The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (2 page)

The inward rehearsal and stress that had consumed him the last few days was replaced by the possibility of hope. Logan grabbed her in a bear hug, which she halfheartedly attempted to escape; he spun her full circle, and when he’d finally let go and there was a second of awkward silence, she tousled his hair again.

“Jesus, Logan,” she said. “From the look on your face, you’d think you’d come to ask me to marry you.”

He ran a hand through his hair to mitigate the damage and, unable to contain the ear-to-ear grin, said, “Maybe one day I will.”

“You should be so lucky,” she said dryly, then with a light punch to the shoulder that held his bag, “That all you got?”

He nodded, the stupid grin still plastered on his face.

She smiled, hooked her arm in his and, shoulder to shoulder, nearly equal in height, led him away from the crowd, saying, “It’s really good to see you.”

The lilt of her voice, the uncharacteristic enthusiasm of her touch,
gave him pause, and as they continued arm in arm, he turned to catch her eye. She grinned, impishly squeezed his biceps, and then placed her head on his shoulder.

“You hungry?” she asked. “We’ve got a long trip ahead of us.”

“I ate on the plane,” he said, and then confused, he hesitated. “How long could it possibly take to get into Casablanca?”

“Not Casablanca,” she said. “Tangier.”

The last map of Morocco that he’d seen showed Tangier nearly two hundred miles northeast. He grasped for reasons. “You and Noah broke up?” he said.

Munroe shrugged and turned ever so slightly, so that she walked backward as she spoke. She flashed him another smile, and in that smile Logan saw a glimpse of the same, odd, telltale stupefaction that hadn’t washed over her face in more than half a decade.

“Hard to call something that could never be whole, broken,” she said. “But no, things haven’t changed, we’re still together.”

She smiled yet again, went back to walking side by side, and in the wake of this last, the burden Logan had come to share grew that much heavier.

He understood from that look what she’d not said with words, and he fought for composure, to prevent the shock of knowledge from escaping to his face. He kept beside her, matching her step for step across polished floors to the lower level, where they’d catch a train into the city.

Logan said, “Why the move to Tangier?”

“I like it there,” she said.

Her words came blank and deadpan. No humor, no sincerity; her unusually indirect way of saying
none of your damn business
, and so he let it go for now. He’d find another way to probe the extent of the damage behind the smile, to come at it from a different direction, because both as friend and as supplicant, he had to know how hard he could push, how solid the chassis, how twisted the wreckage.

They reached Casa Voyageurs, the regional train station, and
there, Munroe led him through the cool, high-domed terminal to the ticket counter, where she segued into an exchange of Arabic.

Logan handed her his wallet and she pushed it back. “I’ve got it,” she said. “This isn’t breaking the bank.”

Tickets in one hand, she took his hand in the other and moved beyond the clean and tidy interior to the outside, to the tunnel and its confusing array of tracks, to the train that would take them north. They were still walking the corridor to the first-class compartment when the car lurched and the train began a slow crawl out of the station.

Logan paused and, as he’d done so many times in years past, stood watching the platform shrink into the distance. Tracks and walls and city structures began to blur, and he turned toward the empty six-seat berth that Munroe had entered.

She sat beside the window with her head tilted back and eyes closed, so he dumped the bag on his assigned seat and took the spot opposite her. She opened her eyes a sliver and stretched so that her legs spanned the aisle, resting her feet between his knees.

Logan said, “I could have flown to Tangier, you know, saved you the trip down and back.”

She nodded. “But I wanted to have the time alone with you,” she said.

He faltered and left the unasked “why” hanging in the air.

She’d handed him an opening, presented the opportunity to unburden himself and say in person what he’d flown across the Atlantic to say, but he couldn’t. Not now. Not with her like this. He needed time to think.

Munroe paused. It was a small hesitation, but enough that he understood she’d given notice. She was aware he’d parlayed the opening gambit and was willing to go along with him.

“Noah’s there right now,” she continued. “He’s edgy, jealous.” She turned her eyes back to meet his. “I didn’t want you to have to face that right off the bat.”

“Doesn’t he know that I’m gay?”

She flashed a cheesy grin and crinkled her nose. “He knows. But he also knows that I love you.”

“So that makes me a threat?” Logan said.

She nodded.

He sighed.

The only way his arrival could be deemed a threat was if something else wasn’t right. Under ideal circumstances Logan would ask for details and she would tell; their conversation would flow in that bonded way of confidants that had defined years together. But this wasn’t ideal, not anything close to ideal.

They settled again into small talk, then gradually into silence as Logan, lulled by the peace of her presence, the rhythm of the wheels against the tracks, and fighting three days of being awake, drifted into the oblivion of sleep.

It was the subtle exchange of metal on metal that gradually pulled him back. According to the sun’s path, hours had passed.

Dazed and disoriented, he turned to Munroe. She was smiling again, that odd telltale smile. She flipped the knife from her palm, her eyes never leaving his as she played the blade across her fingers.

Logan cursed silently, fighting the urge to stare at the weapon, and said, “Been a while since you’ve carried them.”

She nodded, eyes still to his, still grinning, the steel continuing to play.

Logan leaned his head back and closed his eyes—his way of shutting out the pain of seeing her in this state. The knives and all that they symbolized spoke volumes to how far she had fallen.

The sky was dark when they arrived in Tangier, Morocco’s gateway to Europe. Tangier Ville was the end of the line, and the station, with its clean and polished interior was in turn its own gateway to nighttime streets that birthed life and motion into the humid air of Africa’s northern coast.

Their destination in the eastern suburb of Malabata was close
enough that they could have walked, but instead of footing it as Logan had expected, Munroe flagged a petit taxi. In the glow of the terminal’s fluorescent lights she bantered with the driver over the rate, and Logan sensed disquiet in her haste.

The ride was but a few minutes, and the vehicle stopped in front of a three-story building that faced the ocean. The apartment block, like most of the others Logan had seen on the journey, was whitewashed, stacked, and topped with a flat rooftop that he knew to be as much a part of the living space as the rooms inside.

He stepped from the cab and sniffed the salt-tinged breeze.

Parked against the curb not far from the building entrance was a black BMW, and Munroe swore quietly as she took note of it.

“He’s already here,” she said.

Logan lifted the strap of his bag to his shoulder. “I’ve wanted to meet him anyway,” he said.

She stared at the car and after a long pause walked through the front door with Logan following close behind.

The stairs from the entrance led to a tiled mezzanine that amplified their footsteps, and they went up again, another half floor, stopping in front of the only apartment on the landing. Munroe turned the key and swung the oversize door wide to a deep and sparsely furnished living area.

“Home,” she said with a flourish, and Logan grinned at the joke. Six months in Morocco and she’d already jumped cities. For her there would never be anything so permanent as home.

The apartment was quiet and dim, the silence made larger by high ceilings, patterned floors, and a light current of air that billowed through open windows into gauzy curtains. Footsteps echoed from the hall and Logan turned in their direction as Noah entered the living room.

Noah Johnson, a Moroccan-raised American, had been a chance encounter on Munroe’s last assignment, an encounter that had eventually evolved into her latest and possibly final departure from the United States.

Although Logan knew much of the man from pictures and conversations, this was the first time he’d seen him in person, and it was clear why Munroe had taken such a liking to him. He was an easy six-foot-plus, black hair, fair skin, and a rock climber’s physique.

In a gesture proprietary and tender, Noah pulled Munroe close and kissed her on the forehead, then extended his hand to Logan in greeting.

Munroe ran interpretation between Noah’s rudimentary English and Logan’s broken French, and in the easy exchange Logan sensed a fracture in the closeness the two had shared. He wondered as he stood there now, making small talk through Munroe, what it must be like in Noah’s shoes, to helplessly watch the woman he loved withdraw emotionally, to fear she would soon walk away, while extending a hand of friendship to the man he suspected to be the cause.

Munroe returned Noah’s kiss, said softly, “Let me show Logan around. I’ll be ready in twenty minutes,” and with that took Logan’s hand and led him toward the hallway.

Three bedrooms and two bathrooms made up the bulk of the one-level apartment, and a narrow staircase beyond the kitchen led to the laundry and work area on the rooftop. Like so many places in the developing countries in which Logan had once lived, the apartment was bare and rustic, the kitchen and bathrooms minimalistic, and as a whole the flat went without many of the standard fixtures found in even lower-income homes of the United States.

The brief tour ended at the guest bedroom, and when Munroe had shown Logan what little he needed to know, she left to dress for the evening.

He turned off the light and in the dark dumped his bag on a chair.

The room was enveloped in the quiet of night, and in that quiet there was a form of peace. Here, alone in the dimness, he could think; he could process and plan and try to figure out how to dig his way out of a hole that had, in less than a moment of clarity, doubled in size. He’d come to Morocco focused on nothing more than begging for Munroe’s
help, a yes or no answer, and had instead been blindsided by the complex series of hoops he’d have to jump through to get it.

The sound of running water filtered from across the hall, and in the streetlight glow he sat on the bed, elbows to knees, methodically forcing calm; waiting.

A shift in the light under the bedroom door announced her presence before the footfalls. Logan lay back on the bed, hands behind his head, ready for the knock that came a second later.

She was stunning in silhouette, the loose and modest clothes replaced by a very short, figure-hugging dress that accentuated a long, lean, androgynous body and brandished sensuality. In heels, she had at least an inch over Noah’s height, and together they would make a visually intimidating pair.

With a hug and then a house key placed in his palm, she was gone.

The front door echoed a thud and Logan rose from the bed to watch from the window as the BMW peeled away from the curb. He waited until he was certain they would not U-turn for a forgotten item, then headed toward the living room where he’d spotted a telephone.

T
en in the evening local time meant late afternoon in Dallas, still within the office hours of most businesses, although Logan expected that Capstone Consulting kept the phones running far later than the standard nine to five.

He picked up the handset, exhaled, and dialed a call he’d never expected to make.

Capstone was owned and operated by Miles Bradford, former Special Forces turned private contractor, the man who’d been by Munroe’s side when the world had turned upside down. If there was ever a person who’d want to know about her current state, who’d be willing to get involved in a nightmare predicament for no other reason than that it involved
her
, that man was Bradford.

Anticlimactically, Logan was put on hold. During the frustrating wait, he moved methodically about the room, scanning surfaces and opening drawers, careful to leave everything as he’d found it while the phone to his ear provided background music. He was checking beneath the sofa when Beethoven’s Ninth was clipped short by a cheery voice announcing Capstone, as if it were some high-stakes New York marketing firm instead of the bullets-and-blood mercenary outfit Logan knew it to be.

According to the receptionist, Bradford was out of the country.

“I know you have a way to get in contact with him,” Logan said.
“Tell him that Michael’s in trouble and that if he wants to talk to me, this line’s only going to be clear for the next three or four hours.”

He recited the apartment’s phone number, and after a routine reassurance that someone would get back to him, he hung up and moved on to the meager pantry.

He was violating Munroe’s space and her privacy, a deed not done lightly, hunting for what he knew was hidden somewhere nearby. He didn’t need a visual to confirm his suspicions, but he did want the specifics in order to assess the damage.

He was in the middle of Munroe’s bathroom when the phone rang. Logan fumbled and then recovered. The wait had been thirty minutes, not a bad measure of Bradford’s concern.

There was static on the line and a few seconds’ delay, but even through that Logan could hear the clipped, impatient quality of Bradford’s tone.

“I just got your message,” he said. “What kind of trouble is she in?”

Carefully scripted, Logan said, “The self-inflicted, oops-look-at-that-I’m-dead kind of trouble.”

There was a pregnant pause and Bradford said finally, “Suicide?”

Logan closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. “No, she’s very much alive. But she’s self-medicating. And she’s started carrying knives again.”