The Doll (37 page)

T
HE WATER IN
the bathroom ran long and the sounds of Neeva messing about filtered beneath the door. Munroe pulled the pocketknife from the satchel, sat on the frame of the bed, flipped the blade open, and stared at her hands. This knife, like all knives when she picked them up, became a living thing, and like all blades in her hands when the voices were alive and the darkness nibbled at the edges of sanity, this one, too, begged to be used. Not on the soles of her shoes, as she worked it now, probing until the heels gave way, but to be used on those who tormented. To cut, the way she’d been cut, and to make others suffer for the pain they inflicted.

Munroe folded the blade and pocketed the knife.

In the hollowed-out segments of each shoe, Munroe found two more tracking devices. She pulled them out and palmed them. Took paper from the desk and folded it into a makeshift envelope. Dropped the trackers inside and shoved the packet into a pocket. These were the last of them, and when they were dumped, she and Neeva could effectively disappear. Lumani had to know this. Had to feel the pressure. Even if he assumed this stop at the hotel was a feint or, in terms of the chessboard inside her head, a
decoy:
a move that lured a piece into an unfavorable position, he had to act, had no choice, the issue was only when he’d come, not if.

The water in the bathroom continued running, and so Munroe
lay on the floor beside the upright mattress. With her body horizontal, exhaustion settled heavy, thick and blanketing, threatening to submit her fully to sleep against her will.

Taking the phone from her pocket, she dialed Bradford, the fulfillment of her promise, and in the seconds that it rang, her eyes closed of their own accord, only to open reluctantly when he came on the line.

“How are you?” he asked, and she heard in his voice the same worn-down fatigue that she felt.

“I’m okay,” she said.

Questions about Alexis, Logan, and Samantha were foremost on her mind, but to ask for news would only add to Bradford’s burden and so she left them untouched. “I got another image of Alexis,” she said. “A concrete floor and a fairly large space.”

“How long ago?”

“A couple of hours or so, but who knows when it was taken.”

“I’ll get to her,” he said. “It’s slower work now. I do have backup but not much, and I have to be careful in covering my tracks so I don’t face”—he paused—“local complications. But I know where she is.”

Elation tugged at Munroe’s thoughts. She sat up. Hugged her knees.

“Talk to me,” Bradford said. “You’ve got Neeva with you. Are you about to play capture the flag with the traffickers?”

“Sounds bad,” she said, “but, yes, that’s what it amounts to.”

She walked him through the events that had put Neeva back into her custody, the offer the girl had presented, the steps she’d taken so far to stay ahead of Lumani, and the reasons why she now waited for him to find her. When she’d stopped and silence ensued, she could hear in Bradford’s sigh the words of caution and warning he would never say. He moved instead to the topic they’d both danced around: the darkness.

“I’ve got a handle on it,” she said. “I promise you, it’s not like Africa. I’m tempted, you know, the urges are pretty strong, to seek him out in retribution for what he’s done to me and Logan, and I may yet. But on my own terms. Consciously.”

“What do you know of the client?” Bradford asked.

“Wealthy, male, and a regular. He’s paid for several girls from this
trafficking organization, but this isn’t the only operation, so there might be other victims—less famous ones, you know?—cheaper. He could have a place or even several places where he stashes his purchases long-term, but I think it’s more likely each girl replaces the one that came before.”

“And the torture aspect?”

“I can’t be certain,” she said. “But it’s the only way everything makes sense—rules I’ve had to follow, the way he toys with the traffickers—he fits the profile. I could be wrong. I could be projecting my own past onto the present, but it doesn’t really matter—he’s no less evil if instead of torturing and killing these girls, he’s pimping them out or collecting them and keeping them locked away. He’s not going to stop, Miles. Even if I take this organization apart piece by piece, this guy will find a way to feed his addiction.”

The running water from the bathroom had shut off for a while, but Neeva was still inside and far too quiet. Munroe stood and knocked on the door.

“You okay in there?”

“Just a few more minutes,” Neeva said.

A heartbeat of silence and then Bradford continued the conversation. “Your client couldn’t have been the only customer.”

“No,” she said. “But he is one, and he’s one I can find.”

“Is there any way I could convince you to wait? Just buy me a little time so I can get to Alexis. We can sort through options when we have a chance to breathe.”

“Even if this never involved me or mine, you or yours, being this close, knowing what I know …” When her sentence faded, Bradford finished it for her.

“Knowing what you know, you can’t just walk away,” he said. “But I had to try.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I’ll finish this, and I’ll live through it.”

“Don’t make promises like that. You only tempt fate.” He was quiet for a moment, as if resigned and letting go. Finally he said, “Regardless of what happens, I understand why you have to do it.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Munroe stared at the phone a long while before putting it away, and fearing that to lie down would mean falling into a deep sleep, she pulled hair product from the bag and, with practiced fingers,
ran the paste through short strands, tugging and spiking, and turning what had been boy into what now went either way. Without a mirror, she continued with black eyeliner and then heavy mascara, and was painting her short nails black by the time Neeva opened the bathroom door.

In the low light coming from the bathroom, both women stared at each other: Neeva at what had been added, Munroe at what had been taken away.

“You look different,” Neeva said.

“So do you.”

Younger. More helpless. Tinier, if such a thing was possible.

“Trying to wash out the curls only gave me a clown wig,” Neeva said. “I figured this was better than being reminded of
them
every time I looked in a mirror.” She lowered her eyes. “What do you think?”

“Kind of gives you an emaciated concentration-camp-survivor look,” Munroe said. “Or maybe chemo.”

Neeva half smiled and her cheeks flushed. “It’s sort of a disguise.”

Munroe stood, secured the weapon in her waistband. Ran her palm over Neeva’s shaved head. “I’ll help you with the spots you missed,” she said.

Munroe put Neeva’s head over the sink and, with razor in hand, worked over the stubbled patches. Said, “Why’d you do the identity change before heading to Hollywood? You have a good relationship with your parents, so it’s not like you were running away or anything.”

Munroe shut off the water, handed Neeva a towel. Neeva rubbed a hand over her head and smiled. “It’s smooth,” she said, and then her expression changed. “My mom was always really good about keeping me out of the limelight, not using us kids as chips in her politics.”

Neeva dropped the towel into the sink. “We weren’t part of the whole stage, stumping for votes as part of the wholesome family image, but I still saw what happens when people know your name and your face. They constantly twisted what my mom said or did to turn opinions and projections into truths, but where it got totally crazy was how they did it to the rest of my family, who didn’t even have anything to do with anything.”

Neeva slid down the wall and stretched her legs out so that her feet nearly touched Munroe’s. “There’s no such thing as truth, that’s what I learned,” she said. “Only opinions people want you to believe as truth.” She ran a hand against her scalp once more and smiled again. “I knew that once I got work in Hollywood, everything about me would become public property and I’d have to deal with that same issue. I didn’t want the movies and the roles I took to impact my mother’s career—didn’t want to worry that my potty mouth or late-night partying would become her politics or that my own talent would be smothered by her shadow. I just wanted to be me without the baggage, so I changed my name, invented a past, and started clean.”

Munroe said, “Funny how that decision came full circle.”

“What do you mean?”

Munroe stood and, hand outstretched for Neeva to follow, led her back to the bedroom and out of the confining space, where it had been harder to keep attuned to the sounds in the hallway and the street. She listened and, certain that things were still as they should be, said, “The same baggage you tried to save yourself and your family from is pretty much what saved you now—all the media attention, the speculation, put your face on every TV in the world.”

Neeva sat on the floor beside the mattress. “I guess,” she said, and Munroe tossed a package of cookies and a bottle of juice in her direction.

Neeva touched the mattress. “Why is this here?”

“So when the shooting starts and I shove you into the bathroom, I can put another layer of protection between you and the bullets.”

“I thought I was here to help.”

“You won’t be much help if you’re dead.”

“But what about you?”

Munroe joined Neeva on the floor. Placed herself so that the room’s one window was ahead on the opposite wall and the hallway door between her and Neeva. Unlike American construction, which relied heavily on drywall to partition rooms and often used hollow doors, this hotel was European and old, which meant stone and solid wood—meant that unless Lumani or Arben Number Two, or anyone else who might be with them, intended to blow the place up, they’d be coming through one of those two openings.

Munroe put the Jericho on the floor, took a cookie out of Neeva’s package. “Like I told you, if I don’t get them first, then I’m dead either way, so it doesn’t much matter.”

“Who did that to you?” Neeva said, and she moved to touch Munroe’s torso but stopped with her hand hovering in the air above the jacket.

Those who dared to ask about the scars inevitably used questions framed in the context of what and how, but Neeva had cut to the heart of the question with who. Munroe glanced at her, one victim of violence to another. Neeva withdrew her hand and, like a wounded child, went back to the cookies.

“It was a long time ago,” Munroe said. “Done over the course of a few years by a man quite similar to the one who put the purchase price out for you.”

“Do you ever think about trying to get even?”

“He’s dead now.”

Neeva stopped chewing and very slowly swallowed. “Did
you
kill him?”

“Yes,” Munroe said, mimicking the slow speech, “I did.”

“Was it difficult to get away with it?”

Munroe shifted, shoulder to the wall, so that she stared fully at the girl. Measured and deliberate, she said, “It was a long time ago, in a place most people don’t know exists. Why all the questions, Neeva?”

Neeva shrugged. “Sometimes I think about how it would feel.”

“Revenge is best left to fantasy,” Munroe said. “It feels better there. In real life you can eventually learn to deal with the pain and trauma, learn to cope on some level, you know? But you can never
undo death, and even if you think they deserve it, killing doesn’t take away your pain, just puts you on dangerous ground that can collapse out from beneath you at any time.”

“You did it.”

Munroe stared at her a moment longer, thoughts running in a melee that amounted to
My point exactly
, but she said, “I did. Partially out of revenge and partially to save my life and the lives of future victims, but even if it had been entirely to settle a score, that means I, of all people, should
know
.”

Without meeting Munroe’s eyes, Neeva nibbled on a cookie, said, “Would you take it back if you could?”

“I wouldn’t, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t paid a price.”

Neeva huffed. “Well, I still think people like this doll guy and the Pretty Boy, people like them, will never learn or ever stop unless someone goes up against them, fight fire with fire, you know? Someone has to teach them.”

“The problem with fighting fire with fire is that you can get burned and you risk becoming like them.”

“Has that happened to you?”

“It has at times,” Munroe said, and shifted back against the wall, forearms resting on bent knees, and stared across the room at the curtained window.

Neeva tilted sideways and tipped her head so that she rested against Munroe’s shoulder. “I like you, Michael,” she said, “even if sometimes you don’t like yourself a whole lot.”

Munroe smiled, leaned over, and kissed the smooth top of Neeva’s head. “Thank you,” she said, and after a pause, “What happened to the one who hurt you?”

“Nobody knows,” Neeva said. “They never found him.”

Munroe understood, then, what had driven Neeva to leave the safety of the consulate. The offer to give herself up as bait was more than just an exchange of one life for many lives. Neeva’s actions were those of trauma victim refusing to be the victim again—revenge surrogacy, insistence on playing an active role in what happened next. She rested her cheek where her kiss had met smooth skin.