The Doll 39（文稿）

Chapter 39
Alone with Lumani, Munroe stepped to the bathroom, returned with a towel, and draped it over his legs in a concession to his modesty.
She squatted again, looked at him eye-to-eye, and this time Lumani didn’t challenge or avoid her gaze,
although gradually his focus moved from her face to her torso and he stared at the jacket.
“I hit you,” he said. “And you got right back up.”
She stood so that the jacket straightened. Ran her hand along the leather and paused at the hole near her heart.
Allowed him to see it, then spread her fingers and ran them along the front, pausing at each of the hits she’d taken from Tamás.
“Fashionable armor,” he said. “Those pieces are very expensive.”
She nodded.
“I should have demanded the jacket from the beginning,” he said, “together with everything else.”
“You would have had to kill me first,” she said, and with show-and-tell over, knelt, and whispered, “Tell me what you know about the organization, Valon— and about the client who purchased Neeva.”
“May I eat first?” he said.
“After. I’d like to hear what you have to say before Neeva gets back.”
“They’re looking for her,” he said, “she might never come back.”
“You’re not tracked and we weren’t followed.”
He sighed. “I want you to help me in exchange,” he said.
“What do you want?”
“Something. Anything. A place to go or a way to survive.
“I have the clothes I was wearing, and that is all. No bank account, no home to return to, nothing. At this point, I am a beggar in the street.”
She nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”
“Tell me something first,” he said. “I want to know what you told her. When the girl was running and you chased her onto the restaurant patio.
“One moment she is screaming and fighting and then instantly silent, so easily controlled. What were your words, what did you say?”
“I told her the truth,” Munroe said.
Lumani stared at her quizzically. “Truth?”
“Yes, truth. I described, quite graphically, what would happen if she did manage to get free, and I told her I was the lesser of two evils.”
Lumani smiled, almost blushed. “All right,” he said, and then began a monologue that started in Monrovia and worked its way westward, across Europe, into the United States, and back again:
an intricate web of safe houses like the one in Zagreb, transport routes and schedules, a network that pumped a regular flow of young girls from impoverished eastern European countries, and some from South America, into the arms of willing buyers.
A business for which demand was always high and the cost of merchandise cheap.
And then there were the clients from the upper echelon, those to whom Lumani and his near-equal counterpart had been assigned, their jobs to secure specific targets,
the man with the dog just one of a dozen or more who picked their girls like clothes from a catalogue and paid handsomely for the privilege.
Lumani referred to him as Mr. Hollywood, not for the client’s looks but for his proclivity for actresses:
Bollywood, Hong Kong, and now Neeva from the United States, his picks always rising film stars, always sensual, always tiny and childlike.
None of the detail was in and of itself enough to build a complete picture of the organization or to understand entirely who the many men were that kept the Doll Maker in business, but it was enough for a start.
Munroe jotted notes on hotel stationery and occasionally interrupted with a question,
but once he began, Lumani needed little prodding, and they continued until footsteps from the hallway arrested Munroe’s attention.
She straightened and moved from the desk to the door, hand on her weapon, waiting for the knock, and when it came in the pattern she expected, Munroe let Neeva in.
Neeva dumped an armful of items on the bed, glanced at Lumani, and said, “Did he tell us anything useful?”
“Some,” Munroe replied, and fished for the small box of paracetamol. Took a bottle of water from the pile of items.
Popped four blisters in the pack and downed them, popped another four and offered them to Lumani. He opened his mouth without being asked.
She gave him the pills and water, then fed him crackers until the packet she’d previously opened was empty.
To Neeva, Munroe said, “I’m stepping out for a few minutes. Whatever you need to do before we go, do it now.”
Nodded toward Lumani. “You can talk to him, ignore him, whatever, just don’t go near him, okay?
“And if you get the itch to kill him while I’m gone, don’t, because I will disappear and leave you to take the fall.”
Neeva rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to kill him,” she said.
Munroe stepped into the hallway, closed the door.
Strode past doors and recessed lighting to the end of the hall, and there, with her back to the wall, slid to the floor, stretched her legs forward, and tipped her head up to the ceiling.
Detox.
Quiet.
Solitude.
An attempt to survive, to push beyond the anguish of the living and the voices in her head, which though muted, had not left her since Noah’s death.
Blocking them out could only go on so long before the darkness overtook her, as glimpses did now that she’d had a chance to breathe.
Logan was saved, but he’d never be the same.
Samantha alive… for now.
Noah was dead.
Jack was dead.
Alexis might also die or be sold on the slave market.
And her relationship with Bradford, which had somehow allowed them to juggle the disparities of their work and this hellish life and still find peace, was, for all practical purposes, over.
Through no fault of his and no fault of hers, they could never go back to the way things had been.
In the acceptance of so much was such unspeakable pain that for the first time, the urges compelled Munroe not to fight,
but in an act of self-preservation to get up and walk, to keep on walking until she reached a place where she was truly alone, and humanity with all its evils ceased to exist.
In the quiet, in the silence of the empty hall, no longer able to turn off the emotion or shut it down, Munroe allowed the hurt, the gnawing ache that consumed her, to pass through.
How long she sat, she didn’t know, breathing, feeling, allowing herself to simply be, while hotel guests came and went and occasionally did a double-take,
and when the moment finally arrived that she felt strong enough to once more push herself off the floor and continue what had to be done, she pulled the phone from her pocket and dialed Bradford.
LUMANI RAISED CHIN from chest when Munroe stepped through the door, and Neeva was on the bed watching TV.
“Anything about us?” Munroe said.
“There’s lots about me, but I haven’t seen anything about you yet,” Neeva replied. “You took a long time, where were you?”
Munroe tossed her the phone. “Call your parents. Please. You can go into the hall if you want privacy, but stay right outside the door, okay?”
Neeva stared at the phone, snatched the key card off the night-stand, and scooted off the bed. Stepped out the door.
With Lumani watching, Munroe unzipped her pants and took them off. Examined the deepest cut on her leg.
The area was raw and red but not yet showing a lot of infection.
She needed to get the wound properly cleaned and stitched up, but couldn’t until this ordeal was over.
Munroe doused the area with peroxide again, put a clean hand towel over the spot, and used the same tape to hold the mess in place.
Pants back on and five minutes in, Munroe stood and knocked on the hallway door.
Lumani said, “Does it hurt? The wound, does it hurt?”
Munroe didn’t turn toward him. “Does yours?” she said.
“Yes,” he replied. “But I prefer the physical pain. I appreciate the distraction.”
Munroe tested the batteries on the taser and glanced at him over her shoulder. “The pain on the inside is what keeps you human,” she said. “Never forget that.”
In the wait for Neeva, she unloaded and reloaded the magazines. Seated the bullets,
and finally, with these items and most of the euros, she filled the pockets of her cargo pants so that what was left to carry was easily divided between the satchel and the backpack.
The key card was swiped and Neeva stepped back inside, her eyes red and puffy.
She gave the phone back and Munroe waited a beat to see if she’d need to play therapist,
but when Neeva offered nothing, Munroe handed her the satchel. “Give me three minutes,” she said.
Neeva raised an eyebrow but didn’t question her, and when she’d left the room again, Munroe turned to Lumani.
“I’m leaving money, your clothes, and food and water,” she said. “I hope to be back within thirty-six hours. Forty-eight at the most, but I expect you’ll be free before then.”
Lumani said, “Will you use the information I gave you to kill my uncle?”
“Possibly.”
“If you don’t, he will kill you or have you killed.”
“It’s you I’m concerned about,” she said. “Do you have a reason to hunt me?”
“Yes.” He stared at the floor, at her feet. “I have a reason,” he said. Looked at her face. “But no motivation.”
“You may one day find the motivation,” she said, and then knelt so she could better see his face.
“Even if you’re successful in hunting me, killing me, it won’t make you more of a man, won’t earn you the acceptance you’re looking for— not from him, not from yourself.”
“I never loved him, never worshipped him,” he said.
She stood, strode to the door, turned back, and in a whisper just loud enough to carry across the space, said,
“I, too, once danced on marionette strings to earn the affection and approval of a man who would never be capable of giving it. You have a lifetime of options ahead of you. If that’s what you choose.”
Munroe stepped into the hall, put the Do Not Disturb sign on the door handle, and shut Lumani in behind her.
He’d be free by the time she returned— if she returned— of this, she had no doubt.
And like the randomness of life’s chaos, the decision to let him live was a coin toss.
Just as she currently fought to get out from under the weight of her decision to allow Kate Breeden to live, so she might also one day again find herself in Lumani’s crosshairs.
All she could do was walk the narrow line between instinct and conscience and hope for the best.