The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (33 page)

Leaning against the wall, she said, “Considering the type of neighborhood, I’m surprised two women would be socializing late at night with a strange man.”

“They had reason to feel safe.”

“I assume it wasn’t because you’re such a great guy.”

Bradford shook his head.

“Lay it out for me,” she said.

Bradford’s time in the hotel had allowed him to plot the floor plan; his time at the table discussing first the country and then religion had gotten him Hannah’s room number.

On a piece of paper, Bradford diagrammed the access points, the blind spots, and the sticky issues. Hannah was on the third floor, and the only way to her was through the front door, past the front desk, and up the stairwell that wound from the rear of the tiny lobby through the center of the building. There were no elevators or fire escapes or emergency exits. Not in this part of town, or this building.

The hotel’s desk clerks were gatekeepers rather than humble staff. Shift change showed each man as beefy as the other, with weapons behind the counter and no subtlety in the handoff. There were no security cameras, but two of the Cárcans’ foot soldiers traded off in a leisurely form of round-the-clock, patrol-the-hallways, keep-an-eye-on-things security. From the condition of the hotel and the sidewalk out front, the measures did well at keeping the local riffraff from messing with the place. Whatever street crime occurred in the area wasn’t happening there.

Up the stairs, branching right and left off the stairwell, were two floors of short hallways, four doors to a side, sixteen rooms to a floor, and Hannah’s was at the far end of the hall. The entire third floor, Hannah’s floor, housed only the Cárcan’s people, although, as far as Bradford could tell, Hannah was only being hidden, not specifically guarded.

Getting past the desk going in was a nonissue. Coming back out with a drugged teenager who also happened to be the personal guest of the hotel owner and the Cárcan family was another story altogether. As far as extractions went, it wasn’t as simple as it would have been had they pulled Hannah out of the sleeping Ranch, but it was far easier than a hostage rescue.

Pinpointing the new location as quickly as they had was a lucky break, and Munroe wanted nothing more of waiting. That said, her world was one of information and intelligence, stealth and smarts over guns and door kicking, and by that token, it might have been the wiser choice to acquire more knowledge, to get a personal feel for what she was going into, because Bradford’s point of view, no matter how accurate, could never substitute for her own.

But at this stage, she no longer cared.

It was impossible to guess how long Hannah would remain holed up in the hotel, and the Cárcan family inevitably had plenty more places to stash their charge if The Chosen got jumpy. More still, Munroe was wary of what men like those she’d met in the hallway would do if they got their hands on a young girl like Hannah, and Hannah was now surrounded by an entire hotel floor of them.

She had no more patience for being Mr. Nice Guy, was all out of caution and concern over avoiding collateral damage. This time the bets were off. The projection was smash and grab. Get in, get the girl, get the hell out.

A hefty payment to Raúl, and the taxi driver was willing to let go of his cab for the rest of the night—maybe forever. Bradford drove it, navigating the chaos and suicidal maneuverings of Buenos Aires traffic with the skill of a local, while Munroe followed in the Peugeot.

They stopped at a parking area a crooked half mile from the hostel, a place where the streets were still well lit and the vehicle was safe enough from vandalism during the hopefully brief time away.

Munroe stepped from her car and into the night. She pulled a nearly empty duffel bag from the passenger seat, tossed it into the back of the taxi, and locked the Peugeot by remote. She joined Bradford in the cab, handed him the keys, and they rode in silence to the hostel.

The building was sandwiched between others, fronting a two-lane road in a part of town where sidewalk traffic never died. On either side, up and down the street were mom-and-pop restaurants, tailors, repair shops, secondhand shops, all closed and dark, the street traffic coming from the many bars, all with their light and noise and smoke spilling onto the otherwise darkened sidewalks.

By contrast, the hotel was quiet, if dimly lit, a beacon of order in the midst of confusion.

Bradford stopped the cab a half block away from the hotel. Munroe slung the bag over her shoulder and stepped out.

“Ten minutes,” Bradford said, and she nodded.

Going in, she was carrying two blades and a Bersa Thunder 9, one of several firearms that Bradford had already picked up locally. Considering the hotel’s management and clientele, it would be insane to enter unarmed, but the plan was to move fast enough to avoid having to utilize any weapon at all.

The tiny hotel lobby was as Munroe expected. To her left as she entered was the open doorway to the cantina, and after only a few steps in, the hotel desk. The man behind it was easily six-foot-four, and half as wide. He was polite and deferential, and he treated her request for a room with the courtesy expected of any proprietor. She filled out the paperwork and he handed her a key, an old-fashioned-looking thing that hung on the end of a four-inch strip of wood.

The room was as Bradford described: clean, spartan, tiny, and, ironically, on the second floor directly under where Hannah slept. Munroe moved to the window and stared down at the rear alley only long enough to draw the image of the taxi out of the darkness.

Pulling Hannah from the third floor of this building required supplies that they didn’t have, and Munroe had been unwilling to wait to procure them. Like so many parts of an assignment that required split-second changes and last-minute improvisations, the extraction would be makeshift and sloppy, executed with what was already at hand.

Bag on the floor, Munroe tossed the bed, pulled both sheets off, and far corner to far corner, knotted them. Double-checked the tensile strength, checked against slippage, and then shoved them into the bag.

Door locked, she walked to the end of the hall and rapped a pattern against Bradford’s door.

He opened, and she stepped inside.

His bed was tossed, his sheets knotted. She checked his knots and said, “No offense.” He shrugged, and in turn checked hers. Munroe connected the two pieces, and together they worked the length of it. They moved fast. Thorough. And when complete, she stuffed the finished product back into the bag.

They left his room together, listened for the footsteps of the patrolman as he walked the halls until they placed him on the first floor. Bradford headed down the stairs, and Munroe headed up.

She had no business being on the third floor, no business standing in front of Hannah’s door, and Bradford, with his limited Spanish and necessary questions, would buy her time from prying eyes.

The door locks were basic and old-fashioned, the rooms without backup chains or dead bolts, and it took but a moment to work the mechanism and slip inside to the black of the room. Munroe relocked the door from the inside.

The click of the latch was a subtle sound. Not so subtle that Munroe or Bradford or Logan would have slept through it, but then, these two in the bedroom were not war hardened and at three in the morning were dead to the world.

Munroe paused long enough to allow her eyes to adjust to the room’s minimal light level, then lowered the bag to the floor and pulled from the side pocket a bottle and cloth.

On the bed and closest to the door was the woman Bradford had
scrunched his face over. Munroe recognized her as one of the many from the dining-room scenes, one of the few who hadn’t had children about her. She was early fifties—possibly younger—and the years and the poor quality of life hadn’t been kind.

Munroe wet the cloth and placed it over the woman’s nose and mouth. The woman’s eyes opened, panicked for a moment, before they shut again.

On a foldout cot that barely fit between the bed and the window was Hannah.

Munroe stared for a moment while Logan’s daughter slept in innocent bliss. Then she knelt, placed the cloth over the girl’s face, and watched her eyes flutter open and the same terror settle into them before she too drifted back into oblivion.

With both of them unconscious, Munroe shifted the nameless woman off the bed and settled her on the floor. She tore the sheets off the mattress and added them to the chain that she and Bradford had already assembled.

Hannah was a much lighter load, and instead of lifting her out of the bed, Munroe curled her and took the four corners of the sheet, knotted them into a sling, and repeated the procedure with the second sheet, a backup in the unlikely event the knots on the first slipped.

The window was waist high, a narrow opening that did not give easily when Munroe tugged at it, and when it moved, it did so loudly and grudgingly. Munroe paused; listened to the night; listened for a response; heard none. Below, Bradford burst a quick flash of light in her direction. All clear.

Getting Hannah to the window was easier said than done. Although she was an easy ten inches shorter than Munroe, and even thin for her height, she was still a heavy weight to be safely raised and then lowered along the outside wall.

Bradford would have been the better, stronger choice for this part of the job, but to put him in this room with two women carried its own risks. While he might hesitate to use physical force against either of them if necessary, Munroe would not.

Munroe knelt with one knee to the floor, tight against Hannah’s cocooned body. She took the sheet’s tail, wrapped it around her forearm, and then around her torso, allowing the remainder to trail along the floor. Using her knee as a brace, Munroe pulled Hannah toward her, cradled her, and with all of the weight centered at her hips, stood.

There was only a step between where Hannah had lain and the window where she must go, but in that step came the reverberation of a door being slammed directly below. Inching backward, Munroe tipped her head toward the night and heard the window ten feet down scrape shut.

Munroe paused, arms beginning to shake from the weight they bore. Bradford flashed again from below, and feetfirst, Munroe tipped Hannah out the window. The sling held, tightened, and Munroe let go the remaining side. With the last of Hannah’s body through the threshold, the tightly wound sheet and the weight pulled Munroe hard against the wall. She braced, knees bent, pulling backward, allowing the sheet to unwind inch by inch, while counting down minutes until whoever had been downstairs was at the door.

There was no good explanation for why someone had been in her room. Best case was statistical crime. Theft, vandalism, even intent to rape or murder were better possibilities than that of the front-desk and security guys comparing notes. But barring the unlikelihood of the downstairs incursion being bad timing on the part of a common criminal, the sheetless bed would only confirm whatever suspicions the Cárcan foot soldiers had originally had for entering.

Given the proximity in timing between her predawn request for a room and Bradford’s return to the hostel, it wouldn’t take long to draw the connection. After that, it was merely a matter of minutes before the bad guys headed this way. If she and Bradford were lucky, there were rooms and things in this building that ranked higher in order of priority and would be checked on first.

Hannah was five feet down the thirty-foot drop when the first knock came at the door. Munroe ignored it, ignored the anxiety of having her
back to the room and her hands tied, closed her eyes and continued to feed the cocoon toward Bradford.

The knock was louder, a pounding that couldn’t help but roust adjoining neighbors from their beds. Bradford’s light clicked a rapid succession. He’d heard the noise. Munroe slowed in feeding, pulled the flashlight from her teeth, and replied.

Company
.

Hannah was ten feet down. Still too high to drop. Munroe’s back remained to the door, her hearing taking over where sight was absent. The door handle shook. And then came splintering as the door slammed inward.

She continued to feed. Fifteen feet. Halfway there.

They paused at the door, and Munroe didn’t need to see them to follow their movements. Long years spent in the night of the jungle, years of tracking in the dark, of hiding in the dark, of avoiding the worst kind of predator, had primed her for moments like these. She knew them by the rustle of clothing, the weight of foot to floor, and the carelessness of their breathing.

There were two of them, paused at the sides of the doorway, as if these thin walls would protect them from any return fire.

Seventeen feet.

Against the ambient light of the window, Munroe made a perfect target silhouette.

She fed the line. Eighteen feet.

One intruder knelt in the doorway, weapon trained on Munroe. The other moved into the room, nudged the woman on the floor with his toe, and then low and calm came the order for Munroe to raise her hands and to turn slowly.

Munroe ignored them. Nineteen feet. At twenty-four feet, Hannah would be close enough to the ground for Bradford to break her fall.

The order came again, this time not so low, not so calm.

Munroe continued to feed, calculating distance and accuracy. From fifteen feet behind, the chances of even a mediocre shot landing
a fatal wound were high. It would be tragic to end it here, like this, but if this was how she went, so be it. She wasn’t turning, wasn’t letting go of Hannah.

Twenty feet.

A warning shot shattered a window pane above her head. Shards of glass fell away. From below Bradford muffled a yell.

“Drop her,” he said. “I’ve got her. Drop her!”

Twenty-two feet.

Footsteps crossing the room.

Munroe released the sheet from her forearm and it slipped slowly from her grasp. The full weight of Hannah wound around her waist, slowed only by Munroe’s weight against the windowsill.

“Follow the plan,” she yelled.

Bradford’s beam pointed upward.