Hands shot in the air at the speed of light. Joey nodded happily.

Olivia moved a little closer to Joey and smiled up at him. “I for one recognize your value, Joey. This is all so exciting. I’d like to talk about your job a little more at length when you have time. Like this evening. I’m asking you for a date, big guy.”

Joey flushed and then grinned. “I’d like that.”

The others hooted with laughter.

“That’s the good news,” Joey continued. “The bad news is you cannot kidnap a United States senator unless you want a long life in the federal pen. We have to make him come to you of his own free will. Did I say that the man loves his privileged life? He does. Mike and I both think that the risk of exposure will be sufficient punishment. The senator was interviewed not too long ago, and he made the comment that he wanted to die in the Senate just the way his daddy and his granddaddy did. As you may know, they are a very political family.”

The women started to mumble among themselves. Kayla’s voice was the loudest. “Just taking his money doesn’t seem enough for what he did to us.” The others agreed. Joey looked at all of them and shrugged.

“Do you really want to run the risk of going to a federal prison?”

Sam spoke for the first time. Even though she’d listened with rapt attention, she wasn’t sure how she felt about what she’d just heard. All she could think about was Pappy and Big Pine Mountain. “Obviously you have some kind of plan in mind. Would you like to share it with us?”

Joey leaned into the table, his voice dropping to a near whisper as he motioned the others to lean toward him. He started to outline the plan he and Mike had come up with.

“It’s perfect,” one of the “ex-wives” trilled. The others concurred.

Sam’s eyebrows knitted together. “So he pays everyone off, walks away and with another name, another disguise, does it all over again. Sometimes money isn’t the answer to everything. I thought we wanted him to suffer like we did. He’s not going to miss the money.”

“I don’t want to go to jail; I just want to spend the creep’s dough,” a ravishing redhead said.