After buying legislators and bullying senators, tobacco baron Bartholomew Simons is about to watch his billion-dollar glory days go up in smoke. A savvy Florida governor is pulling for a law that’ll bring the CEO to his knees-until Simons fights back. And not with anything as unreliable as a law. He’s going for blackmail, kidnapping and murder. But the eye of this political hurricane is just beginning to stir. Enter a trigger-happy covert-ops wannabe with an armory of lethal toys, a dangerously principled senator, a statehouse Internet porn site, the FBI, and a centerfold-model-turned-lobbyist who trips over one too many secrets in her stiletto heels. All of them are about to discover that crime does pay. After all, if it didn’t, who’d bother?