The Doll (14 page)

He bent to retrieve the blade, and when he drew closer and
Neeva caught sight of him and the object in his hand, she began to struggle again.

Munroe increased the pressure and the girl screamed. Munroe reached for the handle of the knife Lumani held in her direction.

The cold metal connected with Munroe’s hand, and her sight grew dim with the rush of expectant euphoria. The cell faded to gray and the lust for blood rose inside, a response to the blade and the history the metal represented, an unbearable urge that screamed to be let loose.

“Leave,” Munroe said, because if he didn’t, she’d not have the control to finish what had to be done here and would instead turn the knife first on him and then on the Arbens, to force an escape for herself and this girl, and in the end, Logan would be lost.

Lumani didn’t move. With a knee pressed into Neeva’s chest, and gripping the knife in one hand and still twisting the girl’s arm with the other, Munroe turned her eyes to him. Teeth gritted, she said in English, “Leave
now
or there will be consequences.”

Lumani’s lips parted with unspoken words, and without breaking eye contact, he backed away as if encountering a mad dog. Not even waiting for him to fully exit the door, Munroe turned the knife toward Neeva and, with the blade tipped away from the girl’s throat and into the collar of the shirt, sliced through the fabric down to the elastic of the pants, and farther to the crotch. Then Munroe flicked the fabric away with the blade so that Neeva lay chest naked to the ceiling.

“I can get off you now,” Munroe said, “and allow you to dress yourself, or we can continue to do this the hard way.”

Neeva’s face twisted to hold back the tears. “I’ll do it,” she whispered, and her voice rasped thick and dry in response to the struggle and the pressure the chain had made against her windpipe.

Munroe backed off, a slow, staggered process of first releasing the arm, unwinding the chain, and then removing her knee and standing up. With each phase, Neeva lay completely still, as if she had finally understood that any movement might undo this little progress and that to concede now meant a chance to fight again later.

When Munroe was upright and had once more stepped behind the chair and the dress, she said, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Neeva said nothing but stood and stared defiantly at Munroe for
a long moment, and then, dramatically, every bit the actress before an audience, loosed the sliced clothing and let it drop to the mattress. Naked, never breaking eye contact, she reached for the dress and with some struggle slipped into it.

Clothed, she stepped barefoot and cocky off the mattress, to the floor, exaggeratingly tugging on the chain with her left leg as if to say
Now what?

Munroe picked the roll of tape and the blanket off the chair, grabbed the back of it, and dragged it, the metal scraping across the floor, out into the hall, hating herself, hating the Doll Maker and the man-boy and the thugs and the perverse underbelly of human nature that cloaked base desire in goodness and pointed fingers and created scapegoats.

She stood in front of Lumani and, before the urge to put the blade to further use could be fulfilled, dropped the knife on the floor at his feet. Were there no market, no buyers, and no men willing to pay for sex, organizations that fed off human misery and criminals like the Doll Maker who stole and cashed in on the value of the female body would cease to exist.

“I want to kill you,” she said.

He smiled. Picked up the knife. “The feeling is mutual.”

“I need the key.”

“Have you damaged her?”

“I’m not stupid,” Munroe said. “So get me whatever else you want her to wear, shoes perhaps, so that we can be on our way.”

Lumani didn’t turn from her. Studying her face, searching her eyes in a way that betrayed more of himself than he might imagine, he gave the order to Arben Two in Albanian. The man turned and went up the stairs, and as the echoed thuds played out in the enclosed underground, Lumani’s unabashed study continued until the man returned and handed over a box.

Without conceding the stare-down, Lumani gave the box to Munroe and handed her a key. Only then did she avert her eyes, and that only because she had to. In the entirety of the alpha chest-thumping exercise, she’d read him, he’d read her, and without a word they understood each other just fine.

Samantha Walker laddered over Bradford’s body, from knee, to shoulder, to wall, and then settled, balanced, at the top and belly-crawled in a slow move toward a better view. She’d gone up instead of him because she was the smaller and lighter of the two, and her whisper fed into his earpiece: Equipment. Camera positions. Distance.

If they’d been planning to play it safe, to run conventional surveillance, this would have been the place to set up shop, but they didn’t have the time or the resources for smart or safe. Saving Munroe meant finding Logan, and tonight that meant kicking down doors.

After a long pause, Walker said, “Window. Second floor of the warehouse, north side. A yellow light just switched on.”

Bradford heard the snag in her thoughts, felt it, too, as it charged down his spine. Until now, the property had appeared empty, but where there were lights there were people, and people meant guards, and guards meant prisoners.

“Come on down,” he whispered. “Let’s go in through the front door.”

Walker slid backward, hung off the wall, and dropped the remaining four feet. “Drunk and angry?” she said.

He nodded. “Should work.”

Should
. On a run like this, everything was guesswork.

While Bradford drove, Walker stripped out of her overshirt, leaving just the tight-fitting cami to conceal what little it could of her chest. They were possibly walking into a line of fire without protection, but they’d never get through the front door dressed for war. She pulled her hair out of the ponytail and ran her fingers through it. Thick black waves dropped over her shoulders.

“You sure you want to do this?” Bradford asked.

She rolled her eyes, and he said, “Okay then.”

From the end of the alley, he headed back to the main road. Stopped just before reaching the target, beyond the range of the cameras, and stayed only long enough for Walker to step out.

Bradford continued one complex south, parked where he could keep an eye on her while she meandered to the front gate, steps uneven and exaggerated. She pulled on the chain-link gate and shook it. Attempted to climb, one clumsy boot toe that couldn’t gain purchase. Slid down in an incoherent stumble.

Additional security lights powered on.

Once more she shook the fence, shouting. Paused to wipe her nose against her arm. On the northeast corner of the warehouse, a camera shifted. Her performance kicked up a notch, and she continued, dragging her fingers along the loops of the fence, a slow stumble in Bradford’s direction, while occasionally attempting another unsuccessful climb to the top.

A side door to the warehouse opened and a solitary male stepped out. He was bulky, though not from fat, and short enough to look like a brick in rumpled clothes, shirt half-tucked into jeans. If he was carrying a weapon, he was smart enough to keep it out of sight. The closer he got, the softer his expression became, until, right in front of Walker, he almost looked compassionate.

Walker staggered some more, rubbed her eyes, and swiped at her nose again. Held a conversation that Bradford couldn’t hear because with Walker so scantily dressed there’d been no place to safely stash a wire, but he got the general idea. The man gestured. Walker nodded and ran her palm over her eyes, wiping away tears. In her lifetime, she’d taken more than one poker pot with that same act of drunken, pitiful helplessness that wrenched male heartstrings and tugged at their zippers.

The man pulled a key ring from his pocket and opened the lock to the gate. Walker slipped inside. The man made to relock it, but Walker’s drama started again and she strode in the direction of the door he’d exited so that he had no choice but to leave the lock and follow her.

No further camera movement, no light flickering from the few warehouse windows, no backup personnel. The entire response seemed to be a solitary watchman pulling night duty and sleeping on his shift.

Bradford waited until Walker was halfway from gate to building, and then moved out of the vehicle and into the night. Slipped through the opening.

Ahead, Walker stumbled slightly, and when the man dropped an arm around her and stooped to help, she glanced over her shoulder, noted Bradford, and continued on. The two reached the door, and as Walker passed inside, her right hand transferred from her back pocket to brush along the door frame.

The door shut.

Bradford fought the urge to rush in ahead of plan to watch the back of a partner who had just broken every rule in the live-long playbook.

He’d known it would happen and still bristled.

Counted seconds.

And then hand to handle, he tugged on the door. The latch, depressed by a strip of tape, opened effortlessly. Bradford listened, scoped out what he could, and then slipped inside.

The warehouse was truly that, a large and mostly empty building lined with industrial shelving that bore empty pallets. Forklifts slept nearby. Near the truck bays at the front stood a minimal amount of freight, stacked and ready for loading. The legitimacy took him by surprise.

There had to be a holding place, a way station, some soundproof location to keep the trafficked women, and it made sense that if such a place existed, it would work equally well for keeping Logan. Everything they had learned about this warehouse, about this company, screamed that what they looked for must be here. But this place was all wrong.

To Bradford’s right, metal stairs ascended along the inner wall to
the second floor, to offices apparently, which occupied only the back quarter of the building and hung over pilings and empty space, and from where voices now carried, one of them distinctly Walker’s being drunk, which was good.

Bradford traced the ceiling, searching out cameras, and found nothing. For all the electronic eyes pointed outward, security on the inside was sparse. He moved along the perimeter, from shelving to pallets to forklifts, and found nothing that might indicate a false-paneled room or even a hiding place beneath his feet.

The conversation upstairs continued, still only two voices. Men weren’t often silent around Walker, which meant that Warehouse Man was alone, and without more men, Logan, if he had ever been here, was not here now.

The office door opened, and Bradford retreated to the shadows beneath the stairs. Walker teased and stumble-walked her way down with the guy close behind. Fiddled with the keys to a forklift. Warehouse Man tried to take them from her and she slipped beyond him laughing, plugged them into the ignition, and ran the engine. The noise, however long it lasted, was a perfect cover for footfalls against the metal stairs. Bradford hurried now. Warehouse Man would only endure so much teasing and forklift play before the situation turned nasty.

The upstairs was as Bradford expected, two rooms and a restroom area the size of a small closet, the latter with a small outside ventilation window, which was where Walker had spotted the light.

Half of the first room was allocated for security monitors, the other half to a desk with two computer towers, one without a monitor. On the desk in front of the security cameras, a handgun lay naked and exposed.

A nice Walker touch.

Bradford reached for the weapon, then stopped. Taking it would only alert the Doll Maker’s people to their movements. Bradford turned to the second room, in which was a conference table, several chairs, a coffeemaker, and a couple of filing cabinets. No Logan.

Then, even from this far back in the office he could hear the change of tone downstairs. The forklift had been silenced. Walker was shouting. Bradford headed out the door.

Downstairs, Walker shook a fist in Warehouse Man’s face.

He tried to grab her hand, to grab her.

Bradford started down the stairs.

Warehouse Man lunged at Walker and she scooted around a pallet, a lot less drunk and a lot more angry. The man swore at her, and with an accent thick and foreign called her a bitch and a whore.

Bradford made it to the bottom of the stairs and hesitated.

Walker screamed, “Get the hell out of my way,” and Bradford bolted for the exit knowing that the message had been intended for him and not the cur that stood between them.

In the parking lot he checked his watch, anxiety rising. To be on the outside while a partner was still within those walls was wrong on every level.

Half a minute and the noise moved in his direction. Bradford retreated toward the shadows, mindful of the cameras and of the distance yet to cover. Louder it came: Walker close and moving quickly.

Bradford bolted for the gate and reached it just as she came barreling out the door, running full out with Warehouse Man not far behind. Bradford faced the two, waited until Walker blew past, and then, in character, charged toward Warehouse Man. “What the
fuck
are you doing with my girlfriend?”