The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (23 page)

And so Munroe stared, action held in check by the lasting shock of seeing the miniature copy, blond-haired and green-eyed, before her. Slowly, the pure focus of impartial, unemotional assignment returned.
Through the freeze-frame moment, she had nearly failed to register the weight of the words that the girl had spoken to that detached and invisible voice beyond the door.

Mom
.

The child, whose true mother and father had spent the last eight years fighting to find her, had addressed another as her mother.

Munroe waited, tense, eager for the woman to pass, hoping for a sign of recognition, to know who this person was, and as the last of those who’d filled the van trailed inside, she found nothing but a female indistinguishable from any other stranger.

The foyer emptied, and Munroe remained motionless in the dark corner, pushing down the slow, smoldering burn that she’d been sitting on all day, processing the moment, running scenarios.

To strike too quickly with a lack of valid information would invite mistakes; to wait too long was to expose herself to unwanted scrutiny and suspicion. The mental chessboard set itself out; move against move, strategy to probability, chance against the known, while she counted off time in her head and waited for the next group to enter the foyer.

Another ten minutes and the procedure repeated with a second group, this time the youngsters closer to preteens and nearly as many adults as children. On the heels of this came another, and as the first two groups had done, they filtered down the hall, some heading up the wide staircase, others passing on through the back door toward the annex.

With each return, the volume in the house grew. The stairwell became a beehive of activity, the back door a constant open-and-close as the main house filled and emptied again.

If Munroe had calculated correctly, there were still two more vans to return, but there was no point in sitting here waiting for them. She’d seen what she wanted, knew what she required, and the spectrum of objectives had narrowed down to two: she needed to gain familiarity with the layout of the building and to know where Hannah slept.

The back door opened again, and instead of the steady flow heading
out, a solitary set of footsteps slapped a rapid pace toward the foyer. Munroe stood, moved back across the room to the alcove, and flipped the light on. She was nose to the book when Elijah entered.

His mouth was smiling, but his eyes were worried, and his previous harried look had grown to frazzled. Something was keeping him occupied, had him stressing badly, and he perfectly portrayed the stereotype of an executive just out of a bad news conference.

“Hey,” he said. “How’s the reading going?”

In a contrasting calmness, Munroe looked up, her face full of peace. “It’s wonderful,” she said. And then, as if in a bewildered afterthought, added, “What time is it?”

Elijah glanced at his watch, a nervous movement that had to be more habit than necessity because she knew that he knew exactly what time it was. He uttered the hour, and Munroe feigned innocent surprise. “It passes quickly,” she said.

He paused and then relaxed, the tension he carried fading, as if he’d shifted from work to pleasure. He sat next to her, so close that they almost touched, and he appeared oblivious to any discomfort the invasion of her personal space might cause—even less aware that his proximity might be unwanted or of the effort with which she pushed back the returning rage.

Elijah asked about the material she’d read. He fished for depth, for emotional connection, and Munroe’s words flowed in response. Her answers were a cautious hot-and-cold, a drawing close, then a pulling away that toyed with him in the same way a player might keep a love interest on the line.

Elijah put a hand on her knee and said, “Why don’t you join us for dinner?”

At his touch, Munroe’s vision shifted to gray, and in microsecond gaps she fought back the desire to break his fingers. With a smile plastered on her face and a long pause that could only be interpreted as thoughtful consideration, she said, “I think I would enjoy that.”

His hand remained on her thigh, burning a hole of violence through her core, and then, in a sudden movement, he stood.

“Wonderful,” he said, and her body reacted to the removal of his hand as if she’d received an oxygen mask in a room full of noxious gases. She handed him the book, but he shook his head.

“Keep it,” he said. “There’s more to read and we can discuss it as soon as you’ve had the chance.”

“Thank you,” she said, and then, with another vanload of footsteps playing background music, she clutched the words of The Prophet to her chest and followed Elijah out the back door to the annex.

If the main house had been quiet, the dining room was the perfect counterpart. The room of tables that had been so empty earlier in the day now birthed life and volume, and was still in the process of filling. From the sliding door on the far right wall, a girl of thirteen or fourteen led a group of six toddlers into the room, and then, having delivered each child to groups at separate tables, joined a table near the center of the room.

Although the varied looks and racial features of each group would have implied otherwise, the scene was set as if dinner was being served in family groups, and so Munroe scanned the room, searching out Hannah. She found her several tables down with the woman she called Mother and three younger children. The woman shared none of Hannah’s physical characteristics, instead sporting a contrasting mixture of nearly pale green eyes, thick lashes, and jet-black hair against skin the color of a perfect tan. There was no sign of David Law, although he was perhaps in one of the vans that had not yet returned.

Elijah led Munroe to the same corner table that they’d sat at earlier in the day; this time it was filled with the wife and children she’d met before. Three teenagers and a young couple with a baby were there as well, and as Elijah explained her presence to the others in English, he introduced the couple to her as his son and daughter-in-law, and grandbaby.

These were Heidi’s people, the son and two of the girls clearly her biological brother and sisters, and the others, although half siblings and sharing the Filipina features of their mother, still showed familial similarities. Of those at the table, the teenagers spoke Spanish
with perfect fluency, but the mother and younger children spoke only English.

Munroe was offered a seat that allowed her a vantage point of the room, and she took it all in, detail by detail, under the guise of conversation. Industrial-size pots again filled the serving counter, and three teenagers stood over them, scooping food onto plates as the line progressed, cafeteria style. One of Elijah’s daughters brought Munroe a plate, and Munroe nodded in thanks over the indiscernible soupy contents.

The influx began to ebb, and Munroe estimated there were a hundred and fifty in the room, the majority of them children and teenagers. Her eyes scanned, running over the faces of the children, all of them young, innocent, and perfect, some fighting in their own way for a slice of limited attention spread so thin among so many, others, as with Elijah’s children, appearing indifferent to their parents completely, all of it so painful to watch, but Munroe couldn’t look away.

Thankfully, The Chosen didn’t carry weapons. Had that been the case, should anything go wrong with extracting Hannah, the potential for collateral damage would be tremendous to the terms of unacceptable. Munroe’s eyes rested at last on a young man, mid-twenties, with a guitar hung around his neck. With a perfect lack of self-consciousness he stood, strummed, and began to sing.

The eating stopped, the discussions stopped, and a hundred voices filled the room in unison. One song segued into another, and into another still, until the medley relating to food and the gratitude of belonging to this large family of believers had lasted nearly ten minutes.

When the music ended, the young man said a few words of thanks to the Lord requesting cleansing of the food from any germs, then he joined his family and sat. The volume in the room went back to its original cacophony. He had spoken in English, a clear articulation that reminded Munroe of Logan, his accent distinctly American but with twinges of Western Europe and hints of Latin America, and it seemed that most of those here shared that same accent.

Munroe rejoined the conversation and continued to surreptitiously
watch the room. The influx was over and so was the singing, and the table at which Hannah sat still held no David Law.

For being the man who had kidnapped a child to bring her back into a movement, the man who was the closest thing Hannah would have known to a father and the only thing she had resembling real family, David Law was strangely absent. Munroe didn’t need to know where he was in order to pull off this job, but like a wasp in the room, it was helpful to know his location.

The meal wound down, families filtered out of the room, but Elijah’s remained and Munroe stayed with them, internal tension mounting while she applied focus to the moment. She wanted Hannah. Wanted to wander. Reconnoiter.

Instead she sat, plying the made-up desire to belong and feigning interest in their beliefs, sweetly conversing and answering questions, until eventually the group of teenagers who had stayed behind to clean up completed their chores, and Elijah and his family invited Munroe to join them in the living room.

There, crowded into every seat and the floor space between, were the same one hundred and fifty from the dining area. Together they spent an hour of dedication to The Prophet, songs and selected readings, and as Munroe assumed was the same for many in this room, she countered the boredom of it all by allowing her mind to wander free, wondering if they were so naïve as to fail to recognize the obvious—that even the most unsuspecting visitor would realize that this evening’s show had been put on especially for her.

B
y night-owl standards, it was still early when Munroe left the Haven, although the Haven itself, in shutting down for the evening, had already grown dark and quiet. Unlike the rest of the city, The Chosen were early to bed and early to rise.

Elijah and Esteban walked her to the car, and then with feet shuffling and this time not-so-subtle suggestions about giving to God, they prolonged the good-bye to the point of awkwardness. Munroe refused to offer, they didn’t directly ask, and she toyed the issue along, string to the cat, courting an invitation, and it came right on schedule, Elijah offering to spare her the trip home if she’d like to stay the night.

Munroe appeared to weigh her options. She would stay the night, yes. But not tonight. She had prior plans with her family that she couldn’t break, but tomorrow she would be free and tomorrow she would return.

Tomorrow she would steal Hannah from this place.

Munroe drove to the hotel by rote, traffic signs, lane markers, and suicidal merging processed automatically by years of Third World experience. Her mind worked overtime to deconstruct the violent mix of emotion that she’d held in check throughout the evening, piecing together the steps that must follow to bring Hannah safely out.

Bradford was at the desk when she opened the hotel room door. He stood, his face expressing genuine happiness at her return. The welcome warmed her only until she opened the closet and sensed the subtle perfume of Heidi coming off his coat.

Munroe froze in a flash of knowledge and paused for the brief moment that it took to push back the hiss of anger that followed in its wake. She returned Bradford’s nod, his smile, and in a mixture of exhaustion and nervous tension, stepped to the bed and lay down, fully dressed.

“Can I join you?” Bradford said, and Munroe, hands behind her head and staring at the ceiling, shifted slightly to allow him space to sit. Legs over the side, leaning toward her in quiet company, he asked, “Have you eaten?”

“If you could call it food,” she said, and then, after the slightest pause, sat upright. “Come on, let’s get out of here. You’ve been cooped up all day and I need to crawl outside my own head and process a shit-load of information—I want to talk it out with you,” she said, “and I’m sure you’re waiting to hear it.”

“Indeed I am,” he said.

Munroe shed her clothes, changed into evening wear, and then from the hotel they found a
milonga
, one of the city’s many dance halls devoted to tango. Nearing midnight, and still early by city standards, the place was only partially filled, and they easily found a spot on the outer edge of the tables, among others who had arrived as couples. Here in the thick, smoky, dark, music-filled room, they could talk, undisturbed, while watching dance partners ply their skill on the wide center floor.

Over drinks and light food, Munroe told Bradford about the day’s events, taking him through the routines and what she knew of the building layouts thus far. They discussed strategy, options, and the pros and cons of a late-night extraction versus tagging a van and pulling Hannah off the street once The Chosen deployed their members for begging. Each option held its own series of unknowns and set of complications. They made preparations for both eventualities.

As was his reason for being here, Bradford would run matériel and specs as backup to Munroe’s intel, and he outlined the protocols necessary to get Hannah securely over the border once they had possession.

“I’m considering letting Logan know,” Munroe said. “If nothing else, that we’ve pinpointed the location.”

“Another person in the loop brings another potential round of trouble.”

She nodded, acknowledgment of his concern if not concession to his point.

Bradford continued. “Regarding Logan, I spoke with him just a bit before you got back today. He needs to talk to you about Gideon.”

Gideon’s name brought with it a different set of issues. Being this close to Hannah, the job really didn’t need a loose cannon getting into the mix, and any information Logan had to offer was crucial.

Munroe checked her watch. “What’s Logan’s schedule these days? You think he’s still up?”