The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel

by Stevens, Taylor

Maybe some people need killing, maybe by taking them out you break the cycle of pain and suffering.

  Munroe’s eyes remained to the front, centered on what would appear to be some invisible distance. The boss stepped back into the semicircle. Whispered again. His third placed a spring blade in his waiting hand. The boss switched the knife open and squatted again, eye to eye with Munroe. He took the blade up, underneath her chin, pointed into that sweet spot so favored for the kill. He pressed so that in order to avoid puncture, she was forced to tilt her head upward and back, and when she had lifted as high as she could, had tightened all the skin along her neck, he flicked.

  The blade took a quick slice, not deep, but enough to feel, enough to draw blood. “Where did you send the girl?” he said again, only this time he spoke in nearly unaccented English.

  “I didn’t send anyone anywhere,” she said.

  The boss stood. Turned to the men behind him and let out a half-laugh. “English?” he said, as if surprised to discover that what he thought was a long shot turned out instead to be true. English was correct as far as he knew. He could have used Italian, German, Turkish, Ibo, or any one of twenty-something languages, and the result would have been the same.

  “But you didn’t speak English when you were around my friends.”

  “What friends?” Munroe said.

  The boss shook his head. His was the look of impatience, the look she wanted.

  He motioned a finger upward, and two of his men left the half circle for the chair, knelt, sliced at the bonds on her ankles. Beefy hands closed around each of her arms. They jerked her upward and shoved her toward the boss man. Munroe struggled to maintain footing. Her hands were still palm to palm, and the rope still slack.

  Munroe breathed in the aura of this man and his intended violence, absorbing until he blended with the memory and musk of Pieter Willem, until they were one inside her head.

  The boss drew the knife up toward her face, smiling as her eyes tracked it. He pointed it down toward her chest. In a quick movement he sliced the material of her shirt; sliced through the undershirt. The clothing fell away, leaving her chest exposed.

  The boss man turned to his men, jerked his thumb toward Munroe, and said, “See, I told you she was a woman.” He drew close, his breath hot against her neck. Ran his finger along her nipple. Tweaked it.

  “I was right,” he whispered. “I do know you.” He took the blade and played it against her skin. “And now that you’re no longer their guest but mine, I will treat you as I please.”

  He paused when he saw the slivers that marked her torso, stared at them a moment and then his face creased into a half grin. “I see I won’t be the first,” he said. “Did he make you cry, the one who did this? Did he make you bleed?”

  He stretched closer, sniffed her neck and her hair, licked her, his tongue running from her ear to her cheek and over her eye. “Did he make you suffer the way I will make you suffer?”

  The rush of blood was loud in Munroe’s ears, a heavy pounding that drowned out the world, drowned out everything but the man in front of her, and shouted the command to kill.

  Instinct.

  Timing.

  Calculation.

  In a last effort toward reason, she forced it back, fought against the urge, offered a way of escape to someone who deserved none.

  “Let me go now,” she said, her voice low, nearly a monotone, “and I won’t kill you.”

  In response, the boss laughed. His bark was hard and unfeeling, a mockery. “Please, little girl,” he said. “You go ahead and try to kill me. It would make for an entertaining morning.”

  She sighed.

  Wrong answer.

  It was always the wrong fucking answer.

  Her eyes closed as pleasure flowed through her system. This was the point of no return, the pre-rush of a killing. There was no going back. She had no regrets, had made her peace, would die happy if such was the outcome. She’d traded her life for an innocent child’s, and it had been an even trade.

  “I will tell you what you want,” she said.

  “Yes,” he whispered, his eyes on the knife as it caressed her skin. “You will.”

  He paused, broke from his trance, and slipped the knife into his jacket pocket. Sudden and violent, he drove a fist into her stomach and knocked her to her knees. He leaned over her and ran his fingers along her cheek.

  Time slowed. Motion was broken into the fragmented jerking of strobe-light speed. Munroe’s fingers worked, wrist passing, bonds loosening. She looked up, and this time, she smiled death.

  One movement, solid, fluid, fast. Knees to feet. Upward. Forehead into his face. Fast enough to break his nose, hard enough to whip his head backward. Her hand to his pocket. His knife to her palm. Arm around his neck. Blade to his throat.

  In the time it took for his bodyguards and bullies to draw their weapons.

  The boss man’s arms flailed, trying to get a grip, trying to gain balance as she dragged him backward along the far side of the semicircle toward the table and the wall that lay behind it. He was strong. Nearly her weight. Equal to her height, and such was the beauty of adrenaline and the rush that it bore that she didn’t feel his strength, didn’t know his weight, and pulled him along like a ragdoll.

  The men, afraid to fire and hit their leader, followed instead, tightening the circle and drawing near.

  Munroe flicked the boss man’s neck, drawing blood.

  “Back,” she hissed, and each of the men from the semicircle paused in their encroachment.

  Her cut had been more carefully placed than his had been. She’d struck the jugular, like putting a hole in a dike, and he, still flailing, not yet accepting his fate, seemed unaware that the harder he fought, the faster he’d die. He got hold of one of her ears. Began to dig, tear, pull.

  She stabbed his hand.

  He screamed.

  “Right now you’re just in pain,” Munroe said, “but if your men don’t put their weapons down, you’ll be dead.”

  He hissed an unintelligible response.

  She reached the table. Stepped around it. The wall was solid, cold against what was left of her shirt. No one would be coming at her from behind, and the table forced at least six feet of space between her and the others.

  To her captive Munroe whispered, “You’re bleeding. Badly. At this rate you’ll be dead in twenty minutes. Do you want to make a trip to the hospital or do you want to make a trip to the morgue?”

  She’d spoken a lie to keep him motivated; at the rate he was bleeding, he’d be lucky to last ten.

  He stopped struggling. She could feel his body weakening, either through defeat or because with his neck held in the vise of her arm, she’d slowed the blood supply to his brain. The reason mattered little.

  “Drop them,” he said to his men. His voice was low, a whisper.

  “They can’t hear you,” she hissed.

  “Drop your weapons,” he said again. Not much louder, although this time he flailed one arm up and down to emphasize the point.

  In case there was any doubt, Munroe repeated the command, and when the men hesitated, didn’t move at all, she dropped the tip of the knife into the tender of the boss man’s shoulder joint and yanked.

  He screamed again.

  The men placed their drawn weapons on the floor.

  “Scoot them under the table with your feet,” Munroe said, and then added to the boss man’s driver, “You. Fat guy. Toss the car keys on the table.”

  When they’d done as instructed, she nodded to the two closest to the warehouse entrance. “Get the doors,” she said.

  Munroe couldn’t reach for the weapons on the floor, couldn’t collect them and maintain her hold on the boss. They knew it. She knew it. They knew she knew it. She counted seconds as the two faded in the dimness toward the sliding doors.

  Now was the moment of weakness, when the four still standing on the other side of the table would begin to close in.

  Across the warehouse, t
he gate men slowed. Dawdled. They were killing time, keeping the escape route sealed off while they waited for their counterparts to take action. She was losing the upper hand, the window that she’d gained by surprise was closing.

  The four around the table fanned out, inched forward, moving in a way that was far too confident for unarmed men, no matter how loyal they might be.

  Instinct again. The fastest way to survival. Munroe dropped the boss—just let go and let him fall. He collapsed under his own weight, and she went down with him. Pulled two weapons off the floor. Dip and grab. No time to look, just take what she could get, then point and click.

  Her fists closed around a pair of Bersa Thunder 9s, identical to the one pulled off her earlier. If the magazines were full, and they would be, they afforded seventeen rounds apiece. If that didn’t cover what she needed, she deserved to get shot.

  Still lying on her side, she fired. A warning discharge, aimed toward the floor in front of the men nearest the table. The report was a loud echo in the emptiness. They jumped, crouched, backed away only to the edge of the light. Time continued to move in split-second intervals, body language screaming in a way that words never could. The men were each reaching.

  Backup weapons.

  If she was going down, she wasn’t going down alone. Munroe paused. Calmed her breathing. Double tapped. The closest man yelped. Fell. Wounded but alive. For now.

  The boss moved to get up. She drove an elbow into his face and then downward against his cut shoulder. He screamed again.

  She slid over the top of him so that his body remained a shield between the shooters and the wall, and with one weapon pressed into his spine, said, “Move again, and you’re paralyzed for life. Understand?”

  He groaned.

  The three men remained on the periphery of light, inching forward again, trying to find a line of sight between the legs of the table and chairs and past their boss. The warehouse doors were still closed.

  Munroe yelled into the darkness, “One minute to get the doors open or one of your people dies.”

  This time the shooters backed fully into the darkness; nobody wanted to be first. The occasional shuffle, toe scrape, and rustle betrayed position. They were close, just out of sight. The distance would make it difficult for them to shoot with accuracy, but there was always dumb luck and shrapnel. Especially when the lights blinded Munroe to what lay beyond the table area and made her an easy target.

  She shifted forward. Aimed. Popped the lights, and the warehouse went completely black. Her eyesight ringed with the burning images of the powerful lamps, but even effectively night-blinded as she was, the darkness was still home.

  Their eyes would have adjusted first, it would make them brave. Brave enough to crawl in close where they could see. She knelt. Waited. Listened. Then stood to a crouch, fished the keys off the table, and ducked back down to where the table and chair legs provided a modicum of cover.

  She whispered to the boss, “You’ve been deserted.” She punched the muzzle of the gun to the back of his head. “Get up.”

  He struggled to push upward to hands and knees. His breathing was slow, shallow. He’d lost a lot of blood, wouldn’t last much longer. She needed to get to the car before any collateral she held in him ran out.

  Chapter 34

  Logan brought the taxi to a stop several hundred feet from the warehouse. The building was impossible to miss. Even in this remote industrial area, with fewer buildings and ample land between them, it still stood out from the rest, an easy story or two above the other buildings on the street. And from this distance, with the exception of an SUV parked just off to the side at the front, the entire structure appeared quiet and empty.

  Unlike the other buildings set off from the road, there were no trucks idling or laborers milling about, no activity at all. And although Logan would have assumed it to be an illusion, the wide sliding doors were open and welcoming to the world.

  “What do you make of it?” Logan said.

  Gideon shook his head, as if pondering a puzzle for which he had no answer. He reached to the backseat and grabbed the desk clerk’s shirt, pulled so that the man’s line of sight was above the dashboard. “Are you sure that’s the right place?” he said.

  The clerk, gagged and swollen, nodded, and Gideon said, “Look at the doors. Is it normal for them to be open like that?” The clerk shook his head for no, and Gideon let him drop back to the seat.

  They believed he’d led them to the right spot, and believed his answers. Not because he was a trustworthy guide, but because two hours ago his self-interest had aligned with their own. They’d taken him out of town and, in the dark of a field, with his body spread-eagled and staked to the ground and a gun muzzle pressed to his hand, threatened to shoot off one finger at a time until he told them what they wanted. It wasn’t fear of pain that spoke to him as much as reassurance of release. They wanted their friend, their predicament was that simple, and when he brought them to where she’d been taken, when they knew without a doubt where she was, they’d let him go. That was all. It was either that or the fingers, and then toes, and whatever else it took to get what they wanted.

  Logan took the cab another several hundred feet forward before stopping completely and shutting off the engine. Here at this vantage point, not far from the warehouse entrance, they sat, watching and waiting.

  The area was quiet, the street traffic slow, and after a half hour had passed with no movement, Logan reached for the door handle.

  “We’re burning daylight,” he said. “She’s either in there or she’s not.”

  Gideon turned to the backseat. “We live, you live,” he said, and the desk clerk nodded. They knew he’d try to get loose while they were away, any sane person would, but he wouldn’t succeed.

  From the trunk Logan and Gideon pulled out the submachine guns. The pieces were too large to conceal under their jackets, and with the building set back off the road, they still had a few hundred feet to cover, but the security of having the higher-powered weapons overrode the little risk of being seen carrying them.

  Gideon, whose hands were in the bag, tossed three loaded magazines at Logan and awkwardly shoved an equal number into his waistband and pockets. Any more and the weight would drag them down.

  The clerk seemed to think they’d find between five and ten men with Munroe, but even if he was off in his guess, or if he’d lied to skew the odds, unless a small, well-equipped army waited on the other side of those doors, what they carried should be enough.

  Gideon closed the trunk, and Logan stopped at the front passenger door. He kicked at the side mirror until it came loose, picked it up, and carried it with him. They walked in silence until they went off the pavement and Gideon stooped to gather several pebbles. Logan didn’t bother asking what for. He knew.

  They came at the building from far off the street, from the side where their approach would be unseen from within the windowless walls. Gideon neared the SUV, walked backward along half the body, peering into the windows, confirmed it empty, and signaled Logan forward. The only sounds were the light crunch of their boots against the gravel.

  Logan followed the building’s front wall to the edge of the open door, and there he tipped the mirror forward in a crude form of periscope, reflecting back what images he could gather. The mirror showed no movement. Along the vast, empty floor were lumps here and there. Bodies, perhaps. The lighting and angle made it difficult to tell.

  He nodded at Gideon, who in turn tossed a pebble through the doors. The clack of the stone was hard against the floor, a repeated echo while the little rock bounced several times before settling.

  Still, there was silence.

  Gideon repeated the procedure. Again they listened.

  No gunfire. No footsteps. No voices. Nothing.

  Together, they rounded the open wall and flattened along its inside seam.

  Daylight from the doors lit the interior nearly a hundred feet inward, and although the building continued on
past the light, the bodies were out in the open, visible from where they stood.

  There were seven, all men, strewn across the floor with wide spaces between.

  Gideon stood still, staring, mouth slightly agape. He walked toward the center of the violence, and there turned in a slow circle. “This is the right place, isn’t it? She was here, wasn’t she?”

  The tone of his questions framed the level of his disbelief.

  Logan reached the first body. Knelt. “Yes,” he said. “It’s the right place.”

  “You should get a picture of this,” Gideon said. “Miles will never believe it.”

  Logan felt for a pulse. Expected nothing, got nothing. The man’s skull was shaped wrong; his body appeared broken and disjointed, as if he’d fallen from the rafters of the building—or been hit by a car. “Miles will believe it,” Logan said. “He’s seen this stuff firsthand, up close and personal.”

  Logan stood, turned to face Gideon and continue his explanation, but when he saw Gideon’s face, he remained silent and went on to another of the bodies.

  He was allowing Gideon space to process the scene that surrounded them. It wasn’t the carnage, Logan knew that much. Gideon had seen—experienced—far worse. But there were seven dead, Munroe was missing, and Gideon would gradually realize that all of this had been caused by the same woman that he had tried to bully into a fight just days before.

  The awareness of what he’d escaped was a little late in coming, but better late than never. “What do you think happened here?” Gideon said finally.

  Logan shrugged. “At this level of violence, I think someone probably touched her. You know, sexually.” He strode to the next man, knelt again, and felt for a pulse as he had the first two. The bodies were cooling but not cold. “She tries to avoid bloodshed,” Logan said. “Especially so much of it. But there are a few things that will completely set her off and cause something like this, and if someone gets sexually violent with her, he’s soon a dead man.”

  “All of them?” Gideon asked.

  “I don’t know,” Logan said. He paused, turned a slow circle, and then pointed at a man pooled in blood and crumpled up against a wall riddled with bullet holes. “That guy,” he said, and walked toward him. “It looks like he bled to death from the knife wounds. I don’t know about the others, but this one carries all the hallmarks of Michael. Whoever he was, he really pissed her off. I venture he’s the one in charge.”