The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (30 page)

There was silence on the line, the quiet broken by the barely audible clicks and beeps of Bradford searching through footage.

“I think I’ve found it,” he said. “There are only a few ins-and-outs after eight, and of those, the only one that seems to fit what you’re asking for shows a group—two sets of female legs—one of them definitely a girl—and a couple of suits.”

There were no words for this. Munroe stood stupefied and, caring nothing for how it might appear to Morningstar, swore silently. Everything was wrong. Very wrong. Wrong on the macro level, in the screwed-up-strategy, something-critical-had-been-overlooked sort of way. For whatever else Munroe didn’t understand, two things were immediately clear.

This had nothing to do with keeping Hannah away from her—her masquerade was as of yet uncompromised, and Hannah going away for a night was by no means routine or normal.

Munroe had seen firsthand the proprietary nature of the Cárcan boss men and knew from the documents how easily The Chosen shared their women with those in power. Hannah, though young, was a beautiful girl, and even though providing underage girls was officially forbidden, that didn’t mean it didn’t happen, as was clear from Gideon’s experience.

Until Munroe had more information she saw only two viable possibilities: Hannah was being handed over to the Sponsors as a plaything,
or The Chosen were pulling her out of the Haven—hiding her. If it was the latter, if it was the result of Gideon having spooked them, she was going to break his fucking neck.

“I’m coming back,” she said to Bradford. “There’s nothing for us here tonight.” And she shut the phone.

To Morningstar, she said, “I have a family emergency, I need to leave.”

Morningstar looked puzzled. “Let’s go talk to my dad,” she said.

Elijah’s reaction was as Munroe expected, confused and disappointed, and the only reason she stood here now in his presence, even bothering to explain that her mother was in the hospital, was to keep open the option of returning to the Haven in case it proved necessary.

“Put your mother in the hands of the Lord,” Elijah said. “His work, His plans for you come before anything else, and if you do what He wants of you, He will take care of your mother.”

Munroe grit her teeth and forced to the surface the closest illusion of calm she could manage. “She’s my mom,” Munroe said. “She needs me, and my family expects me to be there.”

The door opened, and Esteban stepped inside the room, making it now three Haven members to her one. It should have been intimidating, and as they saw her as nothing more than a girl, perhaps it was intended to be so.

“By staying in the center of God’s will,” Elijah said, “you can have perfect peace that no matter what the outcome is tonight, it’s according to God’s plan. God wants you to stay. And you have to ask yourself, who is your mother or your father? Who are your brothers and sisters? Your true family are those who do the will of God. We are your family, Miki, here is where you belong.”

If there was anything that Munroe knew and knew well, it was scripture; voices from the Book were so branded onto her consciousness that until recently they were a background whisper that permeated her everyday life. She understood upon what Elijah based his values, and trying one last tack before she cut him off, said, “She may die tonight. I need to go.”

Elijah responded in a flat patriarchal reproach. “Jesus was once faced with that same issue,” he said. “One of the men who came to him, who wanted to be a disciple just like you do, begged for a little time so he could first bury his father, and Jesus said, ‘Let the dead bury the dead.’ Are you one of the spiritually dead, Miki?”

“No,” Munroe said. “I’m very much alive, but I need to go.”

Without allowing for a further response, she turned toward the door. Morningstar stood by with mouth agape, and Esteban was close enough to the exit that he seemed to be blocking the way. Munroe didn’t wait for him to move. She strode past, brushing against him as she did.

Outside the doorway she turned. “I am ready to give everything I have to the Lord’s work,” she said. “But if I’m not there at that hospital and my mother dies, there will be nothing for me to give.”

With those two sentences, they would forgive her anything.

She returned to the girls’ room long enough to grab her purse and then headed down the stairs to the foyer.

Morningstar ran after her, and as Munroe stepped out into the night, she paused to give the girl a genuine hug. “You can keep the suitcase,” she said, “and if I don’t make it back, the clothes are yours as well.” And then, after another pause, “Let me drive you to the gate so that you can open it.”

Morningstar hesitated and then got in, and they rode the few hundred yards to the gate in silence.

When Munroe opened the door to the hotel room, Bradford was pacing. He stopped when she entered but remained planted in the middle of the floor, like some battle-scarred statue. His expression was hard. Pure business. And it softened only slightly as she dumped her coat on the bed and strode toward the desk.

He said, “Michael, what’s going on?”

She leaned over the desk and loaded the footage, then sat down and stared as the segment played. According to the time stamps, while
she had been upstairs being handed a book of indoctrination, Hannah had gone out the front door. She restarted the piece, and then played it again.

In the nightmare scenario of having the child spirited away, there was a ray of hope. Munroe’s first set of fears—that the child had been handed over to the men for entertainment—was calmed somewhat by the details on the screen.

The luggage pointed to a protracted stay away, and the frayed and worn clothing was nothing even close to what the women on the staircase had been wearing. There were no guarantees, but by all appearances, The Chosen were moving Hannah out and away from the Havens.

And after a third time through the footage, Munroe stood, and without facing Bradford, she answered his question. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said, “but I’m sure as hell going to find out.”

She pointed at the screen, made a tap toward it. “Those license plates,” she said. “Wherever those plates lead, that’s where I’ll find Hannah. I need everything you’ve got.” She paused, turned toward Bradford. “Is Logan still carrying the emergency phone?”

He nodded.

She stood with her arms crossed, mind racing. “Arrange a meeting,” she said, “as soon as possible. Tonight. All three of them. There’s something someone’s not telling me.”

B
radford stood motionless while the full meaning of Munroe’s words sunk in. She would follow the license plates as far as the information took her, and this was the way of madness, the way of death. He sat on the edge of the bed, raked his fingers through his hair, and didn’t move to make the call Munroe expected him to make.

After a moment of silence, she turned the desk chair to face him, sat, and in her typically intuitive way, joined him in the quiet until he’d gathered his thoughts.

“Look,” he said finally, “pulling Hannah out of a sleeping commune, or snatching her off the street, that’s one thing. But going after the Cárcan family? An operation like that is a whole different caliber. I understand you feel an obligation to finish what you started, you made a promise to Logan and you gave him your word. But this changes everything. We’re looking at an entirely new sitrep. We have none of the same targets, none of the same risks, we’d be going in blind against a group of ruthless people who are on their home turf and are well armed and well connected. This isn’t something the two of us can take on with just a day’s notice.”

Whatever reaction Bradford expected after having vented, it wasn’t to find Munroe in his lap.

She’d sat for a moment, still and thoughtful, and then rose from
the chair and stepped to the bed. She placed a knee on either side of his legs, held his face in her hands, and kissed his forehead.

“I won’t argue with you,” she said, “because you’re right.”

She remained like that for a moment, her cheek to his hair, and he closed his eyes and breathed her in, hurting and happy in the same moment. He wanted to hold her, hold on to her, protect her from herself and from the world, but she wasn’t his to protect and never would be.

She let go and backed away, walked to the window, and stared out. “I have to finish this,” she said. “I’ll get it done one way or the other, and if I have to, I’ll go alone.” She turned from the window. “I’m not threatening you, Miles, and I’m certainly not trying to manipulate you. I know you. I know that if I say I’m going, then you believe you have to go, if for no other reason than to watch my back. But I don’t want that. This might very well be a suicide mission, but it’s my mission, not yours, and I accept that fully.”

“Why?” he said. “For God’s sake, why, Michael?”

She quoted his words back to him. “I have a gift,” she said, “and I’m letting it serve me.”

Bradford sat silent, the timpani of frustration building into a crescendo. Her decision was about Logan, it had always been about Logan. And some misplaced loyalty and her bullheaded stubbornness and refusal to know when enough was enough simply because her life didn’t mean as much to her as it did to other people. He paused and measured his words carefully.

“Logan would throw you under the bus in a minute to save his daughter if it came down to it.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “But Hannah’s his daughter. Who is there to look after a child if not her parents?”

“Well, sure,” Bradford said, his voice rising slightly. “But if Logan is truly what he means to you, then he should have your back, not use you as some form of human shield. That’s what this is coming down to. You’ve become a human shield. Can you even see it?”

She shrugged, as if the implications of such were not even worthy
of consideration. “I can take care of myself,” she said. “I don’t need someone to protect me.”

“And yet you do this willingly, knowing that you’re his tool.”

Munroe paused, and then turned slightly so that she faced him dead-on. She stared. Long. Hard.

“Yes,” she said. “I do it willingly, knowing that I’m a tool, because my decisions have nothing to do with reciprocation. I choose to do this because it suits me. I choose to help Logan because I want to. I choose to save his daughter because I can. I choose to care. Do you understand the difference? It’s a choice, Miles, not an obligation. Not a burden. Not emotional blackmail. Not something I
have
to do simply because Logan needs me. I don’t do it for gratitude or for quid pro quo. What Logan does, how Logan feels, how Logan reacts, has no bearing on my decisions. They’re my choices, not his.”

Bradford stopped, said nothing more.

He understood, then, her bond to Logan, her continued love for Noah, and so many of her life’s decisions. Self-preservation for her was instinctive, feral, and wild, inevitably bringing death to those around her, instinct that controlled her body and kept her alive, and she refused to allow that instinct to encroach upon her heart. She acted and loved who she wanted, when she wanted, and how she wanted, and having made those decisions consciously, for reasons that were her own, even against self-preservation, she would abide by them, even if it killed her.

“Okay,” he said. “I won’t try to stop you or convince you not to go. I’ll get you all the information that I have, get you whatever you need.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“On one condition.”

She paused. Stared at him sharply.

“I’m going with you,” he said. And then as she’d done to him earlier, he quoted her words back. “It’s my choice,” he said. “Not a burden, not an obligation, not emotional blackmail or something that I have to do. I do it because I choose to.”

*   *   *

They gathered at a watering hole off one of the many side streets in San Telmo, near the hostel, nothing more than a room fifteen feet wide, no windows, dim, smoke-hazed and crowded all the way to the bar counter on the end wall. The place was chosen because it was where Logan and Gideon already were when Bradford called, and for what Munroe needed, here was as good as anywhere.

Munroe stepped into the din, Bradford at her heels, and spotted Logan and Gideon in the front corner. The boys were nursing the local brew, had been for a while by the looks of it, and although Munroe would have preferred they be solid and completely sober, she’d take what she could get.

Logan spotted them, stood, and motioned them over. They made small talk for the few minutes it took for Heidi to arrive, and then, with the five of them pulled tightly around the table, Munroe said, “Unless one of you has done something really, really stupid, there are factors in play that you’ve failed to mention.”

There was a shock of silence around the table, and Gideon put his hands up in a defensive position. “I gave you my word,” he said. “Whatever it is you’re going on about, it wasn’t me.”

“Maybe you should start from the beginning,” Logan said. “Because, for the most part, we haven’t been included in your chain of ‘need to know.’ ”

Bradford tensed.

Logan’s sarcasm was an obvious dig at Bradford and the way Munroe had allowed him to usurp Logan’s position on the assignment. Under the table Munroe placed a hand on Bradford’s knee to quiet him.

She was silent for a moment, not because of Logan’s snipe, but to plot her way through several days’ worth of details to the precise moments that would encapsulate where they now stood.

“I’ve been inside The Chosen for three days now,” she said. “Welcomed, and for the most part blending into the scenery—close enough to Hannah to snatch and pull her out the front door, which I didn’t,” she said, “in order to limit damage potential.”

She paused, took a sip of water, and forced silence on the table.

“Tonight was the go night,” she said, “with everything in place for a clean extraction. But since I’m sitting here and I’m not smiling, you can bet things didn’t go as planned. I’ll give you one guess as to what happened.”