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Chapter 6
Munroe pulled down the cap that shadowed her face, shoved her hands into the pockets of cargo pants, and with a furtive glance over her shoulder crossed the street.
Even in the early morning, that cooling time marking the close of day for some and the beginning for others, the city remained wrapped in a familiar heat, torrid and sticky.
She inhaled the aroma of civilization and moved up Fifth Avenue, in the direction of Central Park, hoping against the inevitable, for an evening without mishaps.
Mishaps. Like last night. It would be easy to plead innocence, to say that she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time, to say that it had been self-defense.
But excuses were for cowards. Excuses couldn’t bring the dead to life or undo the damage wreaked by a second of instinct.
Blood was blood, no matter the reason shed. She pushed back the thoughts. It was over and couldn’t be undone.
She strode forward, one foot in front of the other, reaching the southeast corner of the park and following the illuminated paths,
without regard to where she was or where she was going, focus turning from what had already transpired in this city to where she would go from here.
She was glad to have made the trip, if only to meet Logan’s friends, to hear what they had to say and from their collective stories glean a clearer insight into Logan’s past—
although she was far more familiar with his history than he gave her credit for.
How could she not be? No matter the details that he’d conveniently left out over the years, he was her best friend and, like her, had a childhood marred by trauma.
With the glimpses and tidbits he’d shared, she’d done what any good informationist would do. She’d looked.
Like his friends, Logan had been birthed into The Chosen of God, a movement spawned in the late 1960s
that attracted thousands of teenagers and young adults out of society, the Void, and into the arms of The Prophet, a modern-day Moses who promised to lead his people out of Egypt.
They cut ties with family and friends, severed relationships with anyone who didn’t believe as they did,
creating instead a collective new family bound together by loyalty to The Prophet.
The Chosen established communes— Havens— around the globe,
and like Logan’s parents, those thousands of young people birthed even more thousands of children into the life of The Prophet, separate from the outside world.
There was no consideration that the children might want another path, no possibility that the world might not end in their own lifetimes,
and when, like Logan, the children grew and began to leave, they were cut off, demonized, and abandoned to fend for themselves in a world they didn’t understand.
Logan’s story, like that of so many of his friends’, told of falling through the cracks of a society unaware that children like him existed,
of watching many of his childhood friends succumb to drug abuse and suicide,
of experiencing anxiety and stress disorders, of being clueless about social mores and customs,
of fighting the prejudice and social stigma that followed, and then of clawing his way upward one exacting day at a time.
In one way or another, the stories, no matter how different or with how much levity they might be told, were still the same,
and without intervention, it was this same story that little Hannah would be telling in ten years, if she was alive to tell it at all.
Munroe came to a fork in the path, flipped a mental coin, and then left the lights and the trail for an area that promised darkness and seclusion.
A breeze swept through the treetops, and the moon, ripe above them, lit the way.
She was a child of the night, and nocturnal movement was familiar and cathartic—
far better than remaining inside, cooped up, unable to sleep and cautious of stanching the tide of dreams one time too many.
But letting her mind wander, seeking solitude and getting away from Logan and his friends, wasn’t the main reason for this foray into the park.
She’d come here tonight because, just as had happened when she’d left the hotel the night before, she was being followed.
Her nature would have her make a game of it— keep up the guise of oblivion as long as possible for no other reason than that she could.
But tonight wasn’t the night for games. She needed to bring the pieces together.
She came at last to a bench, stopped, and waited, listening to the darkness.
Certain he was there, she sat and, after another moment, spoke to the shadows. “Come and join me,” she said. “I’m tired of being stalked.”
She heard his approach before she saw him, the bulk of his outline materializing from the dark as he drew near.
His stride was casual, his shoulders squared, and his hands relaxed in a summer jacket’s pockets.
He stopped within a foot of her and gazed down with a subtle smirk, and she smiled in exchange. Head tilted up and in his direction, she said, “Hello, Miles.”
He nodded, returned the smile, and with arms crossed remained standing for a moment before joining her on the bench.
Silence.
“How long have you known?” he said finally.
“I spotted you at the airport,” she said, and he chuffed.
In the full light of the moon she noted the way the months had left their mark.
There were a few more wrinkles around his eyes and a three-inch sliver that traced from the base of his left ear across his jaw.
She touched his face, ever so slightly, to tilt it away for a better view.
“I took a hit of shrapnel,” he said. “I’m one scar closer to catching up with you.”
There was a longer silence and finally Bradford said, “Why didn’t you say something and save me the hassle of playing surveillant?”
“And ruin the illusion of Logan’s little”— Munroe paused and finger quoted the air— “intervention?”
“He’s concerned— says you’re medicating.”
“Yeah, I am. But not for the reasons he thinks.”
“Should I be worried?” he said.
She shifted forward, elbows to knees, face to the darkness. “Maybe.”
And then in the silence she struggled to find words that would adequately explain the veritable nightmare the land of dreams had become.
“Does it have anything to do with Africa?” he asked.
She glanced back toward him. “Who knows,” she said. “I’m sure it didn’t help.”
She turned again to face the darkness and, with half-shut eyes, said, “I’ve made my peace, Miles.
“I can’t rewrite the past no matter how much I wish I could, and nothing I could have done would have changed anything.”
She was quiet for a long while, and if Bradford wished to hurry her, he gave no indication of it.
“It started about a month and a half ago,” she said. “Began as the occasional really bad dream and progressed into full-fledged violence.
“While I’m asleep, I have no awareness of what’s going on, I only see the destruction after I’ve woken.”
She paused, turned toward him again. “It’s bad enough to have a death on my hands when I’m awake,” she said, “but now it can happen in my sleep.
“I don’t trust myself, I have no way to control it, and so I knock myself out.” She shifted back to staring at the dark.
“I can only go so many days without sleep before I start to break down,” she said. “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.”
“Have you seen a doctor? At least gotten a proper prescription?”
She cut a glance in his direction. “We’ve already had that conversation.”
It had been at their first meeting, a discussion about the value of psychiatric evaluations after Munroe had learned that Bradford was the one responsible for pulling together the research on her past on behalf of her employer.
She let the weight of her words settle and said, “Has Logan told you about the favor he’s asked— his reason for bringing me here?”
“He hasn’t. I’d assumed he got you here for your own sake.”
“He wants me to make a trip to South America,” she said, “to infiltrate some bad guys and steal his childhood friend’s daughter back home.”
Bradford said nothing and Munroe remained silent, allowing him to piece together the extent of Logan’s altruism.
Bradford let out an audible sigh and with a protective edge said, “Where in South America? Is this thing drug cartel related?”
“Argentina,” she said. “Not drug related, religion related. It’s kidnapping, it’s complicated, and probably the right thing to do.
“Truth is, even though the reasons behind it are sound, it’s a crapshoot, and if anyone but Logan had asked, I’d have already said no.”
“If you knew this,” he said, “why did you come to New York?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Noah?”
She nodded, although truthfully Noah was only part of it.
“Will you be going back to Morocco?” Bradford asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
He was quiet, and Munroe knew that as much as he wanted to pry, he wouldn’t.
In time, perhaps, there would be reason to bare her soul, expose the pain, to put into words what Bradford already instinctively knew. But not now.
After a pause, Bradford said, “Besides the lack of sleep and the drugs, how are you really?”
She shrugged. “Messed in the head as ever— you saw what happened last night.”
“Some of it,” he said. “I lost you around a corner, and by the time I caught up with you there was one dead guy at your feet and another limping away.”
“It happened fast,” she said. “Sadistic fucks.”
“Defending yourself isn’t messed in the head,” he said.
She turned to him. “Isn’t it? No one makes me walk the streets at two in the morning. I don’t have to lurk in the dark alleys, or the lonely trails, just waiting for trouble to invite me to play.”
She looked out toward the path they’d taken to the bench. “What’s the difference,” she said, “between seeking out a victim and playing the victim, knowing that predators will seek me out?”
“There’s a huge difference.”
She opened her mouth to say something and then stopped. This was another topic for another time.
“How long are you in town?” she said.
“That depends,” he said. “How long are you in town?”
She let out an involuntary laugh. “You can’t be serious. Is Logan paying you?”
“Don’t be an ass, Michael. No, Logan’s not paying me.”
“What then?”
A pained look crossed his face. “You have to ask?”
She exhaled audibly, slowly, stretched back and stared up at the sky.
“I apologize,” she said. “I know what being here for me costs you.”
She turned toward him and then back to the night. “I truly appreciate it— more than you might ever know— I just don’t think it’ll do much good.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. And then after another pause, “You know I respect you, right?”
She nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Because I think you’re insane to carry those knives while you’re impaired.
“You intend to medicate consciously and you’re trying to master the usage, but it’s like driving drunk, you think you’re in control and you’re not.
“Michael, you’re dangerous enough clean and weaponless.”
“I’m not off on some loony drug-induced binge,” she said.
“I understand that,” he said, “but we both know you don’t carry those knives for self-defense— you don’t need them.
“Kill someone with your hands and you might have a plausible reason to escape jail for the rest of your life.
“With a knife, you’re screwed, and you know it. Why take the risk?”
Risk. A word bandied about so easily by people who had no clue as to what risk really meant.
From anyone else those words would have been trite and easy to brush aside,
but this was the man who had saved her life, a man who knew the truest meaning of what it was to risk everything.
After another space of silence, she pulled three knives from their hidden places. Without ceremony, she placed them on his lap.
He reached for the blades and held them in his hands. “Would you also let me take the drugs away?” he said.
“If you can take the nightmares with them.”
He didn’t reply, and she let him have the silence.
In time, perhaps he’d understand. She tilted her head back and looked east, where the sky had turned purple. She stood.
“I need to get back to the hotel,” she said. “Walk with me? You can stay in the suite if you like— it’ll be more comfortable than holding vigil on the street.”
“Don’t you have a full house?” he asked.
“It’s a big place,” she said, “but either way you’d stay with me.”
His brow furrowed, and, understanding the source of his confusion, Munroe hooked her arm in his and led him forward.
“I’m trying, Miles,” she said, “really trying. If you want to help and I’m willing to allow it, then let’s do it right. Stay with me.”
The sun had fully risen by the time they returned to the hotel, and when Munroe opened the door Logan was striding toward it.
His face held a mixture of anguish and relief, as if he’d been pacing until her return and expected that it would never come.
Then he saw Miles. Logan blanched and stopped short. Shock replaced everything else.
Miles nodded and Logan continued frozen for a half-second before turning speechless toward the television, then to Munroe, back to the TV, and to Munroe again.
Tiring of his indecision, Munroe said, “What is it, Logan?”
In a disjointed movement he motioned toward the television, which, now muted, flashed pictures of the local news.
“An NYPD officer was murdered night before last,” he said. “This morning someone pulled the body out of a Dumpster.”
He stared at Munroe’s hands and arms, long since washed clean, and whispered, “Was that your doing?”
Mental dissonance filled her head. She couldn’t reconcile what Logan said with what she’d experienced. Police officer.
Wordless, she turned her back to him and, with the world moving in slow motion, joined Miles in front of the TV.
The sound was still off and a breaking news banner streamed beneath a looped clip.
She watched in silence, and after a moment Logan asked again, this time his question an accusing hiss.
Munroe shifted away from the flat screen to face him and then, without a word, leaving him bewildered and panicked, turned and strode to her bedroom and closed the door.
She stood by the window, morning light reflecting onto her hands, and she gazed at the invisible macula of death that marked them.
There was a quiet knock and the door opened. Bradford stuck his head inside the room and then, without waiting for a response, entered fully.
He closed the door and walked over to her, staring out over the city. “Did you leave evidence behind?” he asked.
She turned her eyes slowly to him and said, “Not that I know of.”
Bradford reached forward, touched his thumb to her chin, and said, “Maybe taking this assignment would be a good thing.”
She leaned her head into his hand. “If those men really were police, there’s sure to be fallout, and I won’t run from my mistakes.”
“That would only be a side bonus,” he said. “God knows you’ve needed a break, and I’m sure you’ve kept busy, but have you considered that the extended downtime might be part of your problem?”
She turned again toward the window, to the ants and toys that crawled along the city streets.
There was no doubt that she needed to work; it had been almost eight months since Mongomo, and the internal pressure was steadily building—
a violent tension that could only be eased by the pure focus of an assignment.
But this thing that Logan offered? This was a form of madness.
“Death follows me,” she said. “I can get the girl out, but I can’t guarantee that others won’t die, and one way or another, those people are all connected to Logan.”
She turned again toward the window and the city streets.
“Logan is blinded by desire and need, so much so that he’s ignoring the possibilities, ignoring the potential for”— she found Bradford’s eyes— “the potential for savagery.
“There’s something he’s not telling me,” she said. “He wants this far too badly for it to be as simple as what he’s explained.”
“But still, you go.”
She nodded. “I’m bracing for it and the many repercussions.”
Muted sounds of laughter filtered in from beyond the door, and they both turned toward it.
“The rest of them are awake,” she said. “It’s time to play the game.”
She pulled an ankle-length dress off a hanger in the closet and said, “Excuse me for a moment,” and then stripped down, not caring if Bradford stared or averted his eyes, knowing he would want to do the former but do the latter.
Having shed the fatigues of the night and reverted once more to harmless and demure, she paused with her hand on the door handle.
“Coming?” she said. Seeing her manner of dress, Bradford raised an eyebrow,
and she grinned in reply, then closed her eyes, a brief flash in time while she shifted from one mode to the next.
When she opened her eyes, she had become the girl who would walk out the door.
The four who had stayed the night had joined Logan in the living area, and as far as Munroe could tell, the lively discussion centered on breakfasts of times past.
The television had been switched off, and although Logan interacted little, he did well at masking the undercurrents of stress that had so recently played across his face.
Munroe entered the room with Bradford beside her, and as had happened the day before, the conversation hiccupped when a stranger joined the mix;
it was not so much a closing of ranks as a concern that the newcomer might misunderstand what he’d heard.
With a mischievous grin Munroe introduced Bradford. “Soldier of fortune,” she said, “mercenary for hire, and sometimes my bodyguard.”
Hands were shaken, small talk made, and Gideon said to her, “The way Logan tells it, you shouldn’t need a bodyguard.”
His words, spoken lightly, held the undercurrent of challenge, and Munroe, finding no reason to defend or explain, turned from him.
She reached for the phone intending to order room service for the group, and Gideon stopped her, hand to her shoulder.
Gideon was thirty-five and bore himself with the assurance of a man who had experienced hand-to-hand combat and lived to tell about it.
At six-foot-four and 240 pounds, he held a six-inch, hundred-pound advantage,
and by his behavior seemed to believe that Munroe, in her late twenties, light, lean, and innocent, would be easily schooled.
Munroe froze. The room went silent. Her vision faded, the world turned gray, and her mind ran a series of rapid calculations.
In that moment of suspended time, she yearned for the catharsis and soothing relief of pain, for the exhilaration of spilled blood.
Logan should have warned Gideon; he should have known.
She’d taken on larger men and feared nothing of it. To strike was instinct; second nature.
She could move with devastating speed, a frightful sense of crazy that bordered on true insanity and became, not shock-and-awe, but shock-then-die;
a drive to kill that had been carved into her psyche one savage knife slice after another.
Standing straight, her back still to him, her voice low and monotone, she said, “Remove your hand.”
In minute calculations that reported back like echolocation, she placed each person in the room and readied for what was to come.
Bradford had stood up from the sofa and then stopped. Logan had stayed seated. Neither would dare move for fear of triggering a violent reaction.
The others had remained where they were, and Gideon’s hand was still weighted on her shoulder.
Forcing down the urge to strike, her back still to him, she said, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Gideon’s fingers tightened. He pulled. “I’m talking to you,” he said.
Darkness descended. Time ceased. Movement blurred. Instinct without thought,
and then Gideon was on his knees, hands to his throat, gasping for air, and she was standing over him prepared to strike again.
Munroe’s eyes darted to Logan, and instead of finding horror on his face, as she expected, he was smirking.
She understood then that this was Logan’s doing— Logan and his stupid, dangerous games, proving points that didn’t need proving.
She stood upright, reached a hand for Gideon, pulled him to his feet, and gave him a gentle jab to his arm.
“Give it a few minutes,” she said. “You’ll be fine.” Conversation in the room slowly resumed and gradually the moment passed as if nothing had occurred.
When breakfast arrived, the discussion turned again to the issue of bringing Hannah home.
Logan said little and his eyes hurried often to seek Munroe’s, as if begging assurance.
She smiled in reply, but under the circumstances the gesture was probably more confusing to him than not.
In the stories of the children of The Chosen, in the sincerity of their pain, she understood the insanity of accepting the assignment and exactly why she would.
There was no logic in it, no list of pros and cons; it defied the calculation and the meticulous exactness that had thus far defined her career.
This desire to accept welled from deep inside; a child’s innocent yearning from years long past; the prayers for rescue never answered.
In this round of discussion, Bradford asked the questions, and while the others answered, Munroe withdrew in order to observe body language and facial cues.
As it had been yesterday, there was a collective aura of disbelief. And rightly so.
Unlike typical clients who wore expensive suits and made decisions with businesslike detachment, who had millions of investment dollars at their disposal, who plotted outside of board meetings, and who knew Munroe only by reputation,
this assignment was being run on a shoestring and intensely personal— everything was being staked on the commitment and ability of a stranger.
The conversation increased in volume, and Munroe watched amused as the silent battle lines were drawn.
Bradford’s questions were direct, tactical, had less to do with sentiments and feeling than with logistics.
He was a soldier ignoring emotion in order to calculate risk.
His detachment wasn’t personal, it was the way of war, and of those around the table only Gideon and Logan, each former military men, seemed to grasp it.
Munroe stood. A long and slow movement that pushed the chair back fully and stopped the conversation cold.
She shifted forward, palms against the table, and said, “I’m ready when you are.”
