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KEVIN DOYLE HAD been keeping tabs on both Michael Bennett and Rob Trilling. This was not an assignment he would appreciate if he was told to move forward. But he had to be prepared. Clearly, Bennett had years of experience on the streets of New York. Trilling was young and in shape. Either would be a challenge. Plus, he’d have to get out of New York immediately. Although the general public tended to accept active-duty police fatalities with just a shrug, the cops would be relentless looking for him. It was the same in every country.

Doyle was once contracted to kill a police captain in Beirut. The captain had been on the take and was allowing shipments of supplies for refugees to be pillaged before being sent on to Syria and elsewhere—places that desperately needed them in order to see another sunrise. To Doyle, this was the worst kind of criminal—a corrupt cop taking food and supplies from people who need them.

It had been a fairly simple job. Doyle made certain not to do anything that this jerk’s family might see. His kids didn’t need to be traumatized. He simply took a long shot with a scoped rifle and hit the police captain as he came out of his office.

Doyle had wasted no time employing his escape plan. Even with his resources and experience it was a tighter escape than he would’ve liked. The cops contacted the military and were able to close off Beirut in less than twenty minutes.

Luckily for Doyle, who was traveling with an Irish passport, the cops were certain the assassination was the work of a local terrorist group loosely affiliated with some of the larger, better-known groups. Doyle was allowed to pass through their perimeter, and he was out of the country a few hours later.

Doyle later heard from some of his associates that the cops hadn’t let up the pressure for nearly three weeks after the police captain’s assassination.

Now, on the streets of Manhattan, he watched as Bennett and Trilling both pulled up to their office building in unfamiliar cars. Bennett was in a Cadillac and Trilling drove a blue Ford Explorer. Doyle figured they’d been out on surveillance again. They were definitely poking around the same people as Doyle.

He still held out hope that he wouldn’t get the order to do anything to either of the cops. But Doyle had found he rarely got what he hoped for.