The Doll

by Taylor Stevens

  He leaned forward, searched beyond the desk for Jahan. Pulled back with images from another world, another life, flooding from every pore; unspeakable things seen and experienced, bodies charred and dismembered, combat memories shoved away and better left forgotten. Sweat and emotion coated his skin while Jahan—what was left of Jahan—unrecognizable to anyone unfamiliar with the nightmare that was war, held vigil at the front of the desk.

  The smells. The blood. The wreckage.

  Jahan, who had taken the full force of the explosion, would have died instantly.

  Bradford tore off his jacket, laid it across Walker’s chest. Loosened the snaps and belt at the waist of her cargo pants. Her blood covered his hands, his jeans. Her eyes were shut and he tapped her cheek. Held her jaw, turned her face toward his, screaming inside his head though his voice entered the world as authority without horror. “Samantha.”

  Her eyelids lifted slowly.

  “Listen,” he said.

  She responded with another eye flutter.

  “The sirens are downstairs. Do you hear them? Listen!”

  Downstairs—they had to be downstairs by now.

  Help was coming. Had to be coming.

  “Here,” she whispered, teeth chattering.

  “Please,” he said. “They’re coming. Please hold on.”

  “Jack,” she said. “Package.”

  “Shhhh,” he said, and the background filled with thunder, peripheral vision with color. Boots against the silence. Rescue.

  Hands pushed him away from Walker and he fought them. “ID!” he screamed. “Need to see ID!” Although the verbal replies didn’t satisfy, they were enough for him to let go, to fade into the background while limbs and bodies blended into waves of patterns and Walker was lifted onto a stretcher.

  Bradford followed out the door. Sat with her in the ambulance while activity rushed and blurred around him, a hurried and methodical fight to keep her alive. Stayed with her from ambulance to emergency room until finally hands pushed him back again and he was left staring at a threshold he could not cross, and blinded, was guided to the same waiting room that just four mornings earlier he and Walker had entered in their search for Munroe.

  These were not the worst casualties he’d experienced; on a logical scale, a visual scale, a sensory scale, today couldn’t come close to matching mass graves of decomposing bodies, or mutilated children, or IEDs and burning personnel carriers. But these were people he loved and had bled for, this was his own land, the office was his home away from home. These were not strangers, this was not the battlefield.

  Bradford found a seat. Fell into it more than sat and stayed staring at the floor, air seeping into his lungs incrementally. He would not return to the office, not when only carnage awaited him. For now, this room was all he had: there was no place to go, no mission to accomplish. Everyone near him had, within the last four days, been ripped away, leaving in the gaping holes an empty numbness.

  He needed to get out before he imploded. Had to get back to the garage and move the Trooper with its war chest before investigating bodies got too far into digging for whatever they hoped to find.

  One foot in front of the other, more aimless than direct, Bradford left the waiting room for the outside world. Called for a taxi and then dialed Munroe again, desperate for her voice, for one ray of light in the darkness, afraid of what he might say if she did answer, afraid of himself and the inner deadening that pointed to a danger far more lethal than any rage he’d felt.

  OUTSIDE LE GAYAN, PEILLE, FRANCE

  Out of Monaco, up into the hills, roundabout to roundabout, Munroe headed away from the coast. The rearview offered no glimpse of Lumani, but she didn’t need to see him to know that, like a shadow following the beacon, a shark circling for blood, he was out there. The danger wasn’t in the running, the danger was in the stopping, and eventually she would have to stop.

  They could find sanctuary if they stayed just one step ahead for a little while longer. In Nice, the closest sizable chunk of civilization beyond Monaco, there was an American consulate—not the same level of protection as an embassy, sovereign territory on foreign soil, with its Marines and high security, but safety nonetheless.

  In Nice, Neeva could contact her parents, get a passport, and go home. In Nice, Munroe could contact Bradford. Find out about Logan. Regroup. Think. Sleep. God, she needed sleep. In Nice was a refuge, a place where, for a time, she could stop running, but she wouldn’t be able to get there in the Opel. Not with the evidence that tied her to the murder in Monaco, a murder for which she wasn’t willing to keep running for the rest of her life.

  Scanning, hunting, Munroe scouted the area, time ticking off inside her head. At every turn, every junction, she opted for provincial signage and smaller roads until they were thoroughly into countryside.

  Neatly kept fields rose and fell with the rises and dips in the terrain. Farmhouses abutted the roadway, and traffic was sporadic at best.

  A flash of red caught her attention, and she pulled the Opel off the road and followed a gravel track fifteen meters in, past laundry drying on the line and well-tended vegetable and flower gardens still in the young stage of early spring, to a courtyard between a three-story farmhouse and a building that was either storage or a barn. She stopped next to the motorbike that had caught her attention: the flash of color against the whitewashed wall.

  Munroe shut off the engine. Waited for any sign of occupancy in the house, and when there was no rustling of curtains, no face peering from window or door, and no dogs coming to greet her, she got out of the car.

  Down the road in either direction the quiet hum of nature replaced the traffic noise. Birds in a territorial screech flushed from a nearby berry bush, all of it a relative silence that made it easy to hear a car approach from far away, which meant neighbors who’d heard the Opel’s engine would have taken the time to glance out windows; meant that no matter how secluded this particular set of buildings, someone had inevitably seen her pull in and was now curious.

  Five minutes to be here and gone again, if she could find what she wanted.

  Munroe leaned toward the car window, put finger to lips, and motioned Neeva to follow; strode across the gravel parking area and up the steps to the farmhouse door.

  Peered through the glass; rapped on the frame; was answered by silence.

  The predictability of human nature said that the keys to the motorbike were inside. Would be found someplace familiar and routine: an office desk, a kitchen drawer, a key rack, or a decorative bowl—a spot intended to spare the house owners the ordeal of always having to hunt them down.

  Munroe tried the lock, and when the door swung inward, stepped in after it. Motioned for Neeva to wait on the threshold, a decision intended to keep egress clear, but especially to keep the girl from touching anything or getting underfoot.

  The side entry into the house opened at the end of a long wood-paneled and runner-lined hallway. The air inside smelled of a mixture of wax and dust. Munroe peered down the hall, stopped short at the sight of several sets of keys hanging from a rack. Softly on the runner she moved inward to snag them and then, securing them, backtracked to the kitchen; searched through cupboards and shelves, conscious of every wasted second, requisitioning as she went: long-handled broom, bottle of vodka, bottle of cognac, large tub of flour, box of matches, and knife.

  Returned to the side door and, arms full, nodded Neeva, with her inquisitive and unhelpful stare, out of the way. Munroe dumped the bounty on the ground beside the car. “Wait here,” she said, and continued to the laundry lines. Tore off a dry bedsheet and brought it to Neeva. With her foot, Munroe nudged the knife toward the girl. “Cut strips,” she said. “Lengthwise. As quickly as you can.”

  Neeva set to work without asking why, and Munroe strode toward the motorbike. Checked the tires. Tried the keys until she found the one that brought the machine to life. Noted the fuel level, then switched off the ignition and dropped the rest of the keys on the gro
und, where they’d be discovered easily enough. She had her way out, and a compromise between lost time and forensic evidence.

  Munroe returned to the Opel. Dumped the bottles of alcohol over the seats and then took three of the strips Neeva had torn and cut. Knotted the material, and with time moving faster than her fingers, the strips became a braid.

  She paused again to listen: No sound of traffic. No sign of Lumani. At least not yet. Her initial five minutes had come and gone, and although she understood his mind, his strategy, knew he was content to hold back and let her run, she also knew they’d lost the lead and he would begin to circle in for the kill.

  Munroe removed the Opel’s gas cap and used the broom handle to push most of the cloth into the tank. When the braid was soaked, she pulled it out and repeated the procedure with the other end. Reached into the back of the car to snag the backpack and tossed the bag to Neeva. Lowered the rear window on the Opel just enough to feed the wick far into the interior, place it on a puddle of alcohol. When it was set, she moved to the front.

  From the driver’s seat, she scattered the flour in the interior until it filled the air, then tossed it against the windows, over the dash, several kilos’ worth of the stuff until the inside was full of dust. Dumped the container on the ground and shut the door. “Step back a few feet,” she said, and when Neeva complied, she lit a match and set the wick alight at its center.

  Took Neeva by the elbow and hurried her toward the bike.

  The flame traveled in both directions, the dust explosion inside the car louder and flashier than the slower burn of the fuel in the gas tank, all told not enough to destroy the vehicle in an exciting ball of flame, but enough. Fibers and hair were gone and the fuel would continue to feed the fire and raise the surface temperature inside the car enough to warp plastic and rid it of any prints that were left.

  Mouth agape, Neeva stared at the car.

  “Flour can do that?” she said.

  Munroe prodded her forward. “We’re in a hurry,” she said. “We need to go.”

  TWO-WHEELED VEHICLES WERE not created equal. The motorbike, closer to scooter than motorcycle, was a world away from the Ducati abandoned in Dallas, black-on-black with speed and torque and adrenaline rush, but in the moment, as a way of escape and of pushing closer to ending the madness, it was every bit as beautiful.

  With the Opel billowing black smoke, Munroe revved away from the farmhouse, bike tires spitting gravel, instinct adjusting for the differences between the power with which she was familiar and this lesser thing.

  Neeva squeezed hard and pressed her forehead into Munroe’s shoulder.

  Reaching the asphalt, Munroe gained speed and traction. Down the road to the left, in the direction they’d come, activity announced itself in flashes of color. Not Lumani, but neighbors, inevitably curious about the noise, the smoke. Munroe took the turn hard and Neeva yelped; they headed in the opposite direction of whatever was going on down the road.

  Without access to the GPS, without a solid bearing on roads that twisted and wound in no specific direction, sporadic signs to tiny and unrecognizable towns became meaningless markers forcing them to wander toward the edge of lost until the roads became larger, the signage pointed to the familiar, and the refuge of Nice, which had begun to dissipate like a mirage, phased back into a solid, viable destination.

  Into towns, along two-lane streets that ran through the heart of them, the journey segmented into one roundabout and junction to the next; curving with mountain ridges and through tunnels, traffic often backing up in long stretches behind slower-moving vehicles. Not once did Neeva lift her forehead from the shoulder she’d planted it against, and her squeeze tightened whenever Munroe pulled out of the traffic queue and straddled the line, weaving ahead of cars in a way that would have brought on aggression back home, but here was no different than the erratic riding of the many other mopeds and scooters on the road.

  They couldn’t move as fast as Lumani, not if he was driving anything similar to Arben’s Passat, but by zigzagging and maneuvering, cutting through traffic, they would gain a time advantage nothing on four wheels ever could.

  Downhill and up again, Munroe bought minutes, bought Neeva’s life in increments, until finally the road wound steadily downward and they reached the city, and neared the coast with the same humidity and salt-tinged breeze that had caressed Monaco’s air.

  Like the boardwalk in San Diego or South Beach, the coastal avenue of Nice was green and palm-tree-lined, and even this early in the season was filled with locals and tourists alike, cyclists, pedestrians, and skaters, all threading along the walking paths. Once within the city Munroe knew the way without directions, could find the building that anyone else would be hard-pressed to locate without having been there before.

  A stone’s throw from the beach, and two doors down from a police station that filled the corner of the block, just far enough back from the ocean that the crowds were thinner, the consulate was housed three floors up in a nondescript office building. Only a small square plaque near the intercom buttons announced its presence. No flag. No sign. No nothing.

  Munroe took the bike up onto the sidewalk. Thumb-punched the intercom for the consulate before she’d fully switched off the ignition. “Get off,” she whispered to Neeva, and when the intercom hissed, she said, “American citizens, passport issues.”

  After a short delay, the door buzzed and Munroe stretched forward to grab it. “Hold it open,” she said, and Neeva, still sliding off the seat, reached out, took the handle, and stood in the door frame.

  Munroe set the kickstand. Left the key in the ignition and hoped against hope that someone would brave the police station and steal the bike. She took Neeva by the elbow, prodded her inside, and shut the door behind them.

  With the thud, with the silence in the cool empty foyer, with only postal boxes and an elevator bank for company, one world ended and another began. Munroe slumped against the wall, and for the first time since she’d felt the sting on her thigh those many, many hours ago in Dallas, she truly breathed.

  She had brought Neeva to safety.

  Realization settled, and against the wall, eyes closed and thumb to the bridge of her nose, she allowed the first wave of relief to reach inside. From here, she could discharge her duty and plot her own way forward.

  When she opened her eyes, Neeva, looking as tired and beat-up as Munroe felt, was studying her. Munroe straightened. Pushed off from the wall and nodded toward the elevator. “Up we go,” she said.

  THE ELEVATOR OPENED onto a cramped foyer with a door on either side. One led to the stairwell; the other, metal-reinforced and CCTV-monitored, to the consulate.

  When they stepped off the elevator, a uniformed guard waited for them.

  Asked for passports, Munroe offered a modified version of the truth and presented the person of Neeva Eckridge in their stead.

  The guard left them. Disappeared behind the metal door. Returned a few moments later and opened the door wide. They moved from a small foyer to an even smaller entryway, made impossibly cramped by both an X-ray machine and a metal detector, and before allowing them into the consulate proper, the guard X-rayed the backpack and requested all electronics.

  Munroe handed over the bag. “Just keep it all,” she said. “I’ll get it on my way out.”

  The consulate filled the entire floor of the narrow building and was itself not more than one large room, partitioned by false walls and windowed booths that made it possible for those in the waiting area to see, if not hear, most of what went on beyond the accessible spots.

  A young couple sat on one of the couches. Munroe assumed newlyweds, from their body language, and their facial expressions guaranteed that they recognized Neeva. Were it not for cell phones having been commandeered by the guard, she would have bet thirty seconds before images of Neeva hit the social networks.

  The consulate’s one staff member called Neeva to the window, and after a rush of hushed conversation, motioned for her to
return to the guard area and from there through the security door that would allow her on the other side of the partition.

  Backing away from the window and the woman behind it, turning in the direction she’d been ushered, Neeva glanced at Munroe for reassurance.

  Munroe nodded her on.

  This was how it should be. The wheels would start spinning, the phones ringing, and the powers-that-be would throw their weight into Neeva’s fight. As for herself, all Munroe wanted was a phone that could make international calls. She needed to contact Bradford, and surely the consulate had one, but until the issue with Neeva was settled, until Munroe had been vetted, she wouldn’t bother asking to use it.

  The last of Neeva’s dress passed around the corner, and Munroe, depleted beyond empty and with nothing more to do than allow fate to run its course, turned toward the waiting area’s smaller couch. Ignoring the accusatory stares from the couple and the disapproving look of the guard, she sat, shifting her head to the armrest, her knees dangling over the edge, let go, and fell hard into oblivion.

  THE COUPLE LEFT. Others entered and were soon on their way again. Another staff member arrived to tend fully to Neeva: On the edge of sleep, Munroe was aware of all of these things, but she pushed them away and allowed time to pass and a dreamless darkness to consume her until finally the room was quiet.

  She begged the use of a phone. The consulate staff member passed the handset under the glass and, on Munroe’s behalf, punched in the number for Bradford’s cell as Munroe recited it. The connection made, Munroe nodded her thanks, and while it rang, dread and desire mixed, swirling, within a beaker of conflicted emotion.

  More than anything, she craved the soothing of Bradford’s voice, craved to drop from the pressure and the pain, from death and the fractured reality of the present back to peace—the way things were when she was with him, the way they’d been before this nightmare had struck. But the call would also bring news of Logan, news she could not bear to hear, yet must.