The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel

by Stevens, Taylor

  The embers of today’s earlier fire rekindled into a full flame. Nausea swept in, Munroe’s eyes smarted with the sting of anger, and her mind worked overtime, analyzing, rationalizing. That Hannah was being molested in this Haven, Munroe had no doubt. But that it was Elijah?

  Munroe wasn’t infallible. She read the body language, but there was room for error. It wasn’t safe to assume. Not with something like this.

  She sat. Breathing. Calm. Controlled breathing. Whatever was said around the table was lost to the filters of internal dialogue. Time slowed. She watched the interaction. Studied. Observed. And again the evidence was there, so obvious in the way he touched and interacted with her, so obvious in Hannah’s distaste and the fear in her eyes.

  This man, this leader of the commune, was Hannah’s surrogate father, authority figure, teacher, leader in the Lord, and her abuser. And Hannah, stolen from her parents, abandoned by her kidnapper, and passed from hand to hand like a pet from owner to owner, had no safe place to turn, if she even understood these things to be the crimes against her person that they were.

  Munroe’s inner guidance screamed, her violated childhood rose like a primal creature from the magma of the earth.

  Even when Hannah was gone from here, it wouldn’t end. There would be another innocent to fill her place. But Munroe could put an end to it all. Kill this man tonight before leaving the Haven and break the cycle for good. In the scorch of each passing second came the personal conflict of vigilante justice. Break one cycle only to start a new one.

  These were not strangers in a darkened alley. Elijah was a husband, parent, and granddad. This was Morningstar’s father, Heidi’s father, the only person these children who sat around the table had to protect them from becoming more Hannahs, and their innocent eyes, staring curiously at her from across the table, made very vivid and personal the effects of whatever she chose to do.

  Control. Munroe fought for control. Breathe. Listen. Talk. They were talking to her. Answer the questions being asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Maybe a little dizzy from the heat of the kitchen.”

  Chapter 28

  Munroe processed through the evening, seeing and experiencing everything as if through gauzy curtains, interacting by rote and, through force of will, betraying no sign of the turbulence beneath the façade.

  As per the night prior, dinner segued into further discussions, and as the conversations lengthened, those at the table slowly drifted away. Munroe watched Hannah warily, anxious about not letting her out of her sight, yet knowing there was no option but to do so.

  They congregated again in the living room, another evening of songs and motivational words, another act from The Chosen, all of it fast becoming tiresome, especially after the events of today. Munroe wanted this over. Wanted to escape to the top-tier bed, where she could stare at the ceiling in darkness and her mind could churn and analyze unhindered, and from where she could observe Hannah until the night lengthened.

  After a final round of singing, the Haven’s members dispersed in their many directions, and Munroe walked with Elijah to the makeshift office. There he pulled out another book for her. He suggested she read until lights out, and Munroe was happy to oblige. Not the reading per se, but the escape to the girls’ room and the sanctuary of the upper bed.

  Unlike earlier in the day, the beds were now mostly filled. The girls wrote in journals, read, or talked quietly, bunk mate to bunk mate, the sleeping places used like personal pods on some alien craft. Touches of individuality were tacked to ceilings or posts here and there, these small spaces the only thing uniquely theirs, as if in this crowded house, the boundaries of each one’s personal universe extended only to the four borders of her bed.

  Munroe recognized some of the faces from time spent around the Haven but knew none of the names. Their expressions were welcoming, and as no one moved to challenge her presence, Munroe assumed they were at the least aware in some general sense of who she was and why she was here. Introduction and some form of familiarity with these eager teenagers would have been the better course, but Munroe wanted only quiet, and so instead she headed up the end boards.

  Neither Morningstar nor Hannah was in the room. Given that several of the beds were still empty, it was safe to assume that all was in order, but their absence was anxiety inducing.

  Munroe wanted Hannah where she could see her.

  On her bed Munroe waited, eyes closed and mind running, scattered. Her priority was Hannah, but Hannah was not the only child in this Haven at risk, and that burden, the conflict of retribution, weighed heavily on her. No matter the choice she made tonight, there would be suffering, and although it would be easy to ignore the decision completely and leave the outcome to fate, fate like the other options bore its own implications.

  According to plan, she would wait until after one in the morning to contact Bradford, and from there she’d guide him in. Getting past the gate and the dogs would be a nonissue for him, and the front doors had no security beyond the inside dead bolts. Once Bradford set foot on the property, she would already have the girls in this room unconscious.

  Time passed, the room filled, Morningstar returned, and by the time the lights went out, Hannah was still not in her bed. The violence that had been brewing throughout the day, the death and vengeance that had thus far been held in check by willed control, pressed relentlessly against restraint.

  Munroe climbed from the bed, and Morningstar sat up when she did.

  “I left my phone in the car,” Munroe said. “My parents were supposed to call and I forgot all about it—if they can’t reach me they get panicky—I think I need to check.”

  Morningstar slid out of bed. “I’ll go with you,” she said, and Munroe nodded, expecting nothing less.

  The goodwill purchased earlier in the day was still between them, and as they walked, Munroe, in as casual a tone as she could conjure, said, “I thought all the girls are supposed to follow the lights-out rules.”

  “They are,” Morningstar said. “But we won’t get in trouble if you need to get something from your car.”

  “I was thinking more of Faith,” Munroe said. “She seems like a special exception.”

  “Oh, that,” Morningstar said, and in those few words, Munroe caught the darkened tone of envy. “No, she’s not staying here tonight.”

  That simple sentence changed everything.

  The excuse of needing the phone was meant to be but a way out of the room and alone with Morningstar. Now the little device was burning a hole in Munroe’s pocket, screaming to be used.

  “Where’d Faith go?” Munroe asked.

  She’d asked a direct question with no couching, barely concealed under the guise of innocence, a tactic that would normally shut a mark up faster than any other and was typically best saved for interrogation.

  Morningstar paused, and after a long hesitation said, “She’s staying with friends.”

  Outside, five vans were parked under the stars and both sedans were gone. Munroe opened the passenger door of her vehicle, and by sleight of hand pulled the phone from the glove box. She flipped it open, and with Morningstar curious and watching closely, sighed heavily and said, “God, I feel stupid. Several missed calls.”

  She went through the act of listening to voice mail, and when all was done, concern set across her face. “I need to return this call,” she said, “it’s my boyfriend, and it’s urgent.”

  Morningstar made no move to reenter the house or to allow Munroe space or privacy, and so with the girl standing there, watching and listening, she dialed Bradford.

  “La youmkinouni an atakalam be houriya,” she said. “We’ve got a problem, and I need you to work fast. Have you gotten any of the footage from the front-door camera?”

  “I’ve gotten it,” Bradford said. “But only hips, legs, and feet.”

  “I’m looking for a teenage girl heading out the front—I suspect she’s accompanied.”

  The last time Munroe had seen Ha
nnah had been during the evening vespers. “Start scanning at eight-thirty,” she said.

  There was silence on the line, the quiet broken by the barely audible clicks and beeps of Bradford searching through footage.

  “I think I’ve found it,” he said. “There are only a few ins-and-outs after eight, and of those, the only one that seems to fit what you’re asking for shows a group—two sets of female legs—one of them definitely a girl—and a couple of suits.”

  There were no words for this. Munroe stood stupefied and, caring nothing for how it might appear to Morningstar, swore silently. Everything was wrong. Very wrong. Wrong on the macro level, in the screwed-up-strategy, something-critical-had-been-overlooked sort of way. For whatever else Munroe didn’t understand, two things were immediately clear.

  This had nothing to do with keeping Hannah away from her—her masquerade was as of yet uncompromised, and Hannah going away for a night was by no means routine or normal.

  Munroe had seen firsthand the proprietary nature of the Cárcan boss men and knew from the documents how easily The Chosen shared their women with those in power. Hannah, though young, was a beautiful girl, and even though providing underage girls was officially forbidden, that didn’t mean it didn’t happen, as was clear from Gideon’s experience.

  Until Munroe had more information she saw only two viable possibilities: Hannah was being handed over to the Sponsors as a plaything, or The Chosen were pulling her out of the Haven—hiding her. If it was the latter, if it was the result of Gideon having spooked them, she was going to break his fucking neck.

  “I’m coming back,” she said to Bradford. “There’s nothing for us here tonight.” And she shut the phone.

  To Morningstar, she said, “I have a family emergency, I need to leave.”

  Morningstar looked puzzled. “Let’s go talk to my dad,” she said.

  Elijah’s reaction was as Munroe expected, confused and disappointed, and the only reason she stood here now in his presence, even bothering to explain that her mother was in the hospital, was to keep open the option of returning to the Haven in case it proved necessary.

  “Put your mother in the hands of the Lord,” Elijah said. “His work, His plans for you come before anything else, and if you do what He wants of you, He will take care of your mother.”

  Munroe grit her teeth and forced to the surface the closest illusion of calm she could manage. “She’s my mom,” Munroe said. “She needs me, and my family expects me to be there.”

  The door opened, and Esteban stepped inside the room, making it now three Haven members to her one. It should have been intimidating, and as they saw her as nothing more than a girl, perhaps it was intended to be so.

  “By staying in the center of God’s will,” Elijah said, “you can have perfect peace that no matter what the outcome is tonight, it’s according to God’s plan. God wants you to stay. And you have to ask yourself, who is your mother or your father? Who are your brothers and sisters? Your true family are those who do the will of God. We are your family, Miki, here is where you belong.”

  If there was anything that Munroe knew and knew well, it was scripture; voices from the Book were so branded onto her consciousness that until recently they were a background whisper that permeated her everyday life. She understood upon what Elijah based his values, and trying one last tack before she cut him off, said, “She may die tonight. I need to go.”

  Elijah responded in a flat patriarchal reproach. “Jesus was once faced with that same issue,” he said. “One of the men who came to him, who wanted to be a disciple just like you do, begged for a little time so he could first bury his father, and Jesus said, ‘Let the dead bury the dead.’ Are you one of the spiritually dead, Miki?”

  “No,” Munroe said. “I’m very much alive, but I need to go.”

  Without allowing for a further response, she turned toward the door. Morningstar stood by with mouth agape, and Esteban was close enough to the exit that he seemed to be blocking the way. Munroe didn’t wait for him to move. She strode past, brushing against him as she did.

  Outside the doorway she turned. “I am ready to give everything I have to the Lord’s work,” she said. “But if I’m not there at that hospital and my mother dies, there will be nothing for me to give.”

  With those two sentences, they would forgive her anything.

  She returned to the girls’ room long enough to grab her purse and then headed down the stairs to the foyer.

  Morningstar ran after her, and as Munroe stepped out into the night, she paused to give the girl a genuine hug. “You can keep the suitcase,” she said, “and if I don’t make it back, the clothes are yours as well.” And then, after another pause, “Let me drive you to the gate so that you can open it.”

  Morningstar hesitated and then got in, and they rode the few hundred yards to the gate in silence.

  When Munroe opened the door to the hotel room, Bradford was pacing. He stopped when she entered but remained planted in the middle of the floor, like some battle-scarred statue. His expression was hard. Pure business. And it softened only slightly as she dumped her coat on the bed and strode toward the desk.

  He said, “Michael, what’s going on?”

  She leaned over the desk and loaded the footage, then sat down and stared as the segment played. According to the time stamps, while she had been upstairs being handed a book of indoctrination, Hannah had gone out the front door. She restarted the piece, and then played it again.

  In the nightmare scenario of having the child spirited away, there was a ray of hope. Munroe’s first set of fears—that the child had been handed over to the men for entertainment—was calmed somewhat by the details on the screen.

  The luggage pointed to a protracted stay away, and the frayed and worn clothing was nothing even close to what the women on the staircase had been wearing. There were no guarantees, but by all appearances, The Chosen were moving Hannah out and away from the Havens.

  And after a third time through the footage, Munroe stood, and without facing Bradford, she answered his question. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said, “but I’m sure as hell going to find out.”

  She pointed at the screen, made a tap toward it. “Those license plates,” she said. “Wherever those plates lead, that’s where I’ll find Hannah. I need everything you’ve got.” She paused, turned toward Bradford. “Is Logan still carrying the emergency phone?”

  He nodded.

  She stood with her arms crossed, mind racing. “Arrange a meeting,” she said, “as soon as possible. Tonight. All three of them. There’s something someone’s not telling me.”

  Chapter 29

  Bradford stood motionless while the full meaning of Munroe’s words sunk in. She would follow the license plates as far as the information took her, and this was the way of madness, the way of death. He sat on the edge of the bed, raked his fingers through his hair, and didn’t move to make the call Munroe expected him to make.

  After a moment of silence, she turned the desk chair to face him, sat, and in her typically intuitive way, joined him in the quiet until he’d gathered his thoughts.

  “Look,” he said finally, “pulling Hannah out of a sleeping commune, or snatching her off the street, that’s one thing. But going after the Cárcan family? An operation like that is a whole different caliber. I understand you feel an obligation to finish what you started, you made a promise to Logan and you gave him your word. But this changes everything. We’re looking at an entirely new sitrep. We have none of the same targets, none of the same risks, we’d be going in blind against a group of ruthless people who are on their home turf and are well armed and well connected. This isn’t something the two of us can take on with just a day’s notice.”

  Whatever reaction Bradford expected after having vented, it wasn’t to find Munroe in his lap.

  She’d sat for a moment, still and thoughtful, and then rose from the chair and stepped to the bed. She placed a knee on either side of his le
gs, held his face in her hands, and kissed his forehead.

  “I won’t argue with you,” she said, “because you’re right.”

  She remained like that for a moment, her cheek to his hair, and he closed his eyes and breathed her in, hurting and happy in the same moment. He wanted to hold her, hold on to her, protect her from herself and from the world, but she wasn’t his to protect and never would be.

  She let go and backed away, walked to the window, and stared out. “I have to finish this,” she said. “I’ll get it done one way or the other, and if I have to, I’ll go alone.” She turned from the window. “I’m not threatening you, Miles, and I’m certainly not trying to manipulate you. I know you. I know that if I say I’m going, then you believe you have to go, if for no other reason than to watch my back. But I don’t want that. This might very well be a suicide mission, but it’s my mission, not yours, and I accept that fully.”

  “Why?” he said. “For God’s sake, why, Michael?”

  She quoted his words back to him. “I have a gift,” she said, “and I’m letting it serve me.”

  Bradford sat silent, the timpani of frustration building into a crescendo. Her decision was about Logan, it had always been about Logan. And some misplaced loyalty and her bullheaded stubbornness and refusal to know when enough was enough simply because her life didn’t mean as much to her as it did to other people. He paused and measured his words carefully.

  “Logan would throw you under the bus in a minute to save his daughter if it came down to it.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said. “But Hannah’s his daughter. Who is there to look after a child if not her parents?”

  “Well, sure,” Bradford said, his voice rising slightly. “But if Logan is truly what he means to you, then he should have your back, not use you as some form of human shield. That’s what this is coming down to. You’ve become a human shield. Can you even see it?”