The Doll (25 page)

Everything had happened fast. Stunned by the speed of the violence, she strained to see outside the car and then, in a rush of panic, closed the windows, locked the doors, and checked the ignition in the hope that maybe, just maybe, in the hurry, Michael had left the keys.

But she hadn’t.

In the terror of the moment, Neeva had lost time, and now her heart beat heavily, urging her to flee on foot. Fear alone kept her anchored to the seat. Down the road, in both directions, was only darkness punctuated by pinpricks of light, almost as if someone had chosen this precise location for a stop exactly because it was as far away from anything as Neeva could remember since they’d started the trip, and out there, somewhere in the empty night, was the big creep from the cell.

She didn’t know which direction to run to stay away from him, but she knew his type—the kind to get his kicks from hurting
other people. If he was the one to find her, there was no telling what he would do. Visual possibilities danced inside Neeva’s head, fodder for a slasher film, while the image of the dead man and Michael’s vomiting played out in a background montage, heightening her fear.

That man was dead because Neeva had run. If she actually escaped, what would they do? For sure they’d kill someone she loved, maybe they already had.

Her heart hurt.

Her stomach hurt.

Neeva swallowed back the pain and strained to see out the window. Saw nothing but black and then a blur of movement. She would have to run. Hands shaking, she reached for the dome light and moved the switch so that when she opened the door, the light wouldn’t turn on, then eased from the passenger seat to the driver’s, head low, movements small just in case. Someone outside yelled.

Neeva twitched.

Gunfire shattered the silence and Neeva fumbled for the door lock.

Michael was the only one without a gun, which meant Michael was the only one who could have been shot, which meant Michael was dead and now the creep would come for her.

Door unlocked, Neeva tried for the handle. Missed it and then like magic the door opened of its own accord.

Neeva stifled a scream.

Her eyes tracked up from the ground, searched out the face of whoever stood outside, and like some miraculous apparition, Michael spoke from the darkness. Said, “Get out of my seat.”

Fear and relief and tension, and anger mixed into an emotional cocktail so overwhelmingly powerful that Neeva laughed. Nervous laughter. Crazy laughter.

Michael squatted so that their faces were level and close. From here, even without the dome light, Neeva could see Michael’s eyes and the way they scanned her as if searching for evidence of damage; she could also see that Michael’s lip was swollen and cut, and the skin on her left cheekbone split and bleeding.

“You’re not dead,” Neeva said, and her mouth felt as if it was stuffed with cotton.

“Not dead,” Michael said, and reached for Neeva’s hair. Neeva
flinched, deflected Michael’s hand with a smack, and then, realizing in horror what she’d done, braced for a retaliatory strike that never came.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Michael said. “Put the light back on, will you?”

Neeva paused.

This wasn’t the same Michael from before the dead man’s picture and definitely not the Michael who had dragged her screaming into the road. The voice was the same monotone calm, but something was different in a scary sort of way. Wary, and keeping her face forward, Neeva reached behind, felt for the nub, then found and pushed it, and the dim light came on, painful against the darkness.

This time, when Michael moved her hand toward Neeva’s face, Neeva kept still, guarded and cautious, while Michael reached for the hair at her neck and lifted it, examining the area where the creep had slammed her into the window. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

“No,” Neeva whispered, body still rigid, eyes searching Michael’s in a desperate attempt to discover what was different—something about the face, the eyes—a glaze, maybe, or hollowness, like Michael saw without seeing: alive on the outside but dead behind the eyes.

Michael let the hair drop and nudged her gently. “Move over,” she said, and Neeva, her mind juggling between the danger of Michael in front of her and the creep in the darkness, worked backward to the seat she’d just crawled from.

“If you’re alive,” Neeva said, “is the guy out there dead?”

“Eventually,” Michael said, and reached behind the seat for the blanket.

“So he’s still alive? Still out there?”

“For now,” she said.

“I heard a gun fire.”

Michael nodded again, and dabbed at the blood that trailed beneath her chin. “A warning,” she said, and slid in behind the wheel. She shut the door and the light turned off. Then tipped the seat back as far as it would go and closed her eyes.

“What do we do now?” Neeva said.

“We wait.”

“For what?”

“I want to know that my friend is alive,” Michael said, and those
words burned hot up the back of Neeva’s neck. The
friend
was the reason Michael was here, and even a fool would know that if the
friend
was still alive—Neeva shut off the thought. Michael’s head turned and her eyes, open and unblinking, stared at her with that same scary-dead gaze, like there were a hundred years of things to say and she had no life left to say them. Neeva said, “I thought maybe, you know. I mean, realizing you’re a woman, I just …”

“I don’t want to do it,” Michael said. “I have to choose. I don’t know how many people will die by me not doing this.” She faced the ceiling again and closed her eyes. “It’s not just the ones I love. I’m surprised they haven’t threatened you with your family, too.”

“They have,” Neeva said, “but I didn’t believe them.”

“You don’t strike me as stupid.”

“My parents are powerful people,” Neeva said. “They’re hard to get to, and they’re looking for me, they have to be.”

“They are,” Michael said, “and these guys”—she ran her finger in a circle in the air—“they know that now. I doubt they did at the beginning, which is why I’m here.” She paused and opened her eyes. Looked directly at Neeva. “You pulled a fast one on the world, what with changing your name and burying your past. That’s probably what has saved you now, everyone speculating about you and why you did it. But none of that makes much of a difference anymore. If you don’t do what they want, they’ll still find someone to kill. Maybe not your mom or your dad, but your sisters, your cousins.”

Neeva tried to push back all the nightmare and the crazy, the confusion and the words that made no sense. “Saved me now?” she said. “
Saved
me?” Her voice went up a notch. Then, even more bewildered, she added, “You know about my family?”

“You can trust that if I know, they know,” Michael said, and then sighed. “You have no idea, do you? What’s been going on these past few weeks?”

Weeks
.

Neeva mouthed the word. Pressed her palms to her head and pushed against the walls that were closing inward. She’d lost track of time holed up in that cold stone prison with no concept of day or night, hours parsed by the spacing of sleep and meals and guard changes and assholes who’d arrived to assault her. So much precious time stolen.

Weeks
.

She had no words, no voice, no ability to articulate the sickening angst. Her parents would think she was dead, maybe, would have no closure, no way to know—no last words or good-byes or I love yous. Just this. This grab-and-run and cut off from the world with no way to send a message that she was alive and fighting to get back to them. There was no possible civil response, so all she said in answer to Michael’s question was “I’ve been locked away, so how could I know anything, really?”

The minutes ticked by and the longer the silence grew, the more Neeva’s anxiety increased. Unsure of what she could say or how hard she could push before Michael’s hard-assed captor persona returned, she finally whispered, “What exactly
has
been going on?”

Michael just shook her head and said, “You should put the tights on and get your face cleaned up. Don’t give him an excuse to come back.”

Neeva kicked off her shoes, as close to venting frustration as she dared in the moment. Reached for the packet that had fallen to the floor, snatched it up, and tore at the plastic. “Seriously,” she said. “I want to know.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Michael said, and put a finger to her lips, pointed at the dash, ran her finger in a circle around the air again, then pointed to her ear, and Neeva understood then, that for all of this time, not only were they being followed but their conversations were monitored.

M
UNROE DOZED FITFULLY
,
an hour, maybe two, of silence and downtime and decompression during which it was almost possible to tamp down the fear of retaliation, the guessing game of who, out of the few people she loved, would be next on the list of Doll Maker targets, to pretend that having been snatched away from the first true peace she’d found in the last ten years hadn’t just thrown her back to the edge of the abyss, that place of madness she’d spent the entirety of her adult years trying to avoid.

The fight with Arben and the ensuing pain had been a release valve, a temporary calm from the pressure cooker of violence and voices, but they were back again, feeding off the rage, driving and relentless.

The shrill alert of the phone jolted through the quiet and Neeva jumped, then muttered, “No, not again.”

Munroe picked up the phone, checked the display, and in response to Neeva’s panicked deer-in-the-headlights stare, whispered, “We should be okay for now.”

The number showing on the screen was not Lumani’s, which left only the Doll Maker as the caller, and if what had happened over the past few days was any prediction of how things would continue, even though this call might be the harbinger of another battle, it wouldn’t likely announce another death because the Doll Maker preferred to send his minions and foot soldiers as the bearers of bad news.

Munroe answered the phone with silence and after a long pause the Doll Maker said, “My friend, you are there, are you not?” His voice was warm and friendly and infused with the same fractured sense of reality that had permeated his every move within the office of the dolls.

“I’m listening,” Munroe said.

“I cannot give you what you want.”

“Then I see no reason why I should continue.”

“As expected,” he said. “It’s the time frame at issue. Your friend, he is alive, this is for sure, the problem is in the timing of getting you your proof. Continue the journey. A little farther down the road, a little later, and you will have what you want.”

“You killed a man for arbitrary reasons,” she said, “you lost nothing and still took his life.”

“Words like
arbitrary
are meaningless,” he said. “The responsibility to meet each outcome is yours. No matter how failure arrives, the price for it is yours to pay. I made this clear from the beginning.”

Failure.

Because Neeva had run.

Noah’s life had been taken to compensate for tights and mascara.

“The dead man,” Munroe said. “What was his failure?”

“It was your failure, your punishment, and so the answers are your problem to deal with as you see fit. You were given a task and failed, so there has been suffering. You can correct it now and spare further pain.”

Mental disconnect filled his answers. Her response was about the value of human life, his was about damage to a costume. “You said this task is about me and my debt to you. You already hold
Logan as collateral, but instead you took the life of someone who has nothing whatsoever to do with any of this.”

“Truly unfortunate,” he said. “You must continue the journey now.”

Munroe drew in a breath, fought the timpani inside her head, and said, “If you can’t prove to me Logan is alive, then I have nothing left to lose, so no, I won’t continue. Not without proof of life.”

“There are others,” the Doll Maker said. “There are others who matter to you, so you would be wise to follow through and avoid further failure.”

She could hear the smile, the smirk, the gloat in his voice, and his threat was another punch to the head.

Jolting.

The strategy was there, amorphous, intangible.

There were others, as he said, and they would be used to manipulate her all the way until she had reached the end. Nothing would stop until he had what he wanted, and when he had won, she was destined to die, as was Logan, and eventually Neeva, and God knew who else.

The voices rose, chanting, calling.

This is a day of vengeance, that he may avenge him of his adversaries
.

No matter how many moves she played out in her head, the outcome was always death. Jumping through his hoops, sacrificing one piece to save another, she would lose everything. He controlled the elements, the power, and the board. The only way to end the madness was to upend the game and let the pieces fall.

“I have nothing left to lose,” she said, “and no fear of what you’ll take or what you can do to me because I am already dead.”

“The innocent will suffer.”

“Then let them suffer,” she said, and hung up.