The Doll

by Taylor Stevens

  Walker staggered some more, rubbed her eyes, and swiped at her nose again. Held a conversation that Bradford couldn’t hear because with Walker so scantily dressed there’d been no place to safely stash a wire, but he got the general idea. The man gestured. Walker nodded and ran her palm over her eyes, wiping away tears. In her lifetime, she’d taken more than one poker pot with that same act of drunken, pitiful helplessness that wrenched male heartstrings and tugged at their zippers.

  The man pulled a key ring from his pocket and opened the lock to the gate. Walker slipped inside. The man made to relock it, but Walker’s drama started again and she strode in the direction of the door he’d exited so that he had no choice but to leave the lock and follow her.

  No further camera movement, no light flickering from the few warehouse windows, no backup personnel. The entire response seemed to be a solitary watchman pulling night duty and sleeping on his shift.

  Bradford waited until Walker was halfway from gate to building, and then moved out of the vehicle and into the night. Slipped through the opening.

  Ahead, Walker stumbled slightly, and when the man dropped an arm around her and stooped to help, she glanced over her shoulder, noted Bradford, and continued on. The two reached the door, and as Walker passed inside, her right hand transferred from her back pocket to brush along the door frame.

  The door shut.

  Bradford fought the urge to rush in ahead of plan to watch the back of a partner who had just broken every rule in the live-long playbook.

  He’d known it would happen and still bristled.

  Counted seconds.

  And then hand to handle, he tugged on the door. The latch, depressed by a strip of tape, opened effortlessly. Bradford listened, scoped out what he could, and then slipped inside.

  The warehouse was truly that, a large and mostly empty building lined with industrial shelving that bore empty pallets. Forklifts slept nearby. Near the truck bays at the front stood a minimal amount of freight, stacked and ready for loading. The legitimacy took him by surprise.

  There had to be a holding place, a way station, some soundproof location to keep the trafficked women, and it made sense that if such a place existed, it would work equally well for keeping Logan. Everything they had learned about this warehouse, about this company, screamed that what they looked for must be here. But this place was all wrong.

  To Bradford’s right, metal stairs ascended along the inner wall to the second floor, to offices apparently, which occupied only the back quarter of the building and hung over pilings and empty space, and from where voices now carried, one of them distinctly Walker’s being drunk, which was good.

  Bradford traced the ceiling, searching out cameras, and found nothing. For all the electronic eyes pointed outward, security on the inside was sparse. He moved along the perimeter, from shelving to pallets to forklifts, and found nothing that might indicate a false-paneled room or even a hiding place beneath his feet.

  The conversation upstairs continued, still only two voices. Men weren’t often silent around Walker, which meant that Warehouse Man was alone, and without more men, Logan, if he had ever been here, was not here now.

  The office door opened, and Bradford retreated to the shadows beneath the stairs. Walker teased and stumble-walked her way down with the guy close behind. Fiddled with the keys to a forklift. Warehouse Man tried to take them from her and she slipped beyond him laughing, plugged them into the ignition, and ran the engine. The noise, however long it lasted, was a perfect cover for footfalls against the metal stairs. Bradford hurried now. Warehouse Man would only endure so much teasing and forklift play before the situation turned nasty.

  The upstairs was as Bradford expected, two rooms and a restroom area the size of a small closet, the latter with a small outside ventilation window, which was where Walker had spotted the light.

  Half of the first room was allocated for security monitors, the other half to a desk with two computer towers, one without a monitor. On the desk in front of the security cameras, a handgun lay naked and exposed.

  A nice Walker touch.

  Bradford reached for the weapon, then stopped. Taking it would only alert the Doll Maker’s people to their movements. Bradford turned to the second room, in which was a conference table, several chairs, a coffeemaker, and a couple of filing cabinets. No Logan.

  Then, even from this far back in the office he could hear the change of tone downstairs. The forklift had been silenced. Walker was shouting. Bradford headed out the door.

  Downstairs, Walker shook a fist in Warehouse Man’s face.

  He tried to grab her hand, to grab her.

  Bradford started down the stairs.

  Warehouse Man lunged at Walker and she scooted around a pallet, a lot less drunk and a lot more angry. The man swore at her, and with an accent thick and foreign called her a bitch and a whore.

  Bradford made it to the bottom of the stairs and hesitated.

  Walker screamed, “Get the hell out of my way,” and Bradford bolted for the exit knowing that the message had been intended for him and not the cur that stood between them.

  In the parking lot he checked his watch, anxiety rising. To be on the outside while a partner was still within those walls was wrong on every level.

  Half a minute and the noise moved in his direction. Bradford retreated toward the shadows, mindful of the cameras and of the distance yet to cover. Louder it came: Walker close and moving quickly.

  Bradford bolted for the gate and reached it just as she came barreling out the door, running full out with Warehouse Man not far behind. Bradford faced the two, waited until Walker blew past, and then, in character, charged toward Warehouse Man. “What the fuck are you doing with my girlfriend?”

  The man slowed, his hands forward indicating caution, but before he’d fully stopped, Bradford collided into him, palms to chest, instep to knee. The guy staggered at the shock of the first hit, buckled with the second, and attempting to right himself, swung wildly in defense.

  Bradford ducked, moved into his personal space, chest to chest. “Keep your filthy hands off my woman,” he said, and drove forward, forehead to nose, breaking cartilage and drawing blood.

  Warehouse Man reached for his face and, smearing red, howled a smarting rage. Right hand went behind his back to draw the weapon still sitting on the desk upstairs. Swearing, he threw himself at Bradford.

  The guy was wide and his bulk ungraceful.

  Bradford sidestepped. Used the man’s weight and momentum to continue his top half forward, used a leg to keep his bottom half in place. The man hit the pavement hard.

  Bradford began to walk away. Paused long enough to point a finger at the man crawling to his knees. “You touch her again,” he said, “and I’ll kill you.”

  WALKER WAS IN the Explorer, seated and buckled in, when Bradford returned. He slid behind the wheel, put key in ignition and foot to gas. Peeled out into the deserted street with far more noise than was prudent and ran a red light in the process.

  Damn adrenaline.

  “I hope you broke his nose,” Walker said.

  “Taken care of,” he said, then glanced in her direction.

  Arms crossed and fists clenched, she glared through the windshield. “When this is over, when we have Logan and Michael,” she said, “I’m going back in.”

  “Fair enough,” Bradford said. “Why?”

  Walker turned toward him. “Because that man’s a lunatic psychopath. I swear to God, there’s a body count somewhere, and if I don’t get to him first, another woman somewhere is going to get hurt bad.”

  “The stuff he promised to do to you, huh?”

  “Among other things.”

  Bradford turned focus to the road. “Michael and Logan first,” he said. “Then we take out the trash.”

  ZAGREB, CROATIA

  For the first time in three days, Munroe breathed outside air: late morning and early spring air, colder than Dallas and filled with the must of old stone and
wood. Smelled faintly of diesel or oil, the way an old barn might, and after endless hours among the rot and mold and bleach of prison, it was a sweeter and cleaner high than mountain wind.

  Slung over her shoulder was the backpack she’d been given, stuffed with the blanket and tape, passports, car papers, maps, and GPS from the Doll Maker. Neeva was still down in the hole, chained to the wall with the rubber-coated cuff and the stupid clothes the Doll Maker and his minions insisted she wear. Munroe would retrieve her when she was ready, but for now her focus was on the car parked inside the courtyard.

  The ground was cobblestone and the walls on three sides formed part of the building she’d been in—the gold workroom and the windows to the Doll Maker’s office were directly behind her, and in front of her was she knew not what. The exit from the courtyard was blocked by a massive arched wooden door or gate, quite possibly centuries old, and definitely the source of the barnlike smell.

  The vehicle, an Opel Astra, was a good eight or nine years old, dull gray with half-worn tires and Slovenian plates; a basic model, five-door hatchback, with door locks, windows, and transmission all manual, no air conditioner. The radio had been ripped out and the body had seen a light pole or two in its time. The Doll Maker wouldn’t cry if he never got this piece of property back.

  Munroe circled the car, taking in the details, then stopped in front and popped the hood to check the fluid levels. She wiped the oil dipstick on a rag that lay to the side under the hood, checked again, then removed the brace and let the metal drop with a thud.

  Lumani stood off to the side, arms crossed and leaning against a stairwell arch, and as had been his way thus far, he studied her as if she were a bug under a glass or an exotic caged animal, as if he expected to learn something from her. So she lingered, drawing out each movement far longer than she should have, attempting to provoke impatience in him, but he gave her nothing and finally said, “It’s time.”

  Neeva was sitting on the mattress when Munroe came to collect her. The Doll Maker and his henchmen didn’t want the wild animal soiling her new clothes, so for the sake of cleanliness, the girl hadn’t been fed since she’d been dressed and wouldn’t be unless Munroe decided it was worth the aggravation.

  Drugs would have made this entire venture a breeze—pop a sedative in the girl’s drinking water, say nighty-nighty, and put her in the trunk. For that matter, drugging the girl would have made Munroe’s involvement completely pointless, and were it not for this strange requirement from the Doll Maker’s client, there was a chance Munroe would still be in Dallas right now, probably on the Ducati, burning fuel under the Texas dawn.

  But the customer had rules.

  No bruises. No drugs.

  Prerequisites that made no sense.

  Most traffickers kept their women doped and dependent, not only for the sake of dulled compliance but also for control. A stable of heroin addicts was far easier to maintain than one filled with fighters and screamers like Neeva.

  No bruises. No drugs.

  Why?

  A thousand possibilities could lay claim to the answer, and Munroe pushed away the desire to know. No matter the reason, it wouldn’t change the facts.

  Munroe said, “Let’s go.”

  Neeva lifted her head and said, “Where are you taking me?”

  Fight-or-flight reflexes long honed during Munroe’s own captivity of sorts had heightened her sensitivity to tone, body language, and expression: instinct that picked up nuance with radarlike clarity and in the moment set off a warning sensor. “I don’t know yet,” she said. “They only give me pieces of the journey, one step at a time.”

  “Where do we go first?”

  “Ljubljana.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The capital of Slovenia.”

  Neeva stared back at her blankly.

  Munroe pulled the roll of tape from the backpack, and going for conversation, for distraction and something familiar, said, “We’re in Croatia, Slovenia is one country west.”

  Eyes to the floor, Neeva was quiet as if running numbers or trying to recall why she recognized what she recognized, and said, “I’ve been kidnapped into a war zone?”

  Munroe shook her head. Slovenia and Croatia were splinters from the same origin, but Croatia, far more familiar to most Americans than Slovenia would ever be, meant that those who did recognize the country’s name often associated it with the destruction that took place in the nineties—frozen in time and recategorized as one and the same as the mass genocide and wholesale slaughter within Bosnia and Herzegovina.

  Neeva was too young to have the collective consciousness. Maybe her awareness was the result of political parents. Either way, there wasn’t time for a geography lesson, much less a history one that covered the various Yugoslavian wars. “No war zone,” Munroe said. “At least not for almost twenty years. Stand up, please.”

  Neeva stayed seated. “We’re crossing a border?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have my passport?”

  “Doesn’t really matter, does it?” And she repeated the request. “Please stand up, Neeva.”

  Neeva nodded. Stood. Stepped off the mattress. Munroe’s internal alarm ticked up another notch. She loosed the edge on the roll of tape and pulled it upward. “Hold out your wrists.”

  The girl did as requested, hands forward, fingers bent into relaxed fists. Munroe moved forward, took Neeva’s right wrist in her left hand, felt no twinge of caution, no indication of warning. Leaned in closer to wrap the tape to the girl’s skin, and in that moment, Neeva’s other fist rushed toward Munroe’s eyes, a jagged edge of metal protruding, piercing upward.

  Munroe jerked backward.

  The improvised blade missed her jawbone by a hairbreadth. Scraped air and came back down again in an attempt to connect with her cheek, and then as quickly as the strike had come, Neeva was on her back, struggling to breathe, trying to scream, and Munroe, on top of her, stared at her own hands on Neeva’s throat.

  Slowly, deliberately, making her fingers move by force of will, Munroe released Neeva’s windpipe, while every nerve and primal instinct cried out to win and finish the kill.

  Munroe drew back.

  Plucked the three-inch slice of metal from Neeva’s hand and mechanically examined what appeared to have once been part of a bed frame. “The last person who tried that is dead,” she said.

  Munroe tucked the piece of metal into a pocket, pulled herself off Neeva, and with the girl still flat on her back, tears sliding from eyes to mattress, Munroe bound her wrists in a tight figure-eight that wouldn’t allow for slippage.

  Using the center of the tape as a handle, she pulled Neeva to her feet, mind replaying those fast few seconds again and again, searching for the place to fit the puzzle piece that didn’t belong: This strike, like the previous fight, hadn’t been the random work of panic or adrenaline or merely the actions of a girl struggling for survival. Neeva controlled her body with the assurance of someone who’d studied for years, maybe even competed professionally, but who hadn’t had much of the kind of real-world experience where instinct and speed and the ability to outthink an opponent made the difference between bleeding under the blade of a sadist or not.

  “I warned you not to fuck with me,” Munroe said. “Even if I don’t want to hurt you, I will. You should have listened.”

  In place of words, Neeva nodded, and Munroe patted her down, hands running underneath clothing and along seams in tempo with her irritation. She should have seen the strike coming long before it had happened, but although she’d sensed the warnings, she’d missed the signs, and this irritated her more than the strike itself. Munroe pried open Neeva’s mouth, searching for any other hidden weapons. Perhaps the actress in the girl had blinded her, playing the role, not unlike Munroe’s own chameleon nature that allowed her to become what people needed in order to get what she wanted.

  Finding no other weapons, Munroe put fingertips to the girl’s chin and, without resistance on Neeva
’s part, raised her head so that she could better view her neck and the aftermath of those few seconds.

  For now, the damage was internal. With luck, there’d be no outward sign.

  “I’m going to unlock you,” Munroe said. “If you move, we’ll end up playing on the mattress again and I don’t think that game is very fun for you.”

  Neeva avoided eye contact, staring straight ahead with her jaw working back and forth as if she was grinding her teeth or readying to spit. Munroe said, “I’m doing everything I can to avoid hurting you—protecting you when I can—don’t make me regret it.” Then she knelt to release the shackle that secured Neeva to the chain.

  Pieces of the restraint separated and dropped off, and Munroe pressed Neeva’s foot. “Keep still,” she said. She prodded the flesh and bone that had lain beneath the shackle. “Does it hurt?”

  More than two weeks, maybe, of tugging and yanking were ample time for Neeva to bruise, cut, and harm herself—damage for which Munroe would be held responsible although she’d had nothing to do with the cause.

  “It’s sore,” Neeva whispered, “but doesn’t really hurt.”

  Munroe pressed once more, waited for a wince or a twitch, and receiving none, stood. The rubber coating appeared to have done its job. As the Doll Maker had said, Neeva wasn’t the first to be delivered under these strange requirements. He’d had plenty of practice keeping his merchandise damage free.

  Munroe picked up the backpack and led Neeva by the elbow from the cell to the hall. The girl didn’t resist, but her reluctance to leave this prison was there, and why not? This was a world she’d learned to understand, if not navigate, and how much better the devil she knew than the one still to come.

  In the hall, Arben blocked the path to the stairway. Neeva stiffened when she saw him. Without letting up on the pressure that moved them forward, Munroe said, “Do you know him?”

  Neeva nodded.

  “He doesn’t speak English,” Munroe said.

  Neeva’s voice came in a hoarse whisper. “He came into my cell most often.”