Triple Cross (Alex Cross #30)(80)

Bree turned to look over her shoulder, noticing that the din in the room had dropped multiple decibels. She spotted Frances Duchaine moving through the throng by the bars, flanked by the same two bodyguards who’d thrown Bree out of the fashion designer’s estate.





CHAPTER 89


IT WAS FASCINATING TO watch the crowd react as Duchaine swept deeper into the venue. Heads snapped around. Guests whispered about her presence to other guests and provoked more low murmuring and craned heads trying to spot her.

Even though the scandal had no doubt damaged her brand, the fashion designer seemed to revel in the moment. Frances was the center of attention and knew it.

Luster was suddenly standing there next to Salazar and Bree. “I can’t believe it. I didn’t think she’d come even after she said she would.”

Bree said, “Well, it looks like she’s coming right to us, Phillip.”

“I am the gala’s cochair,” Luster said. “She has to pay her respects.”

“Why?” Salazar said, taking her feet off the chair.

“Because Frances is the other cochair,” Luster said as Duchaine came closer, nodding to some in the crowd and ignoring others, while the buff white bodyguard and the buffer Black bodyguard kept their eyes sweeping the crowd.

Duchaine walked right up to Luster. “Phillip, how wonderful to see you.”

“Frances, dear, how are you holding up?” Luster said and blew a kiss past each cheek.

Duchaine kept up the charade, murmuring something to him, then caught sight of Bree and Salazar standing on the other side of the table. The detective had been in the news a lot with the killings at Paula Watkins’s home, and Duchaine clearly recognized Bree from Greenwich. She retreated from Luster, stared at him coldly. “I can see whose side you’re on now, Phillip. I wish you had told me.”

“What are friends for, dear?”

Enraged, she pivoted and strode off with bodyguards in tow. They took three seats at a table two rows away.

Duchaine ate barely two bites of her entrée before murmuring to both bodyguards; they set their utensils down and rose. Bree watched her make her excuses to the other guests and start toward the front door.

Salazar leaned across Luster and said to Bree, “Let’s trail her a little. Let her know she’s still a target.”

Luster said, “I love it. I really do. Tell me everything she does!”

Bree and the detective got up and walked across the venue and out the front door. Duchaine and her bodyguards were standing about twenty feet away, scanning the traffic on Forty-Second and Lexington. The blond guy was on his phone.

It was seven thirty in the evening in midtown Manhattan. Traffic was heavy but flowing, at least in the eastbound lane of Forty-Second Street.

The blond guy must have seen the car he was looking for because he raised his hand. Bree caught a driver about ten cars back wave in return just as a cream-colored utility van floated into the near lane and stopped.

Cars behind it began honking.

The side door to the van opened. Three men in black hoods leaped out carrying pistols; they aimed at Duchaine and her bodyguards and opened fire.





CHAPTER 90


FRANCES DUCHAINE TOOK MULTIPLE bullets in the chest and torso at close range; she stumbled back and fell, dead before she hit the sidewalk.

The bodyguards, shot in the face and neck, were down before they got their weapons drawn. Pedestrians screamed and tried to get away.

The assassins turned and ran east on Forty-Second toward Lexington and the van they’d come in, which was still rolling. Bree and Salazar, both with years of training, took off after the assailants.

Bree had a federal firearms license and a permit to carry, and as she ran, she dug the Ruger from her purse. Salazar pulled up her gown as she half ran, half waddled, found her backup weapon in a thigh holster, and drew it.

The van crossed Lexington just as the yellow light turned red, the gunmen in close pursuit. The detective shouted, “NYPD! Stop!”

They didn’t slow. A New York taxi headed south on Lexington took off on the green light, streaked across the intersection, and intentionally hit the slowest gunman in the leg. He stumbled, hit the curb, rolled on the sidewalk, and came up shooting. Salazar and Bree fired from the middle of Lexington and hit him square in the chest.

As she ran, Salazar screamed at the pedestrians, the taxi, and the other cars stopped in the intersection, “NYPD! Call 911! NYPD!”

The other two gunmen were still on Forty-Second, heading east toward Third Avenue and the van, which had slowed.

“Don’t let them get in it!” Salazar yelled.

Bree felt stitches in her dress burst as she lengthened her stride, trying to catch up to the two gunmen. A woman came out of a Foot Locker store and almost knocked her over.

Bree lost sight of the assassins as she struggled to keep her balance. A second later, she spotted one of them not thirty yards from the van, which moved at a crawl as it approached Third.

Where’s the other shooter? Where is he?

Bree cut diagonally off the sidewalk onto Forty-Second, looking for a clear shot at the gunman who was almost to the van, when the other shooter appeared from behind a sidewalk planter about thirty feet ahead of her. He fired and hit her in the left arm; she spun around and fell on her side in the gutter.

Shocked, disoriented, she raised her gun and searched for the shooter. She saw him just as he took three steps forward and aimed his weapon at her. A gun went off.