The Savage Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

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