The Doll (17 page)

Across the bridge, Munroe stopped beneath the carport roof, and the young man in uniform stepped from his office, glanced at the car, and without pausing, turned and went back inside.

The phone rang.

Munroe answered.

“Continue on,” Lumani said.

Munroe checked the windows, checked the mirrors. He was out there somewhere, he had to have seen
—someone
had to have seen—for him to have this kind of timing. “Now what?” she said, but he’d already hung up, and a few seconds later the phone began to vibrate with the alert of incoming texts.

M
UNROE EASED THE
car forward, and for another hour and forty minutes they drove terrain that wound over hills and occasionally through tiny postcard-perfect towns. Continued in silence until Neeva said, “I have to use the bathroom.”

The words set off a wave of strategy inside Munroe’s head, pieces shifting, move against move, probability played against death.

When she didn’t say anything, Neeva added, “Really, really badly.”

Aside from the crackers, Neeva hadn’t eaten anything since she’d been doped up in preparation for the trip, and although she may have been given something to drink, it would have been minimal. Neeva knew it. Neeva knew that Munroe knew it and so had chugged an entire liter of water. One didn’t have to be an actress, didn’t even have to watch TV, to know that the bathroom ploy was the oldest escape tactic in the book, so either Neeva took her for a fool or she believed her acting ability trumped logic.

Munroe said, “You should have gone before we left.”

Neeva’s voice, still raspy from the beating her windpipe had taken earlier, went up a notch. “Please tell me you’re kidding,” she
said. “One of the perks of being a kidnap victim in transport should be the right to use a real toilet, right?”

Munroe didn’t respond.

Within Neeva’s plotting was opportunity. Unless Lumani would have his precious package use a field and risk messing up her clothes, this was a legitimate reason to stop the car within at least a touch of civilization. Navigation said they still had several kilometers until the next town, and the speed limits kept the going slow. Neeva said, “Anyway, they took the bucket away again, so the only way I could have gone was in these clothes and I didn’t want to stink them up.”

“I can’t do it,” Munroe said.

Neeva drew a deep breath. “I’ve gotta go,” she said, “and if you won’t let me stop, I’ll use the seat of this car. Trust me, after the crap I’ve put up with these past few weeks, it won’t bother me one bit.”

“It’s not my car,” Munroe said, “and I don’t have to wear the clothes, so suit yourself.”

It was another long minute before Neeva spoke again, this time quieter, and once more it was difficult to tell where the actress ended and the real person began. “The clothes must be important,” she said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have starved me and taken the bucket away and wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble to doll me up and put me in them.” She paused. “Are you really sure you want me to pee in them?”

Munroe said, “If we stop, if you try to run, if something happens to you, someone I love will die and you will have been the cause of that.”

“My bladder just wants a toilet,” Neeva said.

Munroe took her eyes off the road and glanced at Neeva. “If because of your actions you’re responsible for a killing, then I’ll have no reason to keep you alive.”

“Just a toilet.”

Munroe reached for the phone. Dialed one of the only two numbers the phone was permitted to call and in English, though she would have preferred to avoid it and thus keep Neeva on edge, relayed the conversation.

“Can you control her?” Lumani asked.

“
That’s
something over which I have no choice,” Munroe said. “But if it’s wiser not to stop, I don’t have a problem with her using
the car seat for a toilet. It’s the smell I’m unsure about. Even if you have a change of clothes, only you can say how your client will react to stinking merchandise.”

A long pause and then: “I’ll call you back.”

The mental gamble shifted chess pieces, conscience against conscience: Munroe’s instinct for survival drawing on Neeva’s determination to fight as a method toward her own means. If she timed it right, the immediate might save them all in the long run, painful as it would be.

Munroe put down the phone and Neeva said, “And?”

“We drive and we wait.”

Neeva turned to stare out the window, and Munroe checked the navigation. Less than half a kilometer to the next town. And then the phone rang.

Bradford pulled the Explorer into Capstone’s parking spot, a haphazard straddling of the line that welcomed someone to ding his doors. Adrenaline rush followed by adrenaline dump and around again, sleep deprivation, caffeine and sugar crashes, one after the other, combined to bring him to the point he was at now: a danger on the roads and virtually worthless for making rational decisions, much less the quantitative leaps necessary for pulling together and putting sense to the massive amount of information that had been coming at him over the past days.

Walker wasn’t doing a whole lot better.

Time was fleeing, and hope fading just as quickly.

By all accounts, the last hours had been a bust, a wasted opportunity and time lost for nothing except to mark two properties off their list of potential hiding places and prepare to move on to the next. From the transport depot they’d driven another thirty-five minutes to a warehouse, only to once again find no Logan, no clues, nothing but a black and deserted property without security, without vehicles, and without any sign of life.

Now, within the haven of Capstone’s reception area, he buzzed the panel door open and then pointed in Walker’s direction. “Office. Sleep,” he said. “It’s an order. We’ll reconvene at eleven.”

Walker deflated but didn’t argue and, head hung low, followed him into the hall. She bypassed the war room for the closet to stash the vests.

Jahan turned when Bradford entered and, making eye contact, shook his head.

“I need to sleep,” Bradford said. “Unless it’s an emergency, I’m not available. Sam’s headed to the back office, same story for her. Did you pull all night?”

“I stopped at two,” Jahan said. “I’ll be ready to roll whenever you are.”

“Give me four hours,” Bradford said, and walking away added, “Put in another call to Robertson for latents, will you? See if there’s something new on the prints and samples they took at Logan’s. The guy owes me, he’s gotta have something.” He paused, then returned to the war room and hung back in the doorway. “Anything on the lines?”

Jahan shook his head once more.

“You’ve confirmed they’re all operational? Nothing’s down?”

“Everything’s working. I’ll let you know if something comes. I swear.”

Bradford nodded, turned again. Exacerbated by the sleep deprivation, waves of anxiety rolled in, and the first touch of fear licked his skin since the morning of the take-down, when he’d so thoroughly pushed it back.

Seventy-two hours and they still had nothing to go on but hope and fumes. If Logan was alive, they had no proof. If Munroe was pursuing whatever had brought the Doll Maker and his men calling, he’d no indication of it. And Neeva Eckridge? Time to shred the Tisdale contract, and say he’d been unable to reach the tracker the parents were after.

Bradford checked his phone again, a nervous answer to the same question he’d asked Jahan. Capstone, international as it was, had voice-mail drops on six continents and in nearly twenty countries, phone lines that would record and digitally transfer information to the war room, a fail-safe or backup for operatives who might fall into trouble and not have international phone access.

Bradford untied the strings of the bedroll and let it loose beneath the desk.

Munroe would call. If she was alive, if she needed help, if she
could get to a phone, she would call, and this thought cycled through his mind as the darkness of sleep descended.

J
AHAN WOKE HIM
in what felt like two minutes later, and Bradford struggled to lift eyelids secured shut by grappling hooks and weighted by sandbags. He finally resorted to manually opening them with his fingers, squinting against the oxygen burn. Too many hours awake, too few asleep, and he was too fucking old to keep up a pace that had been hard enough ten years ago.

Jahan was a couple of feet from his head, squatting low and holding forward a cup of coffee.

“It’s been four hours,” he said.

Bradford groaned.

“You want me to come back in ten?”

Bradford reached for his phone and with eyes still half-shut checked against hope. Another sixth of a day gone without a smoke signal from her.

“Getting up,” he said, and reached for the coffee. “Anything new?”

“Only that Walker’s already in the war room. Unless you want to be the girl here, you best get moving.”

Bradford scooted out from under the desk, juggling the coffee with balancing upward, and left the roll on the floor.

“You look like shit,” Jahan said, and smiled.

“Thanks,” Bradford said. Took a sip of the coffee. Winced.

Jahan studied Bradford’s face, his smile morphing into something closer to that of a psychiatrist observing a man on suicide watch.

Bradford held out a palm toward him. “Enough, Mommy, I don’t need this from you right now.”

Jahan said, “You have a visitor.”

“Visitor.”

“Yeah, some girl who won’t give her name or say why she’s here, just asked for you, says she knows you and that you’d understand. She’s got a baby with her.”

“Baby.”

“Kid in a stroller, maybe two years old.”

The lightbulb went on.

He’d missed a call from Alexis, Tabitha’s daughter, when he’d been visiting Kate Breeden in prison. Had sent Walker to check up
on her but hadn’t bothered to return the call, needed to do damage control and keep her as far away from this mess as possible.

She was waiting for him on the sofa in Capstone’s reception area, stood and smiled when he walked through the door. Not so much happiness as relief. “I tried calling,” she said.

It was easy to see Munroe in Alexis, although the hair was lighter and at closer to five foot eight, Alexis didn’t quite have the height. The lanky frame was the same, as were the high, angular cheekbones and especially the eyes, and because of the similarities, at the moment it hurt to look at her. But physical was where the comparisons ended. In contrast to Munroe, who lived on the edge, off the grid, and had killed men on at least four continents, Alexis was soft and sweet and in some ways still naive.

“I’ve been working a tough job, missed a lot of calls,” Bradford said. Knelt in front of the stroller, tickled Preston and got him laughing, then stood and guiding Alexis toward the door said, “Let’s talk out in the hall.”

Most who knew Munroe socially assumed from her evasive answers, and at times outright denial, that she was an orphan, or at best estranged from anyone who should matter—and for years that had been true. She still hadn’t spoken to either of her parents since leaving the Africa of her birth, but during the months since Argentina, she had made the effort to reconnect with siblings she barely knew. Bradford was short on the details, but he did know that for Munroe, Alexis was a tender bond, the only one of her near relatives for whom she cared deeply.

“I can’t get in touch with Essa,” Alexis said. “We were supposed to have lunch day before yesterday, but she never showed and her phone goes straight to voice mail. She told me once that if I ever couldn’t reach her, I should contact Logan or you, but nobody’s answering. Do you know where she is?”

Bradford drew down his sigh and through the mental maze searched for the right words, the right
lie
, that would give Alexis the warning without terrifying her. “I haven’t heard from her for a few days,” he said, “but I’m sure she’ll turn up.”

“You think?”

“She’s pretty badass, I think she’ll be okay.”

Alexis smiled, almost blushed. “I thought maybe I’d upset her, that she didn’t want to talk to me anymore.”

Bradford nudged her toward the elevator and pushed the call button. “Well, at least I know for sure that that’s not true.”

“She was very unclear about why I’d ever need to contact you; it makes me nervous now. I know there are things I don’t know.”

Bradford dug a business card out of his wallet and handed it to her. “I don’t know how good I’ll be about answering my phone during this next week,” he said. “This is the office number. You think you could give a call a few times a day?”

She took the card and studied the logo, but he didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that she did it as a way to buy time, to figure out how to word the questions running through her head.

“Not to sound all paranoid,” he said, “just a better-safe-than-sorry-type thing, is there any way you and Preston could get out of town for a week or so? Anyplace you could go?”

The elevator arrived and Alexis didn’t move, just stared at him. The doors began to close. Bradford caught them. Held them open.