Secrets Collide (Bluegrass Brothers)

along with an address. “This is where I'd sometimes meet him.”
    “Was he the boss?” Cy asked as he pushed the paper over for Cole to view.
    “No, but he was close to him. I only met the boss once but never saw him. He was in a limo and rolled down the window only enough for me to hear him.”
    “How many women did they supply you with and where did they get them?” Cole interjected.
    “I pled guilty to twenty-three counts,” Bruce shrugged.
    “I’m not going to charge you. I’m just trying to find out how the cycle worked and maybe a common location. Besides, as you said, you’re a dead man,” Cole said so harshly that Gemma shivered. “Why don’t you just start at the beginning? When did you meet the boss?”
    Bruce took a breath and Gemma could see he was debating what he should tell them. But then the look of utter hopelessness came across his face and he focused on the back wall. “It was twenty years ago. I was a local attorney who had just won a big case in North Carolina when I decided to run for Congress. A man approached me with promises of a big supporter. So I went to this meeting. It was in a deserted sawmill. A limo pulled up and the window came down three inches or so.
    “The man inside asked if I wanted a blank check. He’d pay for every election and reelection. I asked what the rub was and he just laughed. He told me information was the rub. That, and every now and then he would need support for certain legislation. The driver of the car got out and handed me a check for $5,000,000. I stupidly agreed.
    “The first year, I was only contacted a couple of times, but more importantly, I was introduced to very important and influential people. The second year, I was appointed chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and that’s when the phone calls started, needing information or telling me which countries I needed to push for sanctions.” Bruce took a breath and shook his head as if clearing his thoughts.
    “It never occurred to you that this was above your normal Washington corruption?” Cy asked.
    “At the start of my second term, the requests became more frequent and more intrusive. He wanted me to plant bugs in other congressional offices and embassies. One of those embassies was blown up three months later.”
    “Why didn’t you stop? Turn him into the FBI?” Cole leaned forward and laced his fingers together.
    “I thought about it. But the money started coming. He knew my weakness—gambling. The money came with private invitations to big-stake games. He funded my gambling for years. He collected all my markers and I knew it. But I couldn’t stop. I could try to pawn it off as an addiction, but it wasn’t. I was just having too much fun. I was being flown to Monaco for a weekend of gambling with some of the richest and most powerful men in the world. I didn’t want to give it up, so I kept accepting the cash that showed up at my house every two weeks and decided to do whatever the hell I felt like doing.”
    Gemma gasped and Ahmed nudged her. She hadn’t been expecting that. She had been expecting the sob story about a gambling addiction. But what he had was a power addiction. He tasted power, rubbed against it every day, and wanted more and more.
    This time, Cy leaned forward. “When did the women start?”
    “Ah, the women. I loved poker night,” Bruce said wistfully. “A small group of us started that almost ten years ago. The boss set up the first one. There was Judge LeMaster, an ambassador to Syria, a British ministry official, and me. The goatee man came with a submissive woman one night dressed in nothing but a big red bow. He said she was a gift to the winner. That’s when they started. We met every month. Sometimes it was the same group and sometimes others came, but always an equally powerful group. A new woman was dropped off each time.”
    “But why kill them?” Gemma silently nodded in response to Cy’s question. She wanted to know the answer, too.
    “At first, we just dumped them in a bad part of town and left them. But then one night, we got a woman who had been a stripper before she was taken from the club. The damn bitch was stripping to put herself through law school. She knew who we all were and wouldn’t shut up about it. We had no choice. I shot her and dumped her in some alley. It was just a precaution after that. I talked to the goatee man and he said he’d fix it. Two days later, I was attacked on the floor of the Congress.