“You can trust that if I know, they know,” Michael said, and then sighed. “You have no idea, do you? What’s been going on these past few weeks?”
Weeks.
Neeva mouthed the word. Pressed her palms to her head and pushed against the walls that were closing inward. She’d lost track of time holed up in that cold stone prison with no concept of day or night, hours parsed by the spacing of sleep and meals and guard changes and assholes who’d arrived to assault her. So much precious time stolen.
Weeks.
She had no words, no voice, no ability to articulate the sickening angst. Her parents would think she was dead, maybe, would have no closure, no way to know—no last words or good-byes or I love yous. Just this. This grab-and-run and cut off from the world with no way to send a message that she was alive and fighting to get back to them. There was no possible civil response, so all she said in answer to Michael’s question was “I’ve been locked away, so how could I know anything, really?”
The minutes ticked by and the longer the silence grew, the more Neeva’s anxiety increased. Unsure of what she could say or how hard she could push before Michael’s hard-assed captor persona returned, she finally whispered, “What exactly has been going on?”
Michael just shook her head and said, “You should put the tights on and get your face cleaned up. Don’t give him an excuse to come back.”
Neeva kicked off her shoes, as close to venting frustration as she dared in the moment. Reached for the packet that had fallen to the floor, snatched it up, and tore at the plastic. “Seriously,” she said. “I want to know.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Michael said, and put a finger to her lips, pointed at the dash, ran her finger in a circle around the air again, then pointed to her ear, and Neeva understood then, that for all of this time, not only were they being followed but their conversations were monitored.
MUNROE DOZED FITFULLY, an hour, maybe two, of silence and downtime and decompression during which it was almost possible to tamp down the fear of retaliation, the guessing game of who, out of the few people she loved, would be next on the list of Doll Maker targets, to pretend that having been snatched away from the first true peace she’d found in the last ten years hadn’t just thrown her back to the edge of the abyss, that place of madness she’d spent the entirety of her adult years trying to avoid.
The fight with Arben and the ensuing pain had been a release valve, a temporary calm from the pressure cooker of violence and voices, but they were back again, feeding off the rage, driving and relentless.
The shrill alert of the phone jolted through the quiet and Neeva jumped, then muttered, “No, not again.”
Munroe picked up the phone, checked the display, and in response to Neeva’s panicked deer-in-the-headlights stare, whispered, “We should be okay for now.”
The number showing on the screen was not Lumani’s, which left only the Doll Maker as the caller, and if what had happened over the past few days was any prediction of how things would continue, even though this call might be the harbinger of another battle, it wouldn’t likely announce another death because the Doll Maker preferred to send his minions and foot soldiers as the bearers of bad news.
Munroe answered the phone with silence and after a long pause the Doll Maker said, “My friend, you are there, are you not?” His voice was warm and friendly and infused with the same fractured sense of reality that had permeated his every move within the office of the dolls.
“I’m listening,” Munroe said.
“I cannot give you what you want.”
“Then I see no reason why I should continue.”
“As expected,” he said. “It’s the time frame at issue. Your friend, he is alive, this is for sure, the problem is in the timing of getting you your proof. Continue the journey. A little farther down the road, a little later, and you will have what you want.”
“You killed a man for arbitrary reasons,” she said, “you lost nothing and still took his life.”
“Words like arbitrary are meaningless,” he said. “The responsibility to meet each outcome is yours. No matter how failure arrives, the price for it is yours to pay. I made this clear from the beginning.”
Failure.
Because Neeva had run.
Noah’s life had been taken to compensate for tights and mascara.
“The dead man,” Munroe said. “What was his failure?”
“It was your failure, your punishment, and so the answers are your problem to deal with as you see fit. You were given a task and failed, so there has been suffering. You can correct it now and spare further pain.”
Mental disconnect filled his answers. Her response was about the value of human life, his was about damage to a costume. “You said this task is about me and my debt to you. You already hold Logan as collateral, but instead you took the life of someone who has nothing whatsoever to do with any of this.”
“Truly unfortunate,” he said. “You must continue the journey now.”
Munroe drew in a breath, fought the timpani inside her head, and said, “If you can’t prove to me Logan is alive, then I have nothing left to lose, so no, I won’t continue. Not without proof of life.”
“There are others,” the Doll Maker said. “There are others who matter to you, so you would be wise to follow through and avoid further failure.”
She could hear the smile, the smirk, the gloat in his voice, and his threat was another punch to the head.
Jolting.
The strategy was there, amorphous, intangible.
There were others, as he said, and they would be used to manipulate her all the way until she had reached the end. Nothing would stop until he had what he wanted, and when he had won, she was destined to die, as was Logan, and eventually Neeva, and God knew who else.
The voices rose, chanting, calling.
This is a day of vengeance, that he may avenge him of his adversaries.
No matter how many moves she played out in her head, the outcome was always death. Jumping through his hoops, sacrificing one piece to save another, she would lose everything. He controlled the elements, the power, and the board. The only way to end the madness was to upend the game and let the pieces fall.
“I have nothing left to lose,” she said, “and no fear of what you’ll take or what you can do to me because I am already dead.”
“The innocent will suffer.”
“Then let them suffer,” she said, and hung up.
IRVING, TEXAS
The truck driver stayed motionless in the space of the open cab door, the dilemma clear on his face: return to the men on the ground who might shoot him if he jumped, or deal with the gun pointed at his head and the stranger who might shoot him when the driving was finished.
Bradford repeated the instruction, a slow and clear demand to get inside and get the rig moving, and when the response in those long, drawn-out seconds was a continued hesitation, he repeated the promise. “Best thing to happen to you all day.”
The driver shifted his focus from the front to the side and turned his head back as if preparing to jump, so Bradford lowered his weapon. Without taking his eyes off the driver, he reached inside his vest for the remote and punched in to trigger the detonation.
The warehouse explosions ripped through the night in a way automatic gunfire never could: shook the ground with enough force that even high up in the cab, Bradford felt the power. Whatever hesitation the driver held, whatever decision he readied to make, was resolved by the bigger noise and the flash from behind. The driver jerked, shoved forward into the cab, and slammed the door behind him faster than Bradford imagined possible for a man of his girth.
Once behind the wheel, the driver released the brake and the truck crawled forward toward the chain-link gate, still closed. The men who’d been shooting were behind the truck. Bradford could see them in the side mirror, crumpled on the ground bracing for another explosion from the warehouse.
“Get the lights on,” Bradford sai
d. “And don’t stop for the gate.”
The driver didn’t say anything, just reached out and powered on the lights, kept moving until the grille of the truck touched the gate, advancing until even from inside the cab Bradford could hear and feel the squeal of metal twisting under pressure, and then the rig was through and the wheels were on the street.
“Head north,” Bradford said, and they swung wide with the impossible-to-hurry kind of slowness only massive trucks could conjure, the type of crawl that made movement feel like slugging through mud pits and created the sensation of sitting on a target in a firing range.
Far up the street came the flash of blue, red, and white—Bradford didn’t hear the sirens, couldn’t even clearly see the patrol cars, but they were coming. Into his mic he said, “Daddy’s on the way. Party’s over.”
The driver turned to stare at him and after a long pause said, “Where to, boss?” And that was the question, Where to? The problem with Irving was that the city sat nearly dead center between Dallas and Forth Worth, surrounded by thick civilization on all sides with no fast way out of town in any direction. North was the best bet, but Bradford didn’t want to waste time hauling ass out of the city if Logan wasn’t in the truck.
“Take I-35 toward Denton,” Bradford said. “That’ll do for now.”
The driver nodded, and as the truck picked up speed, switched gears.
Three patrol cars with sirens blaring blew past, and in the mirror Bradford watched the vehicles stop beyond the transport fence and their doors swing open. He had radio silence from Jahan and Walker, and that was a good thing. He’d only hear from them if there was trouble; if they got out clean, next contact would be a phone call.
“What’s in the back of the truck?” Bradford said.
“The manifests are there on that clipboard, if you wan’ ’em.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
The driver glanced at Bradford again, at first blankly and then the fog lifted. “You saying what I’m hauling ain’t what’s on the manifest?”
“Exactly that.”
The driver paused, then said, “What’s it you think I got? Drugs?”
“People.”
The driver let out a half-laugh that came more as an indication of spontaneous relief than humor. “Aw, man, no, not possible,” he said. “We don’t run up from Mexico. Down sometimes, but freight only goes one way.”
“I wasn’t talking about illegals.”
Bradford stopped there because this line of discussion was pointless with an underling. “You know an out-of-the-way place to pull over, somewhere not too far outside the metroplex, somewhere that won’t draw any attention?”
“I might,” the driver said, “but you and that pop toy there make me real nervous. I need some guarantee you ain’t planning to use it.”
“If I was planning to kill people, those guys with the guns back at the depot would have been the first to go.”
The driver switched gears again. “I suppose you have a point,” he said, though his body showed signs of agitation, what Bradford expected in a person amped for fight or flight.
“Where were you headed with this load?” Bradford asked.
“Houston, same as always.”
Bradford repeated the answer. “Same as always?” And then, “That the only place you ever go?”
“I run the smaller trucks all over the country, but with this rig, yeah, always Houston. Though before I come on, before Katrina, it was New Orleans.”
“That doesn’t create questions?”
The man shrugged. “I do my job, I don’t ask whatfor.”
“You have a name?”
“Dave Lockreed.”
“Okay, Dave, listen. All I want right now is to get into the back of this truck. I don’t want to hurt anyone, definitely don’t want to kill anyone, and I’m not planning to steal anything. I’m convinced there’s a person in the back, and I’m only here for that. I want to be done and out as quickly as possible, and all I’m asking is for you not to make this any harder than it has to be. Can you work with me on that?”
THEY WERE JUST beyond Lewisville when the call from Jahan came in, a brief swap of details that let Bradford know his team was safe and confirmed specifics for the proposed rendezvous point. With that settled, the remainder of the run north from DFW provided an opportunity to poke and prod at the driver’s knowledge in a not-so-subtle attempt to fill informational gaps.
Lockreed, though a slow and cautious speaker, offered far more in his stop-start moments of rambling than Bradford fished for, a nervous stringing of words, talking for the sake of talking. Houston, as it turned out, was where Veers operated a second truck depot, a location that hadn’t turned up in any of the war room’s digging; a smaller office that, as far as Lockreed knew, handled import and export, a location that tied in well with Bradford’s theories about why Veers operated in the way that it did, and because Houston had access to both sea and air, Bradford suspected this smaller, off-the-map arm of the Doll Maker’s network was the primary gateway for moving his merchandise in and out of the country.
The meeting spot was a park just off the interstate beyond Denton: trees and grass, baseball diamonds, and soccer fields with a deserted parking lot in an area both quiet and sparsely populated.
Brakes hissed, then Bradford climbed down from the cab. Rounded to the rear of the truck while Lockreed did the same along the other side. At the truck’s back end they stared at the door and the double bolts padlocked into place. “You got the keys to these things?” Bradford asked.
“Wish I did, normally would. Didn’t get that sorted before the shooting started.”
“Still no idea what’s inside?”
The driver shook his head. “Not but what’s on the manifest.”
“What do you do when you get to Houston?”
“Back the truck in, hand over the papers and keys, get a signature, and leave.”
“To where? In what?”
“Usually, there’s a company car waiting. I put up in a nearby motel for the night, come back in the morning, and make the return trip, sometimes with freight, sometimes empty.”
“But always with this exact trailer?”
Lockreed nodded.
“Nothing strange about that?”
The driver’s posture sagged. “It’s a job,” he said. “Puts food on the table.”
They waited in silence for a few minutes until Walker, in the Trooper, pulled up beside the rig. Jahan followed several car lengths behind.
Lights switched off and engines running, they stepped from the vehicles and stood beside Bradford. He motioned toward the padlocks. “Driver doesn’t have the keys. Anyone have any PETN left?”
Jahan pulled primer cord from his pack. Wrapped and knotted a segment around the hook of each lock and let out a lead. Then all four stepped a few paces away. The explosives cut through the metal, knife to butter, and the pieces fell to either side. Bradford pushed the scraps out of the way, slid the bolts, and pulled the doors outward. With a flashlight beam roaming, they peered together into a darkened container filled with oversize boxes stacked nearly the height of the interior.
Walker sighed. “They couldn’t make this shit any easier, could they?”
Bradford climbed up into the truck and Walker joined him.
Jahan said, “You want me to cuff the civie?”
Bradford said, “Nah, he’s got nowhere to go,” and then after a moment of staring at the boxes, “Hey, Dave, get in here and help us empty this thing.”
Walker said, “There’s got to be some pattern here. Some route to get to whatever is inside—makes no sense to have to load and unload all of this every single time.”
“Maybe,” Bradford said. “Do you see it?”
Walker shook her head.
“Jack?”
“I see a wall of cardboard and have a big target on my back. Can we get moving?”
Bradford reached for a box and shoved it in the driver’s di
rection. The thing was heavy for being nothing but a prop. “Check out what’s inside,” he said. “Find out if it matches your manifest.”
The document said children’s furniture, and the boxes, heavy and unwieldy, held wooden pieces sandwiched between packaging material: to all appearances genuine cargo, and possibly truly intended for export. The four worked in sweaty silence, offloading enough of the freight to create space within the interior so that they could shuffle boxes from one place to the next, looking for they knew not what but expecting to recognize the thing when they found it.
Bradford was halfway to the front when the first sound of tapping, faint and nearly imperceptible, caught his attention. He held up a hand to stop movement, and within the silence the others also picked up what he had, though the sound had no obvious source and was faint enough that one might think the taps had been imagined.
The noise—if you could call it that—seemed loudest in the direction of the far front, so Bradford switched focus from moving boxes from one spot to the next to clearing a path straight through until he reached the front, and there he found nothing but the end of the container.
The tapping came again, louder than it had been before, the origin still no clearer than when they’d first heard it. In the narrow path, Jahan squeezed beyond Bradford, knelt, and placed his palm and ear to the wall. Waited for the tapping, and when it came, shook his head: no vibration.
In the disappointing silence, each inhale, each exhale, reverberated loudly enough to drown out the faint link to hope until the tapping returned, this time louder and unmistakably an SOS that came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
Finally Lockreed stated the obvious. “That can’t come from one of the boxes,” he said. “None of them is big enough to hold a whole person.”
“False front, false floor, false ceiling,” Walker said. “Those are our only options.” After a moment of pause, without further discussion or consultation, they started moving freight again, faster and less cautiously than before, shoving boxes toward the rear and out the back without regard to how the merchandise fell or if packing burst, spurred on by the confirmation that somewhere in this truck was the score they’d set out to find.
The Doll Page 19
