AllFreeNovel
Share Us
65
Midtown
Magdalena had recognized the man who greeted her elevator. She saw him each time she stayed at the Pierre. He was the hotel’s head of security. A big guy with an Irish face and an outer boroughs accent. In her previous life, Magdalena would have avoided a man like him. It was obvious the guy was a cop. Retired, sure. But a cop all the same.
On that evening, however, the former police officer whose name Magdalena did not know had presented himself as her guardian. Quietly, his voice calm and assured, he had asked Magdalena whether she was expecting any visitors. And when she replied that she wasn’t, he informed her that he had noticed two men loitering outside her suite earlier that afternoon. The same two men, he explained, were now drinking club soda in the lobby bar. It was his considered opinion that both were federal law enforcement agents.
“FBI?”
“Probably. And I think there might be a couple more outside.”
“Can you get me out of here?”
“That depends on what you’ve done.”
“I trusted someone I shouldn’t have.”
“I’ve done that once or twice myself.” He looked her up and down. “Do you need anything from your suite?”
“I can’t go back.”
“Why not?”
“Because the man I trusted is there now.”
With that, he took her by the arm and led her through a doorway. It opened onto a hallway lined with small offices, which in turn gave onto the hotel’s loading bay. A black Escalade idled curbside on East Sixty-First Street.
“He’s waiting for another guest. It’s yours if you want it.”
“I don’t have any way to pay him.”
“I know the driver. I’ll take care of it.”
The big former cop with an Irish face escorted Magdalena across the sidewalk and opened the rear driver’s-side door. Seated in the back was a gray man in a gray suit. The former cop forced Magdalena inside and slammed the door. The Escalade lurched forward and made a left turn onto Fifth Avenue.
The gray man in the gray suit watched Magdalena without expression as she clawed at the door latch. Finally she capitulated and turned to face him. “Who are you?”
“I’m the man who makes Phillip’s problems go away,” he answered. “And you, Ms. Navarro, are a problem.”
The driver had a neck like a fire hydrant and stubble-length hair. At the corner of East Fifty-Ninth Street and Park Avenue, Magdalena politely asked him to unlock her door. Receiving no response, she appealed to the gray man in the gray suit, who told her to shut her mouth. Furious, she tried to gouge his eyes from their sockets. Her attack ended when he seized her right wrist and twisted it to the breaking point.
“Are you finished?”
“Yes.”
He increased the pain. “Are you sure?”
“I promise.”
He reduced the pressure, but only slightly. “Why are you in New York?”
“I was arrested.”
“Where?”
“Italy.”
“How is Allon involved?”
