Last came a drugstore, where Munroe searched out the closest items she could find to hair wax, eye pencils, and lip products. Added hydrogen peroxide, nail polish, and mascara and grabbed a backpack off a circular rack—a shopping foray that would have made most males proud: items procured with indifferent efficiency. Neeva grabbed soap, shaving cream, and a packet of razors and held them up for approval before adding them to the pile.
From the drugstore Munroe led a zigzagged course toward the nearest tramline, reaching the bus-stop-size platform at the same time a streetcar arrived. Didn’t matter where the tram was headed, only that they would move away from the area faster than they could if they remained on foot.
The doors hissed shut and Munroe studied passersby through the windows. Caught sight of a familiar figure—not Lumani, Arben the second, the nameless silent man who’d been with them in the cells—running, so foolishly running, as if to say Here I am, notice me, through the crowds.
He’d clearly not spotted them, as he had headed for the tramline as if following a map, as if he’d known where to look. Then missing the tram, he turned from the platform to the street, and the car Munroe had spotted earlier slowed only long enough for the man to climb into the passenger seat.
The tram stopped at a light, and Lumani’s car, pointed in the wrong direction, was forced by traffic to continue on its way. With Bradford’s phone, Munroe utilized online maps and based on location searched out nearby hotels.
Eye on the traffic, she waited another stop and then, last minute, nudged Neeva toward the door and maneuvered to be last off the tram. Left Neeva’s old shoes on the floor by the feet of an elderly man as they moved off, and if anyone noticed the subtle deposit, no one called attention to it.
They’d only traveled four stops, but because of the direction and route, and the ebb and flow of traffic, Munroe had gained more time. They moved on foot again, following the directions from her phone, the streets darker now, the lights reluctantly turning on to replace the fading daylight.
The hotel, when she found it, was a boutique establishment, modern and clean and upscale, with a proprietor who gladly accepted cash, courtesy of the aproned man, and travel documents, courtesy of Lumani. He didn’t question the absence of luggage and led them up one floor and down a short hall to their room. Opened the door courteously, and when Neeva entered, Munroe stopped in the hallway to tip the man but, more specifically, to prevent the potential loss of innocent life that her presence might cause, to warn him, to caution against those who would undoubtedly come hunting for her. The man looked at her quizzically and then turned to go.
Munroe entered the room and closed the door. Neeva stood quietly with eyebrows raised, as if saying What now? but what came out of her mouth was “You speak a lot of languages.”
Munroe nodded. “I do.” She shed the weight of the bags onto the bed and dumped out the contents of the satchel.
Neeva stared, mouth agape, and Munroe held up one of the firearms. “You know how to handle one of these?”
Neeva nodded. Munroe released the magazine and checked the chamber. Tossed an empty magazine at Neeva, then handed the gun to her. “Show me. I don’t want to wind up with a bullet in the back of my head.”
Neeva snapped the magazine into place, ratcheted the slide, and taking a wide stance, two-handed, as if she’d spent considerable hours at a firing range, pointed the weapon at the window and pulled the trigger for the click.
Munroe handed her a box of ammunition, then turned toward the room’s one window along the far short wall and approached from the side, peering out with a quick glance and retreat, an instant assessment of potential threat. The room was one floor up, fronted by a small garden and a wide street that faced three- and four-story buildings. Not much available for a sniper’s hide, but if one was to be had, Lumani would certainly find it.
Staying away from the window, Munroe tugged the drapes closed. The room went black and Neeva flipped on a light.
“Keep it off,” Munroe said. “We don’t want to cast shadows.”
“Were you trained by the CIA or, like, some military special thing or other?”
Munroe smiled. “No.” Picked up the second empty magazine and, until her eyes adjusted to the dark, loaded bullets by feel.
Neeva said, “How do you speak so many languages and know about the things you know? How did you get this”—she paused—“stuff?”
Munroe tapped the magazine to seat the bullets, pulled the weapon from her waistband, and swapped out magazines. “It’s a long story,” she said. She put the contents of the satchel back in the bag and moved everything to the floor.
The one bed in the room was queen-size and welcoming, and her nearness to it, and the darkness, heightened the gravity of the need for sleep. She pulled back the linens, shoved the mattress off the bed, and propped it, like an A-frame, up against the wall near the bathroom door. “I need your help moving the desk,” she said.
Calculating trajectory and strategy, Munroe pointed and mapped with her fingers so that Neeva understood, and together they rearranged the pieces. “Will they come for us?” Neeva said.
“They have to,” Munroe answered. “Every change of direction we’ve made, we’ve dropped a tracker and kept on. They know we know we’re being followed, so for us to stop moving is counterintuitive. They won’t know if our bread-crumb trail was just a way to lead them to a trick where we pretend to be holed up but we’ve really dumped the rest of the trackers and split. They’ll have to come to find out.”
“So you want them to come?”
“Yes.”
“And when they do?”
Munroe ignored the question and pulled the ball of the doll dress and the rest of Neeva’s clothes from the bag, shook out the dress, and laid it flat atop the empty bed frame. “What are you doing?” Neeva asked.
“Teasing them,” Munroe said.
Her fingers hunted among the folds and seams for the small electronic piece she knew she’d find eventually. Grimaced when she grabbed hold of the plastic and used her teeth to cut through the threads that kept the strip fastened between layers of clothing. And then, having freed the device, held it out for Neeva to examine. “It sends a signal so they can locate you.”
When Neeva handed the thin piece back, Munroe took it to the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet.
Now came the waiting. Could be half an hour or thirty hours; the move was Lumani’s to make and she hated that this gave him the advantage. She was a hunter, not a hider, a predator not prey; hers was meant to be the position of seeking, discovering, gathering information, and controlling the elements.
Not this.
And this was all she had.
In the bathroom, where there were no windows, Munroe unscrewed all but one bulb, and this she allowed as their only source of light. Unwilling to shut the door and chance being cut off from the main room if the attack came sooner than expected, she stripped out of the Doll Maker’s collared button-down and T-shirt, and Neeva stared at her in a way that defied all rules of common etiquette. Finally the girl turned away.
From beneath the tight sports bra, Munroe pulled at the bandage that wrapped her chest. Drew the length out until she was free, balled the elastic up, and tossed it in the garbage. At the sink, she ran cold water, then using the hotel’s small bar of soap and a hand towel, washed her torso and arms, her face, neck, and hair.
She needed a shower. Desperately. But couldn’t risk getting caught compromised when the hunters arrived, and even this was pushing her luck.
Munroe stepped from the bathroom, towel around her neck, and Neeva stared slack-jawed. Munroe didn’t need to follow her line of sight to understand the reaction. The scars were ugly, and there were many, always prompting questions to which she rarely provided a truthful explanation.
“If you want to use the bathroom, now’s a good time,” Munroe said. “I have no idea how long we’ll be waiting, so if you’re hungry, help yourself to the food, too.”
>
Neeva nodded, silence instead of conversation, avoidance instead of questions, while she rummaged through the shopping bags, pulled out a few items. All the way from one side of the bed to the bathroom door, with the same stupefied lack of etiquette, her eyes remained on Munroe’s torso. “I might be a while,” she said, and Munroe answered with a dismissive wave.
When Neeva had shut herself inside, and Munroe no longer had a gawking audience or light for that matter, she stripped down and removed every bit of the Doll Maker’s clothing in the same way she’d had Neeva remove her own in the clothing store. Redressed in the items she’d purchased: boots, black cargo pants, and a black camisole layered beneath the jacket she’d kept with her since Dallas. As long as the jacket was zipped, the outfit remained if not quite androgynous, not exactly gendered, either, and would allow her flexibility when the time came to move again. At the moment, returning to being female was the better bet considering every visual record of her movement over the last forty-eight hours would show her as male.
Clothing, hair, shoes, accessories: these were props, visual cues, that people used to filter information and make instant assessments out of random connections, to categorize and assign value to those who populated their world. And layered beneath the props for sight came those for smell, and hearing, and more, that sense of intangibility that allowed people to read nuance and body language and interpret what the other senses didn’t grasp directly; cues that together formed a picture that matched perceptions based on expectations and that, when adjusted one way or the other, filtered past the gatekeepers of the mind, allowing Munroe to become whatever she needed to be.
THE WATER IN the bathroom ran long and the sounds of Neeva messing about filtered beneath the door. Munroe pulled the pocketknife from the satchel, sat on the frame of the bed, flipped the blade open, and stared at her hands. This knife, like all knives when she picked them up, became a living thing, and like all blades in her hands when the voices were alive and the darkness nibbled at the edges of sanity, this one, too, begged to be used. Not on the soles of her shoes, as she worked it now, probing until the heels gave way, but to be used on those who tormented. To cut, the way she’d been cut, and to make others suffer for the pain they inflicted.
Munroe folded the blade and pocketed the knife.
In the hollowed-out segments of each shoe, Munroe found two more tracking devices. She pulled them out and palmed them. Took paper from the desk and folded it into a makeshift envelope. Dropped the trackers inside and shoved the packet into a pocket. These were the last of them, and when they were dumped, she and Neeva could effectively disappear. Lumani had to know this. Had to feel the pressure. Even if he assumed this stop at the hotel was a feint or, in terms of the chessboard inside her head, a decoy: a move that lured a piece into an unfavorable position, he had to act, had no choice, the issue was only when he’d come, not if.
The water in the bathroom continued running, and so Munroe lay on the floor beside the upright mattress. With her body horizontal, exhaustion settled heavy, thick and blanketing, threatening to submit her fully to sleep against her will.
Taking the phone from her pocket, she dialed Bradford, the fulfillment of her promise, and in the seconds that it rang, her eyes closed of their own accord, only to open reluctantly when he came on the line.
“How are you?” he asked, and she heard in his voice the same worn-down fatigue that she felt.
“I’m okay,” she said.
Questions about Alexis, Logan, and Samantha were foremost on her mind, but to ask for news would only add to Bradford’s burden and so she left them untouched. “I got another image of Alexis,” she said. “A concrete floor and a fairly large space.”
“How long ago?”
“A couple of hours or so, but who knows when it was taken.”
“I’ll get to her,” he said. “It’s slower work now. I do have backup but not much, and I have to be careful in covering my tracks so I don’t face”—he paused—“local complications. But I know where she is.”
Elation tugged at Munroe’s thoughts. She sat up. Hugged her knees.
“Talk to me,” Bradford said. “You’ve got Neeva with you. Are you about to play capture the flag with the traffickers?”
“Sounds bad,” she said, “but, yes, that’s what it amounts to.”
She walked him through the events that had put Neeva back into her custody, the offer the girl had presented, the steps she’d taken so far to stay ahead of Lumani, and the reasons why she now waited for him to find her. When she’d stopped and silence ensued, she could hear in Bradford’s sigh the words of caution and warning he would never say. He moved instead to the topic they’d both danced around: the darkness.
“I’ve got a handle on it,” she said. “I promise you, it’s not like Africa. I’m tempted, you know, the urges are pretty strong, to seek him out in retribution for what he’s done to me and Logan, and I may yet. But on my own terms. Consciously.”
“What do you know of the client?” Bradford asked.
“Wealthy, male, and a regular. He’s paid for several girls from this trafficking organization, but this isn’t the only operation, so there might be other victims—less famous ones, you know?—cheaper. He could have a place or even several places where he stashes his purchases long-term, but I think it’s more likely each girl replaces the one that came before.”
“And the torture aspect?”
“I can’t be certain,” she said. “But it’s the only way everything makes sense—rules I’ve had to follow, the way he toys with the traffickers—he fits the profile. I could be wrong. I could be projecting my own past onto the present, but it doesn’t really matter—he’s no less evil if instead of torturing and killing these girls, he’s pimping them out or collecting them and keeping them locked away. He’s not going to stop, Miles. Even if I take this organization apart piece by piece, this guy will find a way to feed his addiction.”
The running water from the bathroom had shut off for a while, but Neeva was still inside and far too quiet. Munroe stood and knocked on the door.
“You okay in there?”
“Just a few more minutes,” Neeva said.
A heartbeat of silence and then Bradford continued the conversation. “Your client couldn’t have been the only customer.”
“No,” she said. “But he is one, and he’s one I can find.”
“Is there any way I could convince you to wait? Just buy me a little time so I can get to Alexis. We can sort through options when we have a chance to breathe.”
“Even if this never involved me or mine, you or yours, being this close, knowing what I know …” When her sentence faded, Bradford finished it for her.
“Knowing what you know, you can’t just walk away,” he said. “But I had to try.”
“I know,” she whispered. “I’ll finish this, and I’ll live through it.”
“Don’t make promises like that. You only tempt fate.” He was quiet for a moment, as if resigned and letting go. Finally he said, “Regardless of what happens, I understand why you have to do it.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Munroe stared at the phone a long while before putting it away, and fearing that to lie down would mean falling into a deep sleep, she pulled hair product from the bag and, with practiced fingers, ran the paste through short strands, tugging and spiking, and turning what had been boy into what now went either way. Without a mirror, she continued with black eyeliner and then heavy mascara, and was painting her short nails black by the time Neeva opened the bathroom door.
In the low light coming from the bathroom, both women stared at each other: Neeva at what had been added, Munroe at what had been taken away.
“You look different,” Neeva said.
“So do you.”
Younger. More helpless. Tinier, if such a thing was possible.
“Trying to wash out the curls only gave me a clown wig,” Neeva said. “I figured this was better than being re
minded of them every time I looked in a mirror.” She lowered her eyes. “What do you think?”
“Kind of gives you an emaciated concentration-camp-survivor look,” Munroe said. “Or maybe chemo.”
Neeva half smiled and her cheeks flushed. “It’s sort of a disguise.”
Munroe stood, secured the weapon in her waistband. Ran her palm over Neeva’s shaved head. “I’ll help you with the spots you missed,” she said.
Munroe put Neeva’s head over the sink and, with razor in hand, worked over the stubbled patches. Said, “Why’d you do the identity change before heading to Hollywood? You have a good relationship with your parents, so it’s not like you were running away or anything.”
Munroe shut off the water, handed Neeva a towel. Neeva rubbed a hand over her head and smiled. “It’s smooth,” she said, and then her expression changed. “My mom was always really good about keeping me out of the limelight, not using us kids as chips in her politics.”
Neeva dropped the towel into the sink. “We weren’t part of the whole stage, stumping for votes as part of the wholesome family image, but I still saw what happens when people know your name and your face. They constantly twisted what my mom said or did to turn opinions and projections into truths, but where it got totally crazy was how they did it to the rest of my family, who didn’t even have anything to do with anything.”
Neeva slid down the wall and stretched her legs out so that her feet nearly touched Munroe’s. “There’s no such thing as truth, that’s what I learned,” she said. “Only opinions people want you to believe as truth.” She ran a hand against her scalp once more and smiled again. “I knew that once I got work in Hollywood, everything about me would become public property and I’d have to deal with that same issue. I didn’t want the movies and the roles I took to impact my mother’s career—didn’t want to worry that my potty mouth or late-night partying would become her politics or that my own talent would be smothered by her shadow. I just wanted to be me without the baggage, so I changed my name, invented a past, and started clean.”
The Doll Page 27
