The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel

by Stevens, Taylor

  But the tears came, and once they started, they just kept coming. A few were okay, they showed she was repentant, but too many could mean more trouble, and still she couldn’t stop them. Big, huge racking sobs until finally Elijah reached for her hand and pulled her onto his lap.

  “Maybe I’ve been a bit harsh with you,” he said. “The Prophet teaches that punishment without love is against the laws of God, and it’s important that you know how very much the Lord loves you.”

  Elijah’s hands wandered up to the inside of her nightshirt and rested on her bare legs. His touch made her uncomfortable and even more nauseous than when she walked with him to the room knowing that the talk would bring something bad.

  Elijah said, “Perhaps the problem … perhaps the reason you were led into disobedience is because you haven’t been receiving enough of the Lord’s love, sweetie.”

  Hannah tried to stop crying, she knew where this was going and wanted to get away. But until the tears were gone, she had no excuse. Elijah had put her here on his lap and she couldn’t just get up without inviting a whole new bunch of problems.

  “Being reproved is the Lord showing his love for you, sweetie. Sometimes God has to hurt you so that you can learn to behave. But yes, maybe I’ve been too harsh, and tenderness is what you need.”

  Hannah wanted off Elijah’s lap, and even if it made Jesus angry, she didn’t want this kind of love. She fought back the tears, fought them, but they wouldn’t stop, and the only thing she could do now was to go to that other place, to let her mind run far, far away again so she wasn’t here in this room, with this man or anywhere near anything to do with the blessing of love.

  Chapter 8

  John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York

  Against every principle of work and survival, Munroe boarded the flight to Buenos Aires with a three-person entourage. She hadn’t asked Logan and his friends to come, and didn’t waste energy refusing when they insisted. In her own time and on her own terms, she’d have her way.

  She worked alone. Information was a solitary job. She was a shadow, a ghost, blending to become whatever was necessary to get the assignment done. She endured no partners or tagalongs, no buddy to screw things up, and relied on and worried about no one and nothing but herself. This was the policy that kept her invisible and kept her alive.

  Aside from the stint in Africa with Miles Bradford at her side, the closest Munroe had to a partner was Logan. From a distance, Logan watched her back. If she needed help, he ran the other end of the assignment. He was the supply source, the go-to guy, the one who fed the air hose when she descended into the trench.

  And at the moment he was quickly moving from being useful to being a liability.

  She’d assumed that saying yes would have calmed him, that knowing her as he did, he would have relaxed, handed the job to the professional and allowed her to do what she did best. Instead, Logan hovered, micromanaged, and, so typically difficult to faze, had become obsessive in his need to run updates, opinions, and information.

  He was one of the three who’d demanded to be a part of this circus, and now Munroe followed him along the dry interior of the plane, through economy class, scanning the faces of those already boarded, and, as was her habit, touching seatbacks in a silent count from the nearest emergency exit. Behind her trailed Heidi, then Gideon, all of them waddling down the aisle like hatchlings after a parent.

  Nonstop from New York to Buenos Aires meant eleven hours of flying time, and the short-notice ticketing meant that the best they could do for seating was groupings of two, separated by fourteen rows.

  Halfway through the cabin, Logan paused to lift his carry-on into an overhead bin, and Munroe stopped him, slipping the boarding pass from his hand as she did.

  She’d humored him and tolerated his incessant interruptions and questions as long as she could, but having him in the seat next to her overnight would likely find him murdered in the morning.

  “I’m sitting with Heidi,” she said.

  In a moment of quiet confusion, Heidi looked to Logan for assurance. Logan hesitated and then nodded, lips drawn tight. By way of rapport, Munroe gave his shoulder a playful jab, and his eyes returned gratitude.

  She stepped aside. Heidi slipped beyond her to the window, and Munroe moved out of the aisle to let Gideon pass. The boys continued toward the rear of the plane, and as Munroe stared after them, her original suspicion that Logan was withholding something turned to certainty.

  Luggage and paraphernalia stowed, Munroe tossed a thick manila folder onto the open seat tray, all of it overnight reading.

  Heidi said, “You don’t sleep much, do you?”

  Munroe opened the folder, an assemblage of documents that Logan had handed her shortly before boarding, and said, “You noticed.”

  Heidi smiled, radiating warmth. “It’s hard to miss, and it always seems that brilliance accompanies lack of sleep. Being one of those eight-hour-a-night people, I envy the extra hours of living.”

  At five-foot-six, Heidi was a brunette with baby blues, a few extra pounds, and a magnetic personality that belied her thirty-six years. She also had the ability to articulate complex ideas with concise simplicity, and although this surely made her an excellent project manager, to Munroe, this capacity was a portal to be tapped—a temporary window into life as a child of The Chosen.

  Munroe paused at the subtle compliment, tried to discern flattery, felt only sincerity, and said, “Don’t envy it too much. Sometimes the price isn’t worth it.”

  Heidi pulled a book from her purse and creased it open. “Logan says you were raised a missionary kid, kind of like us.”

  Munroe nodded. “Born in Cameroon,” she said, “West Africa.”

  “Is that why you have a guy’s name?”

  “In a roundabout way,” Munroe said. “When I was seventeen, I bribed my way on board a freighter headed to Europe—didn’t want to invite trouble by looking like a woman, so I shaved my hair, bound up my chest, and wore boy’s clothes. I needed a name to go with the look, and that’s where Michael came from.”

  “Did it work?”

  “The name?”

  “The look.”

  Munroe gave Heidi a sideways glance. “If I did it again today, you’d think I was a guy.”

  Heidi raised a chiding eyebrow, and Munroe didn’t begrudge the disbelief. You had to see it to understand.

  “Why’d you choose Michael?” Heidi said.

  Munroe said, “It seemed appropriate. She was King David’s wife in the Bible, and she couldn’t have children.”

  Heidi smirked. The Bible was familiar territory. “The spelling was different,” she said.

  Munroe nodded. “And she wore girl clothes.”

  “So do you,” Heidi said. “So why the guy’s name?”

  “I spend more time out of girl clothes than in them,” Munroe said. “Work takes me to some pretty rough places, and quite like boarding that freighter, it’s easier to get what I want done as a guy. My clients don’t expect me to be a woman either, so the name fit, and it stuck.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  With a lengthening grin, Munroe said, “Vanessa.”

  As if sharing a secret, Heidi tipped closer. “My real name’s Bathsheba,” she whispered. “I hated it so much I had it changed after I got out of The Chosen—adopted my middle as my first.”

  “Michael and Bathsheba,” Munroe said. “We should find us a David.”

  Heidi laughed and returned to her book, and Munroe to the papers in her hands. She removed a paper clip, shuffled pages, and phased from one mode into the next.

  In the world of information, life depended on accuracy. Assumptions and familiarity were treacherous, and it was a far different perspective standing here on the precipice of infiltration and kidnapping than it was glimpsing snapshots of Logan’s life while chugging beer and shooting pool.

  The challenge of weaving herself into this particular assignment would be absorption without
bias, to replace everything she thought she knew with what she must know. These documents, all of them background information on The Prophet and The Chosen, were vital to understanding.

  She sat with highlighter in hand, notepad on the side, and takeoff, with its obligatory seats to their upright position, was a bleep on the periphery of Munroe’s concentration, and the hours passed until she leaned back to stretch and realized Heidi was studying her.

  Munroe ignored the overt interest, circled and diagrammed across the printed page, and finally put the pen down. At this Heidi said, “It’s a lot to cover—you read fast.”

  “This is the first run,” Munroe replied. “I’m laying tracks, building a skeleton. Doing it last-minute while en route makes it very easy to miss critical pieces—it’s why I wanted you sitting with me,” she said. “There’s a lot inside you that will never show up on these pages.”

  Predictably, Heidi relaxed. Munroe said, “Was it like this for you also? This fifth- or sixth-grade education thing?”

  “Very much so.”

  “You give the impression of having been well educated,” Munroe said. “How, having been given so little, did you manage to get so far?”

  “Education isn’t the same thing as intelligence and drive,” Heidi said, and she smiled again. It was a sweet seduction, so subtle that most would not have even been aware of it, perhaps even Heidi wasn’t aware. It was a natural part of her charm, and in this, Munroe noted, Heidi and Logan were very similar.

  Heidi said, “Back in the day, some of us craved input so badly that we’d sneak stuff to read. Dictionaries. Occasionally an encyclopedia volume—we sometimes had them in the Havens, we just weren’t allowed free access to them. So we’d sneak them.”

  “Did you ever get caught?”

  Heidi sighed, almost nostalgically. “Yeah. One time I ended up locked in a closet for three days without food while they prayed over me and tried to cast out the demons that would have caused me to yearn for knowledge from the Void.” She laughed. “Guess it didn’t do much good.”

  Munroe turned the last of a series of pages, flipped back, scanned her notes, and then returned again, searching for answers to a still formulating question. The haste with which the project had moved forward had left her dependent on Logan for details, and although nothing could replace the quality of her own work, he knew well the type of background she looked for and had handed her a thick stack of photocopies, internal documents, newspaper clippings, book excerpts, and hard copies of Internet pages. This had seemed enough to get her started, yet already she was stalled.

  To Heidi she said, “Based on what’s in these pages, it makes no sense for The Prophet to live on the run or be wanted by Interpol. People aren’t arrested for being different unless those differences break laws.”

  Heidi’s nose crinkled. She tilted her head, as if puzzling the question herself, and then after a second pointed to the documents and said, “Can I see those for a moment?”

  Munroe passed the pages over, and Heidi gave a cursory glance through them. “There’s a lot of stuff missing,” she said.

  “Why?”

  Heidi shrugged. “You’d have to ask Logan, but it’s not exactly stuff that’s easy to forget.” And then, waiting only a half beat, Heidi changed the subject, spilling in a rush the question that had undoubtedly been eating at her for the last several days.

  “Michael, why are you doing this?” she said. She paused and started again, slowly, as if she were measuring words, afraid that they might be misunderstood. “Why have you agreed to this job? Not money, that’s for sure, and not for the cause. So why? Because Logan’s your friend? Is that enough?”

  Munroe leaned back, the question of the missing documents shoved away for the time being. How to explain what she herself barely understood? She said, “I have a unique skill set, Heidi. I’m doing this because I can.”

  Sliding doors opened to the shock of chill, and following the others, Munroe stepped from the terminal into the overcast midmorning at Ezeiza, Argentina’s largest airport.

  The hours in flight had taken them from the soggy heat of New York to the middle of a Buenos Aires winter, and Munroe inhaled deeply, taking in the mixture of diesel fumes, exhaust, and cold, misting rain: the fragrance of an airport, the same mixture of smells that preceded every job, the perfume of assignment, of focus and concentration.

  During the trip Logan and Gideon had mapped out an itinerary and, now that they were on the ground, had assumed a shared command of the little group. Heidi seemed to have no problem allowing them to lead, so Munroe nodded assent and, in apparent quiet acquiescence, said little.

  How Logan could possibly believe that her skill was best served by taking orders from someone who hadn’t even a fraction of her knowledge or experience was difficult to comprehend, and performing as a lackey, marching to someone else’s pattern, was out of the question. She’d come on board to bring the little girl home, and her expertise had been called on because she could do a job that nobody else could. Any perceived compliance was only temporary and would never be genuine.

  The others tossed luggage into the trunk of a taxi. Gideon, due to his size, rode shotgun, the three remaining sharing the backseat.

  Unlike the rest, who had packed appropriately for the trip, Munroe had brought only a single change of clothes and a jacket barely warm enough to keep out the penetrating chill. She carried these in a small backpack that she now kept with her.

  Traveling light came naturally after years on the job. Things had to be carried, concerned about, fussed over, and since they would only slow her down, were usually abandoned anyway. She would procure and shed as she went, holding on to only that which was critical to get the job done.

  The taxi pulled away from the curb, careening directly into traffic. The driver sped forward, merging with kamikaze-like aggression in the direction of the airport exit and the freeway that would run them toward the heart of the country’s capital.

  Munroe gazed out the window, the cityscape passing in rapid flashes. Square block apartment houses and residential districts swapped with shopping areas and advertisements several stories high, and traded again. At its heart, the forty-eight districts of the city proper composed an urban area of three million people, but in reality the metropolitan mass stretched outward to the suburbs, tying together ten million more.

  Half the population of Argentina lived in this vast urban sprawl, and when it came to needle searching through haystacks, Buenos Aires was one of the largest in South America or, for that matter, the world. Somewhere out there, among those millions, was a child, and in one of those many houses and high-rise apartment blocks, the Haven that hid her.

  In the city proper the scene shifted yet again. It was for good reason that Buenos Aires had been called the Paris of South America. Old World–inspired architecture, tree-lined avenues, and sleek, modern designs bespoke not only the city’s current sophistication but also a culture steeped in European history.

  Chapter 9

  San Telmo, Buenos Aires

  Their hotel wasn’t a hotel but rather a hostel, a small single story of shared and private rooms, a common kitchen, and a small living area, located south of the city center in the oldest neighborhood. The area was made up of colonial buildings and cobblestone streets, cafés, and milongas, all of it vibrant and alive with color, and here they would stay until Munroe had a better grasp of what the job entailed and the length of time required to pull it off.

  Like Munroe, Logan was committed for the duration, but Gideon had only two weeks and Heidi three before they each had to return home. Without consulting Munroe, they’d developed their own set of expectations as to how quickly the project would progress, and as with everything else surrounding their involvement, Munroe ignored them, and ignored the expectations.

  The little group had two rooms, side by side, and the boys’ master plan and the minimal operating budget called for Munroe to stay with Heidi. The walls, though thin, were a conti
nuation of the same barrier that fourteen rows of seats had thankfully provided during the flight, and although this arrangement was better than being cooped up with either Gideon or Logan, sharing a room did not provide the solitude Munroe so desperately craved.

  She needed sleep, needed it badly. She’d promised Bradford that she’d at least try to go under without medicating, but none of this was possible while sharing a space with someone else.

  Gideon had allotted a few hours to clean up, rest, and otherwise settle before reconvening in the late afternoon. Fighting the urge to drift off, Munroe lay down, waited until Heidi reached the rhythmic patterns of sleep, then slipped from her bed and headed out the door.

  She was halfway along the corridor that led to the street when she heard the expected footsteps behind her. The predictability pleased her, and without turning she continued forward.

  From behind, in a stage whisper that bordered on a hiss, Logan said, “Michael, please, wait for me.”

  She slowed, and he continued toward her, keeping pace as she turned onto the narrow avenue that fronted the hostel. Logan said nothing as they walked but stayed so close that Munroe wanted to push him back.

  It was nearing two in the afternoon, that time of day when the city stopped for lunch, and she searched for a café, some populated place nearby, where conversation would be buzzing and she could listen and absorb. She wanted submersion in the local dialects, needed tone, inflection, accent, and lunfardo, the local slang of the porteños, the port dwellers, as the residents of Buenos Aires were known.

  Five minutes from the hostel on a busy pedestrian corner, Munroe found what she sought. The café was crowded enough that conversation abounded and small enough to facilitate eavesdropping.

  She sat with a steaming cup in front of her and, with Logan across the table, immersed herself in the ambience that filled the room. Language washed over her, through her, and in snapshot glimpses she drew in the soul of the local culture. It was the same inexplicable absorption and understanding of language that had been with her since childhood, the poisonous gift that both created and destroyed, an ability that made it possible for her to blend and become anything to anyone.