The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (39 page)

In the wake of ebbing hunger, the full weight of exhaustion descended, and in the dark, warm cocoon of the closet, Munroe fought to stay alert, to stay awake. She didn’t need a nightmare now. Not on top of everything else, and if she slept, completely fatigued as she was, it was also possible she might sink so fully that she missed port call on the other side.

The rumble of the ship played melody to the beat of its rocking, and against Munroe’s mental protest, her body, drowsy, weak, and demanding that its needs be met, was lulled into a complete shutdown.

The night was black, the sky starless, and from across the length of sand came the rhythmic wash of waves upon the shore. It was deserted here, no light of civilization, no intrusion of humanity into this quiet. Alone, with only the smell of fish, salt, the subtle fragrance of jasmine, and the warm ocean breeze kissing her skin, Munroe rocked in the hammock
.

It mattered not that she couldn’t see or that the cadence of the water completely muted all other sound, because she could feel. In this space of complete darkness there was only tranquillity. Here was a haven of nothing, nothing that could go on, and on, and on …

The voice of rhythm shifted to a low grumble, Munroe’s eyes blinked open, and she drew in air as if she’d been long without it. Her
surroundings were still dark but no longer tranquil. Disoriented, she struggled to give place and meaning to the confines of this space and then calmed, remembering where she was and realizing that the shift had come from the ship’s engines reversing.

The ferry was pulling into port. She’d no idea how long she’d been under, and at which port was anyone’s guess.

She felt through the darkness, and with relief, her fingertips returned an uneventful story. The knife was still in her pocket, the container on top of the box where she’d left it. There were no fragments of clothing, no shards of destroyed property. Uncomfortable as it was, shoulder propped against the wall for a pillow, she’d slept soundly and, for the first time in three months, had slept without dreaming violence.

Footsteps and voices filtered in from beyond the door, and the sounds of car engines coming to life indicated that passengers were disembarking. Munroe stood, smoothed down the wrinkles that would inevitably be on her clothes, ran her fingers across her head, and cracked the door a sliver.

Munroe waited for an opening, drew back the door, and as if she had every right to be there, stepped alongside traffic. Without looking back, and ignoring the occasional stare in her direction, she made for the dock and strode down the gangplank.

Montevideo
.

From the wharf, the cityscape poked above commercial transport containers stacked three and four high, and in the cool of the lengthening afternoon, Munroe paused to take in the air of the place. The city was so much smaller than its sister capital three hours west, but still nearly two million strong, and had she not at least an idea of how to begin searching for Bradford, her path would have been one more needle in a very large, very time-consuming haystack.

The Buquebus terminal in Montevideo shared space with commercial shipping, although the passengers disembarked on the second floor, as they had in Buenos Aires. Munroe bypassed immigration
and customs controls by wandering directly off the dock, deeper into the containers, eventually moving on foot beyond a cursory security checkpoint and into the streets of the oldest part of the city where buildings, centuries old, were arrayed in a matrix on a peninsula of sorts.

Munroe hailed a taxi, the same bumblebee black and yellow of Buenos Aires, and with nearly the last of her money caught a ride to the central post office. There was but a mile to travel, a short jaunt between the ferry and the center of the old town, but she was short on energy and short on time; she wanted this over, and even with the ride, she stepped through the doors dangerously close to quitting time.

Montevideo’s primary post office was small compared to the stately building that housed it: one large room lined corner to corner with antique mailboxes, and in the center was a counter that made a smaller square. Behind it, three postal workers went about their business.

From the nearest woman, Munroe asked for
poste restante
, and she directed Munroe to the side and asked her to wait.

Here was where letters written to those without an address could be sent and held for a month or more, though what Munroe hoped to find would have arrived today at the earliest, hand delivered. Palms to counter, she waited for service. Her nerves were still raw, but food and three hours of sleep had worked their magic, and now only patience would buy her what she wanted.

Against the urge toward motion, she forced her body to stillness and brought placid indifference to her face. The clerk was a plump woman in her mid-forties who returned in no hurry. Munroe requested mail held in her name, and the woman searched through several boxes sorted alphabetically. She finally pulled one lone envelope.

At the sight of the white rectangle the weight of the last twenty-four hours and all of its unknowns slid off Munroe’s shoulders.

The woman asked for identification, and Munroe had none.

Bradford wasn’t an idiot, he’d taken her ID, knew she’d need it
to retrieve any message he’d left, and would have compensated. With what little charm Munroe could muster, and with a heavy dose of flattery, she requested to see the envelope first. The woman raised an eyebrow in mock reproach and, not letting go of the corners, held it address forward.

Munroe stared for a moment and then sighed in dejection. “It’s not for me,” she said, and leaving the confused woman standing, Munroe turned and walked away.

Outside the post office, she flagged another taxi, and to the driver gave the address that had been written as the return on the envelope.

The Palladium hotel.

She’d find Bradford and Hannah on the eleventh floor, in the presidential suite.

Like in the heart of Buenos Aires, Montevideo was a city of tree-lined boulevards and European architecture, a smaller, calmer, cleaner version of its sister to the west, and in spite of its size and the belching buses that flew down otherwise quiet streets, it still held an Old World sleepy-town charm.

They continued east, outside the old town and into the new. Blocks from the coast, the Palladium was modern and sleek with rounded lines and inlaid glass, one of several of the relatively higher-end hotels the city had to offer. Munroe took the elevator up and followed carpet and sconce lighting in Bradford’s direction.

With the same prescience that he’d always displayed when they were together, Bradford opened the door before she reached it. His expression read relief and happiness, and there, subtly, under the initial layers of natural caution, something more.

Munroe paused at the door’s threshold, and Bradford reached for her, pulled her toward him, and wrapped his arms around her, tightly. She understood the desperation: She’d frightened him badly, but in the moment he said not a word of reproof, and there was relief in his acceptance of her entirety, personal risk and bodily damage included.

Munroe leaned into him, put her head on his shoulder.

Bradford smelled of joy and pleasure and belonging, and the tension, the anger, and all of the rage of the past days dissipated.

Bradford released her, stepped back a foot, and put hands to her face. “What the hell did they do to you?” he said.

“You should see the other guys,” she said.

He pulled her to him again and kissed her forehead. “Logan told me about the other guys.”

Head still on his shoulder, still standing at the door’s threshold, Munroe said, “Logan made it to the warehouse? Is he okay?”

Bradford nodded, his whisper soothing against her skin. “He and Gideon got into town a couple of hours ago,” he said.

That Bradford had sent them after her remained an unspoken understanding.

“They tracked you from the hotel to the warehouse, and considering the state of things, figured you were alive and moving in this direction.” He wrapped a hand around the back of her neck, kept the other around her body, pressed his cheek against the side of her head, and then shifted.

One arm behind her knees, he picked her up, brought her into the foyer, and knocked the door closed with his foot.

She laughed, hooked an arm around his neck for support, and said, “What are you doing?”

“Depositing you in the bathtub,” he said. “You need it.” And he carried her forward.

The suite had two rooms, separated by a solid wall and a series of doors that provided a division of space and a sense of privacy. Bradford would have wanted it that way, as much for himself as for Hannah, who was in the bedroom, sedated and asleep, still in the same night-clothes she’d been wearing when they’d taken her from the third-floor room. He was a grown man with a kidnapped and drugged thirteen-year-old girl in his possession and no official authority to have her; it couldn’t have been a comfortable situation.

Munroe, still in Bradford’s arms and straining for a look around the corner, said, “Has she woken at all?”

“Yes,” Bradford said. “Run the water. I’ll get you clean clothes.” He paused. “And if you don’t mind, I’ll tell you about it while you soak.”

M
unroe was smiling again, an ear-to-ear, shit-eating grin that Bradford could only return in kind. To see that smile, even with the damage that had been done to her face, made him damn near euphoric, and having her here, having her safe after so many tortured hours of the unknown, was such a giddy relief that it cloaked the anger that had fast followed the assurance that she was alive and okay.

He wanted to kiss her, wanted to hold on to her, but then shake her and ask what the hell she had been thinking—yell out the frustration so that she’d understand the nauseating ache that had been with him all this time.

But he didn’t.

Wouldn’t.

As she’d said, sometimes love was its own reward, and to struggle to turn it into more was to murder it slowly. No matter how badly he hated that she played so easily with risk and thought nothing of living on the blade of danger, he accepted this as the only way. He couldn’t protect her, wouldn’t attempt to change her, and if acceptance was the price required to stay within her orbit, he would pay it gladly.

Bradford set Munroe’s legs on the bathroom floor, put her upright, and stepped out of her way. He waited just outside the door until the tub was full and she was in it, and then with a slight knock at the door
brought in his only change of clothes and set them on the edge of the sink. But for these, which had been in the trunk of the car, everything else had been left in Buenos Aires.

According to the plan, he and Munroe would have traveled to the charter together, and then, once she and Hannah were safely ensconced, he was to return to the hotel and clear it out.

That was the plan.

What he’d been left with was the need for improvisation: putting boot to Logan’s butt, rousing Heidi out of bed and getting her on her way, and then pulling in one last middle-of-the-night favor from his local connections. By his best estimate, the hotel room had been scrubbed clean right about when he was strapping Hannah into the seat of the Gulfstream that would carry them into Uruguay.

Everything taken from the room was still in Buenos Aires, the clothing, equipment, data, money, and identification, all of it secured and waiting until ready for retrieval. They’d have to head back, probably sooner rather than later, if for nothing else than for their documents and to recover the data that Munroe had used as her bargaining chip with Gideon.

After all of the buildup prior to Hannah’s extraction, and after the horror of having Munroe snatched from him, getting Hannah out of Buenos Aires had been a straightforward nonevent, executed flawlessly, the end result of meticulous preparation. The charter had been fueled and waiting, and although Bradford carried a valid passport for Hannah—something Charity would need to get the girl out of Uruguay—neither he nor Munroe had planned to travel documented, and arrangements had already been made to bypass official exit and entry.

The girl had woken on the way to the airport, and although it had taken less than a minute to put her back under, that had been a painful minute. The kid was terrified. She’d gone to sleep in a bed, in familiar surroundings, and woken in a car with a strange man. Sedating her had been not only a necessary part of transporting her but also a favor.
Once they’d reached Montevideo, he’d put a very slow drip into her to keep her hydrated and asleep and had kept her under ever since.

But sooner or later they were going to have to wake her, and then what?

Bathwater splashed against the other side of the shower curtain. There was joy in that simple sound, and then more of it in the ensuing silence while he waited to give Munroe information. She wasn’t ignoring him, she knew he was there and probably also knew that his patient waiting was really just a cover for a truth he’d never voice: He wanted to be near, didn’t want to let her out of his sight, not for a very, very long time. And although that was a wish that would never be granted, for now he had her cornered, and for the moment it was enough.

Arms crossed, Bradford leaned into the wall opposite the tub, and after several more minutes, content to simply be, he finally spoke. “I know we did the right thing in taking Hannah from The Chosen,” he said. “But for all the time we’ve spent discussing the strategy of extraction, we haven’t talked much about what to do with her once we have her. The kid’s going to be traumatized, you know? One moment she’s asleep in her bed with someone she knows, the next minute she wakes up surrounded by people that she’s spent her whole life thinking were the Devil. Even if we wait until the last minute to wake her and give her directly to her mom, that’s not going to make it any better.”

“How long was she awake?” Munroe said.

“Not long, maybe a minute, but if you could have seen the look on her face, it was heartrending.”