Razor Sharp by Fern Michaels

familiarized herself with it.
    From time to time, as she thumbed through the pages, she would gasp aloud; at other times she would smirk. Stupid, foolish men! And the families involved would never be the same. Where in the hell did Martine get these people? Favors owed? Favors that could be granted in the future by those same stupid males? Quid pro quo?
    You wash my hand, I’ll wash yours. Which all boiled down to: it wasn’t what you knew but who you knew. It all sucked, in Maggie’s opinion.
    What really boggled Maggie’s mind were the sheets of fingerprints that accompanied the scheduled appointments and the paid-in-full charge slips and the handwritten receipts for cash payments. Whoever the madam was, she was one smart lady. She had definitely covered her ass all the way around, for all the good it was going to do her. Everyone knew the madam went to the slammer, and the clients walked away.
    “Not this time!” she muttered, starting through the list again. She knew that by the time she flipped the last page, she would have memorized every pertinent fact. For some reason God had gifted, or cursed, her with a photographic memory.
    Maggie started to think about a headline. How should she refer to the madam? She needed a name, a catchy name that would resonate with readers. Her back suddenly stiffened. Why wasn’t the opposition running with this? There was no way they weren’t in the loop about what was going on. Whispers had a way of becoming full-blown shouts in Washington. Why would they hold back? What was to be gained by keeping quiet?
    Not wanting to wait another minute, Maggie carried the stack of papers over to the fax machine, fed them into the automatic feeder, and hit the number for the mountain, which she’d programmed in a year ago. It would take a while for all the copies to feed through, so she went out to the coffee machine. She carried back coffee, a bagel loaded with cream cheese, two jelly donuts, and a banana. She started to eat, her eyes never leaving the fax machine.
    Maggie’s mind raced as she chewed and swigged. Maybe the way to go was to run with a drawing of the madam since she had no name or photo of the woman. She could have an artist do a rendering of a rhinestone cowgirl with a Stetson, rhinestone-studded boots, and a whip in one hand. That would certainly be eye-popping and sure to grab readers’ attention, not to mention that of the White House. Her mind continued to race as she tried to contemplate how long she could keep the story alive and at the same time double the paper’s circulation. If the Vigilantes appeared, she thought ten days was a safe enough number to run with. If. If. If. If.
    The second fax machine in her office, the one behind her chair, squealed to life. The reason it was behind her chair was that Maggie was lazy, and with it stationed there, all she had to do was slide her chair backward and tear out the fax, as opposed to walking across the office. If there was one thing Maggie Spritzer was big on, it was making things as easy for herself as possible. She was down to the banana by then and the last of her coffee. She scooted back the chair and reached for the fax. It was also from Lizzie. Poor thing, working on her honeymoon.
    “Holy shit!”
    “What? What?” Ted Robinson asked from the doorway, Espinosa in his wake.
    “Martine Connor called Lizzie and offered her the job of White House counsel. At three o’clock this morning, midnight Vegas time. Lizzie turned her down. Then Connor called Cosmo Cricket, but he didn’t take the call. He threw his cell phone in the fireplace. Lizzie and Cosmo got married early this morning. Say something, Ted.”
    Ted echoed Maggie’s words. “Holy shit!”
    Espinosa flapped his arms. “What’s it all mean, Maggie? You know what I mean. If Lizzie turned her down, is that going to…complicate things?”
    Maggie scrounged around her desk for something else to eat, but everything she’d carried in from the kitchen