The Doll

by Taylor Stevens

  “He won’t hurt you as long as I’m here.”

  Neeva’s resistance lessened some, and Munroe guided her forward, single file, past Arben, who in a show of dominance refused to move, forcing them to squeeze by to get to the stairs. He was not subtle in his groping of Neeva, and the girl shied away from him.

  There were rules about not bruising the girl, but nobody had said anything that put the big tough guy off limits. Opportunity would arrive eventually, and when it did, Munroe would take it and Arben would die.

  Up the stairs Neeva went, with Munroe following.

  When they had passed, Arben kept close behind—far too close—so that Munroe felt his heat along her spine, felt him crawling up her neck all the way to the top of the stairs and into the main room where the gold workers toiled.

  Neeva moved awkwardly, feet shuffling forward while her head turned up and to the sides, as if seeing humanity for the first time. Munroe, in no hurry, allowed her to take her time.

  Arben pushed them forward. He’d stopped long enough to shut and bolt the metal door, the first that Munroe had seen or heard it close, and then coming near again, used his bulk and the invasion of space to drive Munroe faster.

  With his breath once more hot against her neck, her insides rebelled; her choler rose and with it came the color change of rage.

  The light of the room shifted to dull gray.

  Munroe let go of Neeva’s elbow.

  Stopped short.

  Turned as if to ask a question and brought her forehead into the right side of Arben’s jaw. The crack of the hit and the hurt that followed brought on a touch of catharsis. She yearned for more, craved release in the soothing balm of pain, longed for the fight and the euphoria that a kill would bring. Even a boot to his scarred and angry face and the crunch of bone against flesh would suffice, but that would have been too obvious, and would force an immediate retaliation.

  Munroe put her hands to her head and staggered slightly, every bit the apologetic player in an accident. “Bocsánat,” she said, backing away.

  Lumani had seen the hit and he stared past Munroe with a poorly concealed grin. Arben, whatever he did or whatever his reaction, kept back far enough that Munroe couldn’t feel him. The man would want to kill her now, and this was good. Rage clouded reason, hate distorted logic.

  They reached the Opel, and seeing the car, Neeva stiffened.

  “Don’t fight it,” Munroe said. “I don’t want to have to hurt you again.” She could feel the self-defense response running through the girl’s head: Never get in the car. Better to run. Better to scream fire and call for attention. Better to fight where there are people around. She felt Neeva’s body expand with an inhale and slapped a hand over her mouth. “I warned you,” Munroe said. “And I can fix it so that you don’t scream again, ever.”

  Neeva deflated.

  Progress.

  To Lumani, she said, “Nyisd ki az ajtót,” and he stepped toward the car and opened the passenger door. Her hand on Neeva’s head for protection, Munroe helped the girl settle. With Lumani still at the door, Munroe knelt with the roll of tape and wound around Neeva’s ankles the same figure-eight she’d used for her wrists, then passed the tape up between the restraints, connecting them so that the girl couldn’t lift her arms to the window. Package secure, Munroe shifted the seat back to an incline so that one of the most recognizable faces on the planet couldn’t be seen from outside the car. Then draped the blanket across Neeva’s lap and feet, hiding what bound her.

  Munroe stood, and closed and locked the door.

  Lumani stepped back and grinned approval—possibly respect—killer to killer, professional to professional. Behind him Arben glared, and Munroe paused to send a smile in his direction, nothing toothy, just a taste, enough to needle and inflame his rage.

  The courtyard wasn’t large enough to swing a three-point turn, so Munroe took the Opel out in reverse through the thick, gated arch while Lumani stood to the side, his eyes tracking her.

  The first address, with an estimated time of arrival of less than ten minutes, had already been entered into the GPS, but she wasn’t meant to stop, merely arrive, plug in the next address, and continue onward. In this way, she was forced to travel the exact micro route that Lumani had plotted. According to the GPS, they were on the outer edge of Donji Grad, old-town Zagreb, one district in a city of 800,000 that bowed outward into a mix of functional, if not aesthetic, buildings and high-rises.

  Standing beneath the arch, Lumani watched the Opel pull out onto the street and then shut the oversize gate. The Doll Maker’s lair disappeared, blending into a facade that was nearly identical to those on both sides of the street, one corner of each long block followed by the next, where solid walls of three- and four-story stone buildings, sidewalks, and parallel-parked cars were interspersed with ancient doors that presumably led to similar courtyards.

  To the sides of the archway were window displays of two jewelry shops, gold wares on show for pedestrians passing by, each shop a different face on the Doll Maker’s die. As best as Munroe could tell, he controlled the buildings on either side of the courtyard, and the only way in was through the archway. Perfect cover for moving his merchandise—once beyond the gate, what went on behind his walls was for his eyes only.

  On the road, away from the building, away from Lumani and the rest of the madmen, Munroe picked up the Doll Maker’s phone and turned on the screen. Neeva tilted her face toward the seat belt and closed her eyes.

  Munroe’s focus shifted from the road to her hand and back again, navigating traffic while flipping through text messages, scanning each and moving on through to the end of an in-box already filled with a series of addresses meant to be her immediate dot-to-dot travel instructions.

  ZAGREB TO LJUBLJANA should have been a straightforward trip from one country’s capital, along well-maintained highways, across green-forested countryside, over the border, and into the next country’s capital. Traveling the route of a sane person, the trip would have taken two hours, not counting delays for immigration and customs purposes. But just as the last few days had resembled a paranoid’s darkest delusion, so, too, did the Doll Maker’s travel plan. Munroe followed farther and farther along a patchwork of roads and townships that doglegged between neatly kept fields and chalet-cum-farmhouses with laundry lines, groomed gardens, and geranium-filled window boxes.

  The Doll Maker hadn’t provided a reason as to why making a straight cut across borders was out of the question, but it didn’t take much to figure it out. Slovenia was part of the European Union’s Schengen Area, one of twenty-something countries that operated as a single state insofar as immigration control was concerned, and Croatia was not.

  Inside the Schengen Area, border posts were rarely manned, and in some cases only local knowledge and a change in language or street signs indicated having passed through one country to the next. Among Schengen countries were no visa forms or passport stamps, no customs procedures or waits in line to continue beyond uniformed officials with the power to say no. But crossing from a non-Schengen country into the Schengen zone, similar to traveling between Mexico and the United States, was a different story.

  Slovenia, like Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland, lay at the perimeter of the Schengen Area. Their territorial boundaries held the line, and on behalf of the entire zone, their major checkpoints were charged with the responsibility of filtering out the illegal for the rest.

  Another address retrieved and entered, Munroe slid the phone into a holder on the console and reached for the backpack on the rear seat to pull out the map. Eyes shifting from road to hand, she searched until she found.

  They were meant to enter Slovenia at Krasinec—barely a dot on the map—a hamlet south of Metlika, which on its own was barely a town. This far down the checkpoint food chain meant that they were certainly headed for a remote and isolated crossing: an entry point intended only for locals who lived near both sides of the border and had the plates or stickers to show for i
t.

  The cell phone rang.

  Munroe stopped at an unmarked junction, conferred with the GPS, and then picked up the phone and answered it. Lumani said, “Find a place to stop, something out of the way, and wait until I call again.”

  Munroe said, “Why?”

  “That I said to do it should be reason enough.”

  “It’s not.”

  “You have no choice.”

  “In that you are very mistaken,” she said. “Every move I make in the next twenty-four hours is a choice. Choice, Valon, that’ll affect the rest of my life. At any moment I can choose to walk away, and you know it, so if you want my cooperation, you’ll give me what I want.”

  A hesitation, and then he said, “We have friendly eyes in Krasinec. Eyes that may or may not care what car you drive or what papers you have, but those eyes are delayed in getting to work, so as I instructed, find a place and wait until I call.” Lumani hung up.

  Neeva said, “What’s going on?”

  These words in a raspy whisper were the first she’d spoken since they’d been on the road. Munroe zoomed out on the navigation, looked at the map. “They’re coordinating something,” she said. “We need to pull over and wait.”

  She headed back in the direction of a wooded area and took the car up a suspension-damning dirt track, caked hard with ruts left after a previous rain. Two hundred meters into the dimming shroud of forest, the track widened slightly, so Munroe turned the car, hood pointing back the way they’d come, then shut off the engine and reclined her seat.

  “Now what?” Neeva said.

  “We wait.”

  “I’m thirsty.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Munroe said.

  “Hungry, too.” Neeva’s words were a plaintive whisper. “But even more than hungry, thirsty. I lost track of time in the darkness, but I think it’s been at least a day since I’ve drunk anything.”

  “Put yourself in my shoes,” Munroe said, and turned to look at the girl. “By not feeding you or giving you anything to drink, I only have to put up with your whining and a strip of tape over your mouth deals with that. Your clothes stay clean, you can’t try to bite me, and I don’t have to drag my ass out of the car to hunt through whatever food they put back there.”

  “I promise not to spit or throw it,” Neeva said.

  “Oh, I know you won’t throw it,” Munroe said, “because I’m not cutting you loose. If you eat, it’s because I put the food in your mouth. I really don’t feel like fighting with you right now.”

  “I’ll behave.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Neeva looked up, a tear of precious water trickling down her cheek. “I promise,” she said.

  Munroe stared at her a long while, trying to discern the girl from the actress, the truth from the lie, then sighed. She ripped a strip of duct tape, placed it over the girl’s mouth, then opened her door and stepped out. She’d pawed through the ratty duffel bag on the backseat before setting out, just to confirm that she wasn’t transporting drugs in addition to human cargo. Lumani had arranged for drinking water and packaged food: pretzels, candy, and the like. Nothing satisfying, just enough to push back against excuses for stopping. Munroe would get to them eventually, but Neeva had provided an opportunity to step out of the car without arousing suspicion.

  She opened the hatchback, and hands roaming, measuring every lost second, searched side compartments, floorboard, and under the rear seat, hoping that unlike the radio, the emergency supplies had been left untouched.

  One by one she recovered the pieces: reflective triangles, empty first-aid box, cheap-ass tire jack, and finally, what she really wanted: a lug wrench. Not as good as a crowbar for thug weapon of choice, but it would do. Munroe pulled the wrench and with some maneuvering got it beneath the front seat.

  Then she grabbed a pack of crackers and a bottle of water from the bag in the back and climbed in behind the wheel. Opened the package. “Don’t say a word, behave, and you can have this,” she said, and Neeva nodded. Munroe inched the tape off her face.

  The girl didn’t fight, didn’t spit, and, more important, didn’t talk. The new version of Neeva made Munroe uneasy, because whatever the girl was, she wasn’t broken. She drank the water in deep gulps and took the crackers in steady bites, avoiding Munroe’s fingers, and when both were consumed, Munroe crumpled the packaging, tossed it into the backseat, and leaned against the headrest, hands to the base of the wheel.

  Twenty minutes since the order to wait and still nothing.

  Her fingers tapped out a steady Morse code of phrases, random words, a habit of deep thought that went back years, all the while wondering if Lumani, or whoever was on the other end of whatever listening devices were in the car, was wise to the patterns and if he’d understand the construct.

  After another thirty minutes, the phone rang again.

  “Continue,” Lumani said. “After you are across the border, you’ll receive new coordinates.”

  “What about the rest of the points toward Ljubljana?”

  “Change of plans. We bypass the city.”

  “Why?”

  He hung up and Munroe swore under her breath. If she had any hope of establishing contact with Bradford, she needed access to civilization, had to have some idea of where they were headed in the short term so that she could project forward, strategize, figure her way out of this nightmare. In one swipe, Lumani had taken away what little she had counted on.

  Munroe turned the ignition key and moved the car forward, back toward Pravutina, the closest dot on the map, and the border.

  The crossing was a two-lane road that spanned a bridge, Croatia on one side, Slovenia on the other: one picturesque postcard village separated from the next by a band of water and two guard posts, one on either side, each attached to the equivalent of a carport.

  Neat. Clean. Quaint. Quiet.

  There were no questions when they left Croatia, not even a second glance. If the border guard had gotten closer, had seen Neeva in the car, there might have been issues. Maybe. But they were leaving Croatia for Slovenia with Slovenian plates—what was there to see?

  Across the bridge, Munroe stopped beneath the carport roof, and the young man in uniform stepped from his office, glanced at the car, and without pausing, turned and went back inside.

  The phone rang.

  Munroe answered.

  “Continue on,” Lumani said.

  Munroe checked the windows, checked the mirrors. He was out there somewhere, he had to have seen—someone had to have seen—for him to have this kind of timing. “Now what?” she said, but he’d already hung up, and a few seconds later the phone began to vibrate with the alert of incoming texts.

  MUNROE EASED THE car forward, and for another hour and forty minutes they drove terrain that wound over hills and occasionally through tiny postcard-perfect towns. Continued in silence until Neeva said, “I have to use the bathroom.”

  The words set off a wave of strategy inside Munroe’s head, pieces shifting, move against move, probability played against death.

  When she didn’t say anything, Neeva added, “Really, really badly.”

  Aside from the crackers, Neeva hadn’t eaten anything since she’d been doped up in preparation for the trip, and although she may have been given something to drink, it would have been minimal. Neeva knew it. Neeva knew that Munroe knew it and so had chugged an entire liter of water. One didn’t have to be an actress, didn’t even have to watch TV, to know that the bathroom ploy was the oldest escape tactic in the book, so either Neeva took her for a fool or she believed her acting ability trumped logic.

  Munroe said, “You should have gone before we left.”

  Neeva’s voice, still raspy from the beating her windpipe had taken earlier, went up a notch. “Please tell me you’re kidding,” she said. “One of the perks of being a kidnap victim in transport should be the right to use a real toilet, right?”

  Munroe didn’t respond.

  Within Neeva�
�s plotting was opportunity. Unless Lumani would have his precious package use a field and risk messing up her clothes, this was a legitimate reason to stop the car within at least a touch of civilization. Navigation said they still had several kilometers until the next town, and the speed limits kept the going slow. Neeva said, “Anyway, they took the bucket away again, so the only way I could have gone was in these clothes and I didn’t want to stink them up.”

  “I can’t do it,” Munroe said.

  Neeva drew a deep breath. “I’ve gotta go,” she said, “and if you won’t let me stop, I’ll use the seat of this car. Trust me, after the crap I’ve put up with these past few weeks, it won’t bother me one bit.”

  “It’s not my car,” Munroe said, “and I don’t have to wear the clothes, so suit yourself.”

  It was another long minute before Neeva spoke again, this time quieter, and once more it was difficult to tell where the actress ended and the real person began. “The clothes must be important,” she said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have starved me and taken the bucket away and wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble to doll me up and put me in them.” She paused. “Are you really sure you want me to pee in them?”

  Munroe said, “If we stop, if you try to run, if something happens to you, someone I love will die and you will have been the cause of that.”

  “My bladder just wants a toilet,” Neeva said.

  Munroe took her eyes off the road and glanced at Neeva. “If because of your actions you’re responsible for a killing, then I’ll have no reason to keep you alive.”

  “Just a toilet.”

  Munroe reached for the phone. Dialed one of the only two numbers the phone was permitted to call and in English, though she would have preferred to avoid it and thus keep Neeva on edge, relayed the conversation.

  “Can you control her?” Lumani asked.

  “That’s something over which I have no choice,” Munroe said. “But if it’s wiser not to stop, I don’t have a problem with her using the car seat for a toilet. It’s the smell I’m unsure about. Even if you have a change of clothes, only you can say how your client will react to stinking merchandise.”