Bullseye (Michael Bennett 9)

Brooklyn and I groaned in unison when we got to the spot where Leroux had left the block.

Because it wasn’t a building. It was a parking lot. An empty one that ran the whole block north to 25th Street.

Leroux was gone.

I threw up my hands as I stared at the lonely expanse of asphalt. He must have booked the second he was out of our sight. We’d lost him.

“You gotta be kidding me with this James Bond routine,” Brooklyn said.

We’d broken into a jog and were halfway across the lot toward 25th when the headlights of a vehicle suddenly swung off 25th Street into the driveway of the lot.

It was a truck, a dark new Chevy Suburban SUV with black-tinted windows. It was moving fast—too fast. I reached back and palmed the undercover Glock at the small of my back as the truck roared straight at us.

I could feel my heart pounding hard in my chest as the vehicle came to a quick tire-barking stop a foot in front of us. Then I was moving around the side of the truck with my Glock pulled.

“NYPD! Hands where I can see them!” I yelled as the front passenger window began to zip down.

As the dark glass fell, I held my breath with my finger on the trigger, thinking that in a split second I would see the face of ex-SEAL turned assassin Matthew Leroux, and a lot of lead would start flying.

But I was wrong.

It wasn’t Leroux.

Instead, a dark-haired boyish man was sitting there. He was wearing a nice pin-striped suit with a two-tone banker’s collar, minus the power tie. Like a Wall Streeter out for fun after work. There was a stupid smile on his face.

“Hey, Mike. How’s it going?” he said.

I didn’t recognize him. Then I did. It was Mark Evrard, the State Department’s expert and adviser on Russia from the restaurant meeting with Secret Service SAC Margaret Foley.

What the…?

“It’s fine, Mike,” he said. “You can put away the gun. Honestly. We’re all friends here. I can explain everything.”

Still in shock, I looked in at the driver beside him, a mean-looking, stocky middle-aged guy with thick forearms and hands.

“Mike, who the hell are these jerks?” Brooklyn said, still training her own Glock at the truck.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Who are you jerks?”

“Mike, we didn’t mean to spook you like that. I think it’s time we should talk,” Evrard said. “High time, in fact.”

“About what?” I said as I finally holstered my gun.

Instead of answering, Evrard climbed out of the truck and opened the back door.

That’s when the real shocker of the night happened. Actually, there were two of them.

My redheaded buddy Paul Ernenwein was sitting in the back of the truck.

And beside him, sitting there calm as a picnic in the park, was none other than Matthew Leroux.

“You got me, Officer. I give up. Don’t shoot,” the blond ex–Navy SEAL said, smiling as he held up his empty hands.

Chapter 56

“Hey, my apologies again, Mike,” Mark Evrard said. “I know we caught you off guard.”

We were heading downtown now, through the meatpacking district, the tires of the Suburban changing pitch as we crossed at the cobbled intersections.