Munroe said, “Or revenge?”
Logan said, “If we want to avoid semantics entirely and call it by its most simple definition, then yes.”
She stood and said to Logan, “I need to think about it.”
After Munroe left, there was a momentary silence, and then one on top of the other the opinions and comments flowed, a mesh of conflicts and agreements that grew in volume.
“Goddamn it, Logan,” Gideon said, “the way you described her, described the plan, the whole thing seemed plausible, but seriously, who are we trying to kid? We might be able to get Michael in, but how the hell is she supposed to get herself, much less Hannah, out?”
“She can do it,” Logan said.
“Just because you like her and trust her doesn’t mean we do. Just because she’s willing to do the job—assuming she’s willing to do it—that doesn’t mean she should do it. We get one shot at this. If she screws up, it’s game over.”
“She can do it.”
“It’s not just about Hannah,” Heidi said. “You know that if this goes wrong, it’s going to come back to burn us.”
Logan rolled a bottle of water between his palms, then set it down on the table and stood. “Eli, how much are you putting into the pot?”
“About three grand.”
“Ruth?”
“Five.”
Bethany held up two fingers and the others did as she had, fingers speaking the words, as Logan’s eyes went from one to the other.
“That’s what? Twenty-five grand between us in order to pull this off, right? Anyone want to venture a guess on what Michael’s last contract paid out?”
Gideon said, “I dunno, fifty thousand?”
Logan paused, waited a beat, and then said, “Five million dollars.”
The table fell silent.
“Yes, Michael is my friend,” Logan said. He paced. “She’s my friend, which is the only reason this project even registers on her radar screen. Twenty-five grand won’t even cover expenses on a job like this. Michael’s not looking for crazy, she’s here because I asked her to come. If she does this, it will be for me. We can sugarcoat it as much as we like, but she’s not stupid, she’s been down this road before and knows that even the cleanest of ins comes with a complicated out.”
“How’s her Spanish?” Bethany asked.
“Last count, she spoke twenty-two languages.” Logan sat and leaned forward, elbows to knees. “I don’t know, it could be more by now. But yeah, she’s fluent.”
Bethany continued, “So, assuming she gets in and locates Hannah, assuming she’s able to get her away from the commune, does she even know what it’s like dealing with corrupt officials—and what if things go wrong and she ends up having to take the rural routes out of the country? Can she do it?”
“Let me put it this way,” Logan said. “If it came down to pulling a trigger to protect Hannah and get her safely out of the country, Michael wouldn’t hesitate.” He paused and held his hands up in a form of backed-off caution. “I’m not saying she would go in guns blazing, I’m just saying that she’s capable of doing it if necessary. And she’s spent more of her life navigating shit-hole, despot-run countries than any of us, including Gideon.”
“I have a hard time seeing it,” Gideon said.
“Hey, don’t take my word for it,” Logan said. “She’s downstairs. I dare you. I dare you to go pick a fight. No wait, you don’t even have to do that. I dare you to lay a finger on her. Touch her shoulder, grab her wrist, anything.”
“I liked her,” Ruth said, putting a pause on the tension. Ruth, the lawyer, who had until now remained silent. “She’s smart, very smart, and I think she actually gets it.”
“I’ll agree to that,” Heidi said. “She gets it. But can she do it?”
“The question is not can she do it,” Logan replied. “It’s will she do it.”
Chapter 6
Munroe pulled down the cap that shadowed her face, shoved her hands into the pockets of cargo pants, and with a furtive glance over her shoulder crossed the street.
Even in the early morning, that cooling time marking the close of day for some and the beginning for others, the city remained wrapped in a familiar heat, torrid and sticky. She inhaled the aroma of civilization and moved up Fifth Avenue, in the direction of Central Park, hoping against the inevitable, for an evening without mishaps.
Mishaps. Like last night.
It would be easy to plead innocence, to say that she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time, to say that it had been self-defense. But excuses were for cowards. Excuses couldn’t bring the dead to life or undo the damage wreaked by a second of instinct. Blood was blood, no matter the reason shed.
She pushed back the thoughts. It was over and couldn’t be undone.
She strode forward, one foot in front of the other, reaching the southeast corner of the park and following the illuminated paths, without regard to where she was or where she was going, focus turning from what had already transpired in this city to where she would go from here.
She was glad to have made the trip, if only to meet Logan’s friends, to hear what they had to say and from their collective stories glean a clearer insight into Logan’s past—although she was far more familiar with his history than he gave her credit for.
How could she not be? No matter the details that he’d conveniently left out over the years, he was her best friend and, like her, had a childhood marred by trauma. With the glimpses and tidbits he’d shared, she’d done what any good informationist would do. She’d looked.
Like his friends, Logan had been birthed into The Chosen of God, a movement spawned in the late 1960s that attracted thousands of teenagers and young adults out of society, the Void, and into the arms of The Prophet, a modern-day Moses who promised to lead his people out of Egypt.
They cut ties with family and friends, severed relationships with anyone who didn’t believe as they did, creating instead a collective new family bound together by loyalty to The Prophet.
The Chosen established communes—Havens—around the globe, and like Logan’s parents, those thousands of young people birthed even more thousands of children into the life of The Prophet, separate from the outside world. There was no consideration that the children might want another path, no possibility that the world might not end in their own lifetimes, and when, like Logan, the children grew and began to leave, they were cut off, demonized, and abandoned to fend for themselves in a world they didn’t understand.
Logan’s story, like that of so many of his friends’, told of falling through the cracks of a society unaware that children like him existed, of watching many of his childhood friends succumb to drug abuse and suicide, of experiencing anxiety and stress disorders, of being clueless about social mores and customs, of fighting the prejudice and social stigma that followed, and then of clawing his way upward one exacting day at a time.
In one way or another, the stories, no matter how different or with how much levity they might be told, were still the same, and without intervention, it was this same story that little Hannah would be telling in ten years, if she was alive to tell it at all.
Munroe came to a fork in the path, flipped a mental coin, and then left the lights and the trail for an area that promised darkness and seclusion. A breeze swept through the treetops, and the moon, ripe above them, lit the way.
She was a child of the night, and nocturnal movement was familiar and cathartic—far better than remaining inside, cooped up, unable to sleep and cautious of stanching the tide of dreams one time too many.
But letting her mind wander, seeking solitude and getting away from Logan and his friends, wasn’t the main reason for this foray into the park. She’d come here tonight because, just as had happened when she’d left the hotel the night before, she was being followed.
Her nature would have her make a game of it—keep up the guise of oblivion as long as possible for no other reason than that she could. But tonight wasn’t the nig
ht for games. She needed to bring the pieces together.
She came at last to a bench, stopped, and waited, listening to the darkness. Certain he was there, she sat and, after another moment, spoke to the shadows.
“Come and join me,” she said. “I’m tired of being stalked.”
She heard his approach before she saw him, the bulk of his outline materializing from the dark as he drew near. His stride was casual, his shoulders squared, and his hands relaxed in a summer jacket’s pockets. He stopped within a foot of her and gazed down with a subtle smirk, and she smiled in exchange.
Head tilted up and in his direction, she said, “Hello, Miles.”
He nodded, returned the smile, and with arms crossed remained standing for a moment before joining her on the bench.
Silence.
“How long have you known?” he said finally.
“I spotted you at the airport,” she said, and he chuffed.
In the full light of the moon she noted the way the months had left their mark. There were a few more wrinkles around his eyes and a three-inch sliver that traced from the base of his left ear across his jaw. She touched his face, ever so slightly, to tilt it away for a better view.
“I took a hit of shrapnel,” he said. “I’m one scar closer to catching up with you.” There was a longer silence and finally Bradford said, “Why didn’t you say something and save me the hassle of playing surveillant?”
“And ruin the illusion of Logan’s little”—Munroe paused and finger quoted the air—“intervention?”
“He’s concerned—says you’re medicating.”
“Yeah, I am. But not for the reasons he thinks.”
“Should I be worried?” he said.
She shifted forward, elbows to knees, face to the darkness. “Maybe.” And then in the silence she struggled to find words that would adequately explain the veritable nightmare the land of dreams had become.
“Does it have anything to do with Africa?” he asked.
She glanced back toward him. “Who knows,” she said. “I’m sure it didn’t help.” She turned again to face the darkness and, with half-shut eyes, said, “I’ve made my peace, Miles. I can’t rewrite the past no matter how much I wish I could, and nothing I could have done would have changed anything.”
She was quiet for a long while, and if Bradford wished to hurry her, he gave no indication of it.
“It started about a month and a half ago,” she said. “Began as the occasional really bad dream and progressed into full-fledged violence. While I’m asleep, I have no awareness of what’s going on, I only see the destruction after I’ve woken.” She paused, turned toward him again. “It’s bad enough to have a death on my hands when I’m awake,” she said, “but now it can happen in my sleep. I don’t trust myself, I have no way to control it, and so I knock myself out.” She shifted back to staring at the dark. “I can only go so many days without sleep before I start to break down,” she said. “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.”
“Have you seen a doctor? At least gotten a proper prescription?”
She cut a glance in his direction. “We’ve already had that conversation.”
It had been at their first meeting, a discussion about the value of psychiatric evaluations after Munroe had learned that Bradford was the one responsible for pulling together the research on her past on behalf of her employer.
She let the weight of her words settle and said, “Has Logan told you about the favor he’s asked—his reason for bringing me here?”
“He hasn’t. I’d assumed he got you here for your own sake.”
“He wants me to make a trip to South America,” she said, “to infiltrate some bad guys and steal his childhood friend’s daughter back home.”
Bradford said nothing and Munroe remained silent, allowing him to piece together the extent of Logan’s altruism. Bradford let out an audible sigh and with a protective edge said, “Where in South America? Is this thing drug cartel related?”
“Argentina,” she said. “Not drug related, religion related. It’s kidnapping, it’s complicated, and probably the right thing to do. Truth is, even though the reasons behind it are sound, it’s a crapshoot, and if anyone but Logan had asked, I’d have already said no.”
“If you knew this,” he said, “why did you come to New York?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Noah?”
She nodded, although truthfully Noah was only part of it.
“Will you be going back to Morocco?” Bradford asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
He was quiet, and Munroe knew that as much as he wanted to pry, he wouldn’t. In time, perhaps, there would be reason to bare her soul, expose the pain, to put into words what Bradford already instinctively knew. But not now.
After a pause, Bradford said, “Besides the lack of sleep and the drugs, how are you really?”
She shrugged. “Messed in the head as ever—you saw what happened last night.”
“Some of it,” he said. “I lost you around a corner, and by the time I caught up with you there was one dead guy at your feet and another limping away.”
“It happened fast,” she said. “Sadistic fucks.”
“Defending yourself isn’t messed in the head,” he said.
She turned to him. “Isn’t it? No one makes me walk the streets at two in the morning. I don’t have to lurk in the dark alleys, or the lonely trails, just waiting for trouble to invite me to play.” She looked out toward the path they’d taken to the bench. “What’s the difference,” she said, “between seeking out a victim and playing the victim, knowing that predators will seek me out?”
“There’s a huge difference.”
She opened her mouth to say something and then stopped. This was another topic for another time. “How long are you in town?” she said.
“That depends,” he said. “How long are you in town?”
She let out an involuntary laugh. “You can’t be serious. Is Logan paying you?”
“Don’t be an ass, Michael. No, Logan’s not paying me.”
“What then?”
A pained look crossed his face. “You have to ask?”
She exhaled audibly, slowly, stretched back and stared up at the sky. “I apologize,” she said. “I know what being here for me costs you.” She turned toward him and then back to the night. “I truly appreciate it—more than you might ever know—I just don’t think it’ll do much good.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. And then after another pause, “You know I respect you, right?”
She nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Because I think you’re insane to carry those knives while you’re impaired. You intend to medicate consciously and you’re trying to master the usage, but it’s like driving drunk, you think you’re in control and you’re not. Michael, you’re dangerous enough clean and weaponless.”
“I’m not off on some loony drug-induced binge,” she said.
“I understand that,” he said, “but we both know you don’t carry those knives for self-defense—you don’t need them. Kill someone with your hands and you might have a plausible reason to escape jail for the rest of your life. With a knife, you’re screwed, and you know it. Why take the risk?”
Risk. A word bandied about so easily by people who had no clue as to what risk really meant. From anyone else those words would have been trite and easy to brush aside, but this was the man who had saved her life, a man who knew the truest meaning of what it was to risk everything.
After another space of silence, she pulled three knives from their hidden places. Without ceremony, she placed them on his lap.
He reached for the blades and held them in his hands. “Would you also let me take the drugs away?” he said.
“If you can take the nightmares with them.”
He didn’t reply, and she let him have the silence. In time, perhaps he’d understand. She tilted her head back and looked east, where the sky had turned pu
rple. She stood.
“I need to get back to the hotel,” she said. “Walk with me? You can stay in the suite if you like—it’ll be more comfortable than holding vigil on the street.”
“Don’t you have a full house?” he asked.
“It’s a big place,” she said, “but either way you’d stay with me.”
His brow furrowed, and, understanding the source of his confusion, Munroe hooked her arm in his and led him forward. “I’m trying, Miles,” she said, “really trying. If you want to help and I’m willing to allow it, then let’s do it right. Stay with me.”
The sun had fully risen by the time they returned to the hotel, and when Munroe opened the door Logan was striding toward it. His face held a mixture of anguish and relief, as if he’d been pacing until her return and expected that it would never come. Then he saw Miles.
Logan blanched and stopped short. Shock replaced everything else.
Miles nodded and Logan continued frozen for a half-second before turning speechless toward the television, then to Munroe, back to the TV, and to Munroe again.
Tiring of his indecision, Munroe said, “What is it, Logan?”
In a disjointed movement he motioned toward the television, which, now muted, flashed pictures of the local news. “An NYPD officer was murdered night before last,” he said. “This morning someone pulled the body out of a Dumpster.”
He stared at Munroe’s hands and arms, long since washed clean, and whispered, “Was that your doing?”
Mental dissonance filled her head. She couldn’t reconcile what Logan said with what she’d experienced. Police officer. Wordless, she turned her back to him and, with the world moving in slow motion, joined Miles in front of the TV.
The sound was still off and a breaking news banner streamed beneath a looped clip. She watched in silence, and after a moment Logan asked again, this time his question an accusing hiss. Munroe shifted away from the flat screen to face him and then, without a word, leaving him bewildered and panicked, turned and strode to her bedroom and closed the door.
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