State of War

PROLOGUE

Solomon “Solly” Bretcher, the Democratic senator from Florida, looked down at the woman beside him.

She had said her name was Joan, and she was young. She’d claimed to be twenty-one when she’d picked him up at that bar back in D.C. — but she had smiled when she’d said it, just a little, just enough so that he had known she was lying. He thought she was probably closer to eighteen.

She was also very slim, almost boyish in her figure, and he believed she must have had some yoga or gymnastics in her background.

Athletic, strong and supple, cute as a bug, and young enough to be, what, his daughter at least. Maybe even his granddaughter.

But none of this was what had drawn Solly to her. No, the reason he was here now, lying naked in some strange hotel room in Virginia, a good fifty miles from his offices, had nothing to do with the way she looked or how old she was or whatever perfume she was — or wasn’t — wearing. It was more powerful than that, more compelling, and it had everything to do with the way she had looked at him, the raw, overpowering hunger in her eyes as she approached him.

It had been a long time since anyone had looked at him like that. He couldn’t even remember the last time someone had wanted him just for himself and not for whatever access he could grant or the votes he could provide.

She had looked at him like that. She had let him see the naked desire in her eyes. She had told him, not with words but with every gesture, every glance, and every breath, that she wanted him, and he had agreed.

He looked down at her now.

“Joan,” he said softly.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him, a slow smile spreading across her face.

“Joan,” he said again, liking the way her name slid across his lips. He wanted to say something to this woman in his arms, to thank her, perhaps, to let her know how deeply she had touched him. He wanted to mark this moment before it slipped away.

He never got the chance.

As he reached for his next words, he was interrupted by the sound of somebody kicking in the hotel room door.

Joan reacted faster than Solly, scrambling out from under him and jerking the sheet up around herself while he reached for his glasses.

“What is the meaning of this?” he said, still fumbling with his glasses. “Who the hell are you?” He was trying to sound irate, not the easiest thing to do when you were lying naked in bed with a young woman not your wife. He shut up when he managed to get his glasses on and saw that the man standing there had a gun pointed at him.

“Get your clothes on, you little harlot!”

Solly’s gut twisted. Her husband? Lord, Lord, what was he going to do? If Marsha found out—!

“And you, you pervert. I ought to shoot you dead! God would bless me, and so would the po-lice!” The man had a funny accent. Was it French?

“Listen, mister,” Solly began. “There’s been some kind of mistake! I–I didn’t know she was married—”

“Married?! You son of a bitch! She’s not my wife! She’s my daughter! She’s fourteen years old!”

Solly’s vision swam with millions of swirling motes. He swallowed dryly and felt light-headed. Fourteen? She couldn’t be fourteen!

“Daddy, I’m sorry—”

The man strode forward and slapped the girl’s face. It was a loud noise in the otherwise quiet room. “Put your clothes on! I’ll deal wid you when we get home! First, I got to call the po-lice and get this pervert arrested! They gonna put you under the jail, baby raper!”

Cajun, Bretcher realized. That’s what the accent is. Louisiana.

Joan hurried to obey, holding one hand to her slapped face.

Senator Solly Bretcher felt his life swirling around the drain, going down. Fourteen. He would be totally disgraced. They would crucify him. The press would eat him alive, and if they didn’t, his family would. He was a dead man.

As the man reached for the phone, Bretcher raised his hand. “Wait! Wait! Don’t do that! Maybe we can come to some… arrangement!”

The girl’s father looked at him. “What you talkin’ about?”

“Anything you want,” Bretcher said. “Anything!”

In the car, Joan laughed. “Fourteen?” she said. “That’s a stretch, Junior, even for me!”

Driving, Marcus Boudreaux, “Junior,” the man who had pretended to be her father, smiled. “Well, fourteen sounds so much worse than sixteen or seventeen, no? And he bought it. You saw his face, yeah?”

“No, I was too busy holding mine. You didn’t have to hit me that hard.”

He shrugged that off. “I had to make it look good. And like I said, it worked. That senator will do whatever we say.”

Joan shook her head. She was twenty-four but had always looked much younger than her age. Being flatchested, slim-hipped, and skinny had their uses. Convincing a frightened old man you were an adolescent was one that had earned her plenty before now — and had just earned her another ten thousand dollars.

“Now what?”

“Never you mind dat. You just take your money and go lie on the beach down in Biloxi. I’ll call you again if I need you.”

She shrugged. Ten thousand for a couple hours’ work? Beat doing fake pedo-porn on the net. And her tan could use some work. Why not…?