The Doll (11 page)

Munroe stepped into the room and the creases in the Doll Maker’s forehead relaxed. He smiled and motioned her closer. “Come, come,” he said. “She’s here for you to see, your package.”

Munroe moved to the center of the room and circled the chair, speechless, tempted to reach out to touch the soiled, matted blond hair that had been transformed into perfect silky ringlets.

Hair, makeup, clothes, Mary Jane shoes—Neeva was an exact replica of a doll, every aspect perfect and convincing down to the bright blue eyes, which were glazed, heavy-lidded, and staring straight ahead in a drugged stupor.

The Doll Maker said, “She’s beautiful, yes?” and Munroe nodded, because in truth Neeva took her breath away. Here it was obvious why the screen came to life when Neeva was on it, why the world raced to find her, and most important, why it would be impossible to hide her in transport.

The Doll Maker straightened, and while Munroe continued to study the girl, he passed to the shelves behind her. “My client has rules,” he said.

Munroe turned to face him.

He pulled down a smaller version of Neeva, who, like the living girl, was dressed in green velvet. “No bruises,” he said. “No scars. No drugs. She must remain perfect and undamaged, and any deviation is considered failure.”

He cradled the doll. “Rules,” he said. “How to control an animal with such handcuffs, I don’t know, but she’s your problem now.” He looked up and smiled. “This one comes from Italy. Not custom-made, but beautiful nonetheless.” And then, as if there had never been an interruption or a derailed train of thought: “My customer grows impatient, especially considering the news and the attention.
The price is good, but nothing is worth the scrutiny this brings on us.”

Munroe turned from him back to Neeva, whose eyelids drooped and opened again. To the Doll Maker she said, “You said no drugs.”

He shrugged. “It couldn’t be helped. It was the only way we could get her cleaned up, but it will be out of her system soon and no one will know. It’s our secret and we can’t repeat it. You’ll have to find another way to control her.”

“No bruises.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “It’s tedious, but the merchandise must remain undamaged, those are the instructions.”

“Why?” she asked.

The Doll Maker shrugged. “Who can say, and who cares? For a good customer that pays, we do what we do and ask no questions.”

“So this is not the first?”

The Doll Maker cooed slightly, fingers resting on brunette curls, lifeless eyes to lifeless eyes. “Not the first,” he said. “And if you succeed, not the last.”

Munroe continued her way around Neeva, one in a line of stolen lives.

She said, “And if I fail?”

“No failure.”

“Ever?”

“Not without a price.”

Completing another circle, focus always on the girl, she said, “It’s a lot that you expect of me. You with your guns and your men have had to drug her to control her. I’m but one person and you want me to do what you can’t.”

“It’s not my problem anymore,” he said. “You do it. You fix it. You follow the rules. If you break them, if you fail, the innocent suffer. When you’ve delivered and I’m paid my money, I let your friend go.”

“And me,” Munroe said. “Let’s not forget that I’m also your prisoner.”

“I let you go, too,” he said. He still stared at the doll in his arms, and Munroe’s eyes left his face, for the walls, for the ceiling, for the reason that not one blink or blush, not one muscle in his body had betrayed his lie.

“I’ll need your plan,” she said.

“Through Italy and into France,” he said. “The two days to allow for any possible delays. One day straight if the package behaves.”

Not highly likely.

“The easiest way to deliver would be to fly her,” Munroe said. “The same way that you got me here, probably the way you got her here, and you really don’t need me for that.”

“You can transport her any way you wish,” he said. “She’s your problem and your responsibility. But you will have to provide your own jet and pilots.”

Munroe walked yet another slow circle around the chair, analysis disguised as interest in Neeva’s doll-perfect clothing. Inside her head the permutations of getting airborne played against the odds of making a break with Neeva and rescuing Logan before the crazy man and his minions caught on and killed him first.

No matter which way the pieces moved, Logan was always too far away.

She needed time. Needed to drag this out as long as possible. To the Doll Maker she said, “If I drive?”

“I’ll provide a car.”

“Is it a stolen car?”

“The plates are good,” he said as if that was all that mattered, and then added, with a toying smile, “and I will pay for gas.”

“Tomorrow, so that the drugs have time to flush out of her system?”

The Doll Maker nodded.

Munroe pointed to Neeva. “Are you taking her back to the cell?”

“Yes, of course,” he said. “Until we are ready for transport.”

“She’ll get dirty again.”

“The mattress has been changed,” he said, “but still, such a waste.” He took the doll from his arms to rest her on the desk, then walked to Neeva. Ran his fingers through her curls and along the outer seam of the lace and velvet dress. “It would be so much more pleasant if we could keep her like this. She is a true doll. Made to order. A collector’s item. It’s no wonder she fetches such a high price.”

The Doll Maker nodded toward Lumani, who called the Arbens inside. Together, they lifted Neeva by her elbows and instead of dragging her out the door they worked her nearly useless legs forward.

Upright, Neeva was even more childlike than she’d appeared while seated. Tiny and slender, she stood five foot two at the most, probably closer to five flat—everything opposite to the larger-than-life personality, the image on the big screen that created something much greater out of this little person.

“What will they do with her?” Munroe said.

“Undress her and put her to bed.”

His words and the nonchalance with which he spoke them sent blood rushing to her head. Munroe took a step in Neeva’s direction, to block the way. An involuntary movement, an urge to protect and intervene so strong that it overcame reason and took her by surprise nearly as much as it did the Arbens, who paused in their exit. She took another step, this time deliberate, and another until she was solidly between Neeva and the door.

The Doll Maker smiled as if reproving a young child. “It won’t do to become attached to the merchandise,” he said, and when Munroe didn’t move, he added, “She is worth more to me whole than whatever temporary use the men might make of her.”

Slow and hesitant, she stepped aside and the Doll Maker smiled, triumphant, wordless in his gloating, while the Arbens walked Neeva out the door and Munroe stared after them.

When the door had shut, the Doll Maker said, “You will stay in the holding area. We’ll leave your door open, but if you attempt to climb the stairs, we will take measures against your collateral. You understand this?”

Munroe nodded, still moving with the trancelike tempo of the conversation, navigating around the chair so that this time her path took her in Lumani’s direction.

Throughout this entire exchange the young man had remained silent and motionless, his gaze following his uncle like that of a loyal dog waiting for approval, waiting for orders. Each measured step brought her closer to him, though her attention remained entirely on the Doll Maker, who continued in his smugness.

In a movement both sudden and violent, Munroe turned midstep and in the heartbeat of Lumani’s delayed reaction, she punched fingers to his trachea and grabbed his wrist.

She jerked his arm behind his back and shoved him, gagging, to his knees. Lumani’s free hand flexed and reached for his shin, and she, knowing that in his moment of panic he would attempt
to access any weapon he carried, moved faster than he did, finding and unsheathing his knife.

The handle connected with her palm like a creation returning to its mold, metal against skin, familiar and soothing, calling out to be used, begging to shed blood. She pressed the flat of the blade to Lumani’s throat and held it there.

At the desk, the Doll Maker picked up his doll and, ignoring Munroe and Lumani, cradled her again. In his indifference, as in his lies, no tell of betrayal marked his face, no body language spoke his hidden thoughts. The Doll Maker smiled at the porcelain face that stared lifelessly at him. Without looking up, he said, “You’ll pay for this failure.”

Lumani twitched and Munroe drew the flat of the blade across his neck to prevent instinct from slitting his throat. “Is it worth the price of this one?” she said. “Or the destruction of the package?”

“I’ll get what I need with or without you,” the Doll Maker said.

Munroe pulled Lumani to his feet and stepped back from him.

Slid the knife along the floor in his direction. “I also have a choice, and I think we’ve both made our points,” she said. “I want to see Logan, video streamed live so I can confirm his current condition.”

“I can arrange that,” the Doll Maker said.

“By tonight?”

“It’ll be done,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

“I’m going downstairs,” she said. “You don’t need to guard me. Leave me alone and let me know when the girl is awake.”

Miles Bradford stood in the middle of the war room and dumped two Kevlar vests on the floor. Jahan and Walker stared at him, both silent and sullen. “Fight it out between you,” he said. “I’ll be in my office.”

More specifically, he’d be on the floor in his office, beneath the desk, grabbing a moment of sleep before heading out again. He turned from the room, and the heated whispered exchange started once more behind his back. Someone had to stay behind and there were no volunteers.

It was nearly one in the morning, technically into day three of the hunt for a trace on Munroe and Logan, and they were running on empty: nerves strung a little tighter, edges a little sharper. Bradford’s body couldn’t handle this lack of sleep crap the way it could eighteen years ago when he was twenty and king of the world. He needed five minutes, ten, if he was lucky.

For a full day they’d stalked information, putting aspects of running Capstone on temporary hold to pore over gigabytes of data, tracking leads and cutting off dead ends—tedious brain work, numerous phone calls, and the occasional in-person visit to pull records—until what they had now was a short list of four valid possibilities, four locations where if Logan was being kept in Texas,
they might actually find him: a residential home, an office condo, a warehouse, and a transport company, all within the Dallas metro area.

Might find him
.

At this juncture, everything was a crapshoot, and this was the best they had.

Bradford threw a bedroll under the desk. Lay feet to the window, head to the darkness, and before closing his eyes, he checked his phone, the same flick of the wrist he’d been making at ten-minute intervals throughout the day, hoping against hope that either Munroe or Logan might have gained access to a phone, might have called, texted, or emailed, and somehow he’d missed the alert.

But nothing. He closed his eyes and opened them to Sam Walker’s feet.

From where she stood, he could see the bottom of the vests, one draped over each shoulder, and gripped in her right hand a backpack that held the war room’s ready stash of tracking and surveillance equipment.

The clock on his phone said fifteen minutes since he’d blinked.

“You awake?” Walker whispered.

Just enough of a hiss to ensure that even if he hadn’t been, he would be now.

“Yeah,” he said. “What’d you get?”

“Jack stays, I go.”

Bradford scooted out from under the desk. “That so?” He turned his back to roll up the bed. “How’d you manage that?”

Walker sighed. “Two on, two off, and we break after dawn.”

Bradford nodded. “Does he have a shopping list?”

“He’s good with whatever we get.”

He handed her the Explorer keys. “You drive,” he said. “I’ll sleep.”

T
HE ARMORY WAS
a war-room legend, on par with Bigfoot or the whispered rumors of Munroe’s ability to absorb languages. Only a handful knew of its confirmed existence, and of those only Bradford and Jahan knew where it was or how to get inside. The armory was just in case; it was hell-in-a-hand-basket, old habits die hard: a collection that had steadily grown over the years in anticipation of a scenario in which he with the biggest guns wins.

Walker pulled the Explorer out of Capstone’s garage space, and Bradford recited the address. She glanced at him with that look of hers but said nothing until they were off the 80, east of Dallas, a full thirty minutes from where they’d started. She pulled off the access road to stop in front of a twenty-four-hour storage complex and nudged Bradford awake.

The cluster of cinder-block buildings sat back off the feeder road in an area of used-car lots and bodywork and pawn shops—an area just derelict enough that the razor-wire fencing, powerful lights, and security cameras would have been necessary if they hadn’t already come as part of the package.