We were on the fourth floor, just down the hall from Paul's office, sitting on metal folding chairs and watching a flat screen.

On it was a live feed of a blond couple walking west up East 43rd Street.

The two were an attractive pair: a weather-beaten blond guy in his late thirties and his pretty platinum-blond wife, probably five years younger. The guy reminded me of that laid-back dude on the HGTV show Fixer Upper, only he had a ridiculously muscular Olympic gymnast's body, a slim waist with broad shoulders, and huge forearms and hands.

The couple was being videotaped with a zoom lens from over a block away by one of Paul's guys in a state-of-the-art surveillance car that looked like a taxi minivan. The van and feds had been on them since I'd sent in the lead the afternoon before. They were also up on their house and cell phones.

"Despite the tourist getup, they look like professionals, don't they, Paul?" I said. "Just the way they move, heads up, relaxed yet alert. Also the way they keep a lot of s.p.a.ce between themselves, almost as if they don't want to reveal to anyone watching if they're actually together or not."

"They're operators, all right," Paul said, nodding. "Who leaves their primary cell phone at home in the middle of the day? That's tradecraft."

"As was the superslick way Matthew hired Jinete in Hamilton Heights," I said. "Intelligence service a.s.set recruitment one oh one."

"Though they're trying to appear to be tourists," Paul said, "watch how even as they look up at buildings, they don't stumble or b.u.mp into people. You can tell they're familiar with the area. These guys are a.n.a.lyzing, fact-finding. They're in mission mode."

"You think they're scoping out the motorcade route?"

"Could be. Mike, you saw the shooter. Could this guy be him?"

I stared at Matthew Leroux as he walked with his wife.

"Maybe," I said after a bit. "Same athleticism. Same build."

I'd already read through the extensive info folders Paul and his team had put together on Matthew and Sophie Leroux from the fed databases.

It turned out they weren't your regular art gallery owners.

In fact, they were both ex-CIA.

They'd met in 2005 in Iraq, where Matthew, a former Navy SEAL turned Special Operations Group team leader, and Sophie, a CIA a.n.a.lyst, both cycled into the Joint Special Operations Command.

What they had worked on together there was cla.s.sified, but Paul had spoken to some people at State and speculated that they had both been ground zero in the insurgent terrorist-hunting business. For four years, they had worked side by side, gathering intel and finding and fixating and terminating jihadi bomb makers in and around Falluja and Mosul.

When Matthew was a SEAL, he'd actually earned the Distinguished Service Cross, one medal below the Congressional Medal of Honor, for almost single-handedly suppressing a truck bomb attack on a forward operating base in Bagram.

He and Sophie had married in '07 and had put in their papers at the same time in 2011, when she had gotten pregnant with their now four-year-old daughter, Victoria. Matthew was a hick from rural Indiana, so it was Sophie who was wearing the pants in their somewhat successful art gallery biz. Sophie was a born-and-bred Manhattanite with a father who had apparently been a famous gallery owner.

They didn't seem like a.s.sa.s.sins, but then again, we had every indication that they had been involved in the hit in Hamilton Heights.

And now they looked like they were casing the streets between the Waldorf and the UN, where the president would be driving around in less than a week's time. It was concerning, not to mention scary as h.e.l.l.

"Is this even possible, Paul?" I said as I watched them. "This can't be what it looks like. Two former distinguished and dedicated patriots now working for some unknown enemy actually setting up our own president?"

I watched the good-looking couple on the screen as they took another picture.

"It seems weird to me, too, Mike, but anything is possible," Paul said. "Maybe they've got money problems or a drug habit, if you consider how wackadoo the art world can be. Or maybe they picked up a crazy ideology. Couples do go nuts sometimes, and these guys were deep in the s.h.i.t over there in Iraq. For years, all they did was eat, drink, hunt and kill people, and sleep. These people are definitely persons of interest."

Chapter 49.

At a minute before five o'clock that evening, I found myself at Riverbank State Park in Harlem, listening to Katy Perry sing about fireworks from the cranked-up ice rink speakers over my head.

"Dad, what do you think of my moves?" said my son Ricky, excited as he wobbled past, almost falling three times.

"They're persistent, son. Real persistent," I said, wondering if I should fetch him a bike helmet from the van.

A moment later, Fiona and Julia and Jane sailed past on their skates quite gracefully, their elbows locked as they sang along with Katy at the top of their lungs. I joined them for a few bars from the sidelines, until for some reason they told me to stop.

"What's the problem?" I called after them with mock concern. "Wrong pitch? No, wait. It's my key, right? Where are you going? Wait, I can go higher."

The annual skate-athon fund-raiser for my kids' school, Holy Name, was officially under way. As an official rinkside lap counter, I was freezing, but it could have been worse, I knew. Instead of my kids, it could have actually been me out there, falling and sc.r.a.ping and clunking against the boards over the Zamboni-freshened ice.

Though I was dog-tired from our all-day surveillance, I couldn't pa.s.s up the chance to spend some time with the kids. I'd been working too much lately on the joint task force. Way too much, if you considered how little there was to show for it.

And the fund-raiser really couldn't have been for a better cause. Catholic schools were truly hurting due to low enrollment, closing all over New York as they were all over the country. The thought of Holy Name actually closing was too depressing to even think about. Everybody at the school and the parish was like family to us.

Speaking of the saints, I busted Mary Catherine, beside me, staring at me as I put down my clipboard and lifted my not-so-hot cocoa. I smiled at her warily as Katy died out and the All-American Rejects started up.

"What?" I said as she continued to stare without saying anything.

"Nothing," she finally said, with a small grin. "It's just nice to see you like this."

"See me like how?" I said. "Dry and on solid ground instead of out there, sitting on the ice with a wet, red, sore frozen b.u.t.t?"

"No, that actually might be cute," she said with a wink. "I meant happy, relaxed, and, as a bonus, actually here."

"I'm here, all right. Mike Bennett in the frostbitten flesh," I said, blowing on my hands. "Too bad we can't say the same for Brian and Marvin. Where are those two? It can't take that long to get here from Fordham. They should be here by now."

I saw Mary Catherine wince with worry as I said this. I knew she was already quite attached to our new houseguest and considered him to be family. Besides, she was no dummy. Like me, she knew full well there was something up with Marvin. Something that for all intents and purposes seemed to be heading from bad to worse.

"How do these d.a.m.n kids become such experts at worrying parents to death, anyhow?" I said as I took out my phone to text Brian yet again. "The second they outgrow the playpen, it's over."

Chapter 50.

Brian Bennett took a quick peek at his vibrating phone as he stood at the greasy window inside a Chinese take-out dump called New Dragon Palace on Westchester Avenue in some misbegotten, run-down section of the Bronx.

He looked up from his dad's latest freak-out of a text and put his eyes back on the car underneath the elevated track across the street.

It was a Mercedes, a two-door glossy silver E320 ghettoed out with big silver rims and dark tinted windows. He'd been doing nothing but stare at it for the last ten minutes.

It was because of Marvin.

Marvin was now in the car doing who knew what with that old psycho g.a.n.g.b.a.n.ger dude who seemed to be stalking him.

This wasn't supposed to be happening, Brian thought. What was supposed to be happening was Brian and Marvin attending the Holy Name skate-athon with everybody at the rink in Harlem.

But after school, Marvin said he had something to do and would meet him later. Brian knew what that meant, so, on an impulse, he decided to follow him.

It was quite the odyssey. The B train at Fordham Road to Yankee Stadium. The 4 train from there to 125th, where Marvin got a third train, an uptown 6 that had taken them back into the Bronx here, to a place called St. Lawrence Avenue.

He didn't know what St. Lawrence was the patron saint of, but his street was one of the sketchiest blocks Brian had ever set foot on. Coming from the stairs of the subway, he'd pa.s.sed an auto gla.s.s store that looked like it had been torched beside a bodega with a bulletproof gla.s.s sidewalk kiosk. The only light on the dilapidated block seemed to be from the bloodred neon PETEY'S DISCOUNT LIQUORS, in front of which the Merc was parked.

It didn't make sense, Brian thought, shaking his head. Marvin was the coolest dude. Enthusiastic and humble and nice to everybody-parents, even freshmen. A solid B student, with his athletics he was a shoo-in for a good college scholarship.

He even talked about his future plans all the time. He said he knew he probably wasn't good enough for the pros, and that he was going to major in management. He had an uncle who owned a bunch of tire stores down south, and he wanted to do something like that: manage a franchise or something and work with colleagues and customers.

At sixteen, he was by far the most mature of all their friends, Brian knew.

And yet in spite of all that, he was here in Fort Apache, the Bronx, doing some...sinister drug deal or something.

It just didn't make sense.

Chapter 51.

What would Dad do? Brian wondered as he continued to stare at the car.

That was easy. He'd probably walk on over across the street, tap on the tinted window, and demand to know what the h.e.l.l was happening.

But Dad was a cop, wasn't he? He had a gun and a badge and twenty years' experience in crazy, dangerous, drug-infested places like this.

What did he have? Brian thought. A book bag and a friendly smile?

Brian winced as he listened to the steel drum rattle of a pa.s.sing 6 on the elevated track overhead.

What the h.e.l.l would happen next? he wondered as Marvin suddenly got out of the car with a small duffel bag.

Brian immediately bolted out of the restaurant and crossed the street, tailing Marvin north under the El toward the intersection of St. Lawrence. As he got to the corner, he watched as Marvin made a beeline toward a tenement on the north side of the street. The run-down structure had an NYPD SAFE HALLWAYS sign above its main door that even Brian knew meant it was a hard-core drug building. Just then, three people-two jacked gangster-looking black guys and a tough-seeming, probably Hispanic chick with cornrows-came out of the building's front door and sat on its stoop. The girl lit a cigarette, and then one of the cold-eyed black guys s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of her mouth as the other guy laughed.

Brian ran up as Marvin was about to cross the street.

"Marvin! Yo, Marvin!" he cried.

"Brian?!" Marvin said, staring at him in shock. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing? Following me? You shouldn't be here, man. What are you doing? Didn't I tell you to leave me alone?"

"What am I doing?" Brian cried. "What are you doing? You have to stop all this crazy stuff, Marvin. I saw you in that car with that crazy dude. Are you out of your frickin' mind? You're gonna get arrested or killed. Why are you throwing your life away?"

Instead of answering, Marvin turned and watched over Brian's shoulder as a car pa.s.sed by back on Westchester Avenue. It was a beat-up maroon Chevy. It slowed and stopped on the corner. The three street toughs on the tenement stoop immediately scattered as some chubby white guys climbed out of the car.

"Oh, d.a.m.n! It's cops! C'mon!" Marvin said, tugging at Brian's jacket.

Before he could stop and think about it, Brian was moving quickly with Marvin down St. Lawrence. They took a left on an even worse disaster of a street called Gleason and started running. They hooked another left on a street called Beach. Halfway down Beach, Brian watched as Marvin threw the duffel bag over a graffiti-covered wood fence into an abandoned lot. Then they ran all the way back to the elevated subway station on Westchester.

"C'mon, Marvin. Let's just get the h.e.l.l out of here," said Brian as they huffed and puffed on the stairs for the El. Brian looked over by PETEY'S DISCOUNT LIQUORS, but the Merc was gone.

Marvin shook his head.

"No, man. We just need to wait a few minutes. I have to go back."

"Go back?" Brian said, disbelieving.

"I have to go back for that bag," Marvin said.

"Why? What the h.e.l.l is in it, anyway?"

Marvin gave him a fierce look.

"Don't you worry about that. Just wait here," Marvin said, pointing at him. "I'll be ten minutes, tops, okay? Just wait."

Brian's phone went off again as he helplessly watched Marvin run back across the street the way they'd come.

Where the h.e.l.l are you guys? Dad wanted to know. I'm not kidding, Brian. You should have been here an hour ago. Where the h.e.l.l are you? Tell me now.

Brian looked around as another train arrived above, its violent, industrial rattle like a death metal drum solo.

As if I know, he thought.

Sorry, Dad. We were stuck in a tunnel. Just got out. Train's stuck again though, Brian lied, typing quickly. But we should be on our way any minute.

If we're both still alive, Brian thought, shaking his head again as he hit Send.

Part Three

Catch Me if You Can