The Doll

by Taylor Stevens

  “I never loved him, never worshipped him,” he said.

  She stood, strode to the door, turned back, and in a whisper just loud enough to carry across the space, said, “I, too, once danced on marionette strings to earn the affection and approval of a man who would never be capable of giving it. You have a lifetime of options ahead of you. If that’s what you choose.”

  Munroe stepped into the hall, put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door handle, and shut Lumani in behind her. He’d be free by the time she returned—if she returned—of this, she had no doubt.

  And like the randomness of life’s chaos, the decision to let him live was a coin toss. Just as she currently fought to get out from under the weight of her decision to allow Kate Breeden to live, so she might also one day again find herself in Lumani’s crosshairs. All she could do was walk the narrow line between instinct and conscience and hope for the best.

  HOUSTON, TEXAS

  Bradford exchanged his jacket for a service technician’s shirt: gray, grimy, and still bearing another man’s sweat—at least he assumed the stink belonged to Roger, the name stitched in red letters above his pecs. Another man’s shirt, another man’s pheromones—a simple illusion for a simple plan: He would walk in the front door, take the girl, and walk back out with her.

  Bradford handed the Explorer keys to Andre Adams, swapping them for the keys to the panel van Adams had parked behind him. The utility vehicle, acquired on short order, white, dirty, ladder-topped, and by virtue of its everyday commonness nearly invisible, would serve its purpose just fine.

  It was six in the early evening and they were still hours away from the handoff Munroe had arranged. The details called for a parking-lot rendezvous at eight in the morning Zagreb time, one in the morning local, but with the area lit up like the Fourth of July, with trucks coming and going around the clock, and new shifts in and out of the port facilities at all hours, time of day meant little, and there was no such thing as true night.

  If Bradford had been in Dallas when the arrangements had been made, he would have needed every one of those precious hours to pull some kind of strategy together. But he hadn’t been in Dallas; he’d been in Houston.

  It hadn’t been difficult to figure this one out. The Doll Maker people knew Bradford was still alive, knew he was hungry and hunting, and they would want Alexis off the grid, somewhere beyond his Dallas reach. But since he was dealing with foot soldiers short on resources, he expected they’d fall back on familiar and convenient.

  When Munroe had begged him for help, he’d gotten off one call and made another, to Adams, already in Houston, burning through cash, waiting to see what moves Kate Breeden might make. Bradford sent him to the address taken from the eighteen-wheeler’s freight manifests and then, going with his gut, pulled Rick Gonzalez up from Gatesville to temporarily man the Capstone office and left town. Was already halfway to Harris County by the time Adams called back with an assessment and pictures of the property.

  While the traffickers were still waiting for instructions, he’d already been inside their crawl space. This time he’d gotten to the battlefield first; this time he knew what he was up against. This time there were no employees to worry about, only the criminals. He’d debated calling in the police, getting a SWAT team to handle the rescue, but couldn’t figure out how to do it without implicating himself in the shit storm he’d already started, or a way to ensure that a raid didn’t occur too soon or, God forbid, too late or not at all.

  No. He’d get Alexis, but not by throwing away Jack’s life and possibly Sam’s as well, just so the scum could spend a day behind bars before posting bail and disappearing like their counterpart trash up north had done after the firefight. The playing field was different now; the stakes had changed and the only way to make sure this got done right was to do it himself.

  THE BUILDING WAS warehouse style with straight lines, constructed of concrete and corrugated metal, and ran the length of the entire block. Veers had the end suite, and the other companies in the building ranged from light manufacturing to storage. This address, unlike the others, was leased instead of owned, so it made sense now why the location had never shown up in any of the war room’s searches.

  The back portion of the property was larger than the warehouse, a fenced lot mostly filled with containers, a place where trucks loaded and offloaded cargo, all of this within an industrial zone just south of I-10 and slightly north of one of the many facilities that comprised the Port of Houston’s twenty-five-mile stretch along the Houston Ship Channel.

  A transport business like Veers fit right in—disappeared entirely.

  Bradford backed the van into one of the few parking spots that fronted the building and stepped into the warm spring air, heavy with moisture and fragranced with chemicals and petroleum, courtesy of the area’s refineries. The Explorer passed in front of him: Adams on his way to the end of the block, to the gated open area in back, an area the doll people couldn’t protect because it wasn’t their property. Bradford pulled a duffel bag out and then a tool chest, and with a clipboard tucked under his arm, laminate ID hooked onto his pocket under ROGER, picked up the heavy stuff and strode to the front door.

  Didn’t bother to find out if it was locked; it was.

  A tremor reached out from beyond the glass: Adams blowing charges on the back door. A thirty-second pause, enough time for defenses to go up, for rounds to be fired, and then came the concussion that Bradford could hear even from here: the first in a series of flash-bangs tossed in through the hole.

  Beneath this oversize roof the effects wouldn’t be as devastating as if this had been a living room or bedroom, but if Adams had managed to get the grenades anywhere near the men inside, then they would feel as if the Jolly Green Giant had just stormed through the door and smacked both hands upside their ears, and a ten-car pileup was having a party inside their heads.

  Disorienting. Nauseating. Painful.

  Bradford drove toolbox to the door.

  He was tired. He was pissed off. He was coming for blood.

  Stepped through the hole in the glass.

  Set down the toolbox and pulled a loaded tactical vest and an MP5 submachine gun from the duffel. Snapped into the vest and, adrenaline amping, slapped the 100-round Beta C-Mag drum into place. Felt the concussion of another grenade, incredibly loud even from here. Counted seconds.

  Another went off.

  With images from the main room playing out in his mind’s eye, he strode forward through a standard industrial-carpeted hallway, past standard offices with standard office equipment and furniture, toward the back, which was not standard by any means: Under the high ceiling three smaller prefabs waited.

  Soundproofed and insulated, they were windowless sheds, padlocked and up on cinder blocks, larger versions of the truck’s crawlspace in which they’d found Logan.

  Bradford rounded the hallway corner into the warehouse. The two-man contingent, in a form of disoriented retreat from the gaping hole and the light and the noise, fired suppressed semiautomatics toward the rear of the building, squandering ammunition on shots that went wide and scattered while they stumbled toward the sheds; headed toward the human shield as Bradford expected they would.

  His throat burned in recognition of a face he’d seen before, had broken before, a face that hadn’t been there when he’d scouted the location; recognition accompanied by his promise to Walker to take out the trash after they’d gotten Logan. Bradford moved forward, finger to the trigger, firing a staccato of controlled bursts.

  The warehouse man and his partner dropped. Rolled. Emptied magazines at him, still too far away for accuracy, and then backup magazines. Bradford continued forward until the drum was empty and the room went battle-deaf silent.

  The smell of war filled his airways. Fireworks. Fear. Death.

  Bodies on the floor, punched full of holes.

  An enemy who might have had a fighting chance if they’d had the ability to think ahead, to strategize, to prepare
for the possibility he might arrive already knowing their traps and their weapons.

  He with the biggest guns wins.

  Bradford moved to the nearest man. Kicked him.

  Dead.

  Stepped to the warehouse guy, drowning in his own blood. The weapon that had been in his hand was a foot away, and Bradford toed it completely beyond reach. The man could have it if he was willing to die for the effort.

  Bradford gazed down at him, then with time bolting wild, turned and strode toward the middle storage shed, the one he’d watched from the crawl space. Checked the door for wires, for any sign of explosive rigging, and, finding none, pulled a length of primer cord from the vest, wrapped, knotted, sliced, and in a maneuver getting old really fast, set it alight.

  ON A MATTRESS, bound with tape at the wrists and ankles, in torn and dirty clothes, lay Alexis Jameson—part-time medical transcriptionist, single mother of a two-year-old—crying out from pain, from fear, turning from the light as if to escape it.

  She didn’t bear any signs of the brutalization Logan had endured—no broken bones that Bradford could see, though from the bruises and the marks she’d clearly been brutalized in other ways. Battle readiness kicked in again; the push of war survival that stamped down emotion, the relief of numbness so that he didn’t have to feel.

  He took a step inside and paused. Had expected to find Alexis in this holding cell, hadn’t expected to find another on the opposite side, staring up at him in terror. Blond, brown-eyed, she was young—sixteen or seventeen—unbound and in much better physical condition. Arms around her knees, she rocked.

  Bradford moved toward Alexis, whose cries had become screams, and her turn from the light into a frantic struggle to crawl away from him, as if she couldn’t see him or had no memory of who he was. “Hey,” he whispered, and she said, “No, no, no.”

  He knelt. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispered. “I promise I’m not going to hurt you. I came to take you away from this place, to put you somewhere safe.”

  Alexis responded to the tone, to the words, if not the face; stopped trying to crawl away. Didn’t move.

  “You’ll be okay,” he whispered. Moved closer. “I’m going to touch you,” he said. “I’m going to put my hands on your arms and legs, so I can move you. I won’t hurt you. I promise.”

  Alexis flinched but didn’t fight, and he drew her close to him. Picked her up and carried her outside into the warehouse. The blond one followed, jabbering, yammering words he couldn’t understand, tugging at his sleeve until finally through sign language and tears and very broken English, she communicated that there were others in the sheds.

  Bradford hesitated. Swore. This hadn’t been part of the plan.

  The delay in dealing with other girls, in finding a way out for them, too, could mean the difference between getting caught or not, arrested for murder or not. But he couldn’t leave them like bags of unwanted belongings beside a Goodwill container.

  He yelled for Adams.

  Through the opening in the back wall, the former Marine materialized. He, too, paused when he saw the blond girl. Bradford moved toward him. “Take her,” he said, and transferred Alexis, like an overgrown child, from one pair of arms to one stronger.

  Hands free, Bradford pulled paper from the vest and scribbled Tabitha’s married name, her number. “This is her mother,” he said. “Call her. I don’t care what bullshit story you have to make up, just make sure she knows her daughter’s been traumatized. Find out what she wants to do.” He paused. “And then, whenever you know what that is, call me. No. Don’t wait that long. Call me as soon as you know you’re safe and then call her mother.”

  Adams nodded, then was gone.

  INCLUDING THE BLOND one, three foreign girls had been contained in the prefabs, pretty and young in a long-legged, fresh-faced sort of way, each a modern version of the goose that laid the golden egg: feed it, house it, pimp it out, and the money would keep on coming.

  They would soon show up on Craigslist and other online meet-up sites, touting themselves as young and new in town, looking for a good time, forced by their owners to pass themselves off as willing prostitutes and call girls, full of smiles and lies and fabricated pasts.

  Not knowing what else to do, he motioned the girls toward the office area, motioned them to wait, and assuming they understood, he turned from them to the nearest fallen enemy, grabbed him by the collar, dead and deadweight, and dragged him into the middle shed.

  The warehouse man was still alive, if barely, each breath rattling with a gurgle. Bradford stood over him, one leg on either side of his body, watching the man shake in the way the battlefield near-dead often did. Pain. Shock. Whatever. Waited just long enough for the man’s eyes to focus and then gave him a big toothy grin. Grabbed the man by the arm and, smearing blood behind him, dragged him, too, into the shed and left him there.

  The girls were in the hallway when Bradford reached it, crowded into one another like a small herd of frightened sheep, staring wide-eyed at his approach. He wanted to feel pity, sympathy, but battle numbness, the logistics of war, the frustration of the moment, overrode the ability to care. He’d been in the warehouse six minutes already. Far too long. He strode past them toward the front of the building. Dumped the vest, the gun, and the drum into the duffel, picked up the toolbox, and went out through the broken glass door, the girls following.

  He’d intended the van to be a way to transport Alexis and, unsure what her condition might be, had put a mattress in the back. This was where the girls sat. Bradford shut them inside. Got the van moving away from the building and once he was far, far down the road, certain he hadn’t been followed, he pulled over.

  His phone rang.

  Adams. Safe. En route to Dallas.

  Before he could follow Adams, he needed to find a way to help the helpless; he couldn’t just put the girls on the street and wish them well. He left the front and slipped into the back. It took a while, but utilizing maps from the Internet on his phone, he gradually understood that they were from Moldova, one of the many pieces split off from the former USSR.

  Another Internet search and the best he could turn up locally was a consulate for the Russian federation. He didn’t know if taking them there would be the equivalent of dropping an American stuck in Thailand on the doorstep of the Canadian embassy, but at least at the consulate there was a better chance of someone understanding their language, their story, and able to communicate on their behalf to those who could help. Not much, but all he had, and so he put the van into gear and began the drive.

  For now, at least for this moment, he’d won.

  The police would come, they’d find the bodies, they’d find plenty of evidence. They’d have to dig for answers and would hopefully discover the same threads the war room had uncovered. Whatever law enforcement didn’t eventually get to, Bradford would, over time. But that was more than he could worry about right now. He’d taken out the garbage on Walker’s behalf. He’d found Alexis and she was on her way to safety. Now he could focus on Michael.

  MILAN, ITALY

  Hands in her jacket pockets, Munroe stepped from the bistro and scanned the main hall of Milan Central below, searching for a danger she might not recognize even if spotted.

  She’d left Neeva behind, tucked away at a rear table with her back to the room so that it would be impossible for someone to recognize the girl in passing and equally difficult for Neeva to give away her own nervousness through eye contact and jumpy behavior. Two thousand euros, the phone, and a set of instructions were the insurance on the off chance Munroe didn’t make it back.

  A final glance over the crowds and Munroe headed down the stairs and through the bustle of the station toward the ticket counters, fighting the limp that marked her as an anomaly.

  According to Lumani—assuming he’d told the truth—two more of his people had arrived in town last night, and they’d be searching; there could be two, or more, or none at all, but regardless, the Doll M
aker knew she was on her way back to Zagreb with Neeva, and no matter how small the needle of her person or how big the haystack of Milan, there weren’t that many ways to get there.

  Traveling by road would have been ideal for slipping between the cracks, and had Munroe been alone, she’d have offered cash to a random driver and hitched a ride, but Neeva as a travel companion made that impossible. Stealing another car and attempting to cross Italy and outside the Schengen Area borders without proper papers was out of the question, and carrying weapons ruled out flying. The Doll Maker’s people, if they were worth anything, had to play these possibilities.

  Munroe waited in line, waited for the telltale hair rise of warning, but there was no incident, and with the next train still some hours away, she returned to Neeva with tickets in hand.

  They punctuated the wait in the bistro with sparse conversation: Munroe with her back to the wall and face to the door, drinking far too much caffeine; Neeva picking at her food, pretending to have an appetite and to smile in order to mask a fatigue deeper than what had been there the day before, until finally their departure time rolled around and they had to move again.

  Munroe lingered until it was nearly too late to board, holding back on the platform, searching for what was out of place, that inability of the truly focused to hide concentration, for faces that sought out other faces instead of travel schedules and compartment numbers—searching for those who were alone and headed in no obvious direction, and only when she saw none of this did she lead Neeva to the train, walking the long length of many cars to their first-class berth.

  Had it been she giving chase, she would have skipped this uncertainty and focused manpower on the arrival, knowing eventually she would have to show. But this was the disadvantage of the hunted: always running, chasing monsters from shadows, never able to rest or predict from which direction the blow would come. Inside the berth, Munroe sat with her back to the window, legs stretched out along empty seats, Jericho in her hand between leg and cushion. Time drew on. The assassins never came, and after an uneventful change of trains in Venice, she relaxed and eventually, even against her own guard, fell into fitful sleep until Bradford called.