The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (20 page)

“If that’s all he wanted, he’d be content to let you do your job,” Logan said. “Especially now that he knows you’re capable of it.”

“He wants inside,” Munroe said. “I’m going to venture that the only thing holding him back from making a break and attempting to find them on his own is the risk of screwing things up for Hannah—for Charity. He wants it bad, Logan.” She looked off in the distance for a moment and then turned back to him. “What’s Gideon’s relationship with Charity?”

“He’s been in love with her for years,” Logan said.

“Are they a couple? An item?”

“If Gideon had his say they would be, but Charity’s not interested in him in that way.”

“He doesn’t know about the two of you?”

“Nobody knows,” Logan replied. “Except for me, Charity, you, and”—he paused—“well, now Miles.”

She nodded. “Miles is my rearguard, Logan, you know the drill.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know how it goes.”

Munroe stared off in the direction that Gideon had walked. “Logan, it’s important that you realize the situation you’re in. As of right this moment, Gideon is the biggest threat we’re facing in getting to your daughter. He came down here for a reason, his time is running out, and he’s not going back until he gets what he wants. If they spook because of something he does, Hannah’s gone again. You know that, right?”

Logan nodded. Kicked a leg back against the wall for support.

“I know you all think that Charity needs to keep her name out of this,” Munroe said, “but if you’re serious about getting it done, I need you to buy me time. If Gideon will do what Charity wants, you need to get her involved.”

“It won’t be a problem,” Logan said. “I talk to her at least once a day, sometimes more. She’s biting her nails even more than I am right now.”

“Tell me about Gideon,” Munroe said. “What’s his story?”

“Kind of like mine,” Logan said. “He was tossed out of The Chosen when he was fifteen. He’d never been to the States before, had never even met his grandparents, and then one day he was dropped off on their doorstep. He tried going to school, was too far behind academically
to keep up with his peers, couldn’t adjust, couldn’t relate, started getting in trouble, and before long his grandparents kicked him out.”

Logan paused, and Munroe motioned for him to continue.

“He ended up on the streets,” Logan said. He chuckled. “Remind you of anyone?”

She smiled. Logan grinned.

“I was lucky,” he said. “Eric’s dad took me under his wing and put a roof over my head, even if it wasn’t much. Gideon didn’t fare as well. He was in nonstop trouble and twice narrowly missed a term in juvie. He saw the military as a way out, and when he was seventeen tried to enlist. He couldn’t without a guardian’s signature. His grandparents had already disowned him and his parents treated him like a pariah and refused. Some love, huh? They’d rather have their son out on the streets than break with The Prophet’s antigovernment worldview. So he survived by picking up odd jobs, eventually got into the Marine Corps, did his time, and then moved on from there. That’s Gideon in a nutshell.”

“What were things like for him while he was in The Chosen?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Logan said. “I only knew him when we were younger—seven—eight—didn’t live with him when we were teenagers, and these days he doesn’t talk about it much. That’s how some of us deal, you know? Pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Anybody in particular he might have a vendetta against?”

Logan paused. Looked directly at her. “You think that’s why he wants in?”

“Gideon’s got a big chip on his shoulder,” she said. “He’s got something to prove to someone, and he doesn’t strike me as the type to want to prove it with words—maybe he wants to pound some issues out.”

“I’ll ask around,” Logan said. “See what I can find.”

When they returned to the café, Bradford and Heidi were talking. There was an intimacy to their conversation, both of them leaning in toward each other, steady eye contact, and Heidi’s face was flushed in a way it hadn’t been when they’d left.

It was hard not to like Heidi
.

Munroe slowed. Her face burned hot. The café ambience faded. The reaction, instant as it was, came as a surprise. In split-second intervals Munroe studied Bradford. Studied Heidi. And then turned concentration inward.

Emotion on an assignment could get a person killed. She pushed it back. Each step toward the table was a conscious rejection of the intensity that had set her heart racing, each step a return to the focus on the tasks at hand. By the time she and Logan had joined the others, it was as if the moment had never happened.

The good-byes were brief, the promises short, and the return to the hotel made in silence.

For Munroe the transit was downtime, transition from one role back into another, and Bradford, aware of how she worked, seemed content to allow her the space she needed.

It was late afternoon by the time Munroe approached the Haven Ranch. The sky had brightened, and scattered rays of sunshine gave rise to the illusion of warmth. She rolled the Peugeot to a stop at the gate, stepped out for the push-button, and then returned to the car to wait. Gaining entry for this round should, by all expectations, be straightforward.

This time it wasn’t Esteban who made the long walk to let her in but a teenage boy. She guessed him to be around fifteen or sixteen, still in that awkward stage between child and man, with limbs longer than they should be and blemishes where they shouldn’t be.

When he had swung the gate wide, Munroe lowered the window and eased the car forward a few feet.

“I’m Miki,” she said.

He didn’t reply, merely nodded and met her eyes shyly.

“I can drive you to the house,” she said, “and save you the cold walk back.”

He shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said.

His reaction was a good gauge. They trusted her enough to send a teenager but not enough to allow him to ride with her.

Munroe parked in the same space that Bradford had the last visit, although today hers was the only vehicle. She stepped out of the car to wait, and when the boy approached, she held out her hand. “I didn’t catch your name,” she said.

He paused and then reached to shake it. His touch said that shaking hands wasn’t an everyday occurrence. “I’m Dust,” he said. Their conversation had so far been in Spanish and the English word was a jarring contrast.

Dust for Dustin or Dust for dirt? Given the nature of the rest of The Chosen names thus far, Munroe guessed dirt.

“Is Esteban here?” she asked.

Dust shook his head but offered nothing else, and not wanting to make him more uncomfortable, Munroe stayed silent, following him to the room in which she’d sat the day before.

“Elijah asked me to tell you he’ll be here in just a minute or two,” he said.

This was the longest string of words the boy had yet to offer, and although from his Scandinavian looks he was clearly not from here, his accent was perfectly local. He’d been in Argentina for a while.

Dust’s dichotomy was part of what made The Chosen what it was. Not Argentine, nor wholly American, the group and the people within it were a hodgepodge of races and cultures homogenized into the culture of The Prophet. From Romania to Zimbabwe, Chile to Finland, The Chosen were different faces, different Havens, functioning as shell organizations under a myriad of names, but behind closed doors the lifestyle was the same: the culture of The Prophet.

Dust left the room, and alone as Munroe was, it would have been a prime opportunity for her to wander. But instinct told her to wait, and so she sat while the minute or two turned into five, and when Elijah arrived, he wore the harried look of a cook in the kitchen on Christmas morning.

Munroe stood in greeting, and he wrapped his arms around her in a tight and welcoming hug.

Her response to the uninvited physical contact was instant, a drive so intense that it required every shard of focus to keep her solidly in place. The rhythm of violence pounded in her chest and she remained frozen, fighting the urge to destroy him, to crush his head against the wall.

With fire burning a trail through her veins, she forced reciprocation.

To every single person in this commune, close physical contact was a part of everyday life, and this was a dangerous tightrope act that she had to walk. The rage had nothing to do with Logan or his daughter or even Elijah; this was Munroe’s own past, a history that would forever allow but a handful of people safely into her personal space—and Elijah certainly wasn’t one of them. It would be several moments until the urge to strike passed, and to remain so close to him now required pure, practiced self-control.

“We’re short-staffed today,” Elijah said, seemingly unaware of how near he stood to hospitalization. “Why don’t you join me in the dining room? We can talk during cleanup.”

Still fighting the internal pressure, still not trusting herself to speak, Munroe nodded, followed, saw in his profile and his gait similarities to Heidi that she hadn’t noticed before, and was irritated for having missed them.

They passed from the alcove, through the living room, past the stairs, and out the back door to a path that led to the annex. There, Elijah slid open wide glass doors, and instead of standing back to allow her to pass, as politeness would have dictated, he walked in ahead.

The doors opened directly to a room, which by appearances accounted for half of the building. The space was lit by neon, tiled white, and half of it was filled with row upon row of rough-hewn picnic-style tables and wooden benches. The other portion was devoted to serving food—large industrial-size pots sitting on a wide counter gave testament to as much—and a dishwashing assembly line.

The only others in the room were children, eight of them, between
what seemed to be ten and twelve years old, silently busying themselves clearing tables and sweeping the floor. Munroe strained to see beyond Elijah’s shoulder, scanning faces, searching for a shock of blond hair, green eyes, anything that might confirm that she had come to the right place, but there was little opportunity.

Elijah ushered her to a table where a stack of papers and file folders were turned blank side up, and against all hope he motioned her to sit where his face was to the room and her back against it.

Each of these details filled in the gaps, all of them snapshots of commune life. She’d arrived at the end of either a very late lunch or an early dinner, and most of those who had once filled this hall were gone again, leaving this particular group of children to do the cleanup. Elijah, harried, juggling his paperwork and his leadership, filled in overseeing these children while whoever usually held the position was out in the vans today, and he, apparently unfamiliar with how odd such a scene would play out to fresh eyes, carried on.

Munroe listened, answered, her mind working overtime to stay in the present while thoughts pinballed through her head. That Hannah could be here, in the same room, invisible while her back was turned, made the attempt to focus on Elijah’s words almost unbearable.

She waited an appropriate amount of time, waited until the sounds and the limited conversation behind her indicated that the cleaning had come to an end, and then, as Bradford had done the day prior, she requested the restroom.

Elijah motioned one of the girls over and, in English, asked her to show Munroe where the bathrooms were. He said nothing more. No request to keep an eye on her, no warnings about limiting conversations, no instructions to wait with her charge. Perhaps such things were so ingrained as to make further commentary unnecessary.

Munroe stood, turned, and scanned the room, running her eyes from face to face, but found no one resembling Charity or Logan.

The girl led Munroe through another sliding door, to a hallway, which passed three smaller rooms, each without a door in the frame, each lined with bunks that stood three beds high.

The bathroom was makeshift and tightly fitted, narrow stalls of plywood on a cement dais set across from the one sink—what appeared to have been a large bathroom, gutted and refitted to run several toilets into plumbing built for one.

Munroe didn’t linger. There was no place to stash either a bug or a camera, and her reason for the trip had been to see the faces in the dining room.

The girl was still outside the bathroom when Munroe exited, eliminating any chance of poking around the bedrooms. They returned to the dining room in silence, the child offering no conversation and Munroe hesitating to initiate it lest her motives somehow be misconstrued.

In the dining room, the children sat at a table, silent, focused on small cards, and the girl went to join them while Elijah stood and motioned Munroe over.

He handed her a small book. “I want you to read this,” he said. “I’ve got a few errands to run and then I’ll be right with you.”

He signaled to a boy of twelve. “Nathaniel will show you the way back,” Elijah said.

Munroe knew the way. Didn’t need a guide or a warden, no matter how young, in order to walk from one house to the next, and she knew that Elijah knew that she knew. Instinct screamed in rebellion, but acquiescence was his expectation, and whether this was a test or merely the way of The Chosen, she couldn’t break from her role.

Showing only gratitude, she followed Nathaniel out.

The boy said nothing, and so again Munroe walked in silence, and at the alcove off the living room, Nathaniel left her alone.

She glanced around the room, sat, and made herself comfortable for the indefinite wait—by the number of pages she’d been assigned, it could be hours. She cracked open the book, and as Elijah, her new spiritual guide had instructed, she read.

M
iles Bradford slipped on his coat. And then, with a hesitant backward glance toward the desk and the tenuous connection to Munroe that the array of equipment and wires represented, stole out the door.

He’d no idea when he’d hear from her or when she’d return—if she’d return—and he’d waited as long as he could for any form of communication beyond what he’d picked up from the stairwell bug when she entered the Haven Ranch.