The Savage Dead Read Free

keeping them from their lunch breaks. And the fact that they couldn’t see the problem disgusted him.
    “I gave orders that all the windows and doors along this wall were to be locked up tight. Do you even know how long that window’s been open? Have you been watching it?”
    “I don’t know,” Bolan said. He was getting indignant now. “Go talk to the kitchen staff. They’re the ones who opened it.”
    “Yeah, but—” Juan stopped himself from saying more. There wasn’t any chance of impressing upon them the dangerous situation they’d allowed to happen, and besides, there wasn’t time.
    “All right,” he said into the mic wired into his sleeve, “listen up, all of you. I’ve got an open window here in the kitchen off the loading dock. Frank, Soto, Sarantino—I need you three to break away and get down to the kitchen. I want this place searched. Somebody locate the PD supervisor, too. I want him down here right now. Tess, you monitoring?”
    “Yeah, boss, I’m here.”
    “Get close to Piper, okay? I want you right on her shoulder. And make sure her husband and Mr. Godwin are accounted for as well.”
    “I’m on it,” she said.
    He was about to turn back to the two Metropolitan PD officers and chew their asses, but just then his earpiece chimed with a private message from Tess.
    “Yeah, Tess, what is it?”
    “Just wanted to let you know that the Good Doctor is already pretty deep in his cups. You want me to get Waller and Strahan on him?”
    Damn, Juan thought. “The Good Doctor” was their unit’s call sign for Dr. Wayne Sutton, Senator Sutton’s infamously and perennially drunk husband. The man was still a practicing dentist, though how he managed to keep a handle on his practice Juan had no idea. He’d dealt with the man at least twenty times over the last six months, and each time Dr. Sutton had been resoundingly drunk. It was enough of a problem that every plan Juan and his unit came up with to get Piper out of danger now included a separate plan to deal with her husband.
    “Yeah,” Juan said. “Get Waller and Strahan to keep him close. Tell Piper to hold off on her speech. I’ll be out on the floor in a just a moment.”
    “Boss, she’s not gonna like that.”
    “I don’t care, Tess. Just tell her to hold what she’s got for a little bit.”
    The Metropolitan PD supervisor showed up a moment later. He was a young, clean-cut lieutenant named Brian Roth. He glanced from Juan to his two officers standing outside the metal door, and then back to Juan.
    “Is there a problem?”
    “I want you to get a squad down here to go through this area. I want every person checked and cleared against the staff roster, and I want it done right now.”
    The lieutenant’s boyish smile evaporated. “I don’t understand. Why the sudden change in plans?”
    “You can thank your two all-stars out there,” Juan said.
    “Now hold on a second—”
    Juan cut the man off. He didn’t have time to be polite. “No, you hold on a second. Those two have been out there smoking and grab-assing all night while that window down there was standing wide open. Now you will get a squad down here, and you will account for every person who has been in and out of this kitchen since five o’clock this afternoon. Do you understand?”
    “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