photographer-- would condemn him if she ever learned what he'd done. But by his lights, the deteriorating situation demanded that he cross the Rubicon. And so he'd quietly risen from bed and, without disturbing his wife, slipped down the hall to where two FBI technicians sat behind computers connected by secure satellite to a high-speed data link in Washington.

-- The Bone Tree by Greg Iles