Joey’s round face puckered up, his shrewd eyes sparkling. “I guess none of you follow Washington politics. If you did, you’d know. Then again, maybe you wouldn’t. Dougie did try to disguise himself a little, not much, just a bit. But it was enough that he could circulate, and people would just think he looked like someone vaguely familiar. Plus, he took all of you to out-of-the-way places in the hope that he wouldn’t be recognized.”

The wonton soup arrived. The diners ignored it. They’d ignored the four dishes of sauce and the hard noodles, too. They were, however, gulping the green tea by the potful.

“Who is it, Joey?” Kayla demanded a second time.

“Senator Malcom Wyne. Heir on his father’s side to a coffee fortune. Heir to a cereal fortune on his mother’s side. He has no siblings. He’s one of the five richest men in the country. He loves women. The guy lives to go on honeymoons. He looks normal, and he’s a force on the Hill. His colleagues and constituents love him. He’s never too busy to donate his money or his time except when he’s honeymooning. He goes on an overnight trip twice a year on government business, but we weren’t able to get much info on that.”

“What state does Doug represent?” Sam asked.

Joey laughed. “The fine state of Kansas. That pretty much explains why none of you would have recognized him even if he didn’t make attempts at a disguise. You pretty much have to follow politics, and senators aren’t on television all that much. I bet if I asked you to close your eyes and try to picture your own U.S. senator, you’d come up dry.”

The women nodded in agreement.

“If he’s so damn generous,” Slick said, “why did he welsh on the money he promised his ‘wives’? I understand he filed divorce papers in order not to pay up, but why?”

“Paper trail,” Joey said as he started to eat his soup.

Sam played with the spoon in her hand. She looked around at the painted dragons on the walls. All were belching fire. She felt like belching fire herself. She’d been married for all of three weeks to a billionaire United States senator, as had her predecessors. And yet he’d cheated all of them. Deliberately.

Zoe dipped her spoon in and out of her soup. She didn’t eat it, though. “What would happen to him if all this came out?” she asked quietly.