The Savage Dead by Joe McKinney Page A

best single malt scotch she had.
    Rachel Sutton had said, “Are you nuts? It’s not even six a.m.”
    He’d said, “Okay, fine. A Bloody Mary then.”
    And from there the argument had gone round and round some invisible point in their past that was both a part of whatever this tension between them was and more than that. Things between them were complicated, Tess could tell.
    “It’s not his drinking,” Paul said to her.
    She looked at him.
    “If that’s what you’re thinking, it’s not that.”
    He was leaning in close to her, whispering.
    “I wasn’t trying to spy,” she said, embarrassed.
    “No, of course not. They can be kind of hard to ignore sometimes.”
    She nodded, and waited a moment for him to say more, but he didn’t. She went back to looking out the window. The sun was coming up and she wondered where they were. There was a river down there, snaking its way through a brown landscape. Tracing its course out to the horizon made her think of how tired she was. Maybe she could sleep, even with them arguing.
    “He was drinking pretty heavy when I first met them,” Paul said suddenly. “That was during her first term.”
    “How long ago was that?”
    “Oh, about thirteen years ago. I was right out of law school, all gung ho for the Democratic Party. I was gonna make a difference, you know?”
    “Have you?”
    He shrugged. “I guess it depends on how you measure it.”
    “So, you’re world-weary now, is that it?”
    He smiled.
    “So what changed?” she asked.
    “With me?”
    “No.” She hooked a thumb toward the seats behind them, where Rachel Sutton and her husband were doing their best to stare off in opposite directions. “With them.”
    “Ah.” His smile softened a little. He had a nice smile, she thought, boyish, innocent looking. She supposed he was cute, in a way. He was certainly no Juan Perez, but he was okay. “Well, her career really started to take off. She works sixteen hour days, six days a week. Did you know that?”
    She nearly reminded him that she’d been watching every move the senator made for the last month, but she didn’t. Instead, she just shook her head.
    “All that hard work paid off. She won election after election, all the while taking a larger and larger role in the party, and the more her career took off, the more his had to get put on hold. He had a thriving practice back in Del Rio, but he gave it up for her.”
    Tess didn’t see the problem. “Makes sense.”
    “Well, yeah, to our generation. He’s from a different time, though. Reminds me of my dad, kind of. The man never changed a diaper, never did the cooking. Except for burgers on the grill on Labor Day. You know the type? He was the breadwinner and all that. The man’s place is to provide, the woman’s to run the home. Dr. Sutton’s the same way.”
    “Are you saying he resents her for doing well?”
    “Yeah, pretty much. He’s never come out and said so. I don’t think he’s even admitted it to himself. But I’d say that’s pretty much the score between them.”
    “That’s awful,” she said. “That seems really sad to me.”
    He shrugged, but she could tell it bothered him, too. She wondered why he was telling her all this. It wasn’t really her concern. She was here to do a job, nothing more.
    But it’s because it bothers him so, she realized. That’s why he was telling her. He was like some grown-up kid watching his parents inching closer every day toward divorce.
    Or maybe it was more one-sided than that. Maybe he was so fiercely loyal to Rachel Sutton that he tended to look at everything in her world through a lens of hero worship. Either way, it was going to be an interesting vacation.
    She heard them talking again.
    “Don’t you dare shush me again,” Dr. Sutton snapped.
    The senator whispered for him to be quiet, but it didn’t work.
    “I don’t care who hears, damn it.”
    “Uh-oh,” Paul said. He stood up. “Excuse me.” He took his iPad and a manila folder