Midnight Kiss (Men of Midnight #7) - Lisa Marie Rice Page 0,30
a crass quid pro quo. Money never changed hands. Nothing like a written contract. Just an … understanding. Between gentlemen. No questions asked, no payment requested.
Except, the next time Senator Court Redfield needed votes for an industry tax break or deregulation, he had it in the bag. And the money poured in, off the books, offshore. He had a fucking fortune in untraceable accounts in Panama, Gibraltar and St. Thomas. His lifestyle didn’t change. You can only drive one car at a time. He had property but not anything flashy, nothing to catch anyone’s eye. A nice house in Virginia, his old home in Sacramento and a condo in Florida. He drove a staid late-model sedan. His clothes were off the rack. His mistresses were quiet and discreet. He didn’t need the things money bought you, he wanted the power money gave you. So he built his power base. And his army.
He had forty men at his command, all ex-military, almost all former SpecOps, the ultimate beneficiary of the hundred million dollars Uncle Sam had spent training them. Then the military fucked up by not paying them, or not paying them enough. Men who had earned the equivalent of several PhDs, spoke several languages, were almost Olympic-level athletes, who risked their lives daily — they earned basically what a bank teller earned. And if they were seriously injured, they went into the maw of the VA and never came out.
Court was smart. He paid his men a base salary of half a million dollars a year, completely off the books, completely tax free, and he saw to it that they got the finest medical care in the world.
They were loyal and worth their weight in gold.
He stared into his tumbler. He had no qualms about giving kill orders. And his men had no qualms in carrying them out. He just had to make sure no one made the connections.
“Resnick,” he said.
Resnick’s head came up. “Sir.”
“There’s a problem.”
Resnick nodded. “That’s what we’re here for, sir.”
“It’s … delicate.”
Resnick nodded again.
Court’s team dealt with hard issues all the time. They were smart, efficient and discreet. For a moment, Court had a flash of anger so strong he felt it crackle in his bones. When this problem first emerged almost three decades ago and Bard was being bull-headed as usual, Court had called in a team of men he wasn’t familiar with. They’d reported that the job was done. Court had never heard anything to the contrary since then, until two days ago. If those men had done their goddamned job right the first time …
His fists clenched, his breathing grew harsh. Resnick watched him, head cocked and Court calmed. Goddammit, only Bard could make him lose his temper, even for a moment.
He should have double-checked, made absolutely sure.
No use thinking that way. The team leader on that job was dead. Resnick had been in high school.
This was in the past goddammit! It should have fucking stayed in the past!
Court sighed. “I have … an issue. As I said, it’s particularly delicate now that I’ve declared my candidacy.”
Something flashed in Resnick’s eyes and Court knew what it was. Resnick headed his personal, private army. It was one thing to head the army of a powerful man, a man who’d been number two in the CIA, a man who was currently a sitting Senator and Chairman of the Armed Forces Committee.
It would be an entirely different thing to be the head of the private army of the president of the United States, with the entire might of the US government behind you. Resnick was about to become the most powerful military man in the world, without being subject to military rules. No wonder his eyes were gleaming.
“Here.” Court handed Resnick a flash drive. Resnick bent his blond head over it, turning it over in his hands. The flash drive was made of a special titanium alloy. The contents of the flash drive would dissolve in a flash of heat half an hour after first being opened, but the titanium exterior would remain intact, a perfectly normal but non-functioning flash drive. “Everything you need is here. It will self-destruct half an hour after opening.”
Court had debated redacting names. What he’d just handed Resnick was like a ton of C-4 with the detonator ready to blow. Any hint of what was on the flash drive to the outside world and he’d be a dead man. Not just in the political sense, either. Bard could never know. No