Naked: The Blackstone Affair, Book 1

2012 May

London

I don’t know shit about American politics. I don’t need to know. I’m a British citizen and Parliament is confusing enough. Politics don’t interest me much. But I am forced to work around the by-products of political affairs all the time. I deal in security, both private and for the British government. I’m good at my job. I take it very seriously. In my business you have to be good, because when you’re not good people die.

United States congressman goes down in a plane crash. Newsworthy of course. But when said congressman was the probable vice presidential nominee for the challenging party and the election is mere months away, then it makes world news in a viral heartbeat. Especially when people who want the power will do just about anything to ensure the incumbent never stands a second term. Scrambling for a replacement, the GOP understandably needed to fill the empty slot on their ticket. And this is how I came to discover her.

I received the email from her father first. A voice from my past extending a friendly greeting and an acknowledgment of where we’d both ended up. Fair enough. My past had been a colorful one, including both the good and the bad, and he’d come into my life during one of the good parts.

A phone call came next, when he told me he had a daughter living in London. He was concerned about her safety and gave some tentative details explaining why. I was polite and quite sure I didn’t need to involve myself. My job had me overextended as it was. Organizing VIP security for London 2012 at the XXX Olympiad pretty much consumed all my time, and I had nothing to spare for the daughter of an acquaintance I’d met at a poker tournament more than six years gone.

I told him no. As a personal favor, I was even prepared to give him a referral to another private security firm when he played his hand. Poker players know when to play their hands.

He sent me her picture in a second email.

That picture changed everything. I was not the same after I saw it, and I couldn’t go back to the man I’d been before seeing it either. Not after we met that night on the street. My whole world altered because of a photograph. A photograph of my beautiful American girl.