Ambush

Chapter 45

Alex Martinez smiled broadly as she walked along Park Avenue South. She was coming from a lovely dinner with the mounted police officer Tom McLaughlin. He was charming, sweet, and a full eighteen months younger than she was. Not that it made a difference. She wasn’t looking for someone she could raise her daughters with. She also wasn’t interested in telling him where she was staying just yet. It was their first date.

He had taken her for drinks at a sports bar called the Hill. It was a younger crowd, but she appreciated his showing her new places. Then they strolled down Third Avenue to a little Italian place named Bistango, and she tried not slurp down clams marinara in an unladylike manner.

After dinner, Tom calmly accepted Alex’s decision to catch a cab back to her hotel. A quick kiss good night turned into just a little more. Enough to make Alex wonder if she was making the right choice, leaving this handsome, horse-loving man for the evening. But it was for the best.

After they parted, she wanted to walk instead of ride in a cab. That’s when it happened. She realized she was getting sloppy. Someone was following her. She knew it wasn’t the police. This was a pretty young woman with short dark hair, wearing a skirt no cop would wear, even undercover.

This was something Alex had dealt with once before. In Madrid, two years ago, some members of a local gang started to follow her. They were subtle, but not nearly as subtle as this young woman now. In Madrid, Alex simply kept walking until she found a police officer and chatted with him. It only took about twenty minutes for the gang to lose interest and wander away.

Ironically, this time she was coming from talking to a police officer. And she had no idea who would want to follow her.

She worked out a plan in her head anyway. She turned east, toward the river. She wasn’t far from the United Nations building. Once she had gone a couple of blocks, she made another assessment. The woman was still back there.

Alex didn’t like to commit violence she wasn’t being paid for. Especially violence against a woman. She would do what she had to, but she didn’t relish the idea of using her stiletto on this woman, who was using a phone to call out Alex’s movements to someone else.

Alex led the woman down to the FDR Drive, then found a place to cross.

She had the river on one side of her. Now she focused on what was coming toward her.