The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (35 page)

Another set of footsteps came down the stairwell, and again Logan ignored them. The man passed through the lobby to the outside, but there would be more coming, others who would go instead to the cantina. The hotel guests, although guests, still mostly worked for the Cárcan family, and each provided his own separate threat level. Bradford had made that clear. The more of them that congregated downstairs, the harder it would be to pull off a repeat performance of securing the desk clerk.

Without turning, Logan said, “Change of plans, Gid. One of them should be enough. Let’s take him now while we’ve got a chance.”

“If we fail with him,” Gideon said, “we can’t come back for seconds.”

“We won’t fail.”

Logan waited until he was certain the lobby would remain empty for the time they needed to get out, and then with the stairwell silent, he gave Gideon the all-clear.

Gideon nudged the man out from behind the counter. Halfway across the small space, the clerk, realizing what the two intended, realizing his partner would not be there in time to save him, began to yell. Gideon struck him, and Logan pushed him forward. The combined movements threw him off balance.

He stumbled out the front door. Tripped. Fell. Struggled to get up, to get away.

They each grabbed an arm and, straining against his weight, hustled him up and forward. Gideon yanked open the back door of the cab and, together with Logan, against the man’s struggling and continued clamoring, attempted to shove him inside.

Logan ran for the driver’s door. “Just shoot him,” he yelled.

Gideon put muzzle to the man’s struggling leg. Pulled the trigger.

The power of the weapon’s report was matched by the man’s bellow and followed a second later by the spit of return fire coming from the hotel’s front door. Gideon pushed. The man caved. Gideon threw himself on top of the clerk, slammed the door.

“Drive,” he yelled. “Drive!”

The rear window shattered.

For the second time in less than three hours, the taxi peeled away from the raunchy neighborhood of the Cárcan hostel.

Logan drove blindly. Madly. Weaving through traffic until Gideon’s voice finally registered.

Gideon was on top of the clerk, head inches from Logan’s, yelling, “Slow the fuck down, they’re not following us and you’re going to get us killed!”

From the tone, Gideon must have been repeating that mantra for a good minute now. Logan nodded, eased off the gas.

This was what adrenaline should be. This was a jacked-up heart rate, and nothing at all like the rush he got racing motorcycles or BASE jumping.

There was a moment of silence, and then as the reality of the moment sunk in, both he and Gideon burst into laughter. Their cackle was manic, the hilarity of insanity that calmed only when Logan said, “We’re drawing attention, get off the guy.”

The clerk, face to the seat, hands still behind his back and legs at an odd angle, had stopped struggling. Gideon shifted. Made sure the guy was still alive, and then with one hand, did a quick inspection of the leg. The wound was a clean through-and-through, muscle tissue, the slug somewhere in the seat cushion. Blood was pooling, but not fast enough to be serious. The clerk would live. Maybe.

Gideon tore the guy’s shirt, took what he wanted, and wrapped the leg to stanch the bleeding, and then slid into the front seat. The clerk turned so that his face was to the front.

“
Sos un hombre muerto,
” he hissed at Gideon. “A dead man. Both of you.”

Gideon pointed the gun at the man’s head. He said, “Bang,” and then ignored the insults that followed.

Logan got his bearings and changed course. They were heading out of town. Someplace deserted and quiet. Someplace where screaming wouldn’t raise an alarm.

A
wareness came slowly, a haze of sensory pulses that invaded the darkness and brought Munroe fully awake. She was seated. Chin on her chest, feet bound to the legs of a metal folding chair, hands secured behind it. Not by handcuffs, duct tape, or zip ties.

Her mind worked. Struggled toward lucidity.

Rope. Thin rope. Lots of it.

Idiots.

Whatever was wrapped around her eyes had been bound tight, and not even a kiss of light reached her eyelids. To her left were voices, raucous conversation, men sitting around a nearby table. Their volume and language spoke to playing cards or some other game of chance. These men—four of them, by the distinctness of tone—were unconcerned with her. They were killing time. Waiting.

Each sound, each smell brought with it a mental snapshot to create a composite of what she couldn’t see. There was no tell of a nearby guard, no restless feet or fidgeting fingers, no rustle of clothing, no breathing.

Cigarette smoke hung in the air, not heavy, as it would be in a small space; it dissipated in the same way the voices did. This place was large. Cavernous. Munroe gauged ten feet between her and the men at the table, maybe fifteen, no more than that. They’d set her off to the side, alone, with her face toward them, trusting that she was secure.

Such basic blunders made it easy to lower the estimate of threat, but she wouldn’t make the same mistake these men had. They would learn that to underestimate an opponent was the fastest route to getting dead.

Chin to chest, as if she were still unconscious, Munroe’s fingers worked, wrists twisted until they found the slightest bit of slack, pushing, prodding until she had enough play to slip free. Well-oiled rollers slid along tracks somewhere across the cavern behind her, pausing the escape.

She stopped to listen.

Doors easing open.

This place was a warehouse.

Only the faintest noise filtered in from the outside, no cars or horns, no pedestrians, no music.

A warehouse outside of town.

The rollers made a return trip, and the purr of a well-machined car engine drew close, shut off. The conversation around the table stopped. Chairs scraped against the floor. Feet shuffled. A car door opened. Shut. Followed by another.

Footsteps drew away from the table, toward the chair, and then fingers, hands, released the blindfold.

Munroe blinked.

The lighting inside the warehouse came from industrial lamps beside the worktable, and although the glare was easily swallowed by the building, the wattage was painful after having been forced into complete darkness.

Munroe winced, staring at the man in front of her.

She had expected someone from the Cárcan family to show, had planned on it, knowing that until the boss had a chance at her they’d keep her alive, a deliberate delay that would buy time not only for Bradford and Hannah but also for herself. That the tormentor had to be the guy who’d groped her in the Ranch hallway was an unfortunate twist.

He stared at her now, looking down in a long-drawn-out silence
that spread to the men on either side of him. Munroe’s face relaxed from wince to deadpan. The boss man grinned, and his men remained motionless. He then stood back, forefinger and thumb to chin in an exaggerated pretense of thought.

He wagged his finger at her. “I know you,” he said.

Pulling at the knees of his slacks, the man lowered to a half-squat so that he was eye to eye.

“Yes,” he said. “I do know you.”

Munroe stayed silent, eyes glazed over in a stare of noncomprehension and ignorance. Her eyes didn’t track him when he stood, didn’t follow when he turned to whisper to one of the men that remained behind him. Now that she could see, could fully assess the situation, this Cárcan son was the least interesting object in the vast empty space.

Instead, her eyes darted to the table and then searched upward along the walls and around the circle, seeking out a way to escape, scouting for anything that could be turned into a weapon: instantaneous survival assessment of who, what, when, where, and how. She already knew the why.

The floors were smooth concrete, the walls cinder block, and the roof, fifty feet up, was of corrugated metal. The direction of echoes spoke to the warehouse being empty; the worktable near the wall and the lights around it seemed to be the only objects there.

The four men who had originally sat around the table had been joined by two more who’d arrived with the boss. All six stood on either side of him in a hungry, uneven semicircle, each carrying firearms, most of which were holstered and a few held in waistbands.

The men were similar only in their build—thick and stocky from too many hours spent in the gym. In contrast, their boss was slight and otherwise undistinguished apart from his expensive clothes and what Munroe already knew was an overdeveloped ego.

She absorbed the placement of men and weapons, each detail filtering into awareness with the accuracy of echolocation, an appraisal that was swift and instinctual, made in less time than it had taken for the boss man to turn and speak.

It was difficult to predict the odds of survival. She’d fought against larger groups, but never in such a defined space, and never from a position of weakness. Speed was her friend, was always her friend, speed born from the will to survive when night after night she was hunted down and forced to defend herself in order to live. Agile and able to move faster than expected, she could handle four or five who were not trained military but thugs. Seven was pushing against reason.

Munroe’s eyes returned front, to the boss man’s second, the one to whom the boss had turned and whispered, the one who now strode toward her.

The second was the broadest and shortest of the seven, and he didn’t pause in his approach. When his feet stopped moving, his arm continued on, fist connecting with Munroe’s face. The blow, hard and dizzying, would have knocked her off the chair had she not braced for it, and were she not strapped to the chair.

Munroe shook her head to clear the dizziness. The telltale trickle flowed from the corner of her mouth, and the stabbing pain brought a hint of smile to her lips. Her heart began to beat the march to destruction.

The boss came close again to look at her swelling face, and she studied his. Her vision blurred to gray, the borders of sight narrowing to feral focus, the lust for blood, for retribution, rising, while long years of practice in pulling back the urge kept her from striking.

Bradford’s words scrolled against the back of her mind.

Have you ever considered that it’s not always wrong to kill
?

The boss said, “
¿Donde está la niña?
Where did you send her?”

Munroe’s eyes glazed again, stayed focused ahead, as if his words held no meaning. The boss nodded to his second, and the man stepped forward again, struck again. The hit was harder. Set her ears ringing.

Maybe some people need killing, maybe by taking them out you break the cycle of pain and suffering
.

Munroe’s eyes remained to the front, centered on what would appear to be some invisible distance. The boss stepped back into the semicircle. Whispered again. His third placed a spring blade in his
waiting hand. The boss switched the knife open and squatted again, eye to eye with Munroe. He took the blade up, underneath her chin, pointed into that sweet spot so favored for the kill. He pressed so that in order to avoid puncture, she was forced to tilt her head upward and back, and when she had lifted as high as she could, had tightened all the skin along her neck, he flicked.

The blade took a quick slice, not deep, but enough to feel, enough to draw blood. “Where did you send the girl?” he said again, only this time he spoke in nearly unaccented English.

“I didn’t send anyone anywhere,” she said.

The boss stood. Turned to the men behind him and let out a half-laugh. “English?” he said, as if surprised to discover that what he thought was a long shot turned out instead to be true. English was correct as far as he knew. He could have used Italian, German, Turkish, Ibo, or any one of twenty-something languages, and the result would have been the same.

“But you didn’t speak English when you were around my friends.”

“What friends?” Munroe said.

The boss shook his head. His was the look of impatience, the look she wanted.

He motioned a finger upward, and two of his men left the half circle for the chair, knelt, sliced at the bonds on her ankles. Beefy hands closed around each of her arms. They jerked her upward and shoved her toward the boss man. Munroe struggled to maintain footing. Her hands were still palm to palm, and the rope still slack.

Munroe breathed in the aura of this man and his intended violence, absorbing until he blended with the memory and musk of Pieter Willem, until they were one inside her head.

The boss drew the knife up toward her face, smiling as her eyes tracked it. He pointed it down toward her chest. In a quick movement he sliced the material of her shirt; sliced through the undershirt. The clothing fell away, leaving her chest exposed.

The boss man turned to his men, jerked his thumb toward Munroe,
and said, “See, I told you she was a woman.” He drew close, his breath hot against her neck. Ran his finger along her nipple. Tweaked it.

“I was right,” he whispered. “I do know you.” He took the blade and played it against her skin. “And now that you’re no longer their guest but mine, I will treat you as I please.”

He paused when he saw the slivers that marked her torso, stared at them a moment and then his face creased into a half grin. “I see I won’t be the first,” he said. “Did he make you cry, the one who did this? Did he make you bleed?”

He stretched closer, sniffed her neck and her hair, licked her, his tongue running from her ear to her cheek and over her eye. “Did he make you suffer the way I will make you suffer?”

The rush of blood was loud in Munroe’s ears, a heavy pounding that drowned out the world, drowned out everything but the man in front of her, and shouted the command to kill.

Instinct.

Timing.

Calculation.

In a last effort toward reason, she forced it back, fought against the urge, offered a way of escape to someone who deserved none.