The Savage Dead (2 page)

“Now, listen,” Roth said, “you can't talk to my men like that—”

“Save it for another time,” Juan said. “Just get your people together and do as I tell you.”

Roth looked like he wanted argue, but after meeting Juan's stare, he backed down. He finally nodded and said, “Yeah, all right.”

“Good. I'll assign an agent to help you.”

Juan walked off, toward the Embassy Ball Room. He passed Randy Soto, one of his agents, on the way out of the kitchen and explained what he wanted him to do with the cops back by the open window.

“You got it, boss,” Soto said.

“Thanks, Randy.”

He nodded to the man and stepped through the doors that led to the ballroom. It was crowded with movers and shakers from both sides of the border, most of them bankers and lawyers, a few Washington hardballers here and there. Juan scanned the room until he saw Tess chatting with a Mexican banker and his much younger soap opera star wife.

Tall and blond, able to move from English to Spanish with fluid ease, Tess Compton was in her element at parties like this. She wore a flowing red halter-top evening gown, a string of pearls at her throat, and was easily the match for any of the many beautiful women in attendance, even the soap opera stars. Despite his urgency, Juan managed a little smile. Very few people in this room had any idea Tess Compton was with the Secret Service, and none of them, save the other agents, had any idea how deadly she could be. Though she'd been raised in the finest country clubs in Atlanta, the daughter of a top executive for Kraft Foods and a Vassar graduate, there was nothing soft about her. He'd once watched her take down, and choke out a man twice her size when he tried to throw pig's blood on a federal judge they were escorting through the Senate lobby. She'd even made it look easy. Juan had seen a lot of agents come through the service. He'd even trained a good many of them. But none were as good as Tess. That was why he'd made her his second in command, and that was why they had become such good friends.

Tess spotted him as he approached, turned, and touched Senator Sutton on the shoulder, leaning in to whisper something in her ear. The Good Doctor stood a few feet off, a martini in his hand. He was swaying drunkenly, smiling at nothing in particular. Happy as a pig in slop, Juan thought. The senator's long-time aide, Paul Godwin, was standing just behind the senator, his fingers busily flying over his iPhone.

Both women turned to face him at the same time. The senator, dressed in one of her signature Hillary Clinton-style pantsuits, spoke first. “What's this all about, Agent Perez? You're cutting it kinda close, aren't you?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said. He explained about the open window he'd found. “I was hoping you could hold your speech off for a few minutes. Give us a chance to make a thorough search one more time.”

“Ms. Compton already suggested that, Agent Perez. I told her no.”

“Ma'am, please. After what happened in San Antonio, and given the intelligence we've had for tonight, I really think—”

“You've been conducting your searches all evening,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said.

“And you've found nothing so far.”

“We've found an open window.”

“An open window. Nothing else?”

“Ma'am, given the circumstances, I think—”

“I appreciate your professional concern, Agent Perez. Believe me, after San Antonio, I most certainly do. But I need to make this perfectly clear. I will not allow the cartels to dictate one minute of my schedule. Is that understood? Not one single second.”

Juan's face flushed with heat. This woman was impossible. She had absolutely no concept of the danger she was in. Or was subjecting the rest of this room to, for that matter. It was arrogant and stupid of her.

Tess seemed to sense his frustration, for at that moment she put a hand over Paul Godwin's iPhone and leaned in to whisper into the aide's ear.

A moment later, he nodded.

“We could burn an easy ten minutes with you just working the crowd on the way to the podium,” he said to Sutton. “A few handshakes. A few quiet conversations. It'd be good for some camera time, and it wouldn't look like stalling.”

The senator shifted her gaze from her aide to Juan. He was about to tell her she had no business wading into a crowd that he couldn't guarantee was safe, but Tess stepped in before he could speak.

“Ten minutes would be about perfect,” she told the senator. “And Mr. Godwin's right, it'd be a good chance to work some handshakes on the way up to the podium.”

Juan kept silent. His team was an elite wing of the service reserved for special operations. Every member of the team had proven themselves over and over again, and he encouraged his subordinates to think on their feet and take the initiative when it came to changing plans on the fly. It was hard to relinquish that kind of total control sometimes, but he trusted Tess. So he just stood there, waiting to see what Senator Sutton was going to do. And for a moment, Sutton looked like she was seriously considering Tess's suggestion.

But then she turned back to her husband. He was still smiling stupidly. He was a tall, thick man, with a ruddy glow and a smile full of perfect teeth. He tilted his drink to his wife and with a gesture that looked like he was stifling a hiccup said, “Absolutely! Do that.”

Juan saw Senator Sutton's face harden, like she was gauging the size of the millstone hanging around her neck.

She wheeled around on Juan. “I'm going on right now,” she said.

And with that she marched straight for the podium, leaving Juan and the others to sort it out.

“That's one determined lady,” said Tess.

Juan nodded to her, and then turned to Paul Godwin. “Your boss is being foolish. People are going to get hurt.”

Godwin shrugged and rolled his eyes. It was the oddly feminine sort of gesture Juan had grown accustomed to seeing from the man. “I have confidence in you, Agent Perez,” Godwin said. “And Ms. Compton is right. The senator is one determined lady.”

“Let's hope that doesn't get somebody killed.”

But Godwin had already stopped listening. He was looking back toward his table, where a stunning, dark-haired Hispanic woman in a strapless black evening gown was holding a pair of martinis and smiling back at Godwin.

Godwin's iPhone chimed softly. He read the display quickly, then fired off what Juan realized must have been his millionth text of the night. The man never put that phone down. But then, much to Juan's surprise, he actually slid the phone back into its holster on his belt. He looked excited and nervous. He licked his lips and straightened his tie.

“Do you still need me for anything else, Agent Perez?” He motioned with a nod toward the woman. “I'd like to, uh, you know.”

Juan shook his head. “No, we're good.”

“Great,” Godwin said. He started to leave.

“Good luck,” Juan said.

Godwin looked back, confused for a moment, then smiled guiltily.

When he was gone, Tess said, “ ‘Good luck'?” Juan stifled a smile of his own as he watched Godwin take one of the martinis from the woman. She giggled at something he said, and then the two of them walked off toward the back of the ballroom, her arm on his elbow.

“I have to admit, that's not what I expected to see,” Juan said. “I kinda figured he was . . . well, you know.”

Tess laughed. “You, too, huh? I actually figured he was kind of sweet on you.”

Juan flashed a menacing look in her direction, but it only made her chuckle.

“Come on,” he said. “We need to take our positions.”

Without another word Tess moved to the middle of the room and took a seat next to a banker from Dallas. Juan withdrew to the corner of the stage on Sutton's right. From where he stood he had a view of the entire room. He watched the crowd as they took their seats and quieted down. He scanned the doors along the back wall and the railing of the balcony to Senator Sutton's left. Beneath the balcony was a staging area for the waiters, and beyond that, an entrance to the kitchen. He took all of this in with a practiced eye, his gaze constantly searching the faces in the crowd, looking for anything wrong.

Senator Sutton had barely finished her greeting when Juan spotted the waiter.

He was dressed in the hotel's signature white and crimson uniform, carrying a pitcher of water, but his gaze kept flicking back to the senator, like he was making sure she was still where she was supposed to be. A woman tried to flag him down for some more water, but the waiter moved by her as though he hadn't heard.

Juan stiffened, his gaze lasering in on the man.

His face was unfamiliar, but it wasn't until Juan saw the sweat beading on the man's forehead that he knew for sure.

“Rook and Carlton, heads up,” Juan said into his mic. “I think we've got our man. The waiter with the water pitcher moving to the stage.”

“We see him,” Carlton said.

What happened next happened fast. Carlton and Rook rushed forward from beneath the balcony. Tess rose to her feet. The waiter put the water pitcher down on a table and kept walking toward the stage, his hand drifting to the brass buttons on his coat, pulling it open, and coming up with a black pistol that he leveled at Senator Sutton.

Juan got to the senator just as the first shot went off. He tackled Sutton to the ground and together they slid into the stage curtains behind the podium. He blocked her with his body, even as the room behind them erupted in gunfire and the sounds of people shouting, chairs being knocked over, women screaming.

“Stay down,” Juan told Sutton. “I've got you.”

He tried to push her under the curtains, but his left arm wouldn't move. Only then did he see the blood pooling on the stage between them. No, he thought, even as the pain blossomed in his mind. It felt like his shoulder was on fire.

Two agents came out of the wings, grabbed Sutton, and started pulling her back out of the way.

“You're hit, boss,” one of them said.

“Get her out of here,” he told the man. The agent tried to open Juan's coat, but Juan knocked his hands away. “Go!” he shouted. “Get her out of here!”

Juan rolled over toward the room, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. The room was in chaos. The shooter was backing away from the stage, moving toward the kitchen. The crowd was on its feet, falling over themselves as they rushed for the exits. Carlton and Rook were trying their best to swim through the panicked crowd, but they weren't going to get to the shooter in time to stop him. Tess, on the other hand, was standing in the middle of the crowd like a rock in a river. She already had her weapon in her hand, and as Juan watched, the pain threatening to pull him down into unconsciousness, the assassin aimed for Tess and fired.

The shot hit a woman next to Tess and knocked her down. Tess shot back, hitting the assassin in the shoulder and spinning him around. He slipped to one knee, but the next instant he was up and running for the kitchen door, holding his wounded shoulder as he went.

The room was spinning around Juan, and he knew the wound had to be bad. He wouldn't be losing consciousness like this from just a glancing blow. But he wasn't about to give up. Despite the pain, despite the waves of nausea that made it hard to focus, he got to his feet and ran after the shooter.

“Juan, no!” he heard Tess shout, but he pushed on.

The next instant, he was through the kitchen door, the shooter staggering on ahead of him, pushing his way through the confused staff. The shooter pushed a dishwasher with a plastic tub full of silverware in his hands over a prep table, forks and knives clanging loudly across the metal table and onto the floor. Juan forced the blurriness to the corners of his vision as he tunneled in on the assassin. Chefs and busboys were rushing between them, blocking his shot.

“Get out of the way!” Juan shouted as he leveled his pistol toward the fleeing man.

Another twenty feet and he'd be at the metal mesh door where the two uniformed cops were hopefully still on their post. Then a gap in the kitchen staff opened up and Juan took his shot, hitting the fleeing man in his leg and dropping him headfirst into an ice machine.

He ran forward just as the shooter was struggling back to his feet.

Juan planted his foot on the man's back and kicked him. The top of his head smacked into the wall and the man slid facedown into a puddle of filthy dishwater.

Tess appeared behind him while he was taking the gun from the man's limp hand.

She pushed her way around him, getting on her knees in the dishwater puddles and forcing the man's hands behind his back as she cuffed him.

She pulled the man to his feet. He was spluttering and coughing, his face ashen white from his injuries and dripping with dishwater. Other agents appeared behind them and took the man by the shoulder.

“Wait,” she told them.

The agents held the man while Tess tore his shirt open, revealing a tapestry of tattoos.

“Juarez Cartel,” Tess said, holding the man's shirt open so Juan could see.

Juan nodded. “Get him out of here.”

When the man was gone, Tess said, “We need to get you a doctor.”

Juan could feel his legs threatening to turn to water beneath him.

“How's Sutton? She okay?”

“She's fine, but you need a doctor.”

He started to argue, but the pain was already turning his vision into a blurry mess. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think that's a good idea.”

C
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2

Finally, one of the Secret Service agents came over to get him. “Mr. Godwin, we're ready for you over here,” the agent said.

Paul grunted impatiently. “It's about time,” he said.

“This way, sir.”

The agent led him to one of the tables in the Washington Hilton's lobby. Two agents were seated there, a man and a woman, both with laptops and a thick pile of adapters and cords spilling over the sides of the table. Paul didn't recognize either agent, and he thought he had at least seen most of the agents on Juan Perez's team. These two must have been from somewhere else.

“What's this all about?” he said. “I want to speak to Senator Sutton. Where is she?”

The agent who'd come to get him spoke up. “We need your cell phone, sir.”

Paul felt a tinge of panic. His world was in that phone. “Why?”

“We're looking for pictures, videos, text messages. Anything that might have evidentiary value in our investigation.”

“I didn't take any pictures during the shooting,” he said. “I was too busy trying not to get shot.”

“We still need to see your phone.”

Paul glared at the agent. Right after the shooting, the Secret Service had locked the hotel down. Nobody went in, nobody went out. The wounded and their spouses were taken to the hospital, but everybody else was put in one of the hotel's meeting rooms and told to wait.

And for a while, Paul had done as he was told. He went where they told him to go and answered their questions in a numb haze. But now that the adrenaline had worn off, Paul was impatient to get back to work. He needed to check with Senator Sutton. They needed to script out their response to what had happened here tonight. There were press conferences to plan and meetings to set up, and all of it had to be done right now. The more time that went by, the more time Senator Sutton's enemies in Congress and the media had to spin this to their advantage. There was no way in hell he was going to let them take his phone from him at a time like this.

“Where are Agents Perez and Compton? I'm Senator Sutton's senior chief of staff and I've been dealing directly with them. I want to speak to them about this.”

“Agent Perez is at the hospital being treated for his injuries,” the agent said. “Agent Compton is with him. Now I need your phone please.”

“This is crazy,” Paul said. “What's your name again?”

“I'm Agent Frank Carlton. If you'd like you can lodge a complaint at a later time, but right now, I need your phone.”

Behind him, another agent moved closer. Paul sensed the movement and glanced over his shoulder at the man, who stared back at him without expression.

Paul turned back to Carlton. “You should have a warrant for this.”

“You're not a suspect, sir. We're just gathering information, such as pictures and videos of the crowd here tonight, that could be helpful in our investigation. We want to make sure your boss doesn't get shot at again. Nobody wants that, right?”

“Don't patronize me,” Paul said. “And no, I won't let you have it. There's privileged information on there.”

“Nobody here cares what your boss had for lunch last Tuesday,” the agent said. “That's not what I'm after. Now please, sir, your phone.”

Paul looked around, hoping to find somebody he knew, somebody who could intervene on his behalf, but there was nobody. He was pretty much stuck on his own. Realizing he was beat, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his iPhone. He punched in his security code and handed it over to Carlton. “I don't appreciate this kind of treatment, Agent Carlton.”

“iPhone,” Carlton said, as though he hadn't heard. He handed it to the female agent sitting at a Mac-Book. “This one's yours.”

The female agent took the phone and plugged it into her computer. She made a few quick keystrokes and then wrinkled her brow. She glanced up at Paul. “You have over four hundred photos in here from tonight alone.”

“I told you,” he said. “I'm Senator Sutton's chief of staff. It's my job to get pictures of her at events like this.”

“Anything after the shooting?” Carlton asked.

“Doesn't look like it,” the woman said.

“Okay, capture it all.” He looked at Paul. “Did you take any videos?”

Paul lowered his eyes. “No,” he said quietly.

“He has twenty-eight text messages from after the shooting,” the woman at the computer said.

“To who?”

“Twenty-three of them to Senator Sutton. The others I don't recognize.”

“All right,” Carlton said. “We're gonna take it.”

“What? No,” Paul said. “No, you can't take my phone.”

“You'll get it back as soon as we're done with it.”

“How long will that take?”

Carlton shrugged. “I don't know. Three, four hours maybe. We've got to run every single one of those photos you took through our facial recognition software. That takes time.”

Paul felt dizzy. “Please,” he said. “Please don't do this. Capture whatever you need to. Download it or whatever you do. But please, I have to have that phone. Here in the next few hours I'm going to be scheduling press conferences and interviews and meetings. I have to have that phone. It's got everything in there. All my contacts, everything. Please, what happens in the next few hours could shape the rest of Senator Sutton's political career. Please.”

Carlton glanced at the two agents seated behind their computers. Neither returned the glance. Paul studied the man's face for some sign of mercy. Rachel Sutton's shift to the political middle had won her a lot of new friends in the Republican Party, and made a lot of enemies among the core faithful in the Democrats. If this agent was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, he might harbor some resentment, and he could sink Sutton, or at least help to sink her, by holding on to that phone.

“Capture a mirror of his device and return it to him,” Carlton said.

Paul let out the breath he'd been holding.

“Thank you, Agent Carlton. Thank you.”

Carlton nodded. “If we find anything, though, I'm gonna need the phone back. We have to have the source of the information to make a solid criminal case.”

“Okay,” Paul said.

Paul thought the agent was about to walk away when he suddenly stepped in close and whispered: “That boss of yours is doing a lot of damage to the cartels. I hope she keeps giving 'em hell. And you tell her, if she runs for president, it'll be the first time in my life I ever vote for a Democrat.”

He turned and walked away without waiting for Paul's reply, leaving Paul standing there with a confused grin on his face.

The female agent kept his phone for another two minutes before finally handing it back to him.

“That's it?” he said.

“Yep,” she answered.

“So, I can leave?”

“No,” she said. “You can go back to that couch over there and wait. Agent Carlton will tell everyone when they can leave.”

“Oh. Any idea how long that'll be? I've got a ton of work I should be doing.”

“I have no idea,” she said. “But he's got Texas billionaires and Mexican movie queens waiting on the hook, too, and if he's not letting them go, I don't think your chances are too good for an early release.” And then, with venom in her voice, she added: “And I don't care who your boss is.”

He walked away, feeling equal parts relief and anger as the realization that the Secret Service now had records of every e-mail he'd ever sent, every photo he'd every taken, every appointment he'd ever made, and every website he'd ever visited. They quite literally had put his entire life under a microscope. The sense of violation was enough to make him physically ill.

He was walking across the lobby, sending another text to Sutton, when he bumped into a woman in a black dress. “Oh, sorry,” he said, and then did a double take when he realized who it was. “Oh, my God. Monica, it's you!”

“Yes,” she said.

“Wow. I didn't think I was going to see you again.”

She smiled and lowered her eyes. “I was afraid of that, too. When the Secret Service men separated us, I was upset because I didn't have your number. I tried to get them to let me see you, but they wouldn't let me.”

Paul shook his head. He couldn't believe his luck. Her name was Monica Rivas, and he'd met her earlier that evening, during the cattle call before Senator Sutton gave her speech. He'd sensed someone at his shoulder and turned, expecting to meet yet another Texas banker and his trophy wife. Instead, he came face to face with a stunning Mexican beauty. Never very good with women, he'd babbled some kind of lame greeting and gone on stammering, desperately trying to think of something cool to say, when Wayne Sutton had whisked him off on an errand “to find a decent martini in this goddamned place.” He'd been almost grateful to be rescued from the botch he was making of it.

But later, Paul had caught her smiling at him from across the room, and he'd put down his iPhone and gone over to make a proper introduction.

Things had gone well from there. She was easy to talk to, with a bubbly laugh and eyes that seemed to make him the center of the room. She was a Mexican citizen, but had been educated at Harvard. She was a lawyer, a voracious reader, could speak four languages. Her insights into the potential legal barriers ahead for the senator's International Asset Seizure Law were nothing short of brilliant. He was having trouble deciding whether he wanted to debate her or make love to her.

Actually, it wasn't a very hard decision to make.

And then, when the bullets started flying, she'd thrown herself into his arms. He'd pulled her behind a table, and there, lying on top of her, the gunfire still crackling just a few feet away, he'd watched her eyes catch fire with fear and desire.

It was, for all the terror and screaming, one of the most erotic experiences of his life. But then the Secret Service had locked down the scene, and before he knew it, he was being pulled away. With everything that happened after that, and all that still needed to be done, he'd given up on seeing her again. Just another bad break in a string of bad breaks that defined his history with women.

But here she was.

And her brown eyes still held a touch of that desire he'd seen earlier.

“Listen,” he said, “I'm gonna be crazy busy here for probably the rest of the day, but I would love to see you again. Would you give me your number? Maybe I could . . . call you?”

She shook her head, and her black hair moved like a wave over her bare shoulders.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, okay.”

As many times as he'd been shut down like this, he thought he'd be used to rejection by now, but it was always awkward, and it always hurt.

Not knowing what else to say, he started to turn away. But then she put a hand on his wrist. He looked at her hand, at her slender fingers and perfectly manicured nails, then up to her face. She was smiling, and it was a wicked little grin.

“What is it?” he said. He wasn't sure why he was whispering, but he was.

“I was so upset when they pulled us apart, Paul. Please, let's not go away so quickly again.”

“Well, okay. Sure. I have a lot of phone calls to make, though. You won't be too bored?”

Her smile turned demure. “Paul.”

“What?”

“Don't you have a room here in the hotel?”

“A room?” For a moment he didn't understand. And then he did. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, a room. Yeah, I sure do, but . . .”

“But what?”

“Well, Monica, I . . . God, I've got about a million things I have to do before I talk with the senator again. I have a press conference to put together and . . .” He trailed off there. She was frowning, the disappointment plain on her face. She looked embarrassed. He couldn't believe he was saying no to this woman, but what was he supposed to do?

And then, like she was reading his mind, she smiled and said, “I understand. You are a dedicated man. I like that. I respect that. A man should be a man when it comes to his job. Perhaps we will see one another again some time.”

“I . . .”

But she had already turned away. He watched the way her dress moved as she walked, the liquefaction of her clothes, and he knew he'd never have a chance at something this good ever again.

Ah, hell, he thought.

“Monica, wait!”

 

 

Paul had his coat off and was struggling to get loose of his tie before they'd even closed the door. He had his hands all over her, and she on him, the two of them kissing, squeezing, exploring each other.

He groped for the light switch. Couldn't find it.

“Damn,” he said.

“Leave it off,” Monica said, breathing hard. Her eyes were bright in the darkness, staring up at him. Paul had read in books of women whose faces were lit with passion like that, and he'd always thought such things to be the purple prose of hack writers. He certainly never thought he'd see it firsthand.

“Monica,” he gasped.

Her long black hair had turned into a beautiful tangled mess after their ride up in the elevator. He loved the way it spilled over her shoulders. He loved the way her black dress clung to her breasts, to her hips. She was fantastic. She leaned in close to him, close enough he could smell the honeysuckle of her perfume and feel the heat of her breath on his neck. Her arms went around his waist, and the next instant, his cummerbund fell to the floor.