Chapter 45
DALLAS, TEXAS
FIVE MONTHS LATER
A quarter of a mile of gravel separated the blacktop county road from Bradford’s front door; a quarter of a mile between foyer and mailbox. 
For the most part, the distance was meaningless. He wasn’t home often enough to worry about collecting the mail— Felecia did that for him, and anything urgent was sent to Capstone’s office.
But today he was home, and so Bradford swung the truck off the blacktop, along the shoulder, to collect what lay within the box and spare Felecia the trip. 
Paper gripped between his fingers, he tossed the stack onto the passenger’s seat, 
and not until he was around the back of the house, parked in the garage and leaning over to collect the meager bounty of inserts and magazines, flyers and envelopes, did he catch sight of the handwriting that stopped his breath cold.
One leg already outside the truck, he reversed, sat back down, and stared at the envelope: plain, white, and from both the shape and the stamp clearly not from the U.S. 
There was no return address, but his own name and address were written in an unmistakable print that quickened his pulse and set his fingers shaking.
Bradford tore into the side of the envelope with his teeth— enough to get a finger into the crease and slit the edge open. Inside was a single sheet of paper. 
A newspaper clipping in a foreign language, printed in a script he didn’t understand— most probably Cyrillic, although for which country, he wasn’t sure— and he didn’t care, didn’t need to know. 
Because although the words were meaningless, the accompanying photograph, in all its newspaper-quality graininess, told him everything.
Charred and gutted, with only enough of the hull left intact to keep from tipping below the waterline, a very large yacht listed off some Mediterranean-looking coastline.
Bradford stared at the clipping a long while, smile widening the longer he sat, happy in a way that defied words, until finally he laughed out loud.

Chapter 44
DALLAS, TEXAS
Munroe stepped from carpeted Jetway into carpeted terminal with nothing for luggage but the satchel filled with the few items she’d accumulated in the week since Neeva’s death.
She’d been in the United States for two days and was only now returning to Dallas, to the closest thing she had to home. 
Hadn’t spoken to or heard from Bradford in the several hours since she’d texted the information for her connecting flight out of Denver, 
but he’d be waiting, she knew, on the other side of the revolving doors.
After leaving Neeva, after calling Bradford and letting him know she was alive and coming home, she’d placed a call to the Reuters office in Zagreb, allowed twenty minutes, then followed with a second to the American embassy.
The news of the bloody scene spread quickly along the wires, and before long, visuals made it to televisions across the globe. 
In the absence of detail, speculation ran high, and with the graphic images accompanying Neeva’s discovery, it would be several weeks at least before the frenzy died.
With the death of the Doll Maker and so many of his lieutenants, his right-hand man vanished, and the dismantling of the U.S.-based side of operations, 
it would be a while, if ever, before the organization got back into the business— 
although, in a world that funneled billions of dollars into the war on drugs and only a pittance to combat the invisible, safer, and more profitable business of moving human chattel, 
with traffickers and slave owners risking so little in providing women to feed rapacious appetites, there would be others— there would always be others— to take up the slack.
Munroe had taken the first train to Ljubljana, and there waited out the tedious and time-consuming aspects of reporting a stolen passport and gathering documentation to acquire a new one— a real one. 
And once she had it, had caught the first flight back to the United States.
She’d bypassed Dallas for Aspen, where the Tisdale parents were staying; had arrived unannounced. Cautious, guarded, they’d welcomed her into their home, 
and in their formal living room, separated by an oversize coffee table, she had laid out the details of what had happened after Neeva skipped from the consulate in Nice; 
told them of the trafficking network and why Neeva had been kidnapped; detailed the reasons their daughter had chosen the path she had. 
What she offered was a small consolation, if any, for the loss of a child, but the details of Neeva’s revenge, details the media and the world would never have, were all she’d had to give.
The Tisdale parents, seated together on the sofa, leaned into each other with as much poise as circumstances allowed. 
Judith had done much of the talking, perhaps not so much an exchange of truth but an unburdening in the way a patient might to a therapist. 
Filled in the gaps, the specifics Neeva had dodged around, the horrors of the brutal attack that had taken place when the girl was fourteen, and the ways in which this had transformed her life and logic.
Having delivered what she’d come to offer, having listened to a mother’s tears, Munroe made the return to Dallas. 
She spotted Bradford through the glass before she reached the door: leaning back against a near wall, arms crossed and body relaxed, with only the movement of his eyes to reveal how focused he was on what went on around him— 
so typically Bradford that she wanted to laugh for nothing more than the relief that she was here again and weep, knowing the relief wouldn’t last.
She pushed through the door and he smiled. Studied her, watched her. 
After she took several long strides he straightened off the wall to meet her halfway. 
The world continued on— suitcases and shoes, announcements and baggage carousel alarms, a congestion of people— while he wrapped his arms around her, put her head to his shoulder, and held her there for a long, long time.
At last she raised her head, drew in a breath, and said, “Let’s go.”
That’s when she first noticed the stricken look on Bradford’s face, the one he’d masked so well in his smile of greeting.
“What’s wrong?” she said. “Logan? Samantha? Alexis?”
He shook his head. “Nothing like that. It can wait.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, but in response, he put his hand to the small of her back and guided her toward the exit and the parking garage.
“Please tell me,” she said.
“I will, but I want to take you home first.”
Home.
Munroe didn’t press Bradford for more details. If for just this one day she could have peace in place of the anxiety, if just for today she had a home, she’d wait for whatever he had to say. 
Side by side, steps in sync, they walked in silence to Bradford’s truck.
HOME WAS NORTH, outside the metro area, where land was still plentiful and towns were still towns and the urban sprawl hadn’t yet overrun the miles, although the sprawl was definitely creeping in. 
Home was a five-bedroom ranch-style house, recently built to Bradford’s specs, set on fifteen acres. 
And because Bradford spent more time away from home than in it, home was cared for by a full-time housekeeper and her husband, 
both of whom had been with Bradford for years and who now lived in a smaller place of their own at the back of the property.
Bradford pulled into the half-circle drive that fronted the house, and Felecia opened the front door before they’d reached it. 
She smiled at Munroe and welcomed her back, and Bradford waited only long enough for the niceties before playfully nudging Munroe along toward the bedroom. 
Once across the threshold, he picked her up, shut the door with his foot, and tossed her onto the bed.
Munroe laughed, and he smiled and stood, studying her. “What?” she said.
“It’s good to see you laughing.”
“You worry too much,” she said.
He knelt on the bed. Leaned over her. “I don’t think I worry enough,” he said. “And, God, I missed you.”
IN THE ROOM, time lost meaning, and all the words left unspoken, all the fears pushed down, 
and the anguish and the heartache, the losses and the pain, faded away for those hours that the outside world ceased to exist.
THEY STOOD IN the kitchen, the island between them, sipping wine and picking at the food on a tray that Felecia had prepared.
Munroe said, “So are you going to tell me?”
Bradford poured another glass. Didn’t ask for clarification; they both knew what she meant. He said, “I’ve lost track of Kate.”
Munroe stopped with a cracker halfway into her mouth. “She’s out of prison?”
“After the explosion at the office I had to call on my guys for help in running things so I could get to Alexis…” He paused and let the rest of the explanation falter.
She put fingers to his cheek. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“I hate knowing she’s the only one who’s walked away from this a winner.”
With a glass of wine in one hand and his hand in the other, Munroe tugged Bradford back toward the bedroom. 
“She hasn’t won yet, and if she does win at all, it’ll be a Pyrrhic victory.”
Bradford paused and his expression shadowed. He pulled her back and held her tight. 
Whispered, “Don’t say it, okay? I know what’s coming and I don’t want to hear it. Not tonight. Tomorrow maybe, but not tonight.”
He wasn’t talking about Kate Breeden. They both knew that Munroe could only bear so much pain and loss before coming completely undone. 
She needed time away, time to heal, and she could only do that by returning to who she was: the lone operative, shut down and shut off.
Munroe set the glass on an end table, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. She truly loved him; always would. 
She smiled and fought back the sadness, glad in a way that she was spared from having to say good-bye, from uttering the words she never wanted to speak— 
although, in truth, there would never really be a good-bye, because if this was where home was, then like a homing pigeon she’d return, and Bradford had to know it, just as he also knew her reasons for leaving.
It wouldn’t happen tonight, or tomorrow, she still had things to do here. 
Needed to visit Alexis; should probably make an effort to call on most of her family and would, when she was ready. 
What she wanted most, needed most, was to see Logan, to look into his eyes and beg forgiveness for all he’d suffered because of her, and because of this she had time— they had time— before the inevitable.
RICHARDSON, TEXAS
The midnight air was still, the coolness of night made deeper by the damp of recent rain. 
The condo, set toward the back of the complex and away from street traffic and the rush of tires against wet pavement, sat in an area that had, over the past three hours, turned eerily quiet.
In a darkened nook, invisible in the night, Munroe watched and waited. 
Over the hours and with the deepening evening, neighbors had returned home, and some, as evidenced by the limited lighting, had already gone to bed.
A hunter in a blind, she’d marked time by cars and open doors, by curtains drawn and lights on and off, shadows that reached the streets, and sometimes by people, unaware of what was so easily seen from the other side of the glass.
And still, she waited. Munroe had asked Bradford for a weapon, searched through the plastic locker he’d offered, and taken what she wanted. 
Had borrowed his truck with no promise of when she’d return and hadn’t told him where she was going. He didn’t ask, but he knew— had to know.
The ground was cold and Munroe shifted, one uncomfortable position into another. 
She had no doubt that Breeden would eventually return to this apartment, a little hideaway Munroe had discovered years ago and about which she’d kept silent— although when Breeden would return, and how often, was a mystery.
During Breeden’s prison tenure, while her house went into foreclosure and her car was repossessed, the mortgage on the condo continued to be paid and the utilities kept on. 
Something waited here, something Breeden needed or wanted; something called her back. 
If nothing else, this one-bedroom unit was the only sanctuary Breeden had— a roof over her head, a place out of the cold— a temporary home while she regrouped and moved on to whatever she planned next.
The midnight quiet drew long and the scent of woodsmoke spoke to the erratic Texas weather that could still bring a solid freeze in early spring.
The occasional set of headlights turned down the lane, disappearing into garages or under carports, but the condo remained as it had been: dark and unoccupied; beckoning.
It was a delightful temptation to enter ahead, to lie in wait in the dark of the rooms, away from the elements and the chance of prying eyes, 
but she had no idea what was on the other side, what preparations Breeden may have made to give notice of intrusion, and was cautious of warning her off.
More time passed, damp and quiet, the dangerous kind of quiet with thoughts and memories and the voices running dialogue inside her head, 
voices that had still not been silenced even after the Doll Maker’s death; had not allowed her a return to the peace she’d had before the madness began.
It was folly to think that by finishing tonight what should have been finished so many nights ago she’d find quiet once again, 
but the thought was there, and it phased into others far darker, far needier. 
Those in turn were replaced by images of a dungeon and children, of Logan and Neeva, of Jack and Sam, of Noah, 
and her own words of caution to Neeva: Revenge is best left to fantasy. There was always a price to pay.
Another set of lights pulled into the lane and continued into the slot reserved for Breeden’s unit. 
Half expecting a decoy in Breeden’s place, Munroe was instead taken by the gaunt frame that clipped a rapid pace in her direction. 
Even in the dark, it was apparent that Breeden had drastically aged since Munroe had last seen her. 
Gone was the poise, the champagne bubbles, and twenty-five pounds of the good life, replaced by a haggard severity.
With measured patience and a predator’s instinct, Munroe waited for Breeden to pass, waited for her to fish keys out of her purse, watched as she ran a finger along the upper doorjamb and fiddled with what Munroe could only assume was a wire.
Munroe stood. Death and the loss of these past weeks called for closure.
The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance.
Inside her chest the war drum tapped.
He will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.
Moved forward, black against the night, shadow to the stairwell lights, focused entirely on Breeden’s posture, Breeden’s breathing, Breeden’s spine. 
And then, very nearly at Breeden’s side, Munroe put the muzzle of the gun to Breeden’s head and said, “Hello again, Kate.”

Chapter 43
With the dead guard’s key ring in hand, Munroe started toward the nearest cell in the underground prison. 
Tried keys until she found the right one. Unlocked and slid the bar free. 
The cell was empty, and the air filled with the same fetid stench that had been there when Neeva was inside.
She strode to the next. Unlocked it. Slid the door wide and on the mat was huddled a wretch of a child, nine, maybe ten at the most, in rags, clawing away from the door as if it might somehow be possible to become part of the walls.
Inside Munroe’s head a chorus of voices ruptured and broke free. 
Rage unbridled and blinding tore from her core, and her heart pounded heavy in a beat entirely different from the adrenaline rush of battle. 
The lust for blood, the thirst for violence, unquenchable, unspeakable: the killer fully arisen from a deep sleep; voices rising, chanting, demanding.
I have removed the bounds of the people.
Munroe turned from the doorway, found the key for the third cell, and opened this, too.
I have robbed their treasures.
Two more girls inside this one, teenagers, fifteen or sixteen, seated on the filthy pad that passed as a bed, staring silently, arms wrapped around their knees.
I have put down the inhabitants like a valiant man.
Munroe cycled through languages with the teenagers, and having exhausted her repertoire of anything that might be understood in Europe, switched to hand signals, motioning the girls toward her.
They didn’t move. She put the gun on the floor and raised her hands. Motioned again. One of them slid off the mat and scooted forward. 
Munroe nudged the weapon out the door with her heel, kept her hands in the air, and backed out of the room. The girl followed. 
By the strength of my hand I have done it.
Munroe pointed down the hall to the dead guard, then to herself, to the gun.
The girl’s face lit into a huge smile, and chattering animatedly, she turned to the other. The second girl stood and nearly ran to the door. 
Munroe showed them to the previous cell where the child still huddled on the mat. 
The braver of the two entered, knelt, and began to talk with the girl, and when once more language became a barrier, she tried to pick up the child and the little girl screamed.
And that was when Munroe first heard the noise above: another scream, this one from someone older, more mature, followed by Munroe’s name and gunfire. 
Scooping the second guard’s .45 off the floor, she ran for the stairs. Shouts. Scuffling. Metal door shutting.
She raced the steps three at a go. Hit the door full force before it had shut, pushing it open some, although strength and momentum were dulled by the uphill climb. 
She shoved hard, and whoever was on the other side let go and the door swung fully open.
Munroe stood in the doorway, a clear target for anyone who wanted to take a shot, but nobody did. 
The Doll Maker sat on a chair near the closest desk, leaning back and smiling. 
He shook his finger at Munroe. “Oh, my crafty friend,” he said. “Thank you for bringing me this gift.”
To Munroe’s left, beside the door, was a man she’d not seen before, who, like Arben and Tamás, appeared to be nothing more than an interchangeable part in the Doll Maker’s machine. 
Beside the Doll Maker was Neeva, gun to her head, arms pinned behind her back, held in place by yet another part of the machinery. Liability.
Like a bad case of déjà vu, she’d seen this scene play out a hundred times since the moment Neeva insisted on following her out of the consulate. 
A dozen arguments, untold energy toward keeping the girl from this exact scenario, and here they were.
Neeva, her expression devastated and panicked, mouthed I’m sorry.
Munroe took a step out of the doorway. If there were more machinery parts here, she didn’t see them, and the numbers made sense considering they tended to work and travel in packs of two.
The teenagers, who had remained in the whitewashed hall when she’d blown past, crept up the stairs behind her, 
as if they understood they had one chance at escape and she was it. They flanked behind her now.
With the dead guard’s weapon in her right hand, Munroe pulled the Jericho from the small of her back. 
She trained one toward the Doll Maker and the other on the thug beside the door. 
Sidestepped fully out of the doorway so that her back was to a wall.
The Doll Maker flicked a finger in the direction of the thug beside the door, and the man lunged, grabbed the wrist of one of the girls, and yanked her out into the room. 
The girl shrieked and began to cry, trying to fight. He put the gun to her head the way the other had his to Neeva, and so the young girl stood there, sobbing, docile, scared.
“Put the guns down,” the Doll Maker said. “A smart one like you knows there is no way out of here.”
“Perhaps,” Munroe said. “But I don’t have to die alone.”
He shrugged. “So you kill me maybe. You kill one of my men maybe. You kill two innocents definitely. What do you gain?”
Munroe stepped away from the wall but kept her back guarded. Moved closer to him, running the odds, the speed, the numbers.
“You won’t kill them,” Munroe said. “They’re too valuable. Worth more to you alive, more difficult to replace than your gorillas.”
The Doll Maker turned to gaze at Neeva for a half-second. “This one, yes,” he said. “But those ones, and the baby down in the chamber, they are cheap and very easy to replace. There will be more tomorrow.”
He stood and stepped next to Neeva, his own lack of height emphasized by the way he didn’t tower over her as his thug did. 
Glanced at her up and down and then said over his shoulder to Munroe, “I think those girls are worth more to you than they are to me.”
While his back was turned, Munroe took another slow step toward him, and within the heartbeat of that movement, the Doll Maker grabbed Neeva and pulled her into him. 
He took the gun from his man and held it to Neeva’s temple. Squeezed her cheeks and turned her to face Munroe. 
There were tears in her eyes and her lips kept saying, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
He said, “None of them are valuable to me if I am dead, so yes, I will kill even this one, if necessary. Don’t take another step.”
Munroe stopped moving.
The Doll Maker nodded to the man from whom he’d taken Neeva, and he made for the stairs, for the second teenager who until now had stood transfixed, frozen in fear. 
She turned, screaming, running back down the way she’d come, and he chased and caught her. 
Dragged her back up the stairs by her hair while she flailed; scraped and bloodied as concrete and stone tore at her clothes and her skin. 
He kicked her, again and again, and she balled into the fetal position, screaming and pleading, trying to protect her head and her stomach.
The seconds passed incrementally, as if time slowed to near standstill, and but for the heartbeat thudding in Munroe’s ears, sound ceased to exist. 
Within the pulsing wash, one beat to the next, flashed odds and strategy.
To kill the kicking man and put an end to the madness, she’d have one shot and be forced to use her left hand; the odds were not good.
Move against move. With that first round fired, the girl would die, possibly Neeva as well.
Weapons would turn on her. She would die. And then the teenager, and the child in the cell, and God knew who else.
Blood in her ears. Rushing. Maddening. Decisions. Choices. 
My soul chooses strangling, and death rather than my life.
She’d come this far knowing she walked into a trap. Come this far knowing she’d had a good run at life, and if it ended now, she was okay with that. 
She said, “Stop.”
The Doll Maker laughed but repeated the command in Albanian, and the man stopped kicking, and the girl on the floor lay sobbing, matted hair covering her face. 
Neeva bit on her lip and her expression hardened, face taut and focused as if she ran the same scenario, the same odds, the same probabilities and came to the same conclusion as Munroe.
The Doll Maker cackled again, as if he’d triumphed. “You are weak,” he said. “Exploitable, and only dangerous in your element when you are in control— 
“so easy to read and manipulate because you lack the ability to make difficult decisions. 
“A good man would have killed these women first so there would be no sword over his head and then come after me. You? You’re worthless.”
As a cloud vanishes and is gone, so one who goes down to the grave does not return. 
“Kill me,” Munroe said. “I know you want to.”
“Of all the merchandise in this room,” he said, “you are the most valuable, you are most highly prized. 
“Delivering you— even drugged— I earn ten times what this girl would fetch thanks to the enemies you have made these past days.”
“I would kill myself first,” she said.
“You are not capable of that, either.”
Neeva said, “Take the shot, Michael, please take the shot.”
The Doll Maker jabbed Neeva in the side and she winced.
“If I surrender what do I buy?”
“You buy four,” he said. “Those little pigs and this one here. I let them all go.”
“Let them go now,” she said. “And then I surrender.”
Neeva screamed, “No!” and the Doll Maker punched her again.
“I am not a fool,” he said. “You first, then the girls.”
“Let the replaceable ones go first.”
The Doll Maker smirked. “Where would they go? I put them on the street, they are found, and eventually the police are at my door. 
“No. When I let them go, I let them go where they are no trouble to me.”
“Then we’re at an impasse.”
The Doll Maker barked a command. The thug from whom the Doll Maker had taken the gun pulled a second weapon from beneath his shirt. 
Before he’d fully aimed the muzzle at the prostrate girl, Munroe yelled, “No!” and the Doll Maker halted the killing. “It is your choice,” he said.
Munroe said nothing, processing, trying to find a way out of an unwinnable situation, where even taking her own life would only propagate evil.
“I will not wait long,” the Doll Maker said.
If she surrendered, she’d have no way to enforce compliance, but without surrender an immediate execution would take place.
As if reading her thoughts, he said, “Ten seconds and the girl dies.”
Neeva screamed, “Take the shot!” and once more the Doll Maker hit her, this time hard enough that the sound carried, and even from this distance Munroe could see her tears.
The Doll Maker counted, moving directly from two to seven. On eight, Munroe began to lower. 
Neeva screamed again, and once more time slowed, filtering movement and events in increments, life defined in jerky strobe-light motion.
The man by the metal door, his gun to the teenager’s head. Yanking her hair, jerking her tear-stained face upward, laughing in her ear. 
The girl on the floor. Huddled. The thug beside her with his weapon pointed at her, index finger stroking the outside of the trigger guard, face turned to the Doll Maker, eyes expectant and happy, waiting for the command. 
The Doll Maker pulling Neeva tighter. Smiling. Gloating. Jamming the muzzle of the gun against her ear. 
A whisper of movement on the far side of the room that could as easily have been from a draft as from a shadow, costing a half-second distraction in which the Doll Maker’s voice, stretched out and distorted, reached the number nine.
Munroe dropped one knee to the floor.
Neeva screamed, “No!” She rose on the balls of her feet so that her cheek aligned with the Doll Maker’s and her body pressed into him, tensed and shifted. 
Her right hand reached for the hand that held the gun to her own head, her left hand reached for his head. 
Not frantic. Deliberate… focused… determined, full of intent and eyes set hard.
His smile faded. Her finger curled around the trigger. And then an explosion of blood and bone that terminated life twice over.
Neeva and the Doll Maker fell together, slapping against desk and chair, pinball and ragdoll, collapsing finally, crooked and bent, arms and legs entwined.
IN THE TIME it took to blink, to register and understand, Munroe dropped the Jericho. 
Raised both hands to the .45 and, still kneeling, fired at the nearest man, the closest replaceable part in the Doll Maker’s machine: rapid pulls that emptied the magazine and sent his body jerking, falling, full deadweight onto the teenager on the floor. 
Turned from him to his counterpart, time held captive in that same fractured breath, the moment distilled into screams and violence, 
while the first man fell and the second raised his head, hesitating in the choice between killing his hostage and human shield or returning fire.
His weapon moved from the hostage to Munroe. She dropped the .45. Scooped the Jericho. 
His gun leveled at the same time hers did. He knew she wouldn’t fire— not as long as he held the hostage as a shield— 
and she knew his aim and control would be off because he was forced to shoot one-handed to maintain his hold on a moving body.
Munroe braced for the hits. Hoped to be lucky enough to take the bullets in her torso where the jacket could still protect, where the odds of him connecting to the same spot another bullet had already struck were slim; 
and in that breath of resignation came another spray of red mist, from the man’s head, death that had not come from her.
Time, which had until now been held taut and captive, cut loose, unspooling like the snap of an overstrained cable. 
The thug collapsed, leaving the hostage standing alone, screaming, trying to escape from liquid and death, as if she might, by crawling out of her own skin, be let free of the moment. 
Her shock and terror chorused with that of the girl on the ground, all of this a deafening noise that penetrated Munroe’s senses for the first time.
Like a runner off the starting block, Munroe bolted through the maze of desks and passageways, catty-corner across the room to where she’d spotted that shadow of movement.
The space was empty. She turned a slow circle. Scanning, searching, while the cries and wails of the teenagers filled the cavernous room in an echoed bounce-back.
By the foot of a chair she found a single ejected shell. She reached for the metal piece, anger coursing.
He’d found his way from Milan. Had been here. Could have ended it all by killing the man who’d caused so much suffering but had instead allowed Neeva to die 
and, in what he would have seen as a noble gesture, saved Munroe’s life, taking from her any chance of peace. 
He could have killed his uncle. Put an end to the suffering. He’d had the power to let Neeva live and had not used it, and Munroe hated him for it.
She’d allowed him life, had given him a chance, but not for this. Not for this.
Munroe pocketed the casing as a memento, and before recrossing the room she peered into the gold shop. 
The woman behind the counter was dead, slumped against the wall with a single hole in her head.
AT THE METAL door to the dungeon, Munroe bypassed the teenagers, who, with the glassy-eyed daze of shock, attempted to wipe blood and body fluids off their hands and faces but only smeared and streaked them, making matters worse.
She motioned for them to follow her down to where she could hose them off, but they refused, and she didn’t force the issue.
The Doll Maker was dead. Four more of his thugs were dead. 
The lady in the gold shop was dead, but the gold workers would still come and there could be more of the Doll Maker’s army on the way. She wanted to get away before they arrived.
Downstairs, the child had stepped out of the cell and into the hall and Munroe found her staring at the dead guard. 
She flinched when Munroe approached, and so Munroe kept still, held out her hand, and gradually the child turned and reached for her fingers.
She led the little girl upstairs to the office with the dolls, where the child’s eyes lit up in response to the multitude of toys upon the shelves. 
Munroe picked up a life-size replica and handed it to her. Motioned for her to sit, and while the child stroked the hair and dress with nearly the same reverence as the Doll Maker had once shown, 
Munroe tore through the drawers, searching for papers, for electronics, anything that might provide information on who the Doll Maker was or how he ran the operation. She found nothing.
The teenagers came to the room and paused in the doorway.
Munroe hesitated. Stopped searching and stood upright, stepped around the desk and stretched out her hand for the child in the seat. 
When the girl scooted off and her feet met the ground, Munroe led her to the doorway, placed her hand in the hand of one of the older ones, and then took money from her pocket. 
Handed them each nearly a thousand euros and escorted them to the outside door, where they stood, a macabre sight, blinking in the early sunlight: 
the entire exchange and all intent communicated without words, without language.
Munroe waited until the girls had walked half the block and then shut the door, burdened with wanting to see their fate through, but that was beyond her. 
They would have to find their own way, would hopefully find the police, find someone who spoke their language, someone to whom they could tell their story and eventually lead truthseekers back to this place of evil. 
Barring that, and perhaps on top of that, she’d track down a local AP or Reuters correspondent and feed enough information for someone who truly wanted a story to find one.
Munroe returned slowly, cautiously to where Neeva lay. Stood over her. Knelt.
The girl’s eyes were closed, her face, untouched by the carnage, was placid. 
If Munroe searched for it, a smile lay beneath the calm, and in death, even without any hair, Neeva looked every inch the doll that this insanity had tried to make her. 
Her near-final words tumbled over and over inside Munroe’s head until she finally spit them out in a whisper to purge them: 
I never wanted anything so badly as I want to finally be able to do something to someone who’s hurt me.
With the floor hard against her knees, Munroe leaned forward to untangle Neeva from the Doll Maker’s arms and then she stopped. 
It felt a violation of everything sacred to leave her there, enmeshed in this travesty, but it was the way things had to be. 
Without disturbing the scene, Munroe stretched out farther and pressed her lips to Neeva’s forehead.
By the strength of my hand I have done it.
“In death, maybe peace,” she whispered, and stood.
Turned her back on the scene and headed to the front, to the gold shop door, dialing Bradford as she walked away.

Chapter 42
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.
From below came a question in Albanian. Munroe dropped her voice an octave and, drawing on a language from long ago, yelled back, “Minjt【马赛克4】!” 
Too many words and the dialect and accent might be wrong. No answer and he would come hunting.
From below came a guffaw. Close enough.
Carrying the dead man’s gun, Munroe worked backward toward Neeva, the weapon held two-handed and aimed toward the empty prison stairs.
When she was within whispering distance, Munroe hissed for Neeva’s attention, got her to block open the gold-shop door and follow her into the main room.
Not because she owed Neeva anything, not because she wanted her help, but because she couldn’t afford to get cut off from her and have her used against her the way the prisoners downstairs might be.
For the third time in nearly twice as many minutes, Munroe crossed the wide floor space, this time quickly and without fear of being seen, to get to the stairs and down before the dead man’s counterpart got curious and headed up. 
Detoured around the body for Neeva’s benefit, reached the stairway, and there Neeva froze.
Munroe started down, paused at Neeva’s hesitation, and motioned her to follow. 
But the girl wouldn’t move. Color drained from her cheeks and she shook her head. Munroe fought back the anger. Liability.
There were times when all the bravery in the world couldn’t compensate for trauma and flashbacks. Liability.
It wouldn’t be easy walking down these stairs and returning to the smell of bleach and mold. 
Wouldn’t be easy to descend, knowing that once underground she was helpless against the metal door being locked in place, shutting her away forever. 
Munroe had to do it, even against her own foreboding, but Neeva didn’t. Liability.
Two fingers to her own eyes and then to the room at large, Munroe set Neeva to keep watch. Motioned to the weapon, then to the room again. Shoot to protect. Neeva nodded.
Munroe blocked out the frustration. The anger. Had to focus on the now. 
Headed down several stairs with quiet foot placement that wouldn’t alert the guard to her presence. 
Listened for pacing, breathing, clothes rustling, and keys clinking, but heard nothing. 
She didn’t need to peer around the corner to know where he was, she’d seen it a half-dozen times during her time in this hell. 
Didn’t need to worry about hitting an innocent with stray bullets, because whoever was being held captive in this dungeon was locked away behind stone and steel.
Munroe turned and did a quick double-check on Neeva, whose back was to her, Jericho two-fisted and pointed toward the floor. 
Drew a breath, ran down the remaining stairs, and skirted the corner, firing, counting rounds, moving steadily closer, until the clip in the .45 was empty. 
She drew the Jericho and charged the remaining distance.
The guard had managed to unholster his weapon. Had managed to draw and get off three shots but had never made it fully out of a sitting position. 
He tried now, crumpled between chair and wall, to lift the weapon and fire. 
She stomped on his hand. Took the gun and, in a single movement, put his own weapon to his forehead and pulled the trigger. 
Tucked the Jericho back into her waistband and ripped the ring of keys off his belt loop.

Chapter 41 MILAN, ITALY
Hands in her jacket pockets, Munroe stepped from the bistro and scanned the main hall of Milan Central below, searching for a danger she might not recognize even if spotted.
She’d left Neeva behind, tucked away at a rear table with her back to the room so that it would be impossible for someone to recognize the girl in passing and equally difficult for Neeva to give away her own nervousness through eye contact and jumpy behavior. 
Two thousand euros, the phone, and a set of instructions were the insurance on the off chance Munroe didn’t make it back.
A final glance over the crowds and Munroe headed down the stairs and through the bustle of the station toward the ticket counters, fighting the limp that marked her as an anomaly.
According to Lumani— assuming he’d told the truth— two more of his people had arrived in town last night, and they’d be searching; there could be two, or more, or none at all, but regardless, the Doll Maker knew she was on her way back to Zagreb with Neeva, 
and no matter how small the needle of her person or how big the haystack of Milan, there weren’t that many ways to get there.
Traveling by road would have been ideal for slipping between the cracks, and had Munroe been alone, she’d have offered cash to a random driver and hitched a ride, but Neeva as a travel companion made that impossible. 
Stealing another car and attempting to cross Italy and outside the Schengen Area borders without proper papers was out of the question, and carrying weapons ruled out flying. 
The Doll Maker’s people, if they were worth anything, had to play these possibilities.
Munroe waited in line, waited for the telltale hair rise of warning, but there was no incident, 
and with the next train still some hours away, she returned to Neeva with tickets in hand.
They punctuated the wait in the bistro with sparse conversation: Munroe with her back to the wall and face to the door, drinking far too much caffeine; 
Neeva picking at her food, pretending to have an appetite and to smile in order to mask a fatigue deeper than what had been there the day before, until finally their departure time rolled around and they had to move again.
Munroe lingered until it was nearly too late to board, holding back on the platform, searching for what was out of place, that inability of the truly focused to hide concentration, 
for faces that sought out other faces instead of travel schedules and compartment numbers— searching for those who were alone and headed in no obvious direction, 
and only when she saw none of this did she lead Neeva to the train, walking the long length of many cars to their first-class berth.
Had it been she giving chase, she would have skipped this uncertainty and focused manpower on the arrival, knowing eventually she would have to show. 
But this was the disadvantage of the hunted: always running, chasing monsters from shadows, never able to rest or predict from which direction the blow would come. 
Inside the berth, Munroe sat with her back to the window, legs stretched out along empty seats, Jericho in her hand between leg and cushion. 
Time drew on. The assassins never came, and after an uneventful change of trains in Venice, she relaxed and eventually, even against her own guard, fell into fitful sleep until Bradford called.
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 difficult 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.

Chapter 40 HOUSTON, TEXAS
Bradford exchanged his jacket for a service technician’s shirt: 
gray, grimy, and still bearing another man’s sweat— at least he assumed the stink belonged to Roger, the name stitched in red letters above his pecs. 
Another man’s shirt, another man’s pheromones— a simple illusion for a simple plan: He would walk in the front door, take the girl, and walk back out with her.
Bradford handed the Explorer keys to Andre Adams, swapping them for the keys to the panel van Adams had parked behind him. 
The utility vehicle, acquired on short order, white, dirty, ladder-topped, and by virtue of its everyday commonness nearly invisible, would serve its purpose just fine.
It was six in the early evening and they were still hours away from the handoff Munroe had arranged. 
The details called for a parking-lot rendezvous at eight in the morning Zagreb time, one in the morning local, 
but with the area lit up like the Fourth of July, with trucks coming and going around the clock, and new shifts in and out of the port facilities at all hours, time of day meant little, and there was no such thing as true night.
If Bradford had been in Dallas when the arrangements had been made, he would have needed every one of those precious hours to pull some kind of strategy together. But he hadn’t been in Dallas; he’d been in Houston. 
It hadn’t been difficult to figure this one out. The Doll Maker people knew Bradford was still alive, knew he was hungry and hunting, and they would want Alexis off the grid, somewhere beyond his Dallas reach. 
But since he was dealing with foot soldiers short on resources, he expected they’d fall back on familiar and convenient.
When Munroe had begged him for help, he’d gotten off one call and made another, to Adams, already in Houston, burning through cash, waiting to see what moves Kate Breeden might make. 
Bradford sent him to the address taken from the eighteen-wheeler’s freight manifests and then, going with his gut, pulled Rick Gonzalez up from Gatesville to temporarily man the Capstone office and left town. 
Was already halfway to Harris County by the time Adams called back with an assessment and pictures of the property.
While the traffickers were still waiting for instructions, he’d already been inside their crawl space. 
This time he’d gotten to the battlefield first; this time he knew what he was up against. 
This time there were no employees to worry about, only the criminals. 
He’d debated calling in the police, getting a SWAT team to handle the rescue, but couldn’t figure out how to do it without implicating himself in the shit storm he’d already started, 
or a way to ensure that a raid didn’t occur too soon or, God forbid, too late or not at all.
No. He’d get Alexis, but not by throwing away Jack’s life and possibly Sam’s as well, 
just so the scum could spend a day behind bars before posting bail and disappearing like their counterpart trash up north had done after the firefight. 
The playing field was different now; the stakes had changed and the only way to make sure this got done right was to do it himself.
THE BUILDING WAS warehouse style with straight lines, constructed of concrete and corrugated metal, and ran the length of the entire block. 
Veers had the end suite, and the other companies in the building ranged from light manufacturing to storage. 
This address, unlike the others, was leased instead of owned, so it made sense now why the location had never shown up in any of the war room’s searches.
The back portion of the property was larger than the warehouse, a fenced lot mostly filled with containers, a place where trucks loaded and offloaded cargo, 
all of this within an industrial zone just south of I-10 and slightly north of one of the many facilities that comprised the Port of Houston’s twenty-five-mile stretch along the Houston Ship Channel.
A transport business like Veers fit right in— disappeared entirely.
Bradford backed the van into one of the few parking spots that fronted the building and stepped into the warm spring air, heavy with moisture and fragranced with chemicals and petroleum, courtesy of the area’s refineries. 
The Explorer passed in front of him: Adams on his way to the end of the block, to the gated open area in back, an area the doll people couldn’t protect because it wasn’t their property. 
Bradford pulled a duffel bag out and then a tool chest, and with a clipboard tucked under his arm, laminate ID hooked onto his pocket under ROGER, picked up the heavy stuff and strode to the front door.
Didn’t bother to find out if it was locked; it was. A tremor reached out from beyond the glass: Adams blowing charges on the back door. 
A thirty-second pause, enough time for defenses to go up, for rounds to be fired, 
and then came the concussion that Bradford could hear even from here: the first in a series of flash-bangs tossed in through the hole.
Beneath this oversize roof the effects wouldn’t be as devastating as if this had been a living room or bedroom, but if Adams had managed to get the grenades anywhere near the men inside, 
then they would feel as if the Jolly Green Giant had just stormed through the door and smacked both hands upside their ears, and a ten-car pileup was having a party inside their heads. Disorienting. Nauseating. Painful. 
Bradford drove toolbox to the door. He was tired. He was pissed off. He was coming for blood.
Stepped through the hole in the glass. Set down the toolbox and pulled a loaded tactical vest and an MP5 submachine gun from the duffel.
Snapped into the vest and, adrenaline amping, slapped the 100-round Beta C-Mag drum into place. 
Felt the concussion of another grenade, incredibly loud even from here. Counted seconds. Another went off.
With images from the main room playing out in his mind’s eye, he strode forward through a standard industrial-carpeted hallway, 
past standard offices with standard office equipment and furniture, toward the back, which was not standard by any means: Under the high ceiling three smaller prefabs waited.
Soundproofed and insulated, they were windowless sheds, padlocked and up on cinder blocks, larger versions of the truck’s crawlspace in which they’d found Logan.
Bradford rounded the hallway corner into the warehouse. The two-man contingent, in a form of disoriented retreat from the gaping hole and the light and the noise, fired suppressed semiautomatics toward the rear of the building, 
squandering ammunition on shots that went wide and scattered while they stumbled toward the sheds; headed toward the human shield as Bradford expected they would.
His throat burned in recognition of a face he’d seen before, had broken before, a face that hadn’t been there when he’d scouted the location; 
recognition accompanied by his promise to Walker to take out the trash after they’d gotten Logan. 
Bradford moved forward, finger to the trigger, firing a staccato of controlled bursts.
The warehouse man and his partner dropped. Rolled. Emptied magazines at him, still too far away for accuracy, and then backup magazines. 
Bradford continued forward until the drum was empty and the room went battle-deaf silent.
The smell of war filled his airways. Fireworks. Fear. Death. Bodies on the floor, punched full of holes.
An enemy who might have had a fighting chance if they’d had the ability to think ahead, to strategize, to prepare for the possibility he might arrive already knowing their traps and their weapons.
He with the biggest guns wins. Bradford moved to the nearest man. Kicked him. Dead. Stepped to the warehouse guy, drowning in his own blood. 
The weapon that had been in his hand was a foot away, and Bradford toed it completely beyond reach. The man could have it if he was willing to die for the effort.
Bradford gazed down at him, then with time bolting wild, turned and strode toward the middle storage shed, the one he’d watched from the crawl space. 
Checked the door for wires, for any sign of explosive rigging, and, finding none, pulled a length of primer cord from the vest, wrapped, knotted, sliced, and in a maneuver getting old really fast, set it alight.
ON A MATTRESS, bound with tape at the wrists and ankles, in torn and dirty clothes, lay Alexis Jameson— part-time medical transcriptionist, single mother of a two-year-old— crying out from pain, from fear, turning from the light as if to escape it.
She didn’t bear any signs of the brutalization Logan had endured— no broken bones that Bradford could see, though from the bruises and the marks she’d clearly been brutalized in other ways. 
Battle readiness kicked in again; the push of war survival that stamped down emotion, the relief of numbness so that he didn’t have to feel.
He took a step inside and paused. Had expected to find Alexis in this holding cell, hadn’t expected to find another on the opposite side, staring up at him in terror. 
Blond, brown-eyed, she was young— sixteen or seventeen— unbound and in much better physical condition. Arms around her knees, she rocked.
Bradford moved toward Alexis, whose cries had become screams, and her turn from the light into a frantic struggle to crawl away from him, as if she couldn’t see him or had no memory of who he was. 
“Hey,” he whispered, and she said, “No, no, no.” He knelt. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispered. “I promise I’m not going to hurt you. I came to take you away from this place, to put you somewhere safe.”
Alexis responded to the tone, to the words, if not the face; stopped trying to crawl away. Didn’t move.
“You’ll be okay,” he whispered. Moved closer. “I’m going to touch you,” he said. “I’m going to put my hands on your arms and legs, so I can move you. I won’t hurt you. I promise.”
Alexis flinched but didn’t fight, and he drew her close to him. Picked her up and carried her outside into the warehouse. 
The blond one followed, jabbering, yammering words he couldn’t understand, tugging at his sleeve until finally through sign language and tears and very broken English, she communicated that there were others in the sheds.
Bradford hesitated. Swore. This hadn’t been part of the plan.
The delay in dealing with other girls, in finding a way out for them, too, could mean the difference between getting caught or not, arrested for murder or not. 
But he couldn’t leave them like bags of unwanted belongings beside a Goodwill container.
He yelled for Adams. Through the opening in the back wall, the former Marine materialized. He, too, paused when he saw the blond girl. 
Bradford moved toward him. “Take her,” he said, and transferred Alexis, like an overgrown child, from one pair of arms to one stronger.
Hands free, Bradford pulled paper from the vest and scribbled Tabitha’s married name, her number. “This is her mother,” he said. “Call her. 
“I don’t care what bullshit story you have to make up, just make sure she knows her daughter’s been traumatized. Find out what she wants to do.” 
He paused. “And then, whenever you know what that is, call me. No. Don’t wait that long. Call me as soon as you know you’re safe and then call her mother.”
Adams nodded, then was gone.
INCLUDING THE BLOND one, three foreign girls had been contained in the prefabs, pretty and young in a long-legged, fresh-faced sort of way, 
each a modern version of the goose that laid the golden egg: feed it, house it, pimp it out, and the money would keep on coming.
They would soon show up on Craigslist and other online meet-up sites, touting themselves as young and new in town, 
looking for a good time, forced by their owners to pass themselves off as willing prostitutes and call girls, full of smiles and lies and fabricated pasts.
Not knowing what else to do, he motioned the girls toward the office area, motioned them to wait, 
and assuming they understood, he turned from them to the nearest fallen enemy, grabbed him by the collar, dead and deadweight, and dragged him into the middle shed.
The warehouse man was still alive, if barely, each breath rattling with a gurgle. 
Bradford stood over him, one leg on either side of his body, watching the man shake in the way the battlefield near-dead often did. Pain. Shock. Whatever. 
Waited just long enough for the man’s eyes to focus and then gave him a big toothy grin. 
Grabbed the man by the arm and, smearing blood behind him, dragged him, too, into the shed and left him there.
The girls were in the hallway when Bradford reached it, crowded into one another like a small herd of frightened sheep, staring wide-eyed at his approach. 
He wanted to feel pity, sympathy, but battle numbness, the logistics of war, the frustration of the moment, overrode the ability to care. 
He’d been in the warehouse six minutes already. Far too long. 
He strode past them toward the front of the building. Dumped the vest, the gun, and the drum into the duffel, picked up the toolbox, and went out through the broken glass door, the girls following.
He’d intended the van to be a way to transport Alexis and, unsure what her condition might be, had put a mattress in the back. This was where the girls sat. 
Bradford shut them inside. Got the van moving away from the building and once he was far, far down the road, certain he hadn’t been followed, he pulled over.
His phone rang. Adams. Safe. En route to Dallas.
Before he could follow Adams, he needed to find a way to help the helpless; he couldn’t just put the girls on the street and wish them well. 
He left the front and slipped into the back. It took a while, but utilizing maps from the Internet on his phone, he gradually understood that they were from Moldova, one of the many pieces split off from the former USSR.
Another Internet search and the best he could turn up locally was a consulate for the Russian federation. 
He didn’t know if taking them there would be the equivalent of dropping an American stuck in Thailand on the doorstep of the Canadian embassy, 
but at least at the consulate there was a better chance of someone understanding their language, their story, and able to communicate on their behalf to those who could help. 
Not much, but all he had, and so he put the van into gear and began the drive.
For now, at least for this moment, he’d won.
The police would come, they’d find the bodies, they’d find plenty of evidence. 
They’d have to dig for answers and would hopefully discover the same threads the war room had uncovered. 
Whatever law enforcement didn’t eventually get to, Bradford would, over time. But that was more than he could worry about right now. 
He’d taken out the garbage on Walker’s behalf. He’d found Alexis and she was on her way to safety. Now he could focus on Michael.

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.

Chapter 38
For the second time between sunset and sunrise, the electrodes worked their magic. 
Lumani flailed and twitched, this time naked and bound, and what should have been satisfying in some small way left Munroe hollow.
When the current had ended, she leaned over and removed the probes. 
When Lumani had caught his breath, she stared down at his thighs and pointed the taser at his groin. “Next one goes there,” she said.
“What do you want from me?” he said. When she didn’t answer, he tugged at the bonds, manic and frantic. 
The chair rocked and the back legs tipped off the ground, and when finally he’d spent his energy, he said, “Why didn’t you kill me?”
“I might still,” she said. “But right now you’re worth more to me alive. I can’t decide whether the value is in trying to trade you for the girl in the United States or use you for information.”
“Can I have clothes?” he said. “This is inhumane.”
Munroe stepped closer. Knelt so she was eye-to-eye and tapped the taser against her thigh. 
“When I douse you with cold water so you can’t breathe, when I shove wide objects up your ass, 
“when I beat you while you’re bound and helpless or stand by and laugh while someone else does, 
“when I pull out your teeth and slaughter your family members, then we can talk about inhumane.”
Lumani fought the bonds and the chair again. Twisted. Shook. Grimaced and snarled, and finally out of breath, he glared at her. “I don’t do those things,” he said.
Munroe stood and moved several paces back. Behind her, the covers on the bed rustled, and without turning she knew Neeva had woken, had sat up and was watching. 
“You do those things,” Munroe said. “You do them every time you bring another girl through your uncle’s doors.” She paused. “Who killed Noah? Was it you?”
He said, “Noah?”
“The Moroccan. The punishment when Neeva ran.”
“Not me,” Lumani said. “My counterpart.”
“How did you find him— the Moroccan?”
“The same way we found you,” he said.
“The woman in prison?”
Lumani nodded, and his confirmation felt like a savage knife slice followed by an injection of painkillers. 
She drew a long breath past the pain for the morphine: For what it was worth, Logan hadn’t been tortured for the information, 
yet even sequestered in prison and cut off from the world, Breeden had found a way to dig and probe and follow Munroe’s movements; 
with nothing but time, endless time, what else did a person have but reason and motive to plot revenge?
Munroe cursed her own weakness, the failure to anticipate, the failure to watch her back. 
If anyone was to blame in this scenario, it was she. She should have known better.
She turned back to Lumani. “Was Noah dead from the beginning?” she said. “Before this even started, killed ahead of time just so you could have that image available in case you needed some sick card to play to control me?”
Lumani raised his eyes to hers. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s possible, but I truly don’t know. That is a question for someone else to answer.”
“How many counterparts do you have?” she said.
“There are three of us,” he said. “But I am the…” His voice caught, and his sentence failed.
“The best?” Munroe said, finishing it for him. “You should be proud.” 
She turned to Neeva. “You want revenge? Want to know what it feels like? You can’t kill him, but if you think it’ll do you any good, have at him.”
Neeva scooted off the bed and Munroe dug through the satchel, pulled out the pocketknife. 
Flicked the blade open, all four inches of it, and even as small as the knife was, the weight of the metal in her palm became soothing, calming: a familiar lullaby of death that put the world at ease.
Neeva said, “Use this?”
Munroe said, “Yes.”
“What about the taser?” Neeva said. “Or maybe the gun. I could shoot him in the leg.”
“No,” Munroe said. “If you want to know what it really feels like, then you do it personal and close. Anything else is cheap and easy.”
Neeva took the knife. Gingerly. The way someone unfamiliar with handling a gun might take such a weapon: two-fingered from the base, like it might morph into a snake, might coil and bite. 
And then, with a toss of her head and her posture straight, Neeva grasped the handle firmly, strode around the bed to Lumani, and stood in front of him for a long while, 
looking from the knife to him and back to the knife again, as if analyzing what she truly felt and determining what course she would steer.
Lumani’s jaw clenched and his gaze hardened, as if he braced for a pain he was too proud to plead against.
“You’re the guy who kidnapped me, aren’t you?” Neeva said.
Lumani held stoic and didn’t reply.
“I could cut you,” Neeva said. “I’m not scared, and it wouldn’t bother me to see you suffer. But I want to talk to you. So, you choose. Cut or talk?”
“I was one of them,” Lumani said.
“And this is what you do for a living? Kidnap girls?”
His head jerked up defensively. “It’s not a living,” he said. “It’s a requirement, and I never touch the girls.”
“Oh, so that makes you better than the rest of them?” Neeva returned to staring at the knife. Pointed the blade down toward Lumani’s thigh. 
There her hand hovered with the point of metal barely touching him, and she said, “Who dies?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Who dies if you don’t follow through on your requirement?”
He lowered his eyes.
“You’re an asshole,” Neeva said. “You turn innocent girls into human cattle and you still find a way to feel sorry for yourself. You should feel guilty, not make excuses for why it’s not your fault.”
Neeva’s hand gripped the knife handle harder, tighter, until her knuckles whitened. 
And then she jabbed the blade down into Lumani’s thigh and jerked: a three-quarter-inch penetration, easy. Maybe an inch. 
To the side of his leg, missing bone, striking soft tissue. Had to hurt.
Lumani screamed and Neeva pulled the knife out. Stood staring at the blood on the blade while the wound began to weep. 
Munroe stepped forward and slowly, almost tenderly, took the knife from Neeva’s hand. “Do you feel better?” she said.
“A little.”
Lumani swore and rocked the chair, teeth gritted, hands clenched tightly around the ends of the arm handles.
“Do you want more?” Munroe said.
“Telling him he’s an asshole felt better than cutting him.”
Munroe handed her back the knife. “Go get a washcloth and bring it to me. Then wash off the knife,” she said. 
“Make sure you do a good job— those are your fingerprints and his blood, and we’re in Italy, not the United States.”
Neeva took the handle between forefinger and thumb and left for the bathroom, returned briefly with the cloth and left again.
Munroe picked up the tape from the desk. Put the towel over Lumani’s wound and used the last of the roll to hold it in place. 
Knelt so she was eye-to-eye with him once more. “I’d like the names of your counterparts,” she said. 
“And I’d like you to explain everything you know about the way your uncle operates, both here and in the United States. 
“I want to know about the clients and I want to know the structure of the organization.”
Lumani, breathing shallow, broke off eye contact and stared at the floor.
Munroe stood and returned to the bed. Sat on it and studied him, while from the bathroom the sound of water flowing continued.
Threats of pain, death, even Neeva with the knife, weren’t what poked at his psyche. 
He wasn’t afraid of those things and they would never be enough to overcome the needs that drove him.
The water in the bathroom shut off and Neeva returned, knife wrapped in a towel. 
“Just put it in the bag,” Munroe said, and she pulled out the phone. Dialed the Doll Maker. Set the call to speaker.
At six in the morning she didn’t expect an immediate answer, especially not when dialing for the first time from an unknown number, 
but the line was picked up and the voice, clearly woken from sleep and unmistakably him, said “Kush?”
“Your missing friend,” Munroe replied, speaking in English for Neeva’s benefit. 
She could hear the shift, the crinkle against the phone that indicated movement.
“Such a tricky one,” the Doll Maker said. “The problem you were meant to fix, you’ve only made worse.”
“Your punishments didn’t fit the crime, so I’ve taken matters into my own hands.”
“My philosophy is so simple,” he said, voice lilting, no longer sleepy, and clearly amused. “You break it and so you break, too.”
“So, congratulations, I broke,” she said. “And now, because of that, there’s a whole lot more broken. What are you going to do? Destroy the whole world?”
“You called me,” he said. “Do you have a proposal or are you a woman wasting time with useless chatter?”
“I will trade your Valon for the girl you currently hold in Texas.”
The spontaneous laughter was loud enough to carry across the room, and Lumani raised his eyes in response.
“If you have him— and I ascertain you must since he’s been missing for some time— then you can do me a favor and dispose of him. 
“The girl in Texas, she has value, might fetch a fair price on the market, but Valon is a failure and worthless to me.”
“Are you absolutely sure?” Munroe said. “Because that isn’t a bluff you can take back. 
“If you know anything about me, you know I have no problem, no conscience or hesitation, in killing people like you. 
“He’s caused me considerable grief, so if you won’t trade him, then he’s worthless to me and I will kill him.”
“Do as you wish,” the Doll Maker said.
“In that case, I’m willing to offer you your multimillion-dollar package for a girl nobody will miss,” Munroe said. “That should be an appealing trade.”
“I’ve seen the state of the merchandise,” he said. “She is damaged. Worthless.”
“That’s fine,” Munroe said. “I know who we’re dealing with and delivering to, I saw him in Monaco. 
“I’m wounded, I need hospitalization, Logan is free, and I no longer have a need for your merchandise. 
“I have to rid myself of evidence and I’m sure he’d be happy to take her for a lesser price. Hair grows back fairly quickly. 
“I’ll deal with him myself and keep the fee, which means no Valon for future captures, no payment— not even to recoup your losses— and no me. You lose, you lose, and you lose.”
The Doll Maker waited a long silence before speaking again. “What, then, my tricky friend,” he said, “is the benefit to you in delivering the doll to me?”
“There will be less blood on my hands.”
“Ah, so you do care for them after all,” he said. “Fine, I will take the doll and give you your niece. Bring her to me.”
“I need time to set it up with my backup to be sure you deliver on your end.”
“My word is good.”
“Then you should have no problem with my arrangements. I’ll bring the merchandise to you and call when I am ready. And really, what do you want with Valon?”
“Do as you wish,” he said. “I have no need for him.”
Munroe put down the phone and turned to Lumani. 
She’d suspected the direction the conversation would run, but never to the extreme it had, 
and the pain etched on Lumani’s face was deeper than what had surfaced when Neeva had cut him. In spite of circumstances, Munroe hurt on his behalf. 
She stood and reached for the bottle of water. Uncapped it and put plastic to Lumani’s mouth. He drank and kept drinking until the bottle was empty. 
Water dribbled down his chin, and though he tried to force it back, water also escaped, just barely, and only once, from his eyes.
Munroe returned to sitting on the bed, then leaned forward and faced him. Said nothing and neither did he, until the silence in the room became palpable. 
From behind, Neeva, inching toward Munroe, said, “Are we going to kill him?”
“I don’t think we have to,” Munroe said.
Oblivious to the undercurrents that drove the silence, the thoughts that went unspoken, Neeva said, “Well, we can’t trade him, and he won’t want to tell us what we want to know. 
“He’ll just make noise and call attention to us. He’s a killer and a criminal and a total dick. What’s the use in keeping him alive?”
“Will you talk?” Munroe said to Lumani. “What does he offer that you can’t find elsewhere? 
“He’ll never love you— no matter what he promises. He’s not capable of giving you what you crave.”
“He has at times,” Lumani said.
“Just a game to him. An amusement, a way to control you.”
Lumani lowered his eyes, and Munroe, offering him a way out from the emotional devastation that verbalizing and facing such an internalized worthlessness and shame would cause, said, “What hold does he have on you?”
“I have no life without him,” Lumani said. “Since I was four, he has taken me under his care— spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on training— money I owed him and had to pay back as the price for my own freedom.”
“You’ve earned it back, but you still work for him.”
“There’s a bank account somewhere, money I’ve earned—”
“Blood money,” Neeva interrupted.
Munroe raised a hand to hush her.
“I’ve seen the statements,” he said. “It’s not a small amount. He’s promised to release it many times. Always one last job and then I am free. 
“And, I think, if that money was really ever mine, I think he’s taking the account as payment for the merchandise,” Lumani paused, then whispered, “and terminating me.”
“You don’t need that money,” Munroe said. “You’re young. Well traveled. Speak several languages. 
“And maybe not as smart or as good as you think you are, but smart enough, good enough. You can start over just about anywhere.”
“With what? My rifle?”
“Point taken,” Munroe said. “But everyone starts somewhere. I started with nothing. It’s not easy, but it’s possible if you want it badly enough.”
“You are a killer,” he said. “No better than me.”
“I didn’t know we were comparing,” she said, “and frankly, terms like better or worse are meaningless to people like us.” 
She jabbed a finger to his chest, and he flinched. “But I do own up to my actions instead of finding someone else to blame, 
“and until you get that sorted out for yourself, you’re just a stupid dumb sheep. You have potential, Valon. A life. Don’t squander what you have chasing an illusion.” 
She paused for effect. “You have options and you’re a fool if you don’t at least examine them.”
He shrugged, his expression empty. “What do you want to know?” he said. “If it is reasonable, I’ll tell you.”
Without turning, Munroe said, “Neeva, check what food is left, will you?” Neeva rummaged through the bag. 
To Lumani, Munroe said, “Are there reinforcements on the way?”
“They arrived last night.”
“How many?”
“Two more.”
“Before or after you came for Neeva?”
“After,” he said, and then, reluctant and perfunctory, “They were en route, couldn’t get to me before the exchange. 
“I was to return to the car and then to rendezvous. Had they gotten into town sooner, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
Munroe shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Are they looking for you right now?”
Lumani stared at the floor. Not the gaze of contemplation but of searching. “I don’t know,” he said finally. 
“If they are looking for me, I believe that it is only to eliminate loose ends. They’re certainly out for her, for you. To kill you.”
“What about your driver?”
“I was lying,” he said. “I left the keys in a magnetic case under the vehicle’s carriage. 
“That’s how we operate, so someone else can come get the vehicle if we don’t return to it. My wallet is there also, and ID.”
Neeva stood by Munroe, last packet of crackers in her hand. Munroe took the package, opened it, and placed a cracker in Lumani’s mouth. He chewed. 
She handed cash to Neeva. “Do you think you can find painkillers in the gift store? We’ll need another couple bottles of water as well.”
“I’ll manage,” Neeva said. “I assume I can spend the change.”
Munroe nodded and, without glancing back, said, “Wear your sunglasses and hat.”
“Got ’em,” Neeva said, and she left.

Chapter 38
For the second time between sunset and sunrise, the electrodes worked their magic. 
Lumani flailed and twitched, this time naked and bound, and what should have been satisfying in some small way left Munroe hollow.
When the current had ended, she leaned over and removed the probes. 
When Lumani had caught his breath, she stared down at his thighs and pointed the taser at his groin. “Next one goes there,” she said.
“What do you want from me?” he said. When she didn’t answer, he tugged at the bonds, manic and frantic. 
The chair rocked and the back legs tipped off the ground, and when finally he’d spent his energy, he said, “Why didn’t you kill me?”
“I might still,” she said. “But right now you’re worth more to me alive. I can’t decide whether the value is in trying to trade you for the girl in the United States or use you for information.”
“Can I have clothes?” he said. “This is inhumane.”
Munroe stepped closer. Knelt so she was eye-to-eye and tapped the taser against her thigh. 
“When I douse you with cold water so you can’t breathe, when I shove wide objects up your ass, 
“when I beat you while you’re bound and helpless or stand by and laugh while someone else does, 
“when I pull out your teeth and slaughter your family members, then we can talk about inhumane.”
Lumani fought the bonds and the chair again. Twisted. Shook. Grimaced and snarled, and finally out of breath, he glared at her. “I don’t do those things,” he said.
Munroe stood and moved several paces back. Behind her, the covers on the bed rustled, and without turning she knew Neeva had woken, had sat up and was watching. 
“You do those things,” Munroe said. “You do them every time you bring another girl through your uncle’s doors.” She paused. “Who killed Noah? Was it you?”
He said, “Noah?”
“The Moroccan. The punishment when Neeva ran.”
“Not me,” Lumani said. “My counterpart.”
“How did you find him— the Moroccan?”
“The same way we found you,” he said.
“The woman in prison?”
Lumani nodded, and his confirmation felt like a savage knife slice followed by an injection of painkillers. 
She drew a long breath past the pain for the morphine: For what it was worth, Logan hadn’t been tortured for the information, 
yet even sequestered in prison and cut off from the world, Breeden had found a way to dig and probe and follow Munroe’s movements; 
with nothing but time, endless time, what else did a person have but reason and motive to plot revenge?
Munroe cursed her own weakness, the failure to anticipate, the failure to watch her back. 
If anyone was to blame in this scenario, it was she. She should have known better.
She turned back to Lumani. “Was Noah dead from the beginning?” she said. “Before this even started, killed ahead of time just so you could have that image available in case you needed some sick card to play to control me?”
Lumani raised his eyes to hers. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s possible, but I truly don’t know. That is a question for someone else to answer.”
“How many counterparts do you have?” she said.
“There are three of us,” he said. “But I am the…” His voice caught, and his sentence failed.
“The best?” Munroe said, finishing it for him. “You should be proud.” 
She turned to Neeva. “You want revenge? Want to know what it feels like? You can’t kill him, but if you think it’ll do you any good, have at him.”
Neeva scooted off the bed and Munroe dug through the satchel, pulled out the pocketknife. 
Flicked the blade open, all four inches of it, and even as small as the knife was, the weight of the metal in her palm became soothing, calming: a familiar lullaby of death that put the world at ease.
Neeva said, “Use this?”
Munroe said, “Yes.”
“What about the taser?” Neeva said. “Or maybe the gun. I could shoot him in the leg.”
“No,” Munroe said. “If you want to know what it really feels like, then you do it personal and close. Anything else is cheap and easy.”
Neeva took the knife. Gingerly. The way someone unfamiliar with handling a gun might take such a weapon: two-fingered from the base, like it might morph into a snake, might coil and bite. 
And then, with a toss of her head and her posture straight, Neeva grasped the handle firmly, strode around the bed to Lumani, and stood in front of him for a long while, 
looking from the knife to him and back to the knife again, as if analyzing what she truly felt and determining what course she would steer.
Lumani’s jaw clenched and his gaze hardened, as if he braced for a pain he was too proud to plead against.
“You’re the guy who kidnapped me, aren’t you?” Neeva said.
Lumani held stoic and didn’t reply.
“I could cut you,” Neeva said. “I’m not scared, and it wouldn’t bother me to see you suffer. But I want to talk to you. So, you choose. Cut or talk?”
“I was one of them,” Lumani said.
“And this is what you do for a living? Kidnap girls?”
His head jerked up defensively. “It’s not a living,” he said. “It’s a requirement, and I never touch the girls.”
“Oh, so that makes you better than the rest of them?” Neeva returned to staring at the knife. Pointed the blade down toward Lumani’s thigh. 
There her hand hovered with the point of metal barely touching him, and she said, “Who dies?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Who dies if you don’t follow through on your requirement?”
He lowered his eyes.
“You’re an asshole,” Neeva said. “You turn innocent girls into human cattle and you still find a way to feel sorry for yourself. You should feel guilty, not make excuses for why it’s not your fault.”
Neeva’s hand gripped the knife handle harder, tighter, until her knuckles whitened. 
And then she jabbed the blade down into Lumani’s thigh and jerked: a three-quarter-inch penetration, easy. Maybe an inch. 
To the side of his leg, missing bone, striking soft tissue. Had to hurt.
Lumani screamed and Neeva pulled the knife out. Stood staring at the blood on the blade while the wound began to weep. 
Munroe stepped forward and slowly, almost tenderly, took the knife from Neeva’s hand. “Do you feel better?” she said.
“A little.”
Lumani swore and rocked the chair, teeth gritted, hands clenched tightly around the ends of the arm handles.
“Do you want more?” Munroe said.
“Telling him he’s an asshole felt better than cutting him.”
Munroe handed her back the knife. “Go get a washcloth and bring it to me. Then wash off the knife,” she said. 
“Make sure you do a good job— those are your fingerprints and his blood, and we’re in Italy, not the United States.”
Neeva took the handle between forefinger and thumb and left for the bathroom, returned briefly with the cloth and left again.
Munroe picked up the tape from the desk. Put the towel over Lumani’s wound and used the last of the roll to hold it in place. 
Knelt so she was eye-to-eye with him once more. “I’d like the names of your counterparts,” she said. 
“And I’d like you to explain everything you know about the way your uncle operates, both here and in the United States. 
“I want to know about the clients and I want to know the structure of the organization.”
Lumani, breathing shallow, broke off eye contact and stared at the floor.
Munroe stood and returned to the bed. Sat on it and studied him, while from the bathroom the sound of water flowing continued.
Threats of pain, death, even Neeva with the knife, weren’t what poked at his psyche. 
He wasn’t afraid of those things and they would never be enough to overcome the needs that drove him.
The water in the bathroom shut off and Neeva returned, knife wrapped in a towel. 
“Just put it in the bag,” Munroe said, and she pulled out the phone. Dialed the Doll Maker. Set the call to speaker.
At six in the morning she didn’t expect an immediate answer, especially not when dialing for the first time from an unknown number, 
but the line was picked up and the voice, clearly woken from sleep and unmistakably him, said “Kush?”
“Your missing friend,” Munroe replied, speaking in English for Neeva’s benefit. 
She could hear the shift, the crinkle against the phone that indicated movement.
“Such a tricky one,” the Doll Maker said. “The problem you were meant to fix, you’ve only made worse.”
“Your punishments didn’t fit the crime, so I’ve taken matters into my own hands.”
“My philosophy is so simple,” he said, voice lilting, no longer sleepy, and clearly amused. “You break it and so you break, too.”
“So, congratulations, I broke,” she said. “And now, because of that, there’s a whole lot more broken. What are you going to do? Destroy the whole world?”
“You called me,” he said. “Do you have a proposal or are you a woman wasting time with useless chatter?”
“I will trade your Valon for the girl you currently hold in Texas.”
The spontaneous laughter was loud enough to carry across the room, and Lumani raised his eyes in response.
“If you have him— and I ascertain you must since he’s been missing for some time— then you can do me a favor and dispose of him. 
“The girl in Texas, she has value, might fetch a fair price on the market, but Valon is a failure and worthless to me.”
“Are you absolutely sure?” Munroe said. “Because that isn’t a bluff you can take back. 
“If you know anything about me, you know I have no problem, no conscience or hesitation, in killing people like you. 
“He’s caused me considerable grief, so if you won’t trade him, then he’s worthless to me and I will kill him.”
“Do as you wish,” the Doll Maker said.
“In that case, I’m willing to offer you your multimillion-dollar package for a girl nobody will miss,” Munroe said. “That should be an appealing trade.”
“I’ve seen the state of the merchandise,” he said. “She is damaged. Worthless.”
“That’s fine,” Munroe said. “I know who we’re dealing with and delivering to, I saw him in Monaco. 
“I’m wounded, I need hospitalization, Logan is free, and I no longer have a need for your merchandise. 
“I have to rid myself of evidence and I’m sure he’d be happy to take her for a lesser price. Hair grows back fairly quickly. 
“I’ll deal with him myself and keep the fee, which means no Valon for future captures, no payment— not even to recoup your losses— and no me. You lose, you lose, and you lose.”
The Doll Maker waited a long silence before speaking again. “What, then, my tricky friend,” he said, “is the benefit to you in delivering the doll to me?”
“There will be less blood on my hands.”
“Ah, so you do care for them after all,” he said. “Fine, I will take the doll and give you your niece. Bring her to me.”
“I need time to set it up with my backup to be sure you deliver on your end.”
“My word is good.”
“Then you should have no problem with my arrangements. I’ll bring the merchandise to you and call when I am ready. And really, what do you want with Valon?”
“Do as you wish,” he said. “I have no need for him.”
Munroe put down the phone and turned to Lumani. 
She’d suspected the direction the conversation would run, but never to the extreme it had, 
and the pain etched on Lumani’s face was deeper than what had surfaced when Neeva had cut him. In spite of circumstances, Munroe hurt on his behalf. 
She stood and reached for the bottle of water. Uncapped it and put plastic to Lumani’s mouth. He drank and kept drinking until the bottle was empty. 
Water dribbled down his chin, and though he tried to force it back, water also escaped, just barely, and only once, from his eyes.
Munroe returned to sitting on the bed, then leaned forward and faced him. Said nothing and neither did he, until the silence in the room became palpable. 
From behind, Neeva, inching toward Munroe, said, “Are we going to kill him?”
“I don’t think we have to,” Munroe said.
Oblivious to the undercurrents that drove the silence, the thoughts that went unspoken, Neeva said, “Well, we can’t trade him, and he won’t want to tell us what we want to know. 
“He’ll just make noise and call attention to us. He’s a killer and a criminal and a total dick. What’s the use in keeping him alive?”
“Will you talk?” Munroe said to Lumani. “What does he offer that you can’t find elsewhere? 
“He’ll never love you— no matter what he promises. He’s not capable of giving you what you crave.”
“He has at times,” Lumani said.
“Just a game to him. An amusement, a way to control you.”
Lumani lowered his eyes, and Munroe, offering him a way out from the emotional devastation that verbalizing and facing such an internalized worthlessness and shame would cause, said, “What hold does he have on you?”
“I have no life without him,” Lumani said. “Since I was four, he has taken me under his care— spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on training— money I owed him and had to pay back as the price for my own freedom.”
“You’ve earned it back, but you still work for him.”
“There’s a bank account somewhere, money I’ve earned—”
“Blood money,” Neeva interrupted.
Munroe raised a hand to hush her.
“I’ve seen the statements,” he said. “It’s not a small amount. He’s promised to release it many times. Always one last job and then I am free. 
“And, I think, if that money was really ever mine, I think he’s taking the account as payment for the merchandise,” Lumani paused, then whispered, “and terminating me.”
“You don’t need that money,” Munroe said. “You’re young. Well traveled. Speak several languages. 
“And maybe not as smart or as good as you think you are, but smart enough, good enough. You can start over just about anywhere.”
“With what? My rifle?”
“Point taken,” Munroe said. “But everyone starts somewhere. I started with nothing. It’s not easy, but it’s possible if you want it badly enough.”
“You are a killer,” he said. “No better than me.”
“I didn’t know we were comparing,” she said, “and frankly, terms like better or worse are meaningless to people like us.” 
She jabbed a finger to his chest, and he flinched. “But I do own up to my actions instead of finding someone else to blame, 
“and until you get that sorted out for yourself, you’re just a stupid dumb sheep. You have potential, Valon. A life. Don’t squander what you have chasing an illusion.” 
She paused for effect. “You have options and you’re a fool if you don’t at least examine them.”
He shrugged, his expression empty. “What do you want to know?” he said. “If it is reasonable, I’ll tell you.”
Without turning, Munroe said, “Neeva, check what food is left, will you?” Neeva rummaged through the bag. 
To Lumani, Munroe said, “Are there reinforcements on the way?”
“They arrived last night.”
“How many?”
“Two more.”
“Before or after you came for Neeva?”
“After,” he said, and then, reluctant and perfunctory, “They were en route, couldn’t get to me before the exchange. 
“I was to return to the car and then to rendezvous. Had they gotten into town sooner, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
Munroe shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Are they looking for you right now?”
Lumani stared at the floor. Not the gaze of contemplation but of searching. “I don’t know,” he said finally. 
“If they are looking for me, I believe that it is only to eliminate loose ends. They’re certainly out for her, for you. To kill you.”
“What about your driver?”
“I was lying,” he said. “I left the keys in a magnetic case under the vehicle’s carriage. 
“That’s how we operate, so someone else can come get the vehicle if we don’t return to it. My wallet is there also, and ID.”
Neeva stood by Munroe, last packet of crackers in her hand. Munroe took the package, opened it, and placed a cracker in Lumani’s mouth. He chewed. 
She handed cash to Neeva. “Do you think you can find painkillers in the gift store? We’ll need another couple bottles of water as well.”
“I’ll manage,” Neeva said. “I assume I can spend the change.”
Munroe nodded and, without glancing back, said, “Wear your sunglasses and hat.”
“Got ’em,” Neeva said, and she left.

Chapter 37
Munroe guided Neeva through the crowd of onlookers, gatherers who’d arrived in the wake of the sirens and lights, past the police cars. 
There were others, too— fellow hotel patrons who, after the shooting ended, and realizing the police had arrived, had also made their dash for freedom, adding to the confusion and the crowds.
They continued along the sidewalk, away from the hotel, Munroe waiting for the instant death that might or might not come and caring not one way or the other. 
One bullet and the pain would stop. But the death never came.
And so Munroe moved Neeva onward, more quickly now that they were beyond the police. 
Additional sirens called from down another street, undoubtedly summoned as backup after the first on scene had experienced the guests pouring out and seen the hotel proprietor on the floor of the lobby. 
She didn’t think the owner was dead, although they’d passed through too quickly to confirm— for conscience’s sake, she hoped he was still alive.
Neeva, by her side, legs moving twice as quickly as Munroe’s, continued to sob. 
Munroe said, “You can stop crying now,” and from one breath to the next, the tears dried up.
As she had done so many times in the past hours, Munroe turned down streets at random, moving slower this time not only to accommodate Neeva but also her own weakening, 
stopping occasionally to ask strangers for directions to the nearest metro, only to deliberately head off course, doing the mental math: 
trying to avoid making a beeline for her destination without taking so long to get there that Lumani was able to project her plan and arrive before she did.
One more phase and she could stop. This last strategic play meant, at least for the night, that the constant movement and the adrenaline spikes would be over, meant she could sleep.
The metro station led off the street and to the underground. If Lumani followed, and Munroe expected he would, he would be methodical and slow. 
She’d picked off two of his men in one day, and he’d be concerned about avoiding strategic errors, although why he hadn’t taken the shot outside the hotel puzzled her.
The train arrived, and with rush hour long past, they found seats easily. 
Munroe caught stares from two passengers across the aisle and swiped at her forehead. 
Neeva handed her a washcloth that she’d apparently taken from the hotel, and Munroe tamped down the blood.
To Neeva she said, “Are you still willing to go through with your plan— to be used as bait?”
The girl didn’t answer immediately, and Munroe switched on the cell phone. “I can’t guarantee this will work,” she said. “And there’s the possibility we only half fail— that you end up getting taken and I can’t get you back. 
“I need to know you’ve seriously weighed the consequences and I’m not gambling with your life without your consent.”
Neeva stared at the floor a long while and then looked up. “I understand the consequences,” she said, “and yes, I’m still willing.”
Munroe reached for Neeva’s hand. Squeezed it. “I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe,” she said, 
and when Neeva smiled in reply, Munroe turned to the phone and worked as quickly as the spotty cell signal would allow, utilizing credit card numbers she’d had and memorized for years, setting the steps out in advance that would get them to the end of the night.
“Okay, then,” Munroe whispered, and she dialed Lumani. When he answered, she said, “I want to make a trade.”
A heartbeat of pause, then Lumani said, “You’ll give up the package?”
“I can’t protect her,” Munroe said. “I’m bleeding. Weakening. You’ll take her from me, anyway. But I want the girl in the United States freed as was the original offer.”
“That was before you killed Tamás.”
“I still want it.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“No guarantees?” she said.
“I can’t. But like you said, I’ll take her from you, anyway.”
“Why didn’t you shoot?” she said.
“The timing wasn’t right.”
“You want me dead,” she said.
“Yes, badly.”
“I’m going to leave her at a restaurant for you to pick up,” she said. “I won’t be there.”
“I’ll still find you.”
“Possibly, but not tonight.”
“Where will you put her?” he said.
“I’ll call you when I figure it out.”
THE TAXI MUNROE had arranged for was waiting at the station when they arrived, and the transfer from train to platform to stairs to car made seamlessly. 
Munroe gave the driver the name of the hotel she’d booked across town and, seated in the comfort of the backseat, fought the body’s command to drift to sleep— sleep Neeva quickly succumbed to.
Buildings rose like silent sentinels standing guard along the way, their facades framed and shadowed by streetlights, casting an otherworldly impression over sidewalks alive with pedestrian traffic. 
Munroe studied the eateries, searching for one that would abet her purpose, and when she found it, signaled the driver to pull over.
Her instructions were simple. Drive around the block at least once, and upon the return, idle down the street with the meter running. 
“When it’s time to leave,” she said, “it might be with two sleeping people, and I’ll probably need your help.” She waved a wad of cash. “Assuming you’re available.”
The driver’s smile widened and he nodded. “Yes, available,” he said.
Munroe nudged Neeva, and the girl came awake grudgingly. “It’s time,” she said, and Neeva scooted out of the taxi with her.
The restaurant filled a corner, the front well lit and inviting, but the side street mainly in shadow, and most of the tables set out under awnings along the fronting still empty.
Munroe called Lumani, and although she suspected he wasn’t far away, she gave him the coordinates. 
She placed Neeva at the table in a corner, in a chair whose back faced the windowless side of the restaurant, and left all of the bags but the satchel at her feet.
Munroe pulled the trackers and the handmade envelope from her pocket. Scribbled a fake address on it. 
Neeva forced a smile, but reflective of the stress and exhaustion, the gesture came out crooked. 
Munroe said, “I promise.” And with a kiss on the top of the girl’s head, walked away.
The journey wasn’t long. Several meters along the length of the building, into the shadows, far enough away from the restaurant patio that she wasn’t visible beyond the lights but still close enough that she could see the back of Neeva’s head.
A group of two men and a woman walked in Munroe’s direction, and Munroe called out to them, offered a hundred euros if they’d take the envelope and drop it into the nearest mailbox for her.
Their expressions were a mix of suspicion and curiosity, but money, the world’s most common language, was one they spoke well, 
and so they took the envelope and the cash and continued along their way until their laughter and playful banter faded with them.
In the shadows, Munroe waited, her back to the wall, time continuing its slow march forward while her glance roved from Neeva to what she could see of the sidewalk and the pedestrians who filled the night.
In place of the Jericho, she held the taser. Double-checked the safety, reconfirmed the battery power. 
The moments passed, and eventually Neeva was forced to order a meal to retain her seat, but still no Lumani.
He’d seen the blood. He’d seen the limp. He was running on nervous fumes and exhaustion the same way she was, and he wanted the package. 
He had to show. And even if he took Neeva down from afar, he’d still have to come in close for the pickup. 
Even if he’d driven by once— twice— to confirm Neeva was truly alone, Munroe should have caught sight of him by now.
Consumed by the silence, by Lumani’s absence, by exhaustion, and entirely focused on trying to spot him on the street and in the crowds, she nearly missed the cues of approach from behind. 
Didn’t hear him, didn’t see him slinking through the shadows from the opposite direction until almost too late.
She turned. Caught a glimpse of him. Of the handgun. Exhaustion became energy. Weakness became strength.
He was still in the range between far enough to miss and close enough to hit.
He stopped suddenly when she turned. Drew, and so did she; he fired and the slug hit her square in the chest. 
The force threw her backward onto the ground, and when he approached to fire again, she aimed the laser sight at his neck. Pulled. Threads of voltage sent him into spasms. 
Hurting, trying to breathe, Munroe forced herself up from the ground and closed the distance. 
Kicked the gun out of reach; it was another HK USP .45 Tactical, same as what Tamás and Arben had used. 
Let go of the taser and put the Jericho to Lumani’s forehead.
With a boot on his chest, she used her free hand to search for the syringe he surely carried. 
Found it. Jabbed it into his thigh. Waited with the gun to his head until his eyes shut and his jaw went slack. Punched him just to be sure. 
The sedative would have been measured to heavily dose Neeva and her nearly half-weight to his, but at this point, what the fuck ever.
A group of pedestrians on the other side of the street had watched the entire scene. Munroe waved them on. 
“It’s official business,” she said, and whether they believed her or not, they moved on. 
Human nature was always more inclined to apathy, to avoiding involvement, to seeing things as someone else’s problem. People were easy like that.
Munroe called to Neeva, though it took several attempts, each louder than the last, to capture the girl’s attention. 
Neeva, as Munroe had been, was so entirely focused on pretending to eat and act naturally while studying pedestrians that she’d filtered out the noise from behind. 
When the girl finally heard the call, she put money on the table and brought the bags, then, spotting Lumani on the ground, smiled. 
Had no idea that because of Munroe’s slipup they’d both come perilously close to disaster.
Munroe blinked back the exhaustion. God, she needed sleep. Soon. Almost. Another hour at the most and she could collapse.
Munroe gave Neeva a strained smile. “Good job,” she said, and dialed the taxi driver. When he answered, she called him around for pickup.
That Neeva was still awake was a bonus Munroe hadn’t counted on, and so together, with one of Lumani’s arms draped over Munroe’s shoulders and Neeva propping him up more with her head than shoulders, they walked him to the curb. 
To the occasional passersby who stopped to gawk, Munroe said, “Too much wine,” which inevitably elicited snickers.
Inside the cab, Munroe handed the driver half the cash she’d offered and said, “The rest when we reach the hotel.” Switching to English, she said to Neeva, “We need to get him naked.”
BY THE TIME they arrived at the hotel, through something of a maneuver in the small backseat, they’d stripped Lumani down and then Munroe, having confirmed the pants and shirt were free of trackers, put them back on. 
The shoes, jacket, belt, and everything else he’d worn and carried on him she’d rolled into a ball, and they’d stopped along the way so that she could dispose of them.
With another portion of cash handed over to the driver, he didn’t question the many requests for turns and false starts. 
They traveled aimlessly along random streets. Stopped and waited. Moved to parking garages and waited more, and although Munroe expected a tail, she found none. 
Throughout, the taxi driver paid attention but said nothing but grazie when at last he parked at the curb outside the hotel and Munroe handed him the last of the money. 
“I have more,” Munroe said. “Wait and I will return.” To Neeva: “I’ll be right back.”
Taking Lumani into the hotel, unconscious and barely clothed, was one thing, putting him on display and babying him through the check-in procedure another, 
and so she entered the hotel alone, scoped the lobby and the elevator area to place the cameras and security, and then returning to the front desk, secured the keys.
At the taxi, Munroe and Neeva inched Lumani out, and with his arm draped over her shoulders and his body sagging, Munroe handed the driver another payment. 
“Don’t return for any of the items we threw away,” she said. “Not even the phone or the watch— there are evil people looking for those pieces, and if you carry even one of them, you’ll invite death to your family.”
The driver gazed at her quizzically and she said, “You have enough money to make up for any value you might get out of going back for them. Please just believe me.”
He nodded.
“I’ll keep your number,” she said. “I may need your help again.” 
So he smiled and waved before driving off, and she stared after him, hoping he’d follow through— not just for his own sake, but for hers.
Munroe turned from the diminishing taillights toward the bright hotel entrance. 
With Neeva’s help, she juggled carrying bags and walking Lumani through the front door, a slightly more attention-gathering process than it had been getting him from the back of the restaurant into the taxi.
This hotel, unlike the boutique one that had served her purpose earlier in the evening, was a European version of an American chain, which made it easier to blend in and hide. 
The twenty-four-hour front desk rotated shifts, and employees and guests passed through the cycle in numbers great enough to make this one odd incident just another curiosity.
From lobby to elevator, past curious hotel personnel and guests, Munroe tossed out the occasional sarcastic comment poking fun at Lumani and eliciting smiles as they continued on, up several floors, down a hall, and finally, into the seclusion of the room.
Munroe shifted furniture, and when she’d cleared the space she needed, she stripped Lumani out of his clothes again and then maneuvered him into the desk chair with its back wedged into a corner. 
With the roll of tape, she bound him— ankles, knees, wrists, elbows, shoulders, and torso— 
so that he took on the shape of the chair and could not, through accident or effort, tip it over. 
The sedative wouldn’t be enough to keep him under for long, but he was as sleep-deprived as she was, and she expected him to be out a while. 
She didn’t tape his mouth for fear of suffocating him, and because in any case what noise he made would surely alert her before anyone else.
Duct tape. Perfect weapon; so many uses. With her work done, Munroe took a step back and tossed what little was left of the roll onto the desk.
Munroe sighed. Glanced at Neeva, who’d fallen asleep as soon as Munroe had gotten Lumani in the chair. 
Sat on the room’s one bed and took off her shoes. Lay back and darkness descended.
TAPPING PULLED MUNROE from the deep. Subtle random thuds that paused and continued on, eager and frenetic, only to pause again. 
Without moving, without changing the rhythm of her breathing, she opened her eyes just enough to observe and for a minute or two lay still, 
while Lumani twisted in the chair, straining at the bonds, throwing himself forward and occasionally inching the chair away from the wall.
Neeva slept on. Munroe opened her eyes fully, waited until Lumani had finished thrashing. 
Smiled at the shock on his face and the sudden freeze when his eyes locked onto hers and he realized she’d been watching him. “What do you want with me?” he said.
Munroe sat. Stretched. The clock on the desk told her six hours had passed since she’d dropped into oblivion, and the darkness on the other side of the curtains, that dawn had not yet arrived.
She stood. Pulled the last bottle of water from the grocery bag. Opened it and, standing in front of him, staring at him, took a long, drawn-out swig.
She wiped a hand across her mouth. Placed the bottle on a side table, close enough that had he not been secured to the chair, he could have reached out and taken it.
Pulled the taser from the bag and rewound the electrode wires she’d had no time to deal with when hustling him from the street into the taxi. 
With the probes back in place, she set the taser on the desk within his line of sight. He studied her intently now.
She fished through the satchel for another gas cartridge, shook it for him to observe, and then slowly, deliberately, each movement exaggerated for staged effect, swapped old cartridge for new. 
Facing him, she sat on the edge of the bed with a box of ammunition and reloaded bullets into the two spare magazines she’d not yet had time to refill.
Swapped out the half-empty one for a full one. Reloaded the third as well.
“Where’s your rifle?” she said.
“In my car.”
“Where’s your car?”
“It was not far from the restaurant where I was supposed to pick up the girl.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “You are definitely the wounded party here.” Loaded the last magazine. “You didn’t have keys in your pockets.”
“I had a driver.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Another one?”
He shrugged.
Munroe stood. Picked up the taser. Casual and nonchalant, she aimed the laser toward his chest and fired.