THEY PASSED THROUGH immigration at the Croatian border and the train arrived in Zagreb in the wee morning hours while the streets were still dark and the city slept. A few people waited on the platform when they disembarked, and among them were two whose manner and posture set off Munroe’s warning instinct.
Munroe kept close to departing passengers, alert for ambush, and not wasting time or energy with words, used her body to herd and corral Neeva, keeping the girl hemmed in among the others: camouflage in numbers as they moved from platform into Glavni Kolodvor, Zagreb’s main railway station.
The building, small and almost provincial after the scope and size of Milan Central, still carried historical grandeur in its architecture, a throwback to days of glory when Zagreb, like Belgrade, Prague, and Budapest, had been a stop along the Orient Express. Not entirely deserted, the station was quiet and the sense of threat made worse by the early-morning dark and the wide area of open space outside the station.
Against the urge to run, Munroe nudged Neeva slightly faster. The sound of pursuit also picked up, but whoever kept behind them never closed the distance.
Outside, a small line of taxis waited. The shadow kept back far enough that even pointedly turning and staring in his direction, Munroe couldn’t see him.
He was a scout. Not here to kill but to report.
Bradford’s call and the news he’d delivered while they were in transit, confirmation that he’d recovered Alexis, had changed the dynamics. The Doll Maker had to wonder if she would show, and if so, if Neeva would be along—he’d need to know to plot his strategy and rearrange his pawns.
So now he knew.
The hotel was a short ride away and at the reception desk Munroe presented their documents and filled out paperwork, paid cash, and received the key for their room. They made their way to the elevator, and headed up, only to reach the sixth floor and turn around for the lobby by way of the stairs. With her arm looped in Neeva’s, Munroe led the girl through the hotel’s side exit, to nowhere in particular, along sidewalks similar to the ones she’d experienced outside the Doll Maker’s building less than a week earlier.
They were in the old city, the same general part of town where his safe house stood, where tidy streets formed a matrix of blocks built out of old three- and four-story buildings with elaborate stone facades and closed-off archways, which inevitably led to courtyards in the same way the Doll Maker’s building had.
“What was that about?” Neeva said.
“We can’t stay there, it’s not safe.”
The Doll Maker knew she was here, knew she’d have to hole up somewhere, had the names on the documents she carried, probably had the license plate and car details of the taxi itself. Now he had something to play with, something to plan and keep busy around.
“Where do we go, then?”
Munroe paused. Nudged Neeva into an arched doorway and turned to face her. “We’re waiting out the night,” she said, “and then after that there’s no more ‘we.’ I’m taking you to the U.S. embassy so that you can get home.”
“You can’t,” Neeva said. “I’m here to help you.”
“You have helped. You’ve been a tremendous help. The entire reason you came along was to use yourself as a bargaining chip, and you’ve served your purpose, but there’s nothing to trade you for anymore.”
“What about that person?” Neeva’s voice went up a notch. “Whoever was in the text?”
“She’s been rescued.”
Neeva stared at the ground. “Okay,” she said. “I understand that. But I still want to be part of whatever comes next.”
“What’s the point? You put your life on the line—bravely—but now it’s over and you can go home and start living again.”
“I can shoot. I’ve got eyes. I can watch your back.”
Munroe smiled and shook her head. “You’ll be one more person I’ll have to worry about.”
Neeva crossed her arms, and the old Neeva, the Neeva who’d spat and lunged at her, who’d sworn and fought and run, the hellion in the little girl’s body, resurfaced. “You’re going to have to drag me kicking and screaming all the way to the embassy and I’m pretty sure that’s way more trouble than I’m worth.”
“Come on,” Munroe said. “After everything we’ve been through? Don’t be a brat. I know you understand the reasons why. You might not like them, but if you were in my shoes you’d do the same thing.”
“I didn’t just come along to offer myself as a trade,” Neeva said. “That was only part of it.” She glanced up, looked Munroe full in the face. “Sure, you have your reasons, but after everything we’ve been through, you have no right to take this from me.”
“Take what from you?”
“Revenge.”
“Holy fuck, Neeva. I thought you’d got that out of your system.”
“I’ve earned this,” Neeva said. “I’ve been loyal, I haven’t questioned, I’ve kept quiet, and I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to. I haven’t caused any problems. I’ve earned it.”
“Earned what? What exactly do you think I’m going off to do?”
“Kill the head guy,” Neeva said. “I know that’s what you’re going to do.”
“And if I am?”
“I want to be a part of that. I want to see him die.”
“No.”
“You can’t take that from me.”
“I can and I will.”
“I’ll follow right after you.”
“You’re pissing me off,” Munroe said.
“Look,” Neeva said. “I’ve waited years for law enforcement, my therapist, somebody, anybody, to make sense of things that happened. I’m tired of being helpless.” She paused, took a deep breath. “And I’m tired of being scared. Either let me come along so I can prove myself and be your partner like I’ve been so far and take what help I can offer, or fight me and waste time and energy and resources.”
“Or I could kill you and get that out of the way now and save him the trouble.”
Neeva rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
“What the hell is it with your need for revenge? How can seeing him dead possibly mean that much to you? I’ll take a picture. You can post it on your bedroom ceiling and stare at it when you drift off at night.”
“You’re missing the point,” Neeva said. “You—with your scars and your killings—should know better than anyone, and instead you’re playing like you’re dumb or something. You know exactly what I want, and exactly why.”
“Neeva, it’s senseless. I’m going into this knowing I’m probably not going to come out of it alive, I might not even be able to get the guy, but I have to do this, I have no choice. You have a choice. Don’t throw away your life.”
“I’ve never wanted anything so badly as I want to finally be able to do something to someone who’s hurt me.”
“They might kill me and take you. Have you thought about that? That you not only don’t get your revenge but have to suffer through the aftermath for your stupidity?”
Neeva shrugged.
“You’ve got fucked-up priorities,” Munroe said.
“You’re one to talk.”
Munroe straightened. “You’re a liability, Neeva. If you weren’t with me right now, he’d already be dead.”
Neeva stood taller, up on the balls of her feet. “If I wasn’t with you right now, the people you love would already be dead.”
Munroe sighed. Took a step backward, out of the archway and onto the sidewalk. “I don’t have the energy to argue with you,” she said. Pulled the phone out of her pocket, turned, and began walking. “If you’re not smart enough to preserve your own life, I’m not going to waste mine trying to talk you out of being an idiot.”
MUNROE DIDN’T HAVE an address for the goldwork building, but on the drive out she’d gotten a feel for how the location related to the area. Knew what she was looking for and the general idea of where she wanted to go, and with a taxi driver doing the navigating, it wasn’t difficul
t to find her way back.
The sky, still dark when the driver deposited them one street over from their destination, had begun the shift from black to deep purple, and waiting for the dawn, Munroe walked the block, pacing lighted and quiet sidewalks that gave off a feeling of quaint and small-town safety.
Neeva, ever silent, kept beside her. No questions, no conversation, they continued in this way until Munroe came full circle and paused opposite the two jewelry storefronts to the sides of the archway in which Lumani had stood smirking in her rearview mirror.
She continued to the end of the block, found a nook within a doorway in which to wait for the sun, and when she sat, Neeva sat, too. “When I move,” Munroe said finally, “I won’t have time to explain. You either stay with me or you don’t, but if you’re left behind, you’re on your own.”
“I’ll be fine,” Neeva said, and Munroe, focused entirely on the Doll Maker’s building and the storefront windows, didn’t reply.
More than once in the drawn-out wait, the skin along the back of Munroe’s neck itched and tingled in the telltale sensation of being watched, but although her gaze sought out windows and rooftops and down the streets for some visual evidence, she found nothing to confirm it. If this was Lumani, if he’d gotten free and made it here this quickly, if he spotted her now through his scope, she welcomed him to take the shot he hadn’t in Milan, welcomed him to end things forever. But time ticked on.
The sun had fully crested the horizon, had begun its ascent in the sky, when the first opportunity to breach the Doll Maker’s building arrived in the form of a wide-shouldered, middle-aged woman in sensible shoes. She was at first, by all appearances, just one of the ever-increasing number of pedestrians heading to work, but she slowed in front of the nearest jewelry store and reached inside her purse.
Munroe was up and off the steps before the woman’s hand had fully traveled back out, was across the street by the time the keys were in her hand. Was behind the woman when the key was inserted into the lock and had the Jericho to the woman’s head as soon as the door opened.
The woman with the keys and sensible shoes opened her mouth to scream, and in the gap of silence between shock and sound, Munroe’s other hand wrapped around the woman’s face. The shrieking came, and continued to come, but muted, while the woman chomped at Munroe’s fingers and clawed with her nails, and Munroe, once more amped up on adrenaline, struck with the gun—a hard crack against the woman’s head.
For a moment the woman stopped struggling, and Munroe, shifting so her back was to the interior and her eyes to the street, worked the woman into the store. Neeva crossed the single-lane road casually as if she owned it, caught the door before it fully shut, then followed them inside and, without Munroe asking, removed the keys, relocked the door, and pulled the second handgun from the satchel.
She waved the weapon in the woman’s face theatrically, and with the realization that there were two to her one, the wide-shouldered woman, like many people when confronted by stress and overwhelmed by fear, shut down in a form of self-preservation. Behind Munroe’s hand she blabbered incoherently and then lost bladder control.
Neeva stared at the puddle on the floor.
Munroe said, “See if you can find the key to the back door.”
Neeva jangled the keys and muttered, “Yes, she can be useful.”
Ignoring her, Munroe whispered in the woman’s ear, cycling through languages until she struck recognition with Hungarian. Because of the strange wiring inside her head and the recordings she’d been force-fed, she had extensive knowledge of the language but limited colloquial ability, and so communicated her lack of intent to harm as best as she could.
The woman nodded frantically, but Munroe couldn’t risk releasing her mouth and because of this, frustration set in. This woman, if Munroe meant to keep her alive, was going to be a problem.
From the back of the store Neeva said, “Found it.”
“Don’t open it,” Munroe said. “Come here and help me look for something to stuff in her mouth.”
“I thought you work alone,” Neeva said.
“Just shut up and do it,” Munroe said, and Neeva smiled a fake smile before stepping behind the counter and rummaging through shelving and several boxes on the floor.
Munroe motioned for the woman to go behind the other display counter and to sit. “Nem akarlak bántani,” she said, “and I want you to live.” This was true. She’d come to kill the Doll Maker, to cut off the head of the organization, and the arms, and possibly the feet. But this woman—she couldn’t know if this woman was a bystander like the many who worked with gold in the main room, possibly here through no choice of her own, or if she was a player in the game.
Neeva said, “I found some box-wrapping stuff and some newspaper.”
“Good enough.”
The woman sat as instructed. Munroe wadded paper and stuffed it into her mouth, then with a roll of twine worked a thick figure-eight around the woman’s wrists, leading the twine down to her ankles, where she repeated the procedure. Not struggle-proof, but the bonds would buy time, save the woman from raising an alarm, and prevent Munroe from having to kill unnecessarily.
Four minutes in and the shop was still quiet.
Munroe straightened and stepped out from behind the counter, then slipped beyond Neeva to the rear door. Checked along the frame for any sign of security, any alarm that might be triggered by opening it, and finding nothing, turned the key. Inched the door inward, peered around the corner.
The large room was quiet, still empty of the worker bees who would, she expected, arrive soon for the daily grind. The lack of light filtering out from the Doll Maker’s lair was incongruous and surprising. Every time Munroe had passed through the main room, his light had been on, almost as if he lived in that doll-filled office like some esoteric hermit.
At the far back the large steel door stood open, and beside the door a guard sat on a metal folding chair, awake but only in the way of one who’d sat alone for far too long: eyes open but mind unengaged. Munroe motioned Neeva closer, then signaled that she should hold the door open.
Had there been no guard, Munroe would have taken Neeva inside, headed down to the prison for a quick look-see, and then returned to lie in wait in the Doll Maker’s office. But a guard indicated prisoners, and prisoners were innocent life with which evil would barter freedom or, worse, use as a control mechanism.
Munroe tucked the Jericho away and pulled the pocketknife from the largest of the cargo pockets. Metal on skin, release to anxiety, warm in her hands like blood fresh from the vein. She slipped inside, low to the ground, creeping between desks and the narrow hallways they formed. Paused occasionally to stretch a hand up in search of loose items and snagged prizes: pencil, ceramic cup, lump of wax. Collected them and moved on until she’d slunk fully across the expanse of the work floor, stopping behind a plywood wall that formed half a cubicle, close enough to the seated guard that even in the soft early light filtering through the windows, she could see the acne scars that marked his cheeks.
Munroe tossed the ball of wax across the empty aisle so that it tapped against the wall of one of the offices. The noise was soft and the guard took no notice of the muted thud that would have caused a more worthy man to look.
She tried again with the pencil. His head jerked up at the clack of wood against the wall, and his shoulders straightened. She willed him forward. Didn’t necessarily need him to pass her way, just wanted him off the chair and on his feet, away from the wall, so she wasn’t making the equivalent of an unarmed suicide lunge at a target with all of the advantage.
But the guard didn’t move and he was burning her time.
Munroe palmed the cup. If this didn’t pull the man forward, she’d be forced to shoot him and in the process draw the attention of whatever security was in the building—either upstairs in the apartments above or downstairs in the prison.
She rolled the mug, bowling style, down the concrete floor behind her, and
at this, the guard finally stood. He tapped on the metal door, a signal, she supposed, to whoever remained down in the pit.
Weapon in hand, an HK USP .45 Tactical just as the rest of the Doll Maker’s men had carried, as if it were part of some de facto bad-guy standard issue, he proceeded forward in search of the noise source. Passed along the half-wall behind Munroe, and she remained crouched beneath a desk, gauging distance and time by his footsteps, his breathing.
Munroe kept count of his paces, waiting until he’d fully passed before shifting her crouch to face him. Focus, pure and feral, tamped down the weakness of compassion and the predator resurfaced. She closed her eyes. Pulled in air through slow long breaths, drew down to the primal nature that had for days begged to be released, allowed the instinct that built layer upon layer and night after night in the jungle to assume control.
The subtle tap of his boots against the floor marked his location on the map inside her head. Step by step, turn by turn, she tracked him.
The guard bent for the cup and his shooting hand extended carelessly toward the floor. Munroe slid from beneath the desk, and as silent as in times past, like the mamba, swiftest of snakes, she struck his wrist. Twisted and sliced, paring through skin, vein, and tendon.
His weapon fell.
The guard bellowed.
She reached for the gun.
He spun toward the attack.
She rose up and fired.
Double tap to the head, the weapon’s roar silenced by the suppressor like screams choked into whispers.
The man’s bellow halted before it had fully begun. He dropped.
She paused long enough to stare at open and lifeless eyes and body twisted and crumpled on the stone floor, discarded like a sack of garbage—garbage with two rosebuds seeping from a pale pink forehead, wrist bleeding into a puddle on the floor: an ugly replica of Noah’s death.
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