I nodded, thinking about all the information Alessio had brought forward. It did seem to line up and point to this destination, and if Shep’s gut was telling him this was the spot, who was I to argue?
Hell, he’d found me in the middle of a damn jungle. I had to believe he’d be able to find this asshole in New York. Shep knew this place better than any of us.
“Bonsoir, is it…Melvin?”
I snorted as Benoit’s snobbish observation came across the speaker inside the van, and shifted to look at the screen attached to the dashboard where we all had a prime view of “Melvin.”
“Yeah, hi,” he said as Benoit shifted to the side to get a look at the computer on the desk beside him.
“Busy night?”
Melvin looked around the small, empty lobby and then back to his nosy customer with awhat the fuck do you think?look.
“I was wondering if you could be a dear and look up something for me? My sister sent me down here to get a box of knickknacks for her, and, well, I’ve forgotten the unit number.”
I could practically hear the pout in Benoit’s voice as he leaned across the desk, but for once in his life his charm was falling flat.
Melvin was one hundred percent uninterested.
“Her name?”
Benoit gave a little harrumph, which made me smirk. It seemed our resident charmer was going to have to use the element of surprise this go around.
“Bérengère Olivier.”
Seriously? Could he pick a harder name to?—
“How you spell that?” Melvin turned toward the computer and suddenly it clicked, as Benoit slipped his hands into his pocket, no doubt palming the tranq he had hidden inside.
Hope he kept that thing capped in there.
“B-E—with a little accent over the top.”
Melvin glanced over his shoulder at Benoit. “A what?”
“An accent. It’s French. You press the command button at the same as— Would you like me to just come around and type it in?”
Melvin, the poor bastard, rolled his eyes but nodded, and as Benoit slipped in behind the desk and moved in behind him?—
Thump.
—he was out before he even knew what hit him.
“Merde. He went down harder than I expected,” Benoit muttered as his camera caught Melvin where he’d just face-planted into the desk.
Chuckles rumbled through the van, then Shep said into his mic, “Good work, Benny—we’ll be there in a second.”
“No need to hurry on his account. He’s got enough of that drug in him to have him sleeping until tomorrow morning.”
“Is it weird I’ve never found you sexier?” Dimitri asked.
“Non, mon monstre. It’s kind of the same way I felt when you pulled a gun on me back in Venice.”
“Masks on,” King said, gruff and no-nonsense. The metal was cold on my skin as I pulled mine on, which actually felt good on my bruised face. Each of us wore the same black filigreed style beneath black hoods, something King had been adamant on so that no one could distinguish between us in case we were seen doing things that weren’t exactly legal.
Like breaking into a public storage facility.
Once we were ready, Alessio held up the camera jammer, hit the button, then counted to ten before pulling open the van door.
