The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (3 page)

Silence, and then, “How long has this been going on?”

“I have no idea. I flew into Morocco this morning and she met me at the airport. The signs are all there, she doesn’t try to hide them—flaunts them, even—she’s poking at me with them, like she wants me to know. I’m going to take a guess and say it’s only been a few weeks. She just moved to Tangier, and it could be related.”

“Any idea what she’s taking?”

“Not sure,” Logan said. “I’m trying to find out. Never thought I’d see the day she started this shit again, but if history’s any predictor, it’ll be legal and she’ll have a fake prescription.”

Logan searched the nightstand drawers. “Anyway, she’s out with Noah right now. I’m ransacking her apartment.”

Bradford exhaled a low whistle.

“She won’t know,” Logan said. “Been there, done that, won’t get caught.”

There was another pause and then Bradford said, “Logan, I’m in Afghanistan. There’s no way for me to get out of here for another week and until then I’m at a loss as to what I can do.”

Logan knelt to look under the bed. “I’m not sure either,” he said. “I just figured you’d want to know. You’re the obvious intervention partner of choice—I mean, you were there, you know better than any of us why she’s doing it—and really, Miles, I think you’re the only other person who cares the way that I do.”

Logan opened the doors of a large armoire and glared at a small box barely visible under a pile of clothes. “I think I’ve found it,” he said.

From the box he pulled a smaller box, opened it, and shook free a bottle of syrup. He read off the label, “Phenergan VC.”

“Is that the codeine version?” Bradford said.

Logan searched the label, lips set tight. Bradford knew his pharmacopoeia. “Yes, codeine,” he said. “The box holds twelve and two are missing.”

“If we’re lucky, that’s the first box,” Bradford said. He hesitated. “Okay, look, I understand why you called and I thank you for it. The earliest I can get out of here is next Thursday. Do you think you can find an excuse to get her to the States?”

“You know how she is about returning.”

“I could come to Morocco,” Bradford said. “But I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” There was a long silence, and although Bradford never verbalized it, Logan understood the reason. Noah and Bradford around Munroe at the same time brought far too much potential for conflict.

“Best would be to get her to the U.S.,” Bradford said. “Or really anywhere out of Morocco.”

Logan nodded agreement to the empty room. “I’ll figure something
out and let you know how it goes,” he said, although in truth his favor already required that he take her from here.

“I’d give you a number,” Bradford said, “but it’s pointless, I move around too much. Call the office. They’ll be able to reach me. If you can’t get her to go back, I’ll come to you, but I need at least a week.”

The call over, Logan continued to stare into the armoire at the box and all that it stood for. Codeine wasn’t the heaviest stuff she’d taken, nor was it the worst to be abused; the issue was that she was self-medicating at all.

Heavy, burdened, he replaced the bottle and rearranged the clothes.

He could work this thing. Getting Bradford involved was a definite step forward, and pulling him in had been rather easy.

Logan shoved away the stab of guilt.

He would have made that call even if he didn’t need Munroe’s help, and Bradford wasn’t offering to do anything he didn’t want to do.

Logan returned to the bedroom and the weight of two days’ travel pressed against his eyelids. Intent on remaining alert until whatever godforsaken hour Munroe came back, he closed his eyes for a second and opened them to bright sunlight streaming through the curtains.

He bolted upright with no recollection of falling asleep or of Munroe returning, or with any concept of how much time had elapsed. He fumbled for his watch.

Seven in the morning, local time.

God, he was tired.

He rolled his legs over the side of the bed and listened, shook his head in an attempt to clear the fog that wrapped around his brain. There was no sound or movement in the apartment, so he stood and padded to the window. Parked along the curb were a few cars, but no BMW.

Logan opened the bedroom door and, with the stealth of a kid preparing to sneak into the kitchen to grab a cookie, peered down the hall.
Munroe’s door was slightly ajar, definitely not closed the way he’d left it the night before. Barefoot against the tiled floor, he moved toward her bedroom, and there, hearing nothing, pressed his palm to the door.

She was alone: sprawled across the mattress, face in a pillow and tangled in sheets that trailed to the floor. The knives sat on the nightstand and against the foot of the bed lay the clothes she had shed before climbing into it. The armoire doors were partially open, and although there was no visible sign that she’d helped herself to the contents of another bottle, crashed out and dead to the world as she was, Logan had no doubt that she had.

He left her room for the guest bathroom, irritation and anger washing over him. He needed her right now, needed her to be herself, lucid, aware, not this—brain- and emotion-numbed, and half-alive. No matter the reasons, what she was doing was such a goddamn fucking waste of brilliance.

He turned on the shower and let it run. There was no point in keeping quiet; the insomniac woman who would normally go from a dead sleep to a fighting stance over less than a whisper had drugged herself into a state of unconsciousness.

It was afternoon when the light tap of footsteps first echoed down the hall. Logan waited until they passed, then left his room in search of Munroe and found her in the kitchen filling a coffeepot with water, dressed in a tank and boxers and sporting a case of bed hair so bad he would have laughed if things had been otherwise. He didn’t see the knives, but then she’d never needed them to kill, and that wasn’t why she carried them anyway.

“Want coffee?” she said.

“Sure,” he replied. “Where’s Noah?”

She yawned and scratched the back of her neck. “He’s at his holiday house. What time is it?”

“Around three o’clock,” he said.

Munroe placed the pot on the stove and lit the burner. She sat at
the kitchen table, then tilted her head up and smiled. A real smile. And in spite of himself and the frustration and anger, Logan smiled back.

“I needed the sleep,” she said. “And thought you might need some too, what with the jet lag and the long trip. I won’t make you wait on me like that again.”

This was as much of an explanation as she’d give, but Logan knew she did it with calculated reason. The sleep and making him wait had been as much a deliberate display as the knives on the train. She wanted him to know her state of mind, to take it all into account should he continue toward whatever favor he must ask.

Logan said nothing, and she smiled again—that killer smile.

“Have a seat,” she said. “I’ll make you lunch.”

He nodded toward the empty cupboards. “From what?”

With a straight face she said, “Coffee,” and the heartbeat of silence was followed by commingled laughter that came as a welcome release of tension.

Logan couldn’t help but grin, so good was it to see her lucid and to have her again, the real her, the Michael that he knew and loved; and he relished the moment because he knew it would be short-lived.

As if she’d read his mind, she said, “Tell me why you’ve come—what is it you need?”

He froze.

The coffeepot percolated on the stove, but Munroe made no move to get it. She nodded toward the seat opposite. It wasn’t an invitation, it was an instruction. There was no point in arguing, so Logan sat in the proffered chair. Forearms on the table, he shifted forward, and as he opened his mouth to speak, she put a hand on his wrist.

“Hold the thought,” she said. She stood, stepped to the stove, and turned off the burner.

She’d so perfectly disarmed him. He watched her move about the kitchen: fluid, methodical, neither hurried nor pausing, much like a well-trained dancer. She turned to catch his eye, smiling conspiratorially as she set out the coffee mugs.

She placed a cup in front of him and held her own while she sat,
her posture taut, her face relaxed. “Go on,” she said, blowing steam as she held the coffee to her lips.

He reached for his wallet and slid the faded photo with its beauty and tragedy, memories and heartbreak, across the table. Munroe paused to look.

“Is that Charity’s daughter?”

Logan nodded.

Charity.

The person he’d loved longer and truer than any other being. Charity, who was his fellow childhood survivor. She’d lived the life, knew the pain and trauma better than he, and shared the burden: the lies, the secrets, and the scars.

Logan gazed down at the photo of the little girl with the blond ringlets and bright green eyes, traced his fingers along the edge of it, and then stopped. All reason, all argument, all the words that had been turning around in his head for the past three days fled, and he was left vacant. Logan looked up and staring into Munroe’s eyes said only, “I’ve found her.”

L
ogan didn’t need to say more because, without explanation, Munroe understood why he’d come and, if not the specifics, at least the essence of what he wanted.

She reached across the table and placed her hand on his.

In the quiet he wished more than anything to plead his case and argue reason. But he kept silent.

Munroe knew the cost, knew what it meant, and he could see the calculation reflected in her eyes. Finally, she shifted her gaze toward the windows.

“I don’t know, Logan,” she said. “I just don’t know.”

He paused, waiting, allowing the stillness to swallow them, and then, with a lump rising in his throat, said, “Would you at least listen to what we know? The details? Would you hear us out?”

She gave no response.

“Come with me,” he said. “Just for a week—just to meet the others.”

“Return to the States?” she said.

“They can’t all come here,” he said. “It’s too expensive and there’s not enough time, but that doesn’t mean you have to return home. It can be anywhere—New York; how about New York? We go for a week, stay at a nice hotel, talk to some interesting people, and when all is said and done and you’ve had time to think about it, then you make a decision.”

She stood, refilled her coffee mug, and continued to stand, staring at nothing.

“Please,” Logan whispered. “For me.”

In the silence, sounds of traffic and occasionally pedestrian chatter filtered through the open windows. She remained motionless, eyes distant, vacant, unreadable. Finally, she turned to him.

“I’ll go,” she said. “For you.”

He exhaled, realizing only then that he’d been holding his breath.

“Logan, I can’t promise you anything,” she said. “I’ll go. I’ll listen. But I make no commitment, and I won’t stay, you know?”

He nodded. She’d offered enough: a start.

She was still standing at the kitchen counter when she said, “I need a bit of time before I can leave.”

“Noah?” Logan ventured.

She nodded and made no pretense at hiding what he could so clearly read in her face. In the heaviness of the moment, he felt sadness at the inevitable and understood why she hadn’t fought harder against his request to go with him. She braced for good-bye, hating it, hurting from it, and feeling no way out.

Logan said, “He thinks it’s him—or maybe me. Noah has no idea, does he?”

She shook her head and turned slightly so that she stared again at some invisible point. “I’ve tried to explain it,” she said, “but how could he possibly understand?”

No matter how well Noah believed he knew Munroe, there was so much he would never grasp, undercurrents that would, Logan or no Logan, inevitably pull her away, all of it guaranteeing pain and confusion as the natural course of things. The man had given Munroe laughter and a reason for happiness, and for this Logan wished it were possible to offer reassurance that things would be okay. But they weren’t and might never be.

“It’s better this way,” he said.

Munroe’s eyes shifted back, a long and languid gaze until finally she whispered, “I know.”

The pain in those words left him speechless. She’d offered a brief glimmer, a crack through which Logan saw beyond her eyes, past her soul, and into the torment of her private hell. Then, without warning, as if a switch had been thrown, Munroe’s face shifted and the glimmer ended. She said, “Tomorrow we race on the water,” and Logan, still struggling for words, responded with a tired smile.

She bartered her time for his. A week in New York for a week in Tangier, and beyond the emotional tension that accompanied Noah’s reaction, the days were action-fueled and driven by an undercurrent of laughter that continued through the return flight home. If Munroe was medicating, she hid it well, though Logan had woken often in the night to the sound of her footsteps passing in the hall and knew that she slept little.

They entered the United States through JFK and took a taxi into Manhattan, to The Palace, where Munroe had reserved one of the hotel’s triplex suites. Even with his racing career and celebrity status as an adrenaline junkie, Logan’s bank balance wasn’t high enough to defend splitting such a bill, and so he didn’t argue when she insisted on covering it.

At the top of the towers, the suite was three bedrooms spread over three floors and five thousand square feet, a direct and opulent contrast to the sparse conditions Munroe had lived in during the last several years. On the second floor she opened the door to the master bedroom and fell backward onto the king-size bed, arms splayed, laughing at the ceiling.

To Logan, she said, “You like it?”

He was wearing an ear-to-ear grin, staring out across the skyline. “It’s insane,” he said.

“This is your room,” she said. “You’ll need the space for your friends. Take the upstairs areas, spoil them a little; my treat. I’ll stay downstairs.”

Logan held her smile for a long while. In the joy of that moment, words were unnecessary, because without doubt this was the proverbial calm before the storm.