The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel

  “Well, sure,” Logan replied, “but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It just wasn’t out in the open like all the other abuse was.”

  “And nobody ever stopped to think that some of these behavior issues might be trauma-related?”

  “That’s not the way they think, Michael. The problem is never the doctrine, never the leader, never The Chosen. The problem never has an external source. The problem, no matter what it is, is you. So they get rid of the problem.”

  Munroe nodded. She was running scenarios. Damage control. Not only on the project but also on her own emotions, which were charging blind like a team of bolting horses. “Why Argentina?” she said. “It’s been what? Seventeen years? Nineteen? People in The Chosen move around so often, if the guy is even still part of them, there’s no way that he’s stayed here all these years—Gideon’s got to know that.”

  Logan shrugged. “Maybe he has to start somewhere. Or maybe things have come full circle. Seems like he got wind of something, some piece of news worth moving on, like maybe the guy had come back here or something like that.”

  “Who’s your source,” Munroe said.

  “Charity.”

  “She knew all of this and didn’t tell you?”

  “Yeah. It’s personal stuff, Michael, not exactly something a guy like Gideon goes around confiding in everyone. I only dragged it out of her because I told her that if she didn’t let me know, she’d quite possibly never see her daughter again.”

  Munroe said nothing.

  “I also told her that you were getting really close and that if Gideon found out that you were looking into his past, you’d walk off the project.”

  Munroe gave Logan an appreciative nod. He knew the look. It wasn’t gratitude, it was admiration. “You did good, Logan,” she said. More than good, because she now had what she needed to neutralize any threat from Gideon.

  “So here’s the thing,” she said. “We’ve located Hannah.”

  Logan blinked, inexpressive, as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. The music set ended, and in the volume drop the table was ensconced in a bubble of impenetrable silence. Logan’s mouth opened, as if his mind couldn’t process the words from head to vocal cords. He paused another moment and then said, “What happens next?”

  “That’s what we were discussing tonight,” Munroe said. “I’m torn, really torn about letting you in on this. I can’t work with you stressing around me, and the last thing I need is to be worried about you getting hurt, but I feel you have a right to know. So you are to stay away, far away, you got it?”

  Logan nodded.

  “And whatever you hear tonight stays with the three of us, okay? If I want Gideon and Heidi to know, I’ll tell them myself.”

  Chapter 23

  Munroe sat on the floor, back to the wall, a blade in each hand. The only light was that which slivered in from under the door, and for the third time in the past few minutes the light had flickered with the shadows of footsteps on the other side.

  They would come for her eventually, and when they did, she would be ready. There was nothing they could do to her that had not already been done, and whatever they wanted they were welcome to try to take.

  She was in no hurry; time was all she had.

  The ship rose and fell with the steady rhythm of the water. Reverberations from the diesel engines shuddered through the hull and into the base of her skull.

  There was another flicker under the door and then the hush of whispered voices. She estimated four or five on the other side and willed them in. Expectation of the fight made her hands tingle. The adrenaline built a slow pressure that would culminate in a savage ecstasy when blood was spilled.

  She flipped the knives and played them along her fingers in a pattern; the blades were her friends, they brought reassurance and continuity to a world that had otherwise been shredded.

  The sliver of light went out.

  In a fluid movement, Munroe shifted upright, coiled and tense beside the door. The handle clicked and the door inched open. She sensed a presence before she saw the penlight searching the mattress. The body was fully in the room now. She heaved her weight against the door, slamming it shut, throwing the bolt.

  The room went from dark to black.

  The body was big and burly and stank of sweat and alcohol. Working off instinct, she lunged forward, plowing into his stomach. The speed and direction of attack knocked him off his feet. His head slammed into the wall. He fell. She plunged her right knee into his midsection; heard the expulsion of breath. He began to pull up. She leaned hard against his chest, one knife at his throat and the other to his groin.

  And then she heard the pounding, to which, until now, she’d been oblivious. The door smashed inward, and with the light came a piercing blindness. Disoriented, she braced for what was to come.

  Munroe gasped, her back arched, and she drew in air, as if coming up from a water trap. She opened her eyes and, seeing the hotel ceiling, almost laughed in relief.

  The replay had ended short; without the guilt and pain, without Logan dead in her arms again; without the horror. Bradford was staring at her. There was concern in his eyes, though none of the panic that had been there the last two times.

  “Did I try to kill you?” she said. Her voice was raspy, and she winced at the forced whisper.

  “No,” he said. “Not this time.”

  “You didn’t wake me.”

  “I didn’t want to make it worse,” he said, “and you weren’t hurting anything or anyone.”

  She nodded and closed her eyes. Her heart was still working double time, and it would take awhile for the adrenaline to run its course.

  “Who are they?” Bradford said. “The ones you see when you dream.”

  “My kills,” she said.

  “You relive them?”

  “Over and over. But in the end, it’s always someone I love who’s dead.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  She allowed a moment to pass before she answered. “It started a couple of months ago,” she said.

  “Why now, after all these years?”

  She shrugged.

  “Africa?”

  “I really don’t know,” she said.

  “They haunt you?”

  “Every single day.” She paused, turned her head toward his; studied his face. “What does it feel like when you kill?” she said.

  He was quiet for a moment, staring down at her, as if trying to decipher a true meaning or draw the hidden message from her words. He said, “I’m a soldier, Michael. Killing is part of war.”

  “Do they ever haunt you? The ones you’ve killed?”

  “There’s a lot that haunts me,” he said, “the brutality, the children, the women, the innocent casualties—unspeakable things—holding my friends bleeding and dying in my arms, feeling them take that last breath, wondering why them and not me. I still hear the grinding of machinery, I smell the fireworks and blood and the stench of fear.”

  “But not your kills?”

  His eyes wandered to the far wall. “I remember every face. Call me calloused, but I’ve no pity for them—they weren’t very good people to begin with. It’s the ones I couldn’t protect, they’re the ones who haunt me.” His eyes cut back to hers. “A mechanic fixes cars, a soldier kills people, it’s not pretty, but that’s what we’re trained for—it doesn’t make me any less human.”

  She sighed and turned her gaze back to the ceiling. “If only it were that easy to stay human. My kills consume me,” she said. “I stare into their eyes, lust for blood, take life, and bask in the rush of triumph.”

  She turned from the ceiling to his eyes, which watched her, absorbing, nonaccusatory, accepting. “And then it’s over and reality creeps in like a rising dawn: I’ve done it again. It feels unfair, unjust. I can take so easily, so fast, and they are so weak—fragile playthings that fall and bleed and die. How is it,” she said, “that I can hate killing so much, and yet at the same
time desire it, and it comes to me so naturally?”

  “In honesty,” he said, “have you ever killed an innocent?”

  “It’s always been in defense of myself or someone else,” she said, “except for the first, but that one was a long time coming, and the only one toward whom I feel nothing.”

  “Maybe that’s your problem,” he said, “the guilt.”

  She chuckled humorlessly. “It works well in the comics and graphic novels, doesn’t it?” She paused, shifted so that she sat cross-legged on the bed and faced him directly.

  “Superheroes defend what’s good and destroy evil,” she said. “They mete out justice, and everybody cheers. Nobody ever talks about what it feels like to kill.” She turned her palms upward and stared at them. “They don’t discuss the rush, the savage ecstasy of bloodlust, the sense of satisfaction when it’s finished.” Her eyes cut to his. “Superheroes are glorified serial killers, Miles. Sure, they only kill bad guys, but aside from the moral labels, what makes them any different from the madmen?”

  “Have you ever considered that it’s not always wrong to kill?” he said. “Maybe some people need to be killed, maybe by taking them out you break the cycle of pain and suffering.”

  She looked toward him and said, “I get a fucking euphoric rush when I kill, Miles! What makes me any different from Bundy and Gacy and Dahmer or, for that matter, Pieter Willem?”

  Bradford was silent for a moment, as if he found it necessary to choose his words carefully, and Munroe knew that he was tiptoeing around the issue of Pieter Willem, her first kill, the mercenary psychopath who had made her what she was and whom she’d murdered in a mixture of terror and cold-blooded calculation.

  “That you care,” he said. “That’s what makes you different. You’re not Willem, you’ll never be Willem, no matter how hard he worked to form you after himself. You can spend the rest of your life running from his ghost, afraid of becoming what you hated most in him, tormented by what you’re capable of, or you can see your skills for what they are and use them without destroying yourself from the inside out.”

  “You’re advocating vigilante justice,” she said. Not a question or an accusation, merely a statement.

  “Maybe I am,” he said. “I’ve seen enough evil in this world to know that sometimes taking justice into your own hands is the only way. Just because killing comes easily to you doesn’t make you evil, just because instinct kicks in doesn’t mean you are a serial killer. You are a soldier at war. And in war, you do what you’ve got to do.” He paused, and then softly, he said, “You have a gift, Michael, and you have a heart, let them serve you.”

  Silence filled the room, and after a trice, she met his eyes. In them was a well of understanding and acceptance so deep it felt as if she could fall into it and drown happy. Leaned in, breath to breath and eye to eye, they remained frozen in the moment until the trance was broken by a bleep on the desk.

  Without moving, Bradford said, “It’s probably Logan.”

  “Were you waiting on something?” she asked.

  “After last night, he’s checking in with me twice a day,” he said.

  From the bed, Munroe reached to the floor and picked up the clothes she’d shed before climbing in. “I need to find Gideon and get him sorted out before he wrecks everything,” she said, “and the timing absolutely sucks. I’ve got to get back to the Ranch—losing a day is going to cost.”

  “Maybe not by much,” Bradford said. He stood and leaned over the computer, keyed in several commands, and then as the screen changed, he turned the map in her direction. In answer to her puzzled expression he grinned. “Courtesy of Logan,” he said. “It’s in the sole of Gideon’s shoe.”

  “Sneaky, sneaky,” she said, and he shrugged in innocence.

  “That will indeed shave a considerable bite off the time cost.”

  “I’ve still got stuff coming in from the Havens as well,” he said. “Now that we know where Hannah is, do you want to kill the cameras?”

  “Are you still going through the footage?” she said.

  “Yeah, it’s all routine stuff. But then, I’m not really sure what I’m looking for. And I don’t understand much of the audio.”

  “Has David Law shown up anywhere?”

  “Not that I can tell.”

  “Let it pool,” she said. “We may not need it, but until we’ve got Hannah out of there, I want as much data coming in as possible. I expect to get another three cameras live tonight, maybe more. Do we have the storage space for it all?”

  “Yeah, we’re good,” he said.

  She stood and headed toward the bathroom, turned on the hot water, and then returned to the bedroom and checked the clock. Time was moving fast.

  “I can handle Gideon if you want,” Bradford said.

  “I’ve no doubt that you could,” she said. “I wish I could take you up on it, but this one I have to handle myself.”

  Chapter 24

  With Bradford’s guidance, it took less than a half hour to track Gideon down. Munroe trailed him until he stopped for lunch at a park-side café. He took an outside table in the sun, in the warmest weather they’d had since their arrival. She waited only until he was seated and then approached from behind, tapped him on the opposite shoulder, and as his head turned away from her, slid into the chair next to him.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Gideon flinched, reacting to her presence like a finger to a bee sting.

  Prepared for this, she spoke quickly. “I have a story to tell you,” she said. “All I ask is that you sit and listen, and after you’ve heard it, then you decide if I’m the bad guy here, or if maybe, just maybe, I can help you get what you want.”

  “You have no idea what I want,” he said. His tone was spiteful, but his shoulders relaxed and his hands lost some of their tension.

  “Let me talk, and then you be the judge.”

  Gideon made no reply. He would listen, couldn’t help but listen, because even if he’d never admit it, he wanted to know what she knew.

  Munroe shifted forward, and with her eyes searching and her face not far from his, said, “Once upon a time there was a little girl whose mother and father were so intent on serving the Lord, they forgot to be parents to their unexpected daughter.”

  Munroe paused a beat. “For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that the girl was me, and that since my parents were so busy doing whatever they did, they sent me away, putting me on my own at the age of thirteen.

  “They thought I was going to school and living with close friends in a nearby big city,” she said, “and I did for a while, but they didn’t check, and what did they care? I was fourteen when I walked away. I found full-time work as an interpreter for the friendly local gunrunner, and he moved me to his house. Those were good times, running the bush in Central Africa. Backward as it sounds, I was happy. There was challenge, and focus, and a lot of laughter when the jobs were done.

  “He was my friend,” she said. “He was eleven years older than I was, and yet somehow we got each other. It was a symbiotic relationship—he needed me, I needed him, and I thought I’d found a home. That is, until a year and a half later, when a pair of mercs joined our team, and life became a garish nightmare.”

  Munroe waited for Gideon’s reaction. Subconsciously mirroring, he leaned in to listen, and with this confirmation from his body language, she continued.

  “One of the mercs was a little wiry guy from South Africa,” she said. “Charming. Smooth. Personable. Smart, but evil. On the sly he was abhorrently ruthless, the kind of guy who secretly tortured puppies as a child.

  “He singled me out for his sadism, and every day, no matter what else happened, there was one thing I could be guaranteed to experience—me, flat on my back with his knife to my throat while he raped me. He taught me to fight,” she said. “It was more of a challenge for him that way, you see? First it was weaponless, and then as I got faster, smarter, dirtier, he brought in the knives. It was always hand to hand.
Up close. Personal. He fought for the thrill, I fought to kill him. And the better I got, the harder he came at me. The sex was the icing on the cake for him, what got him off was making me bleed.

  “He threatened to kill my family if I tried to get away,” she said, “and although I wasn’t close to them, they didn’t deserve what he would do—not for something that had nothing to do with them—so I was trapped in his presence with no one to protect me, and the only thing I could do was learn fast, learn well, and fight back. I want to show you something.”

  Munroe stood, and fully aware of those around, lifted her shirt high enough for her torso to show, high enough for Gideon to catch a glimpse of the slivers that crossed her body.

  His eyes betrayed the shock.

  “His mementos,” she said, and then slyly, “there are more, but there’s no point in stripping down here and showing them off.”

  Having made her point, she returned to her seat. “For two years, there was no safe place,” she said. “When we were camped or back at base, and I kept to the jungle, he would track me. I would stay around others, he would wait. He almost killed me on a few occasions, but in my mind, I died five hundred nights.”

  “How did it end?” Gideon asked.

  “I killed him,” she said. “In his moment of weakness I followed him into the jungle. I took him down with a tranquilizer gun, and when his eyes lulled in their sockets, I stood over him and slit his throat. I was seventeen.”

  Munroe’s speech had trailed into monotone, and she waited for the words to sink in.

  Gideon stretched back and let out a low whistle. “Wow,” he said.

  He was silent for a long while, and although Munroe could only guess at what was going on inside his head, it would have been clear to anyone who looked at him that Gideon was struggling with something.