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Chapter 21
Elijah didn’t come, and in the protracted silence, Munroe waited with the deliberate patience of a predator on the hunt.
The world of information, of infiltration and surveillance, of buying and selling secrets, was a world of endless waiting, idle stress, and measured self-control,
a learned and practiced skill of knowing when to move, when to stop, and how to maintain a holding pattern for indefinite periods of time.
This was a holding pattern.
Like the four hours that had been spent in this room yesterday in order to allow Bradford his ten minutes of reconnaissance and placement, the waiting would buy her what she wanted.
If she hadn’t already been handed a book and asked to stay, she would have requested something, anything, to prolong the visit until the missing vans returned and the house began to fill again.
Elijah, with his desire to bring her into the fold, had solved that problem.
As if on cue, from beyond the front door came a mounting wave of sound, of footsteps and voices, all drawing closer to the house.
Munroe switched off the light in the alcove and moved through the darkened living room toward the front door.
She chose the chair closest to the entrance, positioned so that its back was to the front of the building, and its direct view to the foyer blocked by a small wall segment.
Here in the darkened corner she could see the side and back of each person who passed, and the disadvantage of not being able to clearly scan faces was compensated by placement.
Unless someone specifically turned around and peered into the room, she would never be noticed.
Through the front door they came, mostly teenagers, tromping in from the cold with the weariness of a hard day’s work.
Based on the size of the vehicles and the size of the crowd, if this was the return of only one van, it had headed out with more people than seat belts.
There was conversation and a form of lighthearted jostling among the youngsters as they passed,
and with no consciousness of noise level, the building took on a tone closer to what Munroe expected to be its natural state.
They passed in groups of two or three, loaded with coats and heavy bags, and were it not for the information she already had,
by looks alone it would have been easy to assume that they were students returning from school rather than from begging in the street, which made up much of their daily routines.
From beyond the open front door and still out of sight, the voice of a woman called to several in the group.
Three of the teenagers, having just passed through the foyer, paused and then turned.
They stood but several feet from where Munroe sat, each face clearly illuminated by the hallway lighting.
And in that moment, time stopped. Munroe measured out the heartbeat trying to escape her chest. Feet away was the mirror image of a younger, female Logan.
Munroe fought the urge to stand, to snatch, to run, and made the split-second decision to hold back, based on the factors hammering their way into mental position:
location to the door, number of people nearby, time needed to get to the vehicle, and, provided she could neutralize Hannah, the process of fighting her way out with a hundred pounds of dead weight.
And so Munroe stared, action held in check by the lasting shock of seeing the miniature copy, blond-haired and green-eyed, before her.
Slowly, the pure focus of impartial, unemotional assignment returned.
Through the freeze-frame moment, she had nearly failed to register the weight of the words that the girl had spoken to that detached and invisible voice beyond the door. Mom.
The child, whose true mother and father had spent the last eight years fighting to find her, had addressed another as her mother.
Munroe waited, tense, eager for the woman to pass, hoping for a sign of recognition, to know who this person was,
and as the last of those who’d filled the van trailed inside, she found nothing but a female indistinguishable from any other stranger.
The foyer emptied, and Munroe remained motionless in the dark corner, pushing down the slow, smoldering burn that she’d been sitting on all day, processing the moment, running scenarios.
To strike too quickly with a lack of valid information would invite mistakes; to wait too long was to expose herself to unwanted scrutiny and suspicion.
The mental chessboard set itself out; move against move, strategy to probability, chance against the known,
while she counted off time in her head and waited for the next group to enter the foyer.
Another ten minutes and the procedure repeated with a second group, this time the youngsters closer to preteens and nearly as many adults as children.
On the heels of this came another, and as the first two groups had done, they filtered down the hall, some heading up the wide staircase, others passing on through the back door toward the annex.
With each return, the volume in the house grew.
The stairwell became a beehive of activity, the back door a constant open-and-close as the main house filled and emptied again.
If Munroe had calculated correctly, there were still two more vans to return, but there was no point in sitting here waiting for them.
She’d seen what she wanted, knew what she required, and the spectrum of objectives had narrowed down to two:
she needed to gain familiarity with the layout of the building and to know where Hannah slept.
The back door opened again, and instead of the steady flow heading out, a solitary set of footsteps slapped a rapid pace toward the foyer.
Munroe stood, moved back across the room to the alcove, and flipped the light on. She was nose to the book when Elijah entered.
His mouth was smiling, but his eyes were worried, and his previous harried look had grown to frazzled.
Something was keeping him occupied, had him stressing badly, and he perfectly portrayed the stereotype of an executive just out of a bad news conference.
“Hey,” he said. “How’s the reading going?”
In a contrasting calmness, Munroe looked up, her face full of peace.
“It’s wonderful,” she said. And then, as if in a bewildered afterthought, added, “What time is it?”
Elijah glanced at his watch, a nervous movement that had to be more habit than necessity because she knew that he knew exactly what time it was.
He uttered the hour, and Munroe feigned innocent surprise. “It passes quickly,” she said.
He paused and then relaxed, the tension he carried fading, as if he’d shifted from work to pleasure.
He sat next to her, so close that they almost touched, and he appeared oblivious to any discomfort the invasion of her personal space might cause—
even less aware that his proximity might be unwanted or of the effort with which she pushed back the returning rage.
Elijah asked about the material she’d read. He fished for depth, for emotional connection, and Munroe’s words flowed in response.
Her answers were a cautious hot-and-cold, a drawing close, then a pulling away that toyed with him in the same way a player might keep a love interest on the line.
Elijah put a hand on her knee and said, “Why don’t you join us for dinner?”
At his touch, Munroe’s vision shifted to gray, and in microsecond gaps she fought back the desire to break his fingers.
With a smile plastered on her face and a long pause that could only be interpreted as thoughtful consideration, she said, “I think I would enjoy that.”
His hand remained on her thigh, burning a hole of violence through her core, and then, in a sudden movement, he stood.
“Wonderful,” he said, and her body reacted to the removal of his hand as if she’d received an oxygen mask in a room full of noxious gases.
She handed him the book, but he shook his head. “Keep it,” he said. “There’s more to read and we can discuss it as soon as you’ve had the chance.”
“Thank you,” she said, and then, with another vanload of footsteps playing background music, she clutched the words of The Prophet to her chest and followed Elijah out the back door to the annex.
If the main house had been quiet, the dining room was the perfect counterpart.
The room of tables that had been so empty earlier in the day now birthed life and volume, and was still in the process of filling.
From the sliding door on the far right wall, a girl of thirteen or fourteen led a group of six toddlers into the room,
and then, having delivered each child to groups at separate tables, joined a table near the center of the room.
Although the varied looks and racial features of each group would have implied otherwise, the scene was set as if dinner was being served in family groups,
and so Munroe scanned the room, searching out Hannah. She found her several tables down with the woman she called Mother and three younger children.
The woman shared none of Hannah’s physical characteristics, instead sporting a contrasting mixture of nearly pale green eyes, thick lashes, and jet-black hair against skin the color of a perfect tan.
There was no sign of David Law, although he was perhaps in one of the vans that had not yet returned.
Elijah led Munroe to the same corner table that they’d sat at earlier in the day; this time it was filled with the wife and children she’d met before.
Three teenagers and a young couple with a baby were there as well,
and as Elijah explained her presence to the others in English, he introduced the couple to her as his son and daughter-in-law, and grandbaby.
These were Heidi’s people, the son and two of the girls clearly her biological brother and sisters, and the others,
although half siblings and sharing the Filipina features of their mother, still showed familial similarities.
Of those at the table, the teenagers spoke Spanish with perfect fluency, but the mother and younger children spoke only English.
Munroe was offered a seat that allowed her a vantage point of the room, and she took it all in, detail by detail, under the guise of conversation.
Industrial-size pots again filled the serving counter, and three teenagers stood over them, scooping food onto plates as the line progressed, cafeteria style.
One of Elijah’s daughters brought Munroe a plate, and Munroe nodded in thanks over the indiscernible soupy contents.
The influx began to ebb, and Munroe estimated there were a hundred and fifty in the room, the majority of them children and teenagers.
Her eyes scanned, running over the faces of the children, all of them young, innocent, and perfect, some fighting in their own way for a slice of limited attention spread so thin among so many,
others, as with Elijah’s children, appearing indifferent to their parents completely, all of it so painful to watch, but Munroe couldn’t look away.
Thankfully, The Chosen didn’t carry weapons. Had that been the case, should anything go wrong with extracting Hannah, the potential for collateral damage would be tremendous to the terms of unacceptable.
Munroe’s eyes rested at last on a young man, mid-twenties, with a guitar hung around his neck.
With a perfect lack of self-consciousness he stood, strummed, and began to sing.
The eating stopped, the discussions stopped, and a hundred voices filled the room in unison.
One song segued into another, and into another still, until the medley relating to food and the gratitude of belonging to this large family of believers had lasted nearly ten minutes.
When the music ended, the young man said a few words of thanks to the Lord requesting cleansing of the food from any germs, then he joined his family and sat.
The volume in the room went back to its original cacophony.
He had spoken in English, a clear articulation that reminded Munroe of Logan,
his accent distinctly American but with twinges of Western Europe and hints of Latin America, and it seemed that most of those here shared that same accent.
Munroe rejoined the conversation and continued to surreptitiously watch the room.
The influx was over and so was the singing, and the table at which Hannah sat still held no David Law.
For being the man who had kidnapped a child to bring her back into a movement, the man who was the closest thing Hannah would have known to a father and the only thing she had resembling real family, David Law was strangely absent.
Munroe didn’t need to know where he was in order to pull off this job, but like a wasp in the room, it was helpful to know his location.
The meal wound down, families filtered out of the room, but Elijah’s remained and Munroe stayed with them, internal tension mounting while she applied focus to the moment.
She wanted Hannah. Wanted to wander. Reconnoiter.
Instead she sat, plying the made-up desire to belong and feigning interest in their beliefs, sweetly conversing and answering questions, until eventually the group of teenagers who had stayed behind to clean up completed their chores, and Elijah and his family invited Munroe to join them in the living room.
There, crowded into every seat and the floor space between, were the same one hundred and fifty from the dining area.
Together they spent an hour of dedication to The Prophet, songs and selected readings, and as Munroe assumed was the same for many in this room, she countered the boredom of it all by allowing her mind to wander free, wondering if they were so na?ve as to fail to recognize the obvious— that even the most unsuspecting visitor would realize that this evening’s show had been put on especially for her.
