The Doll (41 page)

“What do you want with me?” he said.

Munroe sat. Stretched. The clock on the desk told her six hours had passed since she’d dropped into oblivion, and the darkness on the other side of the curtains, that dawn had not yet arrived.

She stood. Pulled the last bottle of water from the grocery bag. Opened it and, standing in front of him, staring at him, took a long, drawn-out swig.

She wiped a hand across her mouth.

Placed the bottle on a side table, close enough that had he not been secured to the chair, he could have reached out and taken it.

Pulled the taser from the bag and rewound the electrode wires she’d had no time to deal with when hustling him from the street into the taxi. With the probes back in place, she set the taser on the desk within his line of sight.

He studied her intently now.

She fished through the satchel for another gas cartridge, shook it for him to observe, and then slowly, deliberately, each movement exaggerated for staged effect, swapped old cartridge for new. Facing him, she sat on the edge of the bed with a box of ammunition and reloaded bullets into the two spare magazines she’d not yet had time to refill.

Swapped out the half-empty one for a full one.

Reloaded the third as well.

“Where’s your rifle?” she said.

“In my car.”

“Where’s your car?”

“It
was
not far from the restaurant where I was
supposed
to pick up the girl.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “You are definitely the wounded party here.” Loaded the last magazine. “You didn’t have keys in your pockets.”

“I had a driver.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Another one?”

He shrugged.

Munroe stood. Picked up the taser. Casual and nonchalant, she aimed the laser toward his chest and fired.

For the second time between sunset and sunrise, the electrodes worked their magic. Lumani flailed and twitched, this time naked and bound, and what should have been satisfying in some small way left Munroe hollow.

When the current had ended, she leaned over and removed the probes. When Lumani had caught his breath, she stared down at his thighs and pointed the taser at his groin. “Next one goes there,” she said.

“What do you want from me?” he said. When she didn’t answer, he tugged at the bonds, manic and frantic. The chair rocked and the back legs tipped off the ground, and when finally he’d spent his energy, he said, “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“I might still,” she said. “But right now you’re worth more to me alive. I can’t decide whether the value is in trying to trade you for the girl in the United States or use you for information.”

“Can I have clothes?” he said. “This is inhumane.”

Munroe stepped closer. Knelt so she was eye-to-eye and tapped the taser against her thigh. “When I douse you with cold water so you can’t breathe, when I shove wide objects up your ass, when I beat you while you’re bound and helpless or stand by and laugh
while someone else does, when I pull out your teeth and slaughter your family members, then we can talk about inhumane.”

Lumani fought the bonds and the chair again. Twisted. Shook. Grimaced and snarled, and finally out of breath, he glared at her. “I don’t do those things,” he said.

Munroe stood and moved several paces back. Behind her, the covers on the bed rustled, and without turning she knew Neeva had woken, had sat up and was watching. “You do those things,” Munroe said. “You do them every time you bring another girl through your uncle’s doors.” She paused. “Who killed Noah? Was it you?”

He said, “Noah?”

“The Moroccan. The punishment when Neeva ran.”

“Not me,” Lumani said. “My counterpart.”

“How did you find him—the Moroccan?”

“The same way we found you,” he said.

“The woman in prison?”

Lumani nodded, and his confirmation felt like a savage knife slice followed by an injection of painkillers. She drew a long breath past the pain for the morphine: For what it was worth, Logan hadn’t been tortured for the information, yet even sequestered in prison and cut off from the world, Breeden had found a way to dig and probe and follow Munroe’s movements; with nothing but time, endless time, what else did a person have but reason and motive to plot revenge?

Munroe cursed her own weakness, the failure to anticipate, the failure to watch her back. If anyone was to blame in this scenario, it was she. She should have known better.

She turned back to Lumani. “Was Noah dead from the beginning?” she said. “Before this even started, killed ahead of time just so you could have that image available in case you needed some sick card to play to control me?”

Lumani raised his eyes to hers. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s possible, but I truly don’t know. That is a question for someone else to answer.”

“How many counterparts do you have?” she said.

“There are three of us,” he said. “But I am the …” His voice caught, and his sentence failed.

“The best?” Munroe said, finishing it for him. “You should be proud.” She turned to Neeva. “You want revenge? Want to know
what it feels like? You can’t kill him, but if you think it’ll do you any good, have at him.”

Neeva scooted off the bed and Munroe dug through the satchel, pulled out the pocketknife. Flicked the blade open, all four inches of it, and even as small as the knife was, the weight of the metal in her palm became soothing, calming: a familiar lullaby of death that put the world at ease.

Neeva said, “Use this?”

Munroe said, “Yes.”

“What about the taser?” Neeva said. “Or maybe the gun. I could shoot him in the leg.”

“No,” Munroe said. “If you want to know what it really feels like, then you do it personal and close. Anything else is cheap and easy.”

Neeva took the knife. Gingerly. The way someone unfamiliar with handling a gun might take such a weapon: two-fingered from the base, like it might morph into a snake, might coil and bite. And then, with a toss of her head and her posture straight, Neeva grasped the handle firmly, strode around the bed to Lumani, and stood in front of him for a long while, looking from the knife to him and back to the knife again, as if analyzing what she truly felt and determining what course she would steer.

Lumani’s jaw clenched and his gaze hardened, as if he braced for a pain he was too proud to plead against.

“You’re the guy who kidnapped me, aren’t you?” Neeva said.

Lumani held stoic and didn’t reply.

“I could cut you,” Neeva said. “I’m not scared, and it wouldn’t bother me to see you suffer. But I want to talk to you. So, you choose. Cut or talk?”

“I was one of them,” Lumani said.

“And this is what you do for a living? Kidnap girls?”

His head jerked up defensively. “It’s not a living,” he said. “It’s a requirement, and I never touch the girls.”

“Oh, so that makes you better than the rest of them?” Neeva returned to staring at the knife. Pointed the blade down toward Lumani’s thigh. There her hand hovered with the point of metal barely touching him, and she said, “Who dies?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Who dies if you don’t follow through on your requirement?”

He lowered his eyes.

“You’re an asshole,” Neeva said. “You turn innocent girls into human cattle and you still find a way to feel sorry for yourself. You should feel guilty, not make excuses for why it’s not your fault.”

Neeva’s hand gripped the knife handle harder, tighter, until her knuckles whitened. And then she jabbed the blade down into Lumani’s thigh and jerked: a three-quarter-inch penetration, easy. Maybe an inch. To the side of his leg, missing bone, striking soft tissue.

Had to hurt.

Lumani screamed and Neeva pulled the knife out. Stood staring at the blood on the blade while the wound began to weep. Munroe stepped forward and slowly, almost tenderly, took the knife from Neeva’s hand. “Do you feel better?” she said.

“A little.”

Lumani swore and rocked the chair, teeth gritted, hands clenched tightly around the ends of the arm handles.

“Do you want more?” Munroe said.

“Telling him he’s an asshole felt better than cutting him.”

Munroe handed her back the knife. “Go get a washcloth and bring it to me. Then wash off the knife,” she said. “Make sure you do a good job—those are your fingerprints and his blood, and we’re in Italy, not the United States.”

Neeva took the handle between forefinger and thumb and left for the bathroom, returned briefly with the cloth and left again.

Munroe picked up the tape from the desk. Put the towel over Lumani’s wound and used the last of the roll to hold it in place. Knelt so she was eye-to-eye with him once more. “I’d like the names of your counterparts,” she said. “And I’d like you to explain everything you know about the way your uncle operates, both here and in the United States. I want to know about the clients and I want to know the structure of the organization.”

Lumani, breathing shallow, broke off eye contact and stared at the floor.

Munroe stood and returned to the bed. Sat on it and studied him, while from the bathroom the sound of water flowing continued.

Threats of pain, death, even Neeva with the knife, weren’t what poked at his psyche. He wasn’t afraid of those things and they would never be enough to overcome the needs that drove him.

The water in the bathroom shut off and Neeva returned, knife
wrapped in a towel. “Just put it in the bag,” Munroe said, and she pulled out the phone. Dialed the Doll Maker. Set the call to speaker.

At six in the morning she didn’t expect an immediate answer, especially not when dialing for the first time from an unknown number, but the line was picked up and the voice, clearly woken from sleep and unmistakably him, said
“Kush?”

“Your missing friend,” Munroe replied, speaking in English for Neeva’s benefit. She could hear the shift, the crinkle against the phone that indicated movement.

“Such a tricky one,” the Doll Maker said. “The problem you were meant to fix, you’ve only made worse.”

“Your punishments didn’t fit the crime, so I’ve taken matters into my own hands.”

“My philosophy is so simple,” he said, voice lilting, no longer sleepy, and clearly amused. “You break it and so you break, too.”

“So, congratulations, I broke,” she said. “And now, because of that, there’s a whole lot more broken. What are you going to do? Destroy the whole world?”

“You called me,” he said. “Do you have a proposal or are you a woman wasting time with useless chatter?”

“I will trade your Valon for the girl you currently hold in Texas.”

The spontaneous laughter was loud enough to carry across the room, and Lumani raised his eyes in response.

“If you have him—and I ascertain you must since he’s been missing for some time—then you can do me a favor and dispose of him. The girl in Texas, she has value, might fetch a fair price on the market, but Valon is a failure and worthless to me.”

“Are you absolutely sure?” Munroe said. “Because that isn’t a bluff you can take back. If you know anything about me, you know I have no problem, no conscience or hesitation, in killing people like you. He’s caused me considerable grief, so if you won’t trade him, then he’s worthless to me and I will kill him.”

“Do as you wish,” the Doll Maker said.

“In that case, I’m willing to offer you your multimillion-dollar package for a girl nobody will miss,” Munroe said. “That should be an appealing trade.”

“I’ve seen the state of the merchandise,” he said. “She is damaged. Worthless.”

“That’s fine,” Munroe said. “I know who we’re dealing with and
delivering to, I saw him in Monaco. I’m wounded, I need hospitalization, Logan is free, and I no longer have a need for your merchandise. I have to rid myself of evidence and I’m sure he’d be happy to take her for a lesser price. Hair grows back fairly quickly. I’ll deal with him myself and keep the fee, which means no Valon for future captures, no payment—not even to recoup your losses—and no me. You lose, you lose, and you lose.”

The Doll Maker waited a long silence before speaking again. “What, then, my tricky friend,” he said, “is the benefit to you in delivering the doll to me?”

“There will be less blood on my hands.”

“Ah, so you do care for them after all,” he said. “Fine, I will take the doll and give you your niece. Bring her to me.”

“I need time to set it up with my backup to be sure you deliver on your end.”

“My word is good.”

“Then you should have no problem with my arrangements. I’ll bring the merchandise to you and call when I am ready. And really, what do you want with Valon?”

“Do as you wish,” he said. “I have no need for him.”

Munroe put down the phone and turned to Lumani. She’d suspected the direction the conversation would run, but never to the extreme it had, and the pain etched on Lumani’s face was deeper than what had surfaced when Neeva had cut him. In spite of circumstances, Munroe hurt on his behalf.

She stood and reached for the bottle of water. Uncapped it and put plastic to Lumani’s mouth. He drank and kept drinking until the bottle was empty. Water dribbled down his chin, and though he tried to force it back, water also escaped, just barely, and only once, from his eyes.