英文有声《第43条疤痕》三部曲

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Chapter 37
Munroe was smiling again, an ear-to-ear, shit-eating grin that Bradford could only return in kind. 
To see that smile, even with the damage that had been done to her face, made him damn near euphoric,and having her here, having her safe after so many tortured hours of the unknown, was such a giddy relief that it cloaked the anger that had fast followed the assurance that she was alive and okay.
He wanted to kiss her, wanted to hold on to her, but then shake her and ask what the hell she had been thinking— yell out the frustration so that she’d understand the nauseating ache that had been with him all this time.
But he didn’t. Wouldn’t. As she’d said, sometimes love was its own reward, and to struggle to turn it into more was to murder it slowly. 
No matter how badly he hated that she played so easily with risk and thought nothing of living on the blade of danger, he accepted this as the only way. 
He couldn’t protect her, wouldn’t attempt to change her, and if acceptance was the price required to stay within her orbit, he would pay it gladly.
Bradford set Munroe’s legs on the bathroom floor, put her upright, and stepped out of her way. 
He waited just outside the door until the tub was full and she was in it, and then with a slight knock at the door brought in his only change of clothes and set them on the edge of the sink. 
But for these, which had been in the trunk of the car, everything else had been left in Buenos Aires.
According to the plan, he and Munroe would have traveled to the charter together,and then, once she and Hannah were safely ensconced, he was to return to the hotel and clear it out. That was the plan. 
What he’d been left with was the need for improvisation: putting boot to Logan’s butt, rousing Heidi out of bed and getting her on her way,and then pulling in one last middle-of-the-night favor from his local connections. 
By his best estimate, the hotel room had been scrubbed clean right about when he was strapping Hannah into the seat of the Gulfstream that would carry them into Uruguay.
Everything taken from the room was still in Buenos Aires, the clothing, equipment, data, money, and identification, all of it secured and waiting until ready for retrieval. 
They’d have to head back, probably sooner rather than later, if for nothing else than for their documents and to recover the data that Munroe had used as her bargaining chip with Gideon.
After all of the buildup prior to Hannah’s extraction, and after the horror of having Munroe snatched from him,getting Hannah out of Buenos Aires had been a straightforward nonevent, executed flawlessly, the end result of meticulous preparation. 
The charter had been fueled and waiting, and although Bradford carried a valid passport for Hannah— something Charity would need to get the girl out of Uruguay— neither he nor Munroe had planned to travel documented, and arrangements had already been made to bypass official exit and entry.
The girl had woken on the way to the airport, and although it had taken less than a minute to put her back under, that had been a painful minute. 
The kid was terrified. She’d gone to sleep in a bed, in familiar surroundings, and woken in a car with a strange man. 
Sedating her had been not only a necessary part of transporting her but also a favor. 
Once they’d reached Montevideo, he’d put a very slow drip into her to keep her hydrated and asleep and had kept her under ever since.
But sooner or later they were going to have to wake her, and then what?
Bathwater splashed against the other side of the shower curtain. 
There was joy in that simple sound, and then more of it in the ensuing silence while he waited to give Munroe information.
She wasn’t ignoring him, she knew he was there and probably also knew that his patient waiting was really just a cover for a truth he’d never voice: 
He wanted to be near, didn’t want to let her out of his sight, not for a very, very long time. 
And although that was a wish that would never be granted, for now he had her cornered, and for the moment it was enough.
Arms crossed, Bradford leaned into the wall opposite the tub, and after several more minutes, content to simply be, he finally spoke. 
“I know we did the right thing in taking Hannah from The Chosen,” he said. 
“But for all the time we’ve spent discussing the strategy of extraction, we haven’t talked much about what to do with her once we have her. 
“The kid’s going to be traumatized, you know? One moment she’s asleep in her bed with someone she knows, the next minute she wakes up surrounded by people that she’s spent her whole life thinking were the Devil. 
“Even if we wait until the last minute to wake her and give her directly to her mom, that’s not going to make it any better.”
“How long was she awake?” Munroe said.
“Not long, maybe a minute, but if you could have seen the look on her face, it was heartrending.”
“I kind of figured that’s how it would go,” Munroe said. “Is Charity already in town?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” Bradford said. “But Logan’s been pushing nonstop to have me give Hannah to him. I had to turn off the phone.”
“I can only imagine how difficult this is for him,” Munroe said. 
Logan had waited eight years for his daughter, and now that she was in custody, he couldn’t even come to hold her hand while her mother traveled down. 
But it was the way it had to be. Kidnapping and transporting a child across international borders was a serious crime. 
That they were doing so under the auspices of the child’s legal guardian was something of a gray area, and in order to fly under the radar of the law, they had to wait for Charity.
“It can’t be helped,” Munroe said. “But maybe it’s for the best, because I need to talk to Hannah before she meets any of the others. 
“I don’t know if it’ll go any better than it did for you, but I’m no longer a complete stranger, and I have something that she needs to hear.”
Munroe let the water out of the tub, stood, and turned on the shower. 
From beyond the curtain her body was a vague silhouette, and Bradford watched with unabashed appreciation as she stretched her neck long and let the water beat against the back of it. 
Then, shutting off the water, she said, “We’ll bring Hannah out of it in the morning. That’ll give me several hours at least before her mom gets here.”
Munroe reached her hand beyond the curtain, fingers wiggling expectantly, and Bradford grinned and handed her a hand towel. 
She laughed and tossed it back. “Give me,” she said, and he gave her a bath towel.
“I got another bit of information out of New York this morning,” he said. “A decent-size update on the investigation that’s under way up there.”
Munroe stepped from the shower, pink from the heat and towel wrapped around her. “Oh?” she said.
“Yeah,” he replied, smiling, saying nothing more.
She smacked the back of her hand to his biceps and, smirking, said, “I’m not going to beg you for the details, Miles, no matter how much you want me to.”
“We’ll see,” he said, but his voice trailed and lowered, and had none of the bravado that he’d intended. 
In front of him, she stood warm and wet, and no matter how untoward it might appear, he couldn’t avert his eyes. 
To believe that he had lost her forever, only to have her gifted back, had altered any sense of propriety, and took from him all the reserve and control that thus far had kept him from pursuing her.
He reached out, put a hand behind her neck, pulled her close, and kissed her.
She could have pushed him away or gone cold, gone deadly, and he would have suffered the consequences willingly, if only to have that taste. 
But instead she put her hands to his face, let the towel drop, and kissed him back.
He grabbed her to him, fingers and mouth hungry, wanting, and in full reciprocation her hands found their way underneath his shirt and began to pull it off.
They had started in the bathroom and ended on the living room sofa. 
Munroe had no idea of the time, only a vague notion of how much had passed, and that it was now dark outside. 
The suite was lit by ambient light from the windows and what little seeped from under the bathroom door.
Bradford lay with his back flat to the couch, and she was beside him, on her side with her head on his chest, listening to the rhythm of his breathing. 
He’d drifted off to sleep, and although the idea of joining him in dreamland, joining him for longer, was tempting, she had work to do.
As close as they were to handing off Hannah and finishing what they’d come down to accomplish, the assignment had loose ends. 
Munroe’s dilemma at the Haven Ranch hadn’t ended simply because circumstances had forced her to move away from it in the middle of the night. 
Elijah was far out of sight, but his treatment of Hannah wasn’t out of mind, nor was the convoluted way that everyone was connected, each relation turning in on another like an endless loop.
Munroe slid over Bradford, making a halfhearted attempt not to wake him, though she gladdened when he did.
“Where are you going?” he whispered.
“I need to talk to Heidi,” she said. “And then I need to find Gideon and Logan. But first, I really need to eat.”
Bradford was silent, and she knew the struggle. He didn’t want her to go without him, but neither could they leave Hannah unattended— even though she continued unconscious.
Munroe stood, went to the bathroom, and retrieved the clothes that had never made it on her the first time. 
She slid into pants that, though a bit large, didn’t fall around her knees, and left the shirt hanging baggy over them.
Bradford remained on the couch, eyes tracking her movements until she had fully dressed and her boots were back on, and then he stood. 
He walked to one TV desk, his naked physique a beautiful shape against the moonlight. He picked up the cell phone and tossed it to her.
“It would make me feel a whole lot better about staying behind,” he said, “if you’d meet them at the restaurant downstairs.”
She nodded. “I can do that,” she said, although they might, perhaps, suspect that Hannah was in the hotel, and Logan’s tenaciousness could become an issue. 
“Is the room in either of our names?” she asked.
He shook his head and held up empty hands. 
“No identification or credit cards. I arranged it long before we ever flew, just had to know where to find the keycard.”
Munroe smiled. This was one of the many things she liked about Bradford, that his mind worked so similarly to the way hers did,that he was able to plan and process in several directions at once, many moves in advance of where they stood.
“This phone goes to Logan, right?”
Bradford nodded.
“How do I reach Heidi?”
“She’s at the Balmoral Plaza,” he said, and Munroe left unspoken the dozen personal questions unspooling in her head.
Getting the number for the hotel and then Heidi’s room was easy enough, and from there Munroe made two calls. 
The first was to Heidi, the second to Logan, and with each she arranged to gather at the hotel’s restaurant. But she gave Heidi a different time. 
Munroe wanted her there first, wanted her alone without the others, every second discussing details that she’d no desire to relay, a necessary evil that she would have avoided if she could.
She’d run the scenarios backward, forward, and around again. 
She’d come to Argentina, accomplished what she’d set out to do, and these loose ends were extraneous— not her burden to bear. 
Yet in good conscience she couldn’t walk away. 
She’d seen, was aware, and to refuse to act, to turn her back completely and ignore what lay in plain sight, was to become a complicit part of it all in the same way that each person within The Chosen had become complicit.
Munroe could see only one clear path toward extricating herself from a responsibility she’d never wanted, and this was part of it. Heidi had to know. 
And no child, no matter how adult, or how long estranged, would willingly bear the news that the father she loved and longed to reconnect with was potentially a child molester.
Heidi’s own childhood experience would speak to the truth in what Munroe would say, and yet the human condition was so strong that it would force her into denial. 
She couldn’t accept it, wouldn’t want to, and the emotional conflict would over time become extreme. 
It would be far better if Heidi heard the news and confronted the initial round of disbelief with Munroe instead of hearing it later from Logan or Charity, when the truth eventually surfaced.
And it would surface, of this Munroe was certain. 
Because even if Hannah didn’t tell her parents what had been going on, Munroe sure as hell would. 
Unlike the tarnished history of The Chosen and their older children, right here, right now, there were no expired statutes of limitations, no possibility of hiding and protecting the criminal,and if jurisdiction became an issue, Munroe would personally rendition Elijah back to the United States and dump his ass on the courthouse steps if that’s what it took. 
And maybe, just maybe, this time the legal system would work to protect those it was designed to protect, and save Munroe from being forced to take matters into her own hands.
She left the hotel room, found a table at the restaurant, and ordered. 
She ate heartily, her body still craving true sustenance, and had nearly finished when Heidi arrived.
Less than forty-eight hours had passed since they’d last met at the bar in San Telmo, and still it felt like a lifetime. 
As was Heidi’s way, she greeted Munroe with a hug and then, full of genuine concern, asked about the bruises.
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” Heidi said. “Not with the clothes and your hair and your face like that.” She paused. “Just like you said it would be.” 
Without waiting for a response she handed Munroe a small plastic bag with a change of clothes. “They were the smallest things I have with me.”
“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Munroe said. “I just want her to have something available if she wants it, so she doesn’t have to face strangers in her pajamas.”
Heidi nodded and looked around the restaurant. “Where are the guys?”
“They’ll get here as soon as they can,” Munroe said, her answer the truth, if not completely.
She invited Heidi to sit, and they exchanged small talk until Munroe, in as offhanded and casual a way as possible, segued into the events of the last week, a setup for what was to come, all of it necessary to take Heidi off her guard. 
She told first of what it had taken to get Hannah out of the country, and then how the Havens had been located and the methodology of gaining entrance once they’d known where Hannah was. 
All of this was new to Heidi, who sat wide-eyed, full of questions and tangible energy, which grew even more intense when Munroe spoke of Heidi’s siblings.
“I expect that we’ll eventually hear from Morningstar,” Munroe said. 
“When she finally goes through the bag I left behind she’ll find a bit of documentation that she doesn’t believe exists, and there’s also a prepaid phone and my number.” 
Heidi’s expression, full of joy and expectation, was as Munroe had anticipated, but she followed this with the news she’d no desire to deliver. 
“The other thing is that sooner or later you’ll probably hear things about your dad.”
Munroe paused, waited a beat, and continued. “I don’t want them to be a shock to you when you do.”
“What kind of things?” Heidi asked. Munroe didn’t answer, and when the silence became tangible, Heidi appeared to grasp the unspoken allegations.
“I’m not going to give you specifics,” Munroe said, “because I don’t have them. But you need to brace yourself for when they inevitably surface, okay?”
Heidi nodded, and was still silent, still processing, when the boys arrived. 
They both stopped short when Munroe turned to face them, Gideon’s reaction far more cautious than Logan’s. 
In response Munroe said, “Yeah, but you already saw the other guys.”
They sat, relaxed, and in order to allow Heidi time alone with her thoughts, Munroe repeated for Gideon and Logan most of what she’d already relayed. 
The boys, in turn, gave their version of events, and when playing catch-up was over and Munroe had thanked them for coming after her, she turned to Logan and said, “You’ve heard from Charity, right?”
He nodded. “I’ll be there to get her when her flight lands, and then we’ll head over to wherever you are.”
“Miles will get you the information,” Munroe said. And then, “Look, Logan, I know that all of this waiting is incredibly difficult for you,“but when Charity gets here, I think it’s best that she meets with Hannah alone first— before the rest of you, okay?”
“It’ll just be me and Charity.”
“You’re part of the ‘rest of you,’” Munroe said, and when Logan began to protest she shook her head. 
There was no point in having this discussion in front of Gideon or Heidi— there were things Logan wouldn’t want discussed— 
and as frustrating as it would be that he was being forced to wait yet again, when all was said and done, he’d understand and perhaps even thank her for it.
Munroe turned to Gideon. “I need to talk to you,” she said.
“Alone?”
She shrugged. “It’s your call.”
He stood, and leaving Logan and Heidi to their individual silences, Munroe and Gideon stepped outside the restaurant to the carpeted elevator foyer.
“A deal’s a deal,” Munroe said. “Everything I told you I’d give you, I’ll give. The catch is that it’s all still in Buenos Aires. 
“As soon as we get Charity and Hannah on their flight home, Miles and I are catching a charter back. 
“You’re welcome to come along if you want, or I can deliver everything to you back in the States.”
Gideon was silent, as if he was truly weighing the options.
“I don’t need an answer right this second or anything,” she said, “just wanted to let you know where things stood.” 
She paused and then straightened, standing taller and closer. Her movements were subtle, meant not to intimidate but for emphasis.
“I’m not going to pressure you about what you’re up to,” she said. “That wasn’t part of the bargain, but it is within my rights to know. 
“By giving you all of this information I become a participant in whatever it is you’re setting out to do.” She paused. “What is it you’re after, Gideon?”
Deliberating, he shifted back against the wall. “I’m looking for someone,” he said finally.
“Who?”
“A woman.”
The vagueness didn’t surprise her, but based on the story that Logan had told about Gideon’s past, the gender did.
“Who?” Munroe said again.
“It doesn’t really matter,” Gideon said, “and talking about it isn’t going to change anything.”
“I know a lot more than you think I do,” Munroe said. “Talking might change everything.”
Gideon was silent a long while, and Munroe didn’t rush him. She stood beside him, back to the wall, mirroring him breath for breath. 
When he finally spoke, his voice was low and tranquil. “When I was living in Argentina as a teenager,” he said, “it was a pretty rough time. 
“A lot of stuff happened. I mean, you’ve read the documents, so you know it wasn’t a picnic for anyone,“but stuff happened to me that even the hard-core survivors have a difficult time believing.”
Gideon paused again, perhaps contemplating how far he would go with the explanation, and in response, Munroe remained quiet.
“Anyway,” he said finally, “when it was all going on, there was this woman who lived there, and she knew about it. 
“She was involved in the—” He broke the train of thought, as if unsure of the appropriate word usage. 
【篇幅限制抱歉】

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Chapter 36
It was speed that saved her, was always speed that saved her. 
Munroe drove a responsive fist to his kidney and a boot into the back of his opposite knee. 
Followed him down when he stumbled. Scooped the knife and pulled him upward, all in the time it would have taken for him to trip and catch his balance.
Those mingling along the dock were none the wiser.
He had spoken, and she’d replied, hers the stronger message of the two. 
She forced calm against anger. There was no reason to fault him for trying, she would have reacted the same way, 
and the only thing he’d done to deserve this treatment was having been in the right place at the wrong time.
“I swear I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. “But if you force my hand I’ll have no choice, you understand?”
He nodded, and at her nudge they continued across the way, to the end of the building and the inconspicuous door from which staff had filtered in, but over the last thirty minutes, mostly out.
The small interior was limited to a narrow hall and two small rooms branching off on either side. 
The clutter of papers and the smell of stale coffee and food spilled beyond the open doors into the walkway. 
The hallway continued to a closed door that could be only a bathroom or a utility closet, and from there turned a sharp right toward the remainder of the building. 
Munroe walked him to the dead-end door. “Open it,” she said, and then followed close behind into the one-stall bathroom, locked the door, and motioned him to the toilet. 
It had no lid, no seat, and in order to keep from sliding into the water, he had to straddle it, legs held wide.
“I need your jacket and identification,” she said. “I can either take what I want by force, which will be painful for you and messy for me, 
“or you can give them to me in exchange for what money I have on me— not a lot, but more than what it will take to replace your ID. 
“Either way I’m going to tie you up and leave you here. If you fight me, I’ll do it because I have no choice. 
“If you give me what I want, it will be so that when you are found, your story, whatever you decide to tell, will be believable.”
The man stared at her, his jaw working back and forth in what she read as anger or deep thought, probably both.
“How much money?” he said finally.
Blade in her right hand, eyes always on him, guarding against any movement, she reached with her left into a pocket and pulled out two-thirds of what she’d taken from Logan. 
She dropped it into his outstretched hand, and in response he reached for his back pocket. She said, “Stop.”
He put both hands up. “My wallet,” he said, and she nodded. The man pulled out his ID card and held it toward her.
“Drop it on the floor,” she said. He did as she asked, then shrugged out of his overshirt and theatrically dropped it on top of the ID. 
He raised his eyebrows in a look of “Now what?”
She wanted his T-shirt, and he peeled it off to reveal a well-toned torso underneath. 
She placed a boot on his groin, shoved dangerously downward, and reached for the shirt.
“Don’t move,” she said. With the knife, she slit the material, one ribbon after the next, then pushed his head between his knees. 
Boot to his neck, she secured his wrists behind his back, then tied a gag between his lips. 
Certain he couldn’t easily free himself, she ordered him to stand.
She loosened the buckle of his pants. A look of horror crossed his face and he began to crawfish backward, a blinded, crazed attempt to escape when there was no escape.
Munroe’s laugh was spontaneous and she shook her head. “Calm down,” she said, “I’m just making sure you remain secure.” 
Never mind the explanation that she was female. His eyes remained wide, but he stopped struggling. 
Hands to his shoulders, she moved him back into a seated position, 
and with his pants around his ankles, she secured his feet, one to the other, with strips she’d taken from his shirt, the improvised bonds running behind the toilet from one foot, back again to the other. 
Once she was gone, he would struggle, but the restraints would hold until after the ferry departed, and that was all she needed.
She slipped into his work shirt. Picked up the ID. Slid out of the bathroom and shut the door.
Munroe moved back onto the dock and next to the ship, shouldered the remaining box still there on the ground and, five minutes from start to finish, carried it into the belly of the ship.
Only after she was on board, out of the light and out of the fight, did she realize the severity of her shaking. 
She’d gone from adrenaline rush to adrenaline dump, to adrenaline rush twice over, and was beyond spent. 
She needed food. Needed a place where she could lay low for the length of the trip.
She was on the ship’s lower level, the hollow space where vehicles were stowed for the duration of the trip and where the air was foul with fumes and machinery. 
The last of the luggage trolleys had returned to the dock, passengers who’d driven the vehicles on board were sent upstairs, and only a few crew members remained below.
Munroe slipped between the cars. On a ledge, next to life vests, was a small container, like a lunch box, temporarily set aside, 
and without breaking stride or letting go of the load she carried, Munroe picked it up and continued on, beside the vehicles to a windowless door.
The interior was dark and small, an empty storage area.
She slipped inside, dumped the box onto the floor, sat on it, and shoveled food from the lunch container into her mouth faster than she could chew, gorging on it as if she were starving, craving protein when there were only vegetables and potatoes and a flavor that said meat, although there was none to be had.
The food was sufficient to slow the shaking, but not nearly enough to satiate the craving for sustenance. 
Munroe slit open the box, found it filled with an assortment of packaged desserts, 
and although she knew that she would later pay the price for dumping sugar into a system that badly needed nutrition, she opened and ate several.
In the wake of ebbing hunger, the full weight of exhaustion descended, and in the dark, warm cocoon of the closet, Munroe fought to stay alert, to stay awake. 
She didn’t need a nightmare now. Not on top of everything else, and if she slept, completely fatigued as she was, it was also possible she might sink so fully that she missed port call on the other side.
The rumble of the ship played melody to the beat of its rocking, and against Munroe’s mental protest, her body, drowsy, weak, and demanding that its needs be met, was lulled into a complete shutdown.
The night was black, the sky starless, and from across the length of sand came the rhythmic wash of waves upon the shore. 
It was deserted here, no light of civilization, no intrusion of humanity into this quiet. 
Alone, with only the smell of fish, salt, the subtle fragrance of jasmine, and the warm ocean breeze kissing her skin, Munroe rocked in the hammock.
It mattered not that she couldn’t see or that the cadence of the water completely muted all other sound, because she could feel. 
In this space of complete darkness there was only tranquillity. Here was a haven of nothing, nothing that could go on, and on, and on…
The voice of rhythm shifted to a low grumble, Munroe’s eyes blinked open, and she drew in air as if she’d been long without it. 
Her surroundings were still dark but no longer tranquil. 
Disoriented, she struggled to give place and meaning to the confines of this space and then calmed, remembering where she was and realizing that the shift had come from the ship’s engines reversing.
The ferry was pulling into port. She’d no idea how long she’d been under, and at which port was anyone’s guess.
She felt through the darkness, and with relief, her fingertips returned an uneventful story. 
The knife was still in her pocket, the container on top of the box where she’d left it. 
There were no fragments of clothing, no shards of destroyed property. 
Uncomfortable as it was, shoulder propped against the wall for a pillow, she’d slept soundly and, for the first time in three months, had slept without dreaming violence.
Footsteps and voices filtered in from beyond the door, and the sounds of car engines coming to life indicated that passengers were disembarking. 
Munroe stood, smoothed down the wrinkles that would inevitably be on her clothes, ran her fingers across her head, and cracked the door a sliver.
Munroe waited for an opening, drew back the door, and as if she had every right to be there, stepped alongside traffic. 
Without looking back, and ignoring the occasional stare in her direction, she made for the dock and strode down the gangplank. Montevideo.
From the wharf, the cityscape poked above commercial transport containers stacked three and four high, 
and in the cool of the lengthening afternoon, Munroe paused to take in the air of the place. 
The city was so much smaller than its sister capital three hours west, but still nearly two million strong, 
and had she not at least an idea of how to begin searching for Bradford, her path would have been one more needle in a very large, very time-consuming haystack.
The Buquebus terminal in Montevideo shared space with commercial shipping, although the passengers disembarked on the second floor, as they had in Buenos Aires. 
Munroe bypassed immigration and customs controls by wandering directly off the dock, deeper into the containers, 
eventually moving on foot beyond a cursory security checkpoint and into the streets of the oldest part of the city where buildings, centuries old, were arrayed in a matrix on a peninsula of sorts.
Munroe hailed a taxi, the same bumblebee black and yellow of Buenos Aires, and with nearly the last of her money caught a ride to the central post office. 
There was but a mile to travel, a short jaunt between the ferry and the center of the old town, 
but she was short on energy and short on time; she wanted this over, and even with the ride, she stepped through the doors dangerously close to quitting time.
Montevideo’s primary post office was small compared to the stately building that housed it: 
one large room lined corner to corner with antique mailboxes, and in the center was a counter that made a smaller square. 
Behind it, three postal workers went about their business.
From the nearest woman, Munroe asked for poste restante, and she directed Munroe to the side and asked her to wait.
Here was where letters written to those without an address could be sent and held for a month or more, 
though what Munroe hoped to find would have arrived today at the earliest, hand delivered. 
Palms to counter, she waited for service. Her nerves were still raw, but food and three hours of sleep had worked their magic, and now only patience would buy her what she wanted.
Against the urge toward motion, she forced her body to stillness and brought placid indifference to her face. 
The clerk was a plump woman in her mid-forties who returned in no hurry. 
Munroe requested mail held in her name, and the woman searched through several boxes sorted alphabetically. She finally pulled one lone envelope.
At the sight of the white rectangle the weight of the last twenty-four hours and all of its unknowns slid off Munroe’s shoulders.
The woman asked for identification, and Munroe had none.
Bradford wasn’t an idiot, he’d taken her ID, knew she’d need it to retrieve any message he’d left, and would have compensated. 
With what little charm Munroe could muster, and with a heavy dose of flattery, she requested to see the envelope first. 
The woman raised an eyebrow in mock reproach and, not letting go of the corners, held it address forward.
Munroe stared for a moment and then sighed in dejection. “It’s not for me,” she said, and leaving the confused woman standing, Munroe turned and walked away.
Outside the post office, she flagged another taxi, and to the driver gave the address that had been written as the return on the envelope. 
The Palladium hotel. She’d find Bradford and Hannah on the eleventh floor, in the presidential suite.
Like in the heart of Buenos Aires, Montevideo was a city of tree-lined boulevards and European architecture, a smaller, calmer, cleaner version of its sister to the west, 
and in spite of its size and the belching buses that flew down otherwise quiet streets, it still held an Old World sleepy-town charm.
They continued east, outside the old town and into the new. 
Blocks from the coast, the Palladium was modern and sleek with rounded lines and inlaid glass, one of several of the relatively higher-end hotels the city had to offer. 
Munroe took the elevator up and followed carpet and sconce lighting in Bradford’s direction.
With the same prescience that he’d always displayed when they were together, Bradford opened the door before she reached it. 
His expression read relief and happiness, and there, subtly, under the initial layers of natural caution, something more.
Munroe paused at the door’s threshold, and Bradford reached for her, pulled her toward him, and wrapped his arms around her, tightly. 
She understood the desperation: She’d frightened him badly, but in the moment he said not a word of reproof, 
and there was relief in his acceptance of her entirety, personal risk and bodily damage included.
Munroe leaned into him, put her head on his shoulder.
Bradford smelled of joy and pleasure and belonging, and the tension, the anger, and all of the rage of the past days dissipated.
Bradford released her, stepped back a foot, and put hands to her face. “What the hell did they do to you?” he said.
“You should see the other guys,” she said.
He pulled her to him again and kissed her forehead. “Logan told me about the other guys.”
Head still on his shoulder, still standing at the door’s threshold, Munroe said, “Logan made it to the warehouse? Is he okay?”
Bradford nodded, his whisper soothing against her skin. “He and Gideon got into town a couple of hours ago,” he said.
That Bradford had sent them after her remained an unspoken understanding.
“They tracked you from the hotel to the warehouse, and considering the state of things, figured you were alive and moving in this direction.” 
He wrapped a hand around the back of her neck, kept the other around her body, pressed his cheek against the side of her head, and then shifted.
One arm behind her knees, he picked her up, brought her into the foyer, and knocked the door closed with his foot.
She laughed, hooked an arm around his neck for support, and said, “What are you doing?”
“Depositing you in the bathtub,” he said. “You need it.” And he carried her forward.
The suite had two rooms, separated by a solid wall and a series of doors that provided a division of space and a sense of privacy. 
Bradford would have wanted it that way, as much for himself as for Hannah, who was in the bedroom, sedated and asleep, still in the same night-clothes she’d been wearing when they’d taken her from the third-floor room. 
He was a grown man with a kidnapped and drugged thirteen-year-old girl in his possession and no official authority to have her; it couldn’t have been a comfortable situation.
Munroe, still in Bradford’s arms and straining for a look around the corner, said, “Has she woken at all?”
“Yes,” Bradford said. “Run the water. I’ll get you clean clothes.” He paused. “And if you don’t mind, I’ll tell you about it while you soak.”

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Chapter 35
On the best of days Munroe had little patience for power-playing tug-of-wars with ignorance or arrogance, and today was not the best of days. 
She flipped the boss’s blade into her palm, sprung it open, leaned over the counter, and hissed a vivid description of what she would do to the desk clerk once she found him alone after work, and it took but a moment for him to compromise.
Key in hand, Munroe took the stairs up, two at a time. She worked against the clock, against private security, which would soon be on their way, and the police that might eventually come.
Munroe opened the door to an empty room. The place had been cleaned out. 
Not in a housekeeping sort of way, but in special-ops style, where no hint was left that either she or Bradford had ever been there. 
Munroe made directly for the bathroom, ignored her reflection, and lifted the toilet-tank lid. 
Disappeared with everything else was her money and her identification. She replaced the lid with relief. Bradford was gone. He’d followed protocol. 
Without money or documentation, getting out of the country and finding him was going to be a bit of a bother, but she wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Munroe tossed the keys on the bed, blocked the door open an inch, and ducked into an alcove before the stairwell. 
She’d been in the room a minute and a half, an entire minute longer than acceptable. 
The elevator opened, and a pair of uniforms rushed past. 
They stopped at the room door and kicked it inward, and Munroe slipped into the stairwell.
She ran the way down, rushed the lobby to the sidewalk, turned left, and head down, moved forward at a brisk pace. 
She didn’t pause when she came to the stolen vehicle but slowed to a quick walk, heading past it toward a man several spaces down who was getting into his car.
Knife to his side, she ordered him across the front seat and slid in next to him.
The decision had been made in a split second and was one Munroe detested. 
Under conditions like these, getting across town shouldn’t have required carjacking; whatever she was, she wasn’t a thug, and preying on random strangers who had nothing to do with her predicament was not her way.
Procuring a ride should have taken only a careful study of body language, a few smiles, and a sob story. 
But nobody wanted to play host to Frankenstein, and with her face as it was, her options were reduced to forcing a ride or driving the streets in a moving target.
Munroe peeled into traffic, sped away from the hotel only far enough to put distance between herself and whatever security was up to, and then, safely gone from the place, slowed to the speed of acceptable insanity.
In the seat next to her, the man’s eyes were wide. 
He’d pushed himself as far away as he could, as if it were possible to become part of the door,and staring directly at her, with terror on his face, he stammered nonsense, as though he were speaking to an imaginary friend.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said, but he continued on, as if her words held no meaning.
He was a slight man, mid-fifties, gray hair, mousy suit that read bureaucrat not businessman, and from his lack of Spanish, was clearly not from here. 
Staying in the flow of traffic, Munroe focused on his blubbering, gathering a snippet here or there until recognition struck. 
His words were an incantation; the same few sentences whispered over and over. In Russian. 
The oddity was disconcerting, and barely escaping a collision, Munroe returned her focus to the road.
“Ya ne sdelayu vam nichego plokhogo,” she said. In the stress of the moment, the switch from one language to the next came without thought, like flipping stations on a remote or shedding a jacket after arriving home.
“I just need to get from one part of town to the next,” she said to him, “and then I’ll give you back the car. I promise.”
The man’s eyes widened farther, if such were possible, and his mouth dropped open an inch.
At least this was a predictable reaction: It happened often when others heard their mother tongue spoken in a foreign land and believed they’d found a compatriot. 
It didn’t typically happen under these circumstances, but was familiar territory nonetheless, and she’d have been able to answer questions as a matter of rote had he asked them. But he didn’t. 
The incantation stopped, his hands relaxed, he didn’t try to fight her, and she was able to drive in silence. For these, Munroe was grateful.
On the street outside Logan’s hostel, Munroe stopped short at the curb, hopped out of the car, slammed the door, and paused just long enough to reopen the door, lean her head back inside, and apologize. 
She shut the door again, turned, and headed for the courtyard at a near run.
Munroe moved through the inside area, didn’t bother finding the proprietor or asking for a key. 
These rooms had thinner doorframes, smaller locks; a solid strike to each, just left of the handle, would give her entry. 
Munroe reached Heidi’s room first. Knocked. Waited. Pounded. Waited. And then kicked.
The frame splintered, the door swung inward, and not quite unexpectedly, the room was empty. 
Not the special-ops empty of the last hotel, but left-in-a-mighty-big-hurry kind of empty.
She moved down the hall to Logan’s door, where she expected the same, but the need for certainty compelled her toward it. 
The door flung inward and she checked to a stop. Bradford had cleared out, Heidi was gone, but Logan and Gideon’s room still showed signs of occupancy.
Munroe entered the room and closed the door, fiddled with the latch until it held in place. 
She stepped to the beds, felt them, and found them long cold. 
Among the items that had been left behind were computers, portable electronics, and on Gideon’s bedside table a book that he’d been reading. The boys were still in town.
Munroe felt under Logan’s mattress for the money belt that should be there, snagged it, and pulled it out. 
He’d left his passport and several hundred dollars, half of it in Argentine pesos.
With all of the other evidentiary pieces, there was only one reason these two hadn’t gone. 
Munroe would have laughed if she wasn’t so conflictingly angry about it.
Bradford had followed the plan— to a point. Then he’d sent Logan and Gideon after her. 
The situation was beyond frustrating. People she loved and cared about were spread around the city. 
She had no idea where they were. No idea if they were safe, and she wanted nothing more than to track them down and protect them. 
But like a kid lost in a haunted amusement park, the only thing she could do to keep from making the situation worse was to follow the plan. Get to the meeting point and hope that they did too.
Munroe took a portion of the pesos and thrust them into her pocket. Found a pen, scrawled a note to Logan, and placed it under the front cover of his passport. 
She shoved it all back under the mattress where she’d found it, then stripped out of her clothes, pulled replacements from Logan’s suitcase, and changed. 
She dumped the bloody items into a backpack and slung it over her shoulder. She’d been inside the room a total of four minutes.
Inside the main house, she searched out the proprietress, ignored both her reaction and that of some of the guests, and left a message for Logan and Gideon. 
Provided the boys were still alive, they would be checking out soon, and assuming Logan with his emergency phone was still in contact with Bradford, this would be the fastest way to let Bradford know that she too was alive.
The money she’d taken from Logan was enough to get a cab to the port, and from there to buy a one-way ferry ticket to Montevideo, the capital of neighboring Uruguay. 
The trip was only a three-hour skip over the water, but money to pay for a ticket was useless without documents for travel, and as such, the trip would predictably be a whole lot longer.
When Munroe stepped outside, the Russian was still in his car by the curb where she’d parked. 
He’d switched to the driver’s seat but turned off the engine, and was now staring out the windshield. 
It had been fewer than ten minutes since Munroe had rushed inside, but to a man who had, by his own interpretation of events, narrowly escaped a violent act, ten minutes were ten lifetimes,and she would have expected him to have used that time to put as much distance between himself and the hostel as possible. And then maybe down a stiff drink.
The man didn’t have the look of a trauma victim, and other than that he still sat where she’d left him, he didn’t appear to be in shock.
Munroe cursed inwardly and made a slow, cautious return to the car. 
There wasn’t time to waste, but the Russian was there, and as she was at fault for bringing him to this point, she couldn’t just walk away.
Munroe rapped knuckles on the passenger window, and the man turned as if he’d been waiting for her and was happy she’d come back.
“What happened to you?” he asked. “Are you in trouble?”
His questions weren’t what she’d expected, but she wouldn’t turn down an opportunity. “I could use a ride,” she said.
He reached to open the passenger door, and she slid inside.
“We Russians must stick together,” he said, and Munroe, following the path of least resistance, simply grinned. 
Her nonverbal response was neither acknowledgment nor contradiction, and he would read from the look whatever pleased him. 
Ambiguity was so much easier than truth and the exhaustive amount of time it would take to explain that she’d never even been to Russia, that she had a gift for languages,that the only reason he mistook her for one of his own was because in her second year of college she’d spent four months dating a boy from St. Petersburg.
Better just to grin.
The man turned the ignition key and Munroe asked for the Buquebus terminal, the lower end of the port, south of the commercial shipping docks, where the ferry lines to Uruguay were found. 
The Russian seemed familiar enough with the location and the route. 
He pulled directly into traffic, asked no help with directions, and drove the first several minutes in silence.
“If you’re in trouble, maybe I can help,” the Russian said, “so far from home, we must ally.”
“It’s been a bad morning, that’s all,” she said. “I’ve friends to meet up with and once I find them, everything will be well.”
“You’re certain?” the man said.
Munroe nodded, and he said nothing more.
The port abutted the wide, busy avenues of Puerto Madero,as if the city had decided to end things by jumping into the chocolate-toned water and then at the last minute would rather tiptoe in, adding a few more buildings before the very end.
The Buquebus terminal, with its modern glass design and Jetway-style boarding, which ran from the second floor down to where the ships would dock, seemed more like an airport than a ferry transport.
Munroe asked that the Russian drive beyond the parking area, with its policemen and security, just a little farther down the branching road,and so he continued beyond the terminal and ticket office, stopping as requested along a rusted fence that separated the docks from city traffic.
She offered to pay for the ride, and he refused. 
With a good-bye full of unasked questions, and a reassuring handshake on her part, he pulled away from the curb, and she remained rooted, watching as the vehicle shrank away and then blended with traffic to vanish completely.
Munroe turned from the road to the fence and headed farther back, to the run-down end of the wharf, where the buildings were old, the security lax, and where fewer pedestrians mingled. 
There she found a spot to hop the wires in order to gain access to where the employees gathered: 
a place where she could sit and observe without being noticed while cars lined up and the baggage men with their little tractors and trailing carts made ready for the next departure.
The ferry to Montevideo was scheduled to leave in an hour, and one way or the other, she would be on it.
The issue wasn’t ticketing per se, it was getting identification to purchase the ticket— and then proceeding through the appropriate immigration procedures— 
as if her face, messed up as it was, wouldn’t create unnecessary complications.
Up top, through the glass, she could see the shadows of passengers as they gathered and prepared for embarkation, but they held no interest to her. 
Passports were only as good as their original holder, and as such had the possibility of bringing the bearer unforeseen trouble. 
Ideally, she would swipe a national identification card; this was all that an Argentine would need to cross into Uruguay. 
No questions. No suspicions. Simply an open door to the country across the border.
With emotionless calculation she studied those mingling about the dockside, judging the quality of each, passing them over in turn. 
This was that dangerous place where the predator overrode empathy, where, like the Russian with his car, solving need and want blurred the boundaries between right and wrong, and the uninvolved suffered on behalf of those to blame.
Munroe stood and slipped closer to the work area, watching, waiting, searching out opportunity amid the bustle of dockside readiness. 
Suppliers, dockworkers, and the occasional crew member came and went, and Munroe tracked them with dispassionate interest.
It took twenty minutes to spot the mark. He was part of the ferry staff, early thirties at best,and both his body language and the menial tasks he performed pointed toward his being low man on the totem pole. 
Unlike any member of the crew, he wouldn’t be overly missed if he failed to show up for embarkation,and better still, his position as a Buquebus employee would not only solve the issue of documentation but also eliminate the need for ticketing and much of the immigration and border protocol that went with the journey.
The ferry was in the final stages of preparing to set out, the stream of passengers that had been steadily boarding over the past ten minutes began to ebb slightly,and the target had already made several trips over the service gangplank and back, carrying an assortment of boxes on board.
Munroe loitered, waiting until he’d moved most of them, timing each trip in and out until, with only one load left, he was swallowed by the interior of the ship.
Much could be assessed from a person’s walk, from their build, and the level at which they observed their surroundings, but appearances were often deceiving. 
The sweetest old lady might think nothing of sticking you with a shiv, and as such, taking on an unknown opponent, no matter how docile and defeated he might appear, always carried an element of risk.
On the man’s return, as he prepared to lift the final box, Munroe casually approached from behind, across the dock, amid the commotion, as if she rightfully belonged there. 
At the periphery of her awareness remained a counterweight to the savage, the ever present caution that there was no point to eradicating evil if in the end she would only replicate it.
She took the knife to the side of his lower back, tip pointed upward, far enough through his clothes that he would feel the thrust of it. 
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispered, “and I don’t want to steal from you.”
He tensed, let go of the box, and straightened. His breathing shifted, and it wasn’t a rapid pant of fear. 
His were the slow and measured movements of a man who had been down this path before, a man who understood the leverage he held in this crowded area.
With her free arm wrapped around his waist, she steered him back the way she’d come, under the upper floor, toward the staff door along the outside of the ticket building wall. 
She wanted him off the wharf and into privacy as quickly as possible. “Walk with me and listen to my proposal,” she said.
The man did as she asked, moved with her for the moment, acquiesced,perhaps to put her off her guard, because several paces forward he drove his elbow into her side so hard that it knocked the knife from her hand.

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Chapter 34
Logan brought the taxi to a stop several hundred feet from the warehouse. The building was impossible to miss. 
Even in this remote industrial area, with fewer buildings and ample land between them, it still stood out from the rest, an easy story or two above the other buildings on the street. 
And from this distance, with the exception of an SUV parked just off to the side at the front, the entire structure appeared quiet and empty.
Unlike the other buildings set off from the road, there were no trucks idling or laborers milling about, no activity at all. 
And although Logan would have assumed it to be an illusion, the wide sliding doors were open and welcoming to the world.
“What do you make of it?” Logan said.
Gideon shook his head, as if pondering a puzzle for which he had no answer. 
He reached to the backseat and grabbed the desk clerk’s shirt, pulled so that the man’s line of sight was above the dashboard. 
“Are you sure that’s the right place?” he said.
The clerk, gagged and swollen, nodded, 
and Gideon said, “Look at the doors. Is it normal for them to be open like that?” The clerk shook his head for no, and Gideon let him drop back to the seat.
They believed he’d led them to the right spot, and believed his answers. 
Not because he was a trustworthy guide, but because two hours ago his self-interest had aligned with their own. 
They’d taken him out of town and, in the dark of a field, with his body spread-eagled and staked to the ground and a gun muzzle pressed to his hand, threatened to shoot off one finger at a time until he told them what they wanted. 
It wasn’t fear of pain that spoke to him as much as reassurance of release. 
They wanted their friend, their predicament was that simple, and when he brought them to where she’d been taken, when they knew without a doubt where she was, they’d let him go. That was all. 
It was either that or the fingers, and then toes, and whatever else it took to get what they wanted.
Logan took the cab another several hundred feet forward before stopping completely and shutting off the engine. 
Here at this vantage point, not far from the warehouse entrance, they sat, watching and waiting.
The area was quiet, the street traffic slow, and after a half hour had passed with no movement, Logan reached for the door handle.
“We’re burning daylight,” he said. “She’s either in there or she’s not.”
Gideon turned to the backseat. “We live, you live,” he said, and the desk clerk nodded. 
“They knew he’d try to get loose while they were away, any sane person would, but he wouldn’t succeed.
From the trunk Logan and Gideon pulled out the submachine guns. 
The pieces were too large to conceal under their jackets, and with the building set back off the road, they still had a few hundred feet to cover, 
but the security of having the higher-powered weapons overrode the little risk of being seen carrying them.
Gideon, whose hands were in the bag, tossed three loaded magazines at Logan and awkwardly shoved an equal number into his waistband and pockets. Any more and the weight would drag them down.
The clerk seemed to think they’d find between five and ten men with Munroe, 
but even if he was off in his guess, or if he’d lied to skew the odds, unless a small, well-equipped army waited on the other side of those doors, what they carried should be enough.
Gideon closed the trunk, and Logan stopped at the front passenger door. He kicked at the side mirror until it came loose, picked it up, and carried it with him. 
They walked in silence until they went off the pavement and Gideon stooped to gather several pebbles. Logan didn’t bother asking what for. He knew.
They came at the building from far off the street, from the side where their approach would be unseen from within the windowless walls. 
Gideon neared the SUV, walked backward along half the body, peering into the windows, confirmed it empty, and signaled Logan forward. 
The only sounds were the light crunch of their boots against the gravel.
Logan followed the building’s front wall to the edge of the open door, and there he tipped the mirror forward in a crude form of periscope, reflecting back what images he could gather. 
The mirror showed no movement. Along the vast, empty floor were lumps here and there. Bodies, perhaps. The lighting and angle made it difficult to tell.
He nodded at Gideon, who in turn tossed a pebble through the doors. 
The clack of the stone was hard against the floor, a repeated echo while the little rock bounced several times before settling.
Still, there was silence. Gideon repeated the procedure. Again they listened. No gunfire. No footsteps. No voices. Nothing.
Together, they rounded the open wall and flattened along its inside seam.
Daylight from the doors lit the interior nearly a hundred feet inward, 
and although the building continued on past the light, the bodies were out in the open, visible from where they stood.
There were seven, all men, strewn across the floor with wide spaces between.
Gideon stood still, staring, mouth slightly agape. He walked toward the center of the violence, and there turned in a slow circle. 
“This is the right place, isn’t it? She was here, wasn’t she?” The tone of his questions framed the level of his disbelief.
Logan reached the first body. Knelt. “Yes,” he said. “It’s the right place.”
“You should get a picture of this,” Gideon said. “Miles will never believe it.”
Logan felt for a pulse. Expected nothing, got nothing. 
The man’s skull was shaped wrong; his body appeared broken and disjointed, as if he’d fallen from the rafters of the building— or been hit by a car. 
“Miles will believe it,” Logan said. “He’s seen this stuff firsthand, up close and personal.”
Logan stood, turned to face Gideon and continue his explanation, but when he saw Gideon’s face, he remained silent and went on to another of the bodies.
He was allowing Gideon space to process the scene that surrounded them. 
It wasn’t the carnage, Logan knew that much. Gideon had seen— experienced— far worse. 
But there were seven dead, Munroe was missing, and Gideon would gradually realize that all of this had been caused by the same woman that he had tried to bully into a fight just days before.
The awareness of what he’d escaped was a little late in coming, but better late than never. “What do you think happened here?” Gideon said finally.
Logan shrugged. “At this level of violence, I think someone probably touched her. “You know, sexually.” 
He strode to the next man, knelt again, and felt for a pulse as he had the first two. The bodies were cooling but not cold. 
“She tries to avoid bloodshed,” Logan said. “Especially so much of it. 
“But there are a few things that will completely set her off and cause something like this, and if someone gets sexually violent with her, he’s soon a dead man.”
“All of them?” Gideon asked.
“I don’t know,” Logan said. He paused, turned a slow circle, and then pointed at a man pooled in blood and crumpled up against a wall riddled with bullet holes. 
“That guy,” he said, and walked toward him. “It looks like he bled to death from the knife wounds. 
“I don’t know about the others, but this one carries all the hallmarks of Michael. Whoever he was, he really pissed her off. I venture he’s the one in charge.”
Logan pointed at the scars on the wall. “They were shooting at something or someone— not this guy.” 
He ran the back of his hand along the wall and checked his fingertips. “No blood spatter,” he said. He searched the floor for spatter beyond the congealed pool. 
“I don’t think they hit whatever they were shooting at,” he said. “I want to bring that clerk in and verify the ID on these guys.”
“What about Michael?” Gideon asked.
“She’s not here, and all seven of these guys didn’t arrive in that one vehicle outside. There had to be another, and it’s gone. 
“So, either she’s dead somewhere else or there were more people and they took her somewhere else. 
“But if that guy over there is the boss, then my guess is that she’s free and on the move. 
“If that’s the case she’s going to be heading in Miles’s direction as quickly as she can. We should probably do the same.”
Logan paused, stared at the scene across the floor, and then stood. If the head of a local crime family fell off the radar, sooner or later someone was going to come looking. 
“I’m going to check out the back of this place, just to be sure Michael’s not here,” he said. 
“Go get the clerk. I want to identify these guys, and then I want to get the hell out of here before reinforcements show up and we take the heat for this.”
The morning was still early, city traffic still light, and Munroe drove as slowly as was possible to drive on Buenos Aires streets without attracting attention. 
Moving through town inconspicuously wasn’t easy when driving a car dented from where she’d hit the warehouse wall, or a front grille spattered with blood, and a rear passenger window spiderwebbed from the absorption of several rounds against bulletproof glass. 
A few more miles and she could ditch the thing.
She’d seen the SUV sitting by the side of the warehouse only after she’d spun out onto the road, 
and although in retrospect it might have been the smarter option to go back for it, at the time going back wasn’t a consideration.
In the ebb and flow of changing lanes, Munroe’s mind ran in circles, attempting to put into place the series of steps that she would make next. 
There were loose ends, pieces to be ordered, and like a house of cards, each one balanced on the ones below. 
She needed clarity, but the adrenaline dump was slowing her down and making it difficult to focus beyond getting the car safely from point A to point B.
She had to get food into her system, had to pump up blood sugar levels, and she craved sleep too. 
Food would be the faster and easier option. It had to wait just a little longer. 
First a trip to her hotel room to confirm that Bradford was safe, that he’d followed the plan. 
She needed to see it, know it, not only for personal assurance but also for guidance in deciding which direction to turn. 
Because the way things stood now, she had to get to Bradford as quickly as possible, or locate and then rescue Bradford. One or the other.
If Bradford was alive, if he’d been successful in getting Hannah to safety, Logan would want his daughter, and Bradford would refuse. This was the way it had to be. 
Bradford was neither Hannah’s guardian nor the one legally assigned to take her home; 
he had no authority to do anything other than deliver the girl to her mother and would want her off his hands as quickly as possible.
Once successful, Bradford would be driven to return to Buenos Aires, to search for Munroe, no matter how long it took, and continuing this mess was the last thing she wanted. 
She had to reach him before Charity did, and for reasons of her own had to reach Hannah before Charity did. 
On both counts, time was running out. It would take time, a day perhaps, for Charity to get to Montevideo, if she wasn’t already en route.
Munroe entered the hotel with her head tucked down and one hand holding her sliced shirts closed. 
She made directly for the small ground-floor restroom. She’d seen her face in the car’s rearview mirror, and it wasn’t pretty. 
Her lips were swollen, both eyes blackened, and her cheeks and forehead bruised and mottled. 
All told, the facial coloring was far better than the sheet-white alternative, but it made blending in nearly impossible.
She pushed into the unisex bathroom and locked the door. 
Facing the mirrors, water running, she scrubbed the blood off her face, hands, and arms, and plunged her head under the water to wash everything out of what was left of her hair.
The best she could do about the slit shirts was to strip out of them, reverse the undershirt so that the opening faced the back, and pull the top layer back on over it. 
Blood had dried on the clothes, had drenched the arm she’d used to create the chokehold, and there wasn’t much she could do about that. 
Against the black, the stains weren’t obviously blood, they could be anything, 
and although she would have preferred to wash them out, or at the least scrape the residue off into the sink, this was a procedure that would take more time than she had, and she’d already been in the bathroom long enough to attract attention.
She bathed her face in the cold water once more and patted herself dry. The water wouldn’t help much with the swelling, but it made her feel better.
Munroe left the restroom for the front desk and, amid curious stares at her battered face, requested a key to the room. 
As was standard procedure, she’d carried nothing on her during the extraction. Her passport, money, and all personal effects had been left behind. 
And although she expected the room had since been cleared out— for Bradford’s sake, she hoped that it had been— she was compelled to make sure.
The desk clerk did a poor job at concealing his disgust at her mangled face, and made no pretense of helping. 
Yes, the room was still paid a week in advance, but as she could not prove that she was one of the occupants, and he certainly didn’t recognize her, there was nothing he would do.
The dangerous chemical cocktail brought on by the morning’s events still percolated through Munroe’s system, 
and any ability to maintain cordial interaction with a snot-nosed brat had ended hours ago.

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Chapter 33
Awareness came slowly, a haze of sensory pulses that invaded the darkness and brought Munroe fully awake. 
She was seated. Chin on her chest, feet bound to the legs of a metal folding chair, hands secured behind it. Not by handcuffs, duct tape, or zip ties.
Her mind worked. Struggled toward lucidity. Rope. Thin rope. Lots of it. Idiots.
Whatever was wrapped around her eyes had been bound tight, and not even a kiss of light reached her eyelids. 
To her left were voices, raucous conversation, men sitting around a nearby table. 
Their volume and language spoke to playing cards or some other game of chance. 
These men— four of them, by the distinctness of tone— were unconcerned with her. They were killing time. Waiting.
Each sound, each smell brought with it a mental snapshot to create a composite of what she couldn’t see. 
There was no tell of a nearby guard, no restless feet or fidgeting fingers, no rustle of clothing, no breathing.
Cigarette smoke hung in the air, not heavy, as it would be in a small space; it dissipated in the same way the voices did. 
This place was large. Cavernous. Munroe gauged ten feet between her and the men at the table, maybe fifteen, no more than that. 
They’d set her off to the side, alone, with her face toward them, trusting that she was secure.
Such basic blunders made it easy to lower the estimate of threat, but she wouldn’t make the same mistake these men had. 
They would learn that to underestimate an opponent was the fastest route to getting dead.
Chin to chest, as if she were still unconscious, Munroe’s fingers worked, wrists twisted until they found the slightest bit of slack, pushing, prodding until she had enough play to slip free.
Well-oiled rollers slid along tracks somewhere across the cavern behind her, pausing the escape.
She stopped to listen. Doors easing open. This place was a warehouse.
Only the faintest noise filtered in from the outside, no cars or horns, no pedestrians, no music. A warehouse outside of town.
The rollers made a return trip, and the purr of a well-machined car engine drew close, shut off. 
The conversation around the table stopped. Chairs scraped against the floor. Feet shuffled. A car door opened. Shut. Followed by another.
Footsteps drew away from the table, toward the chair, and then fingers, hands, released the blindfold. 
Munroe blinked. The lighting inside the warehouse came from industrial lamps beside the worktable, 
and although the glare was easily swallowed by the building, the wattage was painful after having been forced into complete darkness.
Munroe winced, staring at the man in front of her.
She had expected someone from the Cárcan family to show, had planned on it, knowing that until the boss had a chance at her they’d keep her alive, a deliberate delay that would buy time not only for Bradford and Hannah but also for herself. 
That the tormentor had to be the guy who’d groped her in the Ranch hallway was an unfortunate twist.
He stared at her now, looking down in a long-drawn-out silence that spread to the men on either side of him. 
Munroe’s face relaxed from wince to deadpan. The boss man grinned, and his men remained motionless. 
He then stood back, forefinger and thumb to chin in an exaggerated pretense of thought.
He wagged his finger at her. “I know you,” he said. Pulling at the knees of his slacks, the man lowered to a half-squat so that he was eye to eye.
“Yes,” he said. “I do know you.”
Munroe stayed silent, eyes glazed over in a stare of noncomprehension and ignorance. 
Her eyes didn’t track him when he stood, didn’t follow when he turned to whisper to one of the men that remained behind him. 
Now that she could see, could fully assess the situation, this Cárcan son was the least interesting object in the vast empty space.
Instead, her eyes darted to the table and then searched upward along the walls and around the circle, seeking out a way to escape, scouting for anything that could be turned into a weapon: 
instantaneous survival assessment of who, what, when, where, and how. She already knew the why.
The floors were smooth concrete, the walls cinder block, and the roof, fifty feet up, was of corrugated metal. 
The direction of echoes spoke to the warehouse being empty; the worktable near the wall and the lights around it seemed to be the only objects there.
The four men who had originally sat around the table had been joined by two more who’d arrived with the boss. 
All six stood on either side of him in a hungry, uneven semicircle, each carrying firearms, most of which were holstered and a few held in waistbands.
The men were similar only in their build— thick and stocky from too many hours spent in the gym. 
In contrast, their boss was slight and otherwise undistinguished apart from his expensive clothes and what Munroe already knew was an overdeveloped ego.
She absorbed the placement of men and weapons, each detail filtering into awareness with the accuracy of echolocation,
an appraisal that was swift and instinctual, made in less time than it had taken for the boss man to turn and speak.
It was difficult to predict the odds of survival. She’d fought against larger groups, but never in such a defined space, and never from a position of weakness. 
Speed was her friend, was always her friend, speed born from the will to survive when night after night she was hunted down and forced to defend herself in order to live. 
Agile and able to move faster than expected, she could handle four or five who were not trained military but thugs. Seven was pushing against reason.
Munroe’s eyes returned front, to the boss man’s second, the one to whom the boss had turned and whispered, the one who now strode toward her.
The second was the broadest and shortest of the seven, and he didn’t pause in his approach. 
When his feet stopped moving, his arm continued on, fist connecting with Munroe’s face. 
The blow, hard and dizzying, would have knocked her off the chair had she not braced for it, and were she not strapped to the chair.
Munroe shook her head to clear the dizziness. The telltale trickle flowed from the corner of her mouth, and the stabbing pain brought a hint of smile to her lips. 
Her heart began to beat the march to destruction.
The boss came close again to look at her swelling face, and she studied his. 
Her vision blurred to gray, the borders of sight narrowing to feral focus, the lust for blood, for retribution, rising, 
while long years of practice in pulling back the urge kept her from striking.
Bradford’s words scrolled against the back of her mind. Have you ever considered that it’s not always wrong to kill?
The boss said, “【马赛克3】Donde está la ni【马赛克2】a? Where did you send her?”
Munroe’s eyes glazed again, stayed focused ahead, as if his words held no meaning. 
The boss nodded to his second, and the man stepped forward again, struck again. The hit was harder. Set her ears ringing.
Maybe some people need killing, maybe by taking them out you break the cycle of pain and suffering.
Munroe’s eyes remained to the front, centered on what would appear to be some invisible distance. 
The boss stepped back into the semicircle. Whispered again. His third placed a spring blade in his waiting hand. 
The boss switched the knife open and squatted again, eye to eye with Munroe. He took the blade up, underneath her chin, pointed into that sweet spot so favored for the kill. 
He pressed so that in order to avoid puncture, she was forced to tilt her head upward and back, 
and when she had lifted as high as she could, had tightened all the skin along her neck, he flicked.
The blade took a quick slice, not deep, but enough to feel, enough to draw blood. 
“Where did you send the girl?” he said again, only this time he spoke in nearly unaccented English.
“I didn’t send anyone anywhere,” she said.
The boss stood. Turned to the men behind him and let out a half-laugh. 
“English?” he said, as if surprised to discover that what he thought was a long shot turned out instead to be true. 
English was correct as far as he knew. He could have used Italian, German, Turkish, Ibo, or any one of twenty-something languages, and the result would have been the same.
“But you didn’t speak English when you were around my friends.”
“What friends?” Munroe said.
The boss shook his head. His was the look of impatience, the look she wanted.
He motioned a finger upward, and two of his men left the half circle for the chair, knelt, sliced at the bonds on her ankles. 
Beefy hands closed around each of her arms. They jerked her upward and shoved her toward the boss man. 
Munroe struggled to maintain footing. Her hands were still palm to palm, and the rope still slack.
Munroe breathed in the aura of this man and his intended violence, absorbing until he blended with the memory and musk of Pieter Willem, until they were one inside her head.
The boss drew the knife up toward her face, smiling as her eyes tracked it. He pointed it down toward her chest. 
In a quick movement he sliced the material of her shirt; sliced through the undershirt. The clothing fell away, leaving her chest exposed.
The boss man turned to his men, jerked his thumb toward Munroe, and said, “See, I told you she was a woman.” 
He drew close, his breath hot against her neck. Ran his finger along her nipple. Tweaked it.
“I was right,” he whispered. “I do know you.” He took the blade and played it against her skin. 
“And now that you’re no longer their guest but mine, I will treat you as I please.”
He paused when he saw the slivers that marked her torso, stared at them a moment and then his face creased into a half grin. 
“I see I won’t be the first,” he said. “Did he make you cry, the one who did this? Did he make you bleed?”
He stretched closer, sniffed her neck and her hair, licked her, his tongue running from her ear to her cheek and over her eye. “Did he make you suffer the way I will make you suffer?”
The rush of blood was loud in Munroe’s ears, a heavy pounding that drowned out the world, drowned out everything but the man in front of her, and shouted the command to kill.
Instinct. Timing. Calculation. In a last effort toward reason, she forced it back, fought against the urge, offered a way of escape to someone who deserved none.
“Let me go now,” she said, her voice low, nearly a monotone, “and I won’t kill you.”
In response, the boss laughed. His bark was hard and unfeeling, a mockery. 
“Please, little girl,” he said. “You go ahead and try to kill me. It would make for an entertaining morning.”
She sighed.
Wrong answer.
It was always the wrong fucking answer.
Her eyes closed as pleasure flowed through her system. This was the point of no return, the pre-rush of a killing. There was no going back. 
She had no regrets, had made her peace, would die happy if such was the outcome. 
She’d traded her life for an innocent child’s, and it had been an even trade.
“I will tell you what you want,” she said.
“Yes,” he whispered, his eyes on the knife as it caressed her skin. “You will.”
He paused, broke from his trance, and slipped the knife into his jacket pocket. 
Sudden and violent, he drove a fist into her stomach and knocked her to her knees. He leaned over her and ran his fingers along her cheek.
Time slowed. Motion was broken into the fragmented jerking of strobe-light speed. 
Munroe’s fingers worked, wrist passing, bonds loosening. She looked up, and this time, she smiled death.
One movement, solid, fluid, fast. Knees to feet. Upward. Forehead into his face. 
Fast enough to break his nose, hard enough to whip his head backward. Her hand to his pocket. His knife to her palm. Arm around his neck. Blade to his throat.
In the time it took for his bodyguards and bullies to draw their weapons.
The boss man’s arms flailed, trying to get a grip, trying to gain balance as she dragged him backward along the far side of the semicircle toward the table and the wall that lay behind it. 
He was strong. Nearly her weight. Equal to her height, and such was the beauty of adrenaline and the rush that it bore that she didn’t feel his strength, didn’t know his weight, and pulled him along like a ragdoll.
The men, afraid to fire and hit their leader, followed instead, tightening the circle and drawing near.
Munroe flicked the boss man’s neck, drawing blood. “Back,” she hissed, and each of the men from the semicircle paused in their encroachment.
Her cut had been more carefully placed than his had been. She’d struck the jugular, like putting a hole in a dike, 
and he, still flailing, not yet accepting his fate, seemed unaware that the harder he fought, the faster he’d die. 
He got hold of one of her ears. Began to dig, tear, pull. She stabbed his hand. He screamed.
“Right now you’re just in pain,” Munroe said, “but if your men don’t put their weapons down, you’ll be dead.”
He hissed an unintelligible response. She reached the table. Stepped around it. The wall was solid, cold against what was left of her shirt. 
No one would be coming at her from behind, and the table forced at least six feet of space between her and the others.
To her captive Munroe whispered, “You’re bleeding. Badly. At this rate you’ll be dead in twenty minutes. Do you want to make a trip to the hospital or do you want to make a trip to the morgue?”
She’d spoken a lie to keep him motivated; at the rate he was bleeding, he’d be lucky to last ten. He stopped struggling. 
She could feel his body weakening, either through defeat or because with his neck held in the vise of her arm, she’d slowed the blood supply to his brain. The reason mattered little.
“Drop them,” he said to his men. His voice was low, a whisper.
“They can’t hear you,” she hissed.
“Drop your weapons,” he said again. Not much louder, although this time he flailed one arm up and down to emphasize the point.
In case there was any doubt, Munroe repeated the command, and when the men hesitated, didn’t move at all, she dropped the tip of the knife into the tender of the boss man’s shoulder joint and yanked.
He screamed again. The men placed their drawn weapons on the floor.
“Scoot them under the table with your feet,” Munroe said, and then added to the boss man’s driver, “You. Fat guy. Toss the car keys on the table.”
When they’d done as instructed, she nodded to the two closest to the warehouse entrance. “Get the doors,” she said.
Munroe couldn’t reach for the weapons on the floor, couldn’t collect them and maintain her hold on the boss. They knew it. She knew it. They knew she knew it. 
She counted seconds as the two faded in the dimness toward the sliding doors.
Now was the moment of weakness, when the four still standing on the other side of the table would begin to close in.
Across the warehouse, the gate men slowed. Dawdled. They were killing time, keeping the escape route sealed off while they waited for their counterparts to take action. 
She was losing the upper hand, the window that she’d gained by surprise was closing.
The four around the table fanned out, inched forward, moving in a way that was far too confident for unarmed men, no matter how loyal they might be.
Instinct again. The fastest way to survival. Munroe dropped the boss— just let go and let him fall. 
He collapsed under his own weight, and she went down with him. Pulled two weapons off the floor. Dip and grab. No time to look, just take what she could get, then point and click.
Her fists closed around a pair of Bersa Thunder 9s, identical to the one pulled off her earlier. 
If the magazines were full, and they would be, they afforded seventeen rounds apiece. 
If that didn’t cover what she needed, she deserved to get shot.
Still lying on her side, she fired. A warning discharge, aimed toward the floor in front of the men nearest the table. 
The report was a loud echo in the emptiness. They jumped, crouched, backed away only to the edge of the light. 
Time continued to move in split-second intervals, body language screaming in a way that words never could. 
The men were each reaching. Backup weapons. If she was going down, she wasn’t going down alone. 
Munroe paused. Calmed her breathing. Double tapped. The closest man yelped. Fell. Wounded but alive. For now.
The boss moved to get up. She drove an elbow into his face and then downward against his cut shoulder. He screamed again.
She slid over the top of him so that his body remained a shield between the shooters and the wall, 
and with one weapon pressed into his spine, said, “Move again, and you’re paralyzed for life. Understand?”
He groaned.
The three men remained on the periphery of light, inching forward again, trying to find a line of sight between the legs of the table and chairs and past their boss. 
The warehouse doors were still closed. Munroe yelled into the darkness, “One minute to get the doors open or one of your people dies.”
This time the shooters backed fully into the darkness; nobody wanted to be first. 
The occasional shuffle, toe scrape, and rustle betrayed position. They were close, just out of sight. 
The distance would make it difficult for them to shoot with accuracy, but there was always dumb luck and shrapnel. 
Especially when the lights blinded Munroe to what lay beyond the table area and made her an easy target.
She shifted forward. Aimed. Popped the lights, and the warehouse went completely black. 
Her eyesight ringed with the burning images of the powerful lamps, but even effectively night-blinded as she was, the darkness was still home.
Their eyes would have adjusted first, it would make them brave. Brave enough to crawl in close where they could see. 
She knelt. Waited. Listened. Then stood to a crouch, fished the keys off the table, and ducked back down to where the table and chair legs provided a modicum of cover.
She whispered to the boss, “You’ve been deserted.” She punched the muzzle of the gun to the back of his head. “Get up.”
He struggled to push upward to hands and knees. His breathing was slow, shallow. He’d lost a lot of blood, wouldn’t last much longer. 
She needed to get to the car before any collateral she held in him ran out.

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Chapter 32
Bradford fishtailed out of the alley and onto the narrow connecting street, the street that led away from the hostel, away from Munroe and toward the objective.
He was breathing hard. Too hard. He needed to slow down, he couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. 
She’d been clear on what she wanted. Follow the plan. And so he followed, driving on instinct, moving on autopilot, every muscle, every nerve screaming the contra-order.
He’d left a man behind. And not just any man; he’d left Michael.
This was not the way things were done. Not the way it should be. Wrong. He had to go back, fight, protect her the way she refused to protect herself. 
Michael was the important one, not this girl she was giving her life to save.
Bradford swung a left, side street to boulevard, one more taxi blending into the city’s late-night or early-morning traffic. 
He eased off the pedal if only slightly. Every second took him farther away from Munroe— if she was even still alive.
Reason kicked in. Of course she was still alive. She’d walked into the big dog’s den and taken his bone, and now that dog was going to want to know where to find it and how to get it back.
The realization was a double-edged sword. 
There was relief in the knowledge that Michael was alive, and would still be alive for a while;
but there was torment knowing what would come when she refused to divulge any information. Not only because she wouldn’t, but because she couldn’t.
She’d foreseen this. It’s why she’d left the finer details of getting Hannah out of the country in Bradford’s hands, 
why even she had no idea how he was transporting the girl, or where in neighboring Montevideo he would take her.
More, she knew the way the game was played. As long as they thought she had what they wanted, they would continue to try to break her. 
The longer she lived, and the more they focused in the wrong direction, the safer Hannah would be.
Bradford pulled into the parking area next to the Peugeot and shut off the engine. 
He turned to the backseat where the little body was still bundled, and after staring at the girl for several seconds, he stepped from the cab and opened the rear door.
He sliced through the knots in the sheets and let the material fall. 
The girl looked so small, so fragile, sleeping as she was. She was unmistakably Logan, and the similarity brought on a surge of anger that crested above the tormenting conflict.
Bradford remained motionless, caught in the crosshairs of duty.
The child breathed a steady in-and-out, and his mind found the pattern, working through the maze. 
He would find a way both to fulfill his obligation and to avoid abandoning Munroe to the vises of the Cárcan family.
He lifted Hannah and transferred her from one car to the next. Left the items in the trunk where they were. 
Tossed the keys to the cab under the cab’s front passenger seat and climbed into the Peugeot. He would do this.
Against his strongest instinct he would follow the plan. But he would add his own twist. 
This was the only way his conscience would allow him to both move forward and give Munroe what she wanted. The time had come for Logan to pay his dues.
Bringing Logan into the mix wasn’t a decision made lightly, nor was it based on emotion, although granted, emotion ran high. 
These were Bradford’s terms. If he was to sacrifice Munroe to save another’s child, then everyone would pay a price. A life for a life for a life.
And that, exactly, was the risk of bringing Logan or even Gideon into the fray. 
Sure, they were both kickass in their own little worlds, but that wasn’t the same thing as living on the edge. 
Skills got rusty, muscles got weak, and for whatever else, they were still living the civilian life. 
Munroe had a reason for wanting to keep them out of the fight— not just so that she wouldn’t worry— but because of the higher likelihood of one of them getting killed.
Life for a life for a life.
Bradford picked up the phone. Punched in the number. “I’ve got Hannah,” Bradford said.
The relief on the other end was palpable. “Where are you?” Logan said.
“They’ve got Michael.”
Silence.
“I can’t go after her,” Bradford said. “Not if I’m to get Hannah safely out. The situation is volatile.”
More silence.
“You can either track Michael or I’m leaving Hannah where she is, right now, and going back myself.” Bradford stopped, waiting for the venom in his voice to fade.
“Why don’t you give me Hannah?” Logan said.
“Not an option. It’s either all or nothing. 
“The people we just took her from are powerful, connected, and vicious. 
“I have pieces in place to get your daughter safely out of the country, and my window of opportunity is closing. 
“I don’t have time to dicker around with you. Either I do this or I don’t.”
Another pause, and Logan said, “Tell me where I should start.”
Bradford gave Logan the address of the hostel, provided general directions, told him how to find the taxi and what he would find in the taxi. 
Explained the layout of the hostel, the patterns of security, and what Logan could expect. 
He told him to move fast. Munroe was there right now. There was no guarantee for how long.
“Last thing,” Bradford said. “Tell Gideon the only way he’s ever going to get the information Michael had for him is if she’s alive to give it to him herself.”
Bradford shut the phone without waiting for a response, tossed it on the seat, and pulled out of the parking area into the thin stream of traffic. 
Gideon might have gone along anyway, simply to watch Logan’s back, but there was no motivator like self-interest.
Logan stared at the phone in his hand, held it out as if it were toxic, his mind blank, in shock. 
The news that he’d waited eight years to receive brought with it an unbelievable anguish.
He stood and climbed back into the clothes he’d shed only an hour earlier. 
On the opposite bed, Gideon stirred and said, “Was it Michael?”
“Miles.”
Gideon tossed, turning from his back to his side. “Good news or bad?”
Logan moved steadily through the room, collecting items. Belt. Shoes. Wallet. Watch. “Both,” he said.
Gideon turned on the light. “What’s going on?”
“Miles has Hannah,” Logan said. “That’s the good news. He’s on his way to moving her out of the country as we speak.” 
He paused, turned to face Gideon, and, as if his mind couldn’t quite comprehend the reality of his words, said, “Michael was taken in the process of getting Hannah. 
“Not by The Chosen but by the Sponsors they’d handed Hannah off to— a big-name local crime family.” 
Logan stood, momentarily blank, and then clasped his watch into place. “She’ll probably be tortured for information if they don’t kill her outright.”
“Sucks for her,” Gideon said, and then, realizing that Logan was preparing to leave the room, sat up. “Where are you going?” he said.
“To find Michael.”
Gideon lay back down and pulled the covers up to his chin. “Good luck with that.”
Logan paused and stared at Gideon the way he’d stared at the phone. “Incidentally, a little message to you from Miles,” he said.
Gideon rolled back and blinked an eye open.
Logan knelt and tied his laces. Tight. Old habits. 
“Michael not only had the locations of all of the puerte【马赛克2】o Havens,” he said. “She had days of video and audio, a hierarchy map, and lots and lots of names. 
“Whatever arrangement she made with you was between the two of you. Miles says the only way you’re getting anything that she had is if she’s the one to give it to you.”
Gideon swore. Flung the blankets aside and stood, muttering about blackmail. 
“So what are we supposed to do even if you do find her?” he said. “Just go marching in like two idiot targets, saying, ‘Here shoot at us, and let her go’?”
“Apparently, Miles left us a gift. It’s in the back of a car, and we’re going to go find it.”
Logan stopped. He stood square in front of Gideon, didn’t move, just stood until Gideon raised his head and said, “What?”
“Michael is my best friend, Gideon— more than friend— she’s the only family I have. 
“She’s saved my neck more than once and put her life on the line to get Hannah because I asked her for help. 
“Whether you come or not, I’m going after her. She deserves at least that from me. And you? You can either put up or shut up.”
Gideon raised a hand. “It’s cool,” he said. “Let’s go kick some ass.”
They found the taxi where Bradford said it would be, and the parking area not as empty as described. The morning was coming quickly. 
Logan fished the key out from under the seat, opened the trunk, and almost cautiously unzipped the long duffel bag.
There was a long moment of silence as he and Gideon stood side by side, mouths open, staring at what waited for them.
Logan took a quick look over his shoulder, checked again that they were alone in the parking area, pulled the bag to the ground, and then shut the trunk.
Gideon said, “Where the hell did he get that? And how, with all of this shit, did Michael manage to get taken?”
“Weapons are what Miles does,” Logan said. He grunted, heaved the bag onto the backseat, and closed the door. Slow and firm. 
“Miles has connections all over the place,” he said, and then paused, thoughtful, piecing together the unknown events of the darkened morning. 
Logan didn’t know much about Miles, but he knew Michael better than anyone else ever would.
“She didn’t want to go in shooting,” Logan said, “for Hannah’s sake. And Michael has always been more about stealth than bullets.” 
He nodded at the bag. “That was Miles’s doing— she probably didn’t even know it was back there.”
They climbed into the cab, Logan in the driver’s seat, Gideon riding shotgun. 
After another thoughtful moment, Logan turned the ignition key and pulled into the thickening traffic. 
It took several passes to find the hostel, and on the way, the boys discussed strategy. 
Logan outlined all he knew of the hostel and its security, a repeat of everything that Bradford had told him.
Gideon climbed from the front seat into the back. Pushed the bag to the floor and culled through it until he’d found what he wanted, then searched on Logan’s behalf. 
Most of the lighter pieces were Argentine made, an assortment of Bersas, reliable 9 mms, even if not well known outside of South America. 
There was a pair of Spanish Star Z-84 submachine guns, also 9 mm, a block of C4 with ample det cord, timers and remotes, smoke grenades, live grenades, night vision, and what had to be at least two thousand rounds of ammunition.
The sky was breaking into dawn, and day had come by the time they reached the neighborhood. 
Logan broke from the journey long enough to transfer the bag and its remaining contents into the trunk and then made his way to the hostel, parking the taxi just beyond the front door.
He shut off the ignition. Nodded at Gideon. “Ready?”
Gideon returned the motion. “Let’s do it,” he said.
They exited the cab, both doors slamming at the same time, walked the two steps up the hostel entrance, and once inside, separated. No point in creating a single target.
The desk clerk looked up, and his face clouded. Any idiot who’d been in the building within the last few hours would have reason to mistrust two men walking solidly through the door. 
The clerk’s hands fell below the counter.
Gideon drew, his weapon trained on the man’s chest. 
The clerk froze. And why not; all he had to do was wait for the backup that was somewhere upstairs and would soon be down.
In Spanish fluent from his years in South America, Gideon stage-whispered a demand to the man to place his hands where he could see them. 
When the clerk obliged, Gideon crossed the lobby, a few quick strides, and slid in behind the counter. 
He stood behind the man and out of reach, with the weapon still trained on him.
Gideon nodded to Logan, who had waited at the base of the stairwell.
Logan slipped behind the counter, rooted out the weapons from underneath it, and handed them to Gideon. 
He stepped back to cover the clerk while Gideon zip-tied the man’s hands behind his back.
With the clerk secured and still behind the counter, Logan returned to the bottom of the stairwell and, as casually as possible, weapon out of sight, waited. 
Disarming and securing the clerk had gone quickly— better than anticipated— almost like clockwork. This next part wouldn’t be as straightforward.
The hotel’s guests were beginning to stir, and Logan’s judgment call said that the first steps down the stairwell toward the cantina would not be those of the foot soldiers. 
He had little to go on in pinpointing the hotel security other than Bradford’s descriptions, which, admittedly would probably now be different, but something about the posture of the man on the stairs was wrong. 
Like Munroe, Logan knew the subtleties of facial expression, knew body language, skills highly attuned after years of trying to avoid trouble in the ever-changing, arbitrary structure of The Chosen.
Another set of footsteps came down the stairwell, and again Logan ignored them. 
The man passed through the lobby to the outside, but there would be more coming, others who would go instead to the cantina. 
The hotel guests, although guests, still mostly worked for the Cárcan family, and each provided his own separate threat level. 
Bradford had made that clear. The more of them that congregated downstairs, the harder it would be to pull off a repeat performance of securing the desk clerk.
Without turning, Logan said, “Change of plans, Gid. One of them should be enough. Let’s take him now while we’ve got a chance.”
“If we fail with him,” Gideon said, “we can’t come back for seconds.”
“We won’t fail.”
Logan waited until he was certain the lobby would remain empty for the time they needed to get out, and then with the stairwell silent, he gave Gideon the all-clear.
Gideon nudged the man out from behind the counter. 
Halfway across the small space, the clerk, realizing what the two intended, realizing his partner would not be there in time to save him, began to yell. 
Gideon struck him, and Logan pushed him forward. The combined movements threw him off balance. He stumbled out the front door. Tripped. Fell. Struggled to get up, to get away.
They each grabbed an arm and, straining against his weight, hustled him up and forward. 
Gideon yanked open the back door of the cab and, together with Logan, against the man’s struggling and continued clamoring, attempted to shove him inside.
Logan ran for the driver’s door. “Just shoot him,” he yelled.
Gideon put muzzle to the man’s struggling leg. Pulled the trigger.
The power of the weapon’s report was matched by the man’s bellow and followed a second later by the spit of return fire coming from the hotel’s front door. 
Gideon pushed. The man caved. Gideon threw himself on top of the clerk, slammed the door. “Drive,” he yelled. “Drive!” 
The rear window shattered. For the second time in less than three hours, the taxi peeled away from the raunchy neighborhood of the Cárcan hostel.
Logan drove blindly. Madly. Weaving through traffic until Gideon’s voice finally registered.
Gideon was on top of the clerk, head inches from Logan’s, yelling, “Slow the fuck down, they’re not following us and you’re going to get us killed!”
From the tone, Gideon must have been repeating that mantra for a good minute now. Logan nodded, eased off the gas.
This was what adrenaline should be. This was a jacked-up heart rate, and nothing at all like the rush he got racing motorcycles or BASE jumping.
There was a moment of silence, and then as the reality of the moment sunk in, both he and Gideon burst into laughter. 
Their cackle was manic, the hilarity of insanity that calmed only when Logan said, “We’re drawing attention, get off the guy.”
The clerk, face to the seat, hands still behind his back and legs at an odd angle, had stopped struggling. 
Gideon shifted. Made sure the guy was still alive, and then with one hand, did a quick inspection of the leg. 
The wound was a clean through-and-through, muscle tissue, the slug somewhere in the seat cushion. 
Blood was pooling, but not fast enough to be serious. The clerk would live. Maybe.
Gideon tore the guy’s shirt, took what he wanted, and wrapped the leg to stanch the bleeding, and then slid into the front seat. 
The clerk turned so that his face was to the front. “Sos un hombre muerto,” he hissed at Gideon. “A dead man. Both of you.”
Gideon pointed the gun at the man’s head. He said, “Bang,” and then ignored the insults that followed.
Logan got his bearings and changed course. They were heading out of town. 
Someplace deserted and quiet. Someplace where screaming wouldn’t raise an alarm.

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Chapter 31
The clock had passed midnight and the voices with their worthless conversations were coming to an end when Bradford finally walked through the door.
Munroe turned to face him, an accusation almost to her lips until she saw him. She stopped and forced back a laugh.
“Where the hell have you been?” she said, but this time she was smiling.
Bradford was dressed in old clothes, ratty and tattered, the kind of getup you’d see on a kid who’d spent the last four months hitchhiking the continent. 
The boots on his feet were beat up and worn through, and over his shoulder he carried a small backpack. 
This wasn’t the Bradford who’d headed out at midafternoon.
“I’ve been hobnobbing with the base and seedy,” he said. He shrugged off the backpack. Held it out, as if the grime were contagious, and dumped it on the floor. 
“There wasn’t really any way to call. I’m glad you waited for me— hope I didn’t worry you.”
Munroe nodded at his outfit. “Talk to me,” she said.
“We’re in,” he said.
“You found her?”
Bradford shrugged and smiled a bragging smile, an actor’s grin. 
Munroe let him have the moment. She moved from the chair to the edge of the bed, audience to the stage, and motioned for him to continue.
“Out of the three hotel-slash-hostels on our radar, two are normal run-of-the-mill-type places,” he said. “Not a whole lot happening. 
“Quiet. Empty. Clean. And from what I saw, there didn’t appear to be any Cárcan henchmen around. 
“Now, if I were a Cárcan big shot, and I were going to stash a kid like Hannah as a favor, 
“I’d wonder what exactly my friends were up to, and I’d put her where I could keep an eye on her. Which brings me to the third location.
“This one is different. It has three stories and borders one of the rougher neighborhoods, 
and rumor has it that a lot of the guests are not as transient as you’d expect— that the Cárcans use it to house short-term employees. 
“You know, the kind who are in town for a special job before moving on? Definitely more up our alley and closer to what I expect we’re looking for.
“Whatever else the place may be, it’s also open for regular business, and it seemed the easiest way inside was through the front door, although not the way I was dressed. 
“I found a kid a few blocks away who liked my offer of clothing and shoe exchange. I had to pay extra for the luggage.” 
He shook his head theatrically and rubbed his finger along the shirt’s frayed collar. 
“I checked into the Cárcan family suites. The place is a dump, but the rooms are clean and the doors lock. 
“There’s a small cantina downstairs. Metal tables, folding chairs, tepid coffee, local TV. 
“I’m sure you know the drill. Hung out there for a while, and eventually me and my trusty guidebook made some new friends.”
Munroe raised an eyebrow, as if to say And?
“Hannah’s a real cute little lady,” he said. “Looks just like a miniature Logan. That woman who’s with her, though—” Bradford grimaced and shook his head.
Munroe’s face remained deadpan, and her voice monotone. “You have target location?”
“No need to thank me,” he said. “But yes, we have confirmation.” He paused. “And I love what you’ve done with your hair.”
Munroe grinned and, without breaking eye contact, stood. She moved toward Bradford, slow and languid. 
He remained motionless, eyes tracking her as she drew near, head turning slightly to follow her approach until she was close against him, mouth to his ear, her lips close enough to graze his skin.
“Not bad for a night’s work,” she whispered.
The hair raised along Bradford’s neck. 
Munroe continued on past, and he, with a deer-in-the-headlight glaze, turned to follow her.
Leaning against the wall, she said, “Considering the type of neighborhood, I’m surprised two women would be socializing late at night with a strange man.”
“They had reason to feel safe.”
“I assume it wasn’t because you’re such a great guy.”
Bradford shook his head.
“Lay it out for me,” she said.
Bradford’s time in the hotel had allowed him to plot the floor plan; 
his time at the table discussing first the country and then religion had gotten him Hannah’s room number.
On a piece of paper, Bradford diagrammed the access points, the blind spots, and the sticky issues. 
Hannah was on the third floor, and the only way to her was through the front door, past the front desk, and up the stairwell that wound from the rear of the tiny lobby through the center of the building. 
There were no elevators or fire escapes or emergency exits. Not in this part of town, or this building.
The hotel’s desk clerks were gatekeepers rather than humble staff. 
Shift change showed each man as beefy as the other, with weapons behind the counter and no subtlety in the handoff. 
There were no security cameras, but two of the Cárcans’ foot soldiers traded off in a leisurely form of round-the-clock, patrol-the-hallways, keep-an-eye-on-things security. 
From the condition of the hotel and the sidewalk out front, the measures did well at keeping the local riffraff from messing with the place. 
Whatever street crime occurred in the area wasn’t happening there.
Up the stairs, branching right and left off the stairwell, were two floors of short hallways, four doors to a side, sixteen rooms to a floor, and Hannah’s was at the far end of the hall. 
The entire third floor, Hannah’s floor, housed only the Cárcan’s people, 
although, as far as Bradford could tell, Hannah was only being hidden, not specifically guarded.
Getting past the desk going in was a nonissue. Coming back out with a drugged teenager who also happened to be the personal guest of the hotel owner and the Cárcan family was another story altogether. 
As far as extractions went, it wasn’t as simple as it would have been had they pulled Hannah out of the sleeping Ranch, but it was far easier than a hostage rescue.
Pinpointing the new location as quickly as they had was a lucky break, and Munroe wanted nothing more of waiting. 
That said, her world was one of information and intelligence, stealth and smarts over guns and door kicking, 
and by that token, it might have been the wiser choice to acquire more knowledge, to get a personal feel for what she was going into, 
because Bradford’s point of view, no matter how accurate, could never substitute for her own. But at this stage, she no longer cared. 
It was impossible to guess how long Hannah would remain holed up in the hotel, 
and the Cárcan family inevitably had plenty more places to stash their charge if The Chosen got jumpy. 
More still, Munroe was wary of what men like those she’d met in the hallway would do if they got their hands on a young girl like Hannah, and Hannah was now surrounded by an entire hotel floor of them.
She had no more patience for being Mr. Nice Guy, was all out of caution and concern over avoiding collateral damage. 
This time the bets were off. The projection was smash and grab. Get in, get the girl, get the hell out.
A hefty payment to Raúl, and the taxi driver was willing to let go of his cab for the rest of the night— maybe forever. 
Bradford drove it, navigating the chaos and suicidal maneuverings of Buenos Aires traffic with the skill of a local, while Munroe followed in the Peugeot.
They stopped at a parking area a crooked half mile from the hostel, 
a place where the streets were still well lit and the vehicle was safe enough from vandalism during the hopefully brief time away.
Munroe stepped from her car and into the night. She pulled a nearly empty duffel bag from the passenger seat, tossed it into the back of the taxi, and locked the Peugeot by remote. 
She joined Bradford in the cab, handed him the keys, and they rode in silence to the hostel.
The building was sandwiched between others, fronting a two-lane road in a part of town where sidewalk traffic never died. 
On either side, up and down the street were mom-and-pop restaurants, tailors, repair shops, secondhand shops, all closed and dark, 
the street traffic coming from the many bars, all with their light and noise and smoke spilling onto the otherwise darkened sidewalks.
By contrast, the hotel was quiet, if dimly lit, a beacon of order in the midst of confusion.
Bradford stopped the cab a half block away from the hotel.
Munroe slung the bag over her shoulder and stepped out.
“Ten minutes,” Bradford said, and she nodded.
Going in, she was carrying two blades and a Bersa Thunder 9, one of several firearms that Bradford had already picked up locally. 
Considering the hotel’s management and clientele, it would be insane to enter unarmed, but the plan was to move fast enough to avoid having to utilize any weapon at all.
The tiny hotel lobby was as Munroe expected. To her left as she entered was the open doorway to the cantina, and after only a few steps in, the hotel desk. 
The man behind it was easily six-foot-four, and half as wide. 
He was polite and deferential, and he treated her request for a room with the courtesy expected of any proprietor. 
She filled out the paperwork and he handed her a key, an old-fashioned-looking thing that hung on the end of a four-inch strip of wood.
The room was as Bradford described: clean, spartan, tiny, and, ironically, on the second floor directly under where Hannah slept. 
Munroe moved to the window and stared down at the rear alley only long enough to draw the image of the taxi out of the darkness.
Pulling Hannah from the third floor of this building required supplies that they didn’t have, and Munroe had been unwilling to wait to procure them. 
Like so many parts of an assignment that required split-second changes and last-minute improvisations, 
the extraction would be makeshift and sloppy, executed with what was already at hand.
Bag on the floor, Munroe tossed the bed, pulled both sheets off, and far corner to far corner, knotted them. 
Double-checked the tensile strength, checked against slippage, and then shoved them into the bag.
Door locked, she walked to the end of the hall and rapped a pattern against Bradford’s door. He opened, and she stepped inside.
His bed was tossed, his sheets knotted. She checked his knots and said, “No offense.” He shrugged, and in turn checked hers. 
Munroe connected the two pieces, and together they worked the length of it. 
They moved fast. Thorough. And when complete, she stuffed the finished product back into the bag.
They left his room together, listened for the footsteps of the patrolman as he walked the halls until they placed him on the first floor. 
Bradford headed down the stairs, and Munroe headed up.
She had no business being on the third floor, no business standing in front of Hannah’s door, 
and Bradford, with his limited Spanish and necessary questions, would buy her time from prying eyes.
The door locks were basic and old-fashioned, the rooms without backup chains or dead bolts, 
and it took but a moment to work the mechanism and slip inside to the black of the room. 
Munroe relocked the door from the inside. The click of the latch was a subtle sound. 
Not so subtle that Munroe or Bradford or Logan would have slept through it, but then, these two in the bedroom were not war hardened and at three in the morning were dead to the world.
Munroe paused long enough to allow her eyes to adjust to the room’s minimal light level, then lowered the bag to the floor and pulled from the side pocket a bottle and cloth.
On the bed and closest to the door was the woman Bradford had scrunched his face over. 
Munroe recognized her as one of the many from the dining-room scenes, one of the few who hadn’t had children about her. 
She was early fifties— possibly younger— and the years and the poor quality of life hadn’t been kind.
Munroe wet the cloth and placed it over the woman’s nose and mouth. 
The woman’s eyes opened, panicked for a moment, before they shut again.
On a foldout cot that barely fit between the bed and the window was Hannah.
Munroe stared for a moment while Logan’s daughter slept in innocent bliss. 
Then she knelt, placed the cloth over the girl’s face, and watched her eyes flutter open and the same terror settle into them before she too drifted back into oblivion.
With both of them unconscious, Munroe shifted the nameless woman off the bed and settled her on the floor. 
She tore the sheets off the mattress and added them to the chain that she and Bradford had already assembled.
Hannah was a much lighter load, and instead of lifting her out of the bed, Munroe curled her and took the four corners of the sheet, knotted them into a sling, and repeated the procedure with the second sheet, a backup in the unlikely event the knots on the first slipped.
The window was waist high, a narrow opening that did not give easily when Munroe tugged at it, and when it moved, it did so loudly and grudgingly. 
Munroe paused; listened to the night; listened for a response; heard none. 
Below, Bradford burst a quick flash of light in her direction. All clear.
Getting Hannah to the window was easier said than done. 
Although she was an easy ten inches shorter than Munroe, and even thin for her height, she was still a heavy weight to be safely raised and then lowered along the outside wall.
Bradford would have been the better, stronger choice for this part of the job, but to put him in this room with two women carried its own risks. 
While he might hesitate to use physical force against either of them if necessary, Munroe would not.
Munroe knelt with one knee to the floor, tight against Hannah’s cocooned body. 
She took the sheet’s tail, wrapped it around her forearm, and then around her torso, allowing the remainder to trail along the floor. 
Using her knee as a brace, Munroe pulled Hannah toward her, cradled her, and with all of the weight centered at her hips, stood.
There was only a step between where Hannah had lain and the window where she must go, but in that step came the reverberation of a door being slammed directly below. 
Inching backward, Munroe tipped her head toward the night and heard the window ten feet down scrape shut.
Munroe paused, arms beginning to shake from the weight they bore. 
Bradford flashed again from below, and feetfirst, Munroe tipped Hannah out the window. 
The sling held, tightened, and Munroe let go the remaining side. 
With the last of Hannah’s body through the threshold, the tightly wound sheet and the weight pulled Munroe hard against the wall. 
She braced, knees bent, pulling backward, allowing the sheet to unwind inch by inch, while counting down minutes until whoever had been downstairs was at the door.
There was no good explanation for why someone had been in her room. Best case was statistical crime. 
Theft, vandalism, even intent to rape or murder were better possibilities than that of the front-desk and security guys comparing notes. 
But barring the unlikelihood of the downstairs incursion being bad timing on the part of a common criminal, 
the sheetless bed would only confirm whatever suspicions the Cárcan foot soldiers had originally had for entering.
Given the proximity in timing between her predawn request for a room and Bradford’s return to the hostel, it wouldn’t take long to draw the connection. 
After that, it was merely a matter of minutes before the bad guys headed this way. 
If she and Bradford were lucky, there were rooms and things in this building that ranked higher in order of priority and would be checked on first.
Hannah was five feet down the thirty-foot drop when the first knock came at the door. 
Munroe ignored it, ignored the anxiety of having her back to the room and her hands tied, closed her eyes and continued to feed the cocoon toward Bradford.
The knock was louder, a pounding that couldn’t help but roust adjoining neighbors from their beds. 
Bradford’s light clicked a rapid succession. He’d heard the noise. 
Munroe slowed in feeding, pulled the flashlight from her teeth, and replied. Company.
Hannah was ten feet down. Still too high to drop. Munroe’s back remained to the door, her hearing taking over where sight was absent. 
The door handle shook. And then came splintering as the door slammed inward.
She continued to feed. Fifteen feet. Halfway there.
They paused at the door, and Munroe didn’t need to see them to follow their movements. 
Long years spent in the night of the jungle, years of tracking in the dark, of hiding in the dark, of avoiding the worst kind of predator, had primed her for moments like these. 
She knew them by the rustle of clothing, the weight of foot to floor, and the carelessness of their breathing.
There were two of them, paused at the sides of the doorway, as if these thin walls would protect them from any return fire.
Seventeen feet. Against the ambient light of the window, Munroe made a perfect target silhouette.
She fed the line. Eighteen feet. One intruder knelt in the doorway, weapon trained on Munroe. 
The other moved into the room, nudged the woman on the floor with his toe, and then low and calm came the order for Munroe to raise her hands and to turn slowly.
Munroe ignored them. Nineteen feet. At twenty-four feet, Hannah would be close enough to the ground for Bradford to break her fall.
The order came again, this time not so low, not so calm. Munroe continued to feed, calculating distance and accuracy. 
From fifteen feet behind, the chances of even a mediocre shot landing a fatal wound were high. 
It would be tragic to end it here, like this, but if this was how she went, so be it. She wasn’t turning, wasn’t letting go of Hannah.
Twenty feet. A warning shot shattered a window pane above her head. Shards of glass fell away. 
From below Bradford muffled a yell. “Drop her,” he said. “I’ve got her. Drop her!”
Twenty-two feet.
Footsteps crossing the room. Munroe released the sheet from her forearm and it slipped slowly from her grasp. 
The full weight of Hannah wound around her waist, slowed only by Munroe’s weight against the windowsill.
“Follow the plan,” she yelled.
Bradford’s beam pointed upward.
Munroe took a step from the window, let go, and the sheet whipped wildly. 
From below came first a thud, then a grunt, a pause, and then a door slam.
The cold of gun metal pressed against the back of Munroe’s head. She raised first one hand and then the other until her fingers joined behind her head.
Tires peeled, and in her mind’s eye, Munroe saw the taxi launch forward.
Hannah was away, and every moment here, every moment stalled, facilitated that escape. 
Munroe filled with a mix of elation and regret. The sadness wasn’t for herself but for Bradford, 
because no matter what happened tonight, she knew well from personal experience the torment to come: 
he would feel helpless to protect her, he could do nothing but watch and wait; 
he would curse himself for his weakness, torture himself while wondering if he had done the right thing.
The muzzle stayed pressed to Munroe’s head, and she stared forward, out the window, into the night, a sad smile on her face while the other set of hands, rough and angry, patted her down.
Eventually Bradford would realize that there was nothing he could have done differently. 
She’d gone into the hostel, this third-floor room, fully aware that she was walking into a box. 
She had made the choice consciously, and her refusal to resist or fight was more of the same, this time to allow Bradford the opportunity to gain distance from the hostel. 
But in the end, no matter tonight’s outcome and no matter what her reasons, Bradford would ache, and this was the one thought that pained her.
The hands found the Bersa, found the blades. Took them. Munroe braced. Waited. And then the world went black.

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Chapter 30
Munroe and Bradford stepped out of the bar, and Logan followed them, calling for Munroe to wait. 
She paused on the street corner until he caught up, and when he reached her, he was breathless and strained, and didn’t bother with niceties. 
“Where did they put her?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Munroe said. “I called you guys in as soon as I found out she was gone. 
“I haven’t had a chance to start digging yet. But I know who she’s with, and with that I’ll find her.”
“Tell me truthfully,” he said. “No padding, no sparing my feelings, no trying to protect me. How bad is it?”
Munroe blew imaginary strands of hair out of her face, debated against going back inside the bar, where they could sit and she could lay it out for him. 
But there really wasn’t any point. She didn’t know enough to do anything more than scare him.
“We’re back at the beginning,” she said. “Not square one exactly— maybe three or four— but at least I have something to work with. 
“No padding. We’re dealing with a whole new animal. An animal with teeth. The Chosen have some strange bedfellows for Sponsors.”
Logan began to speak and then stopped, as if he was now finally grasping the situation for what it was. 
“What are they? Military? Police? It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Organized crime.”
His lips drew taut, and he didn’t even pretend to be calm. “I can be an extra set of hands,” he said, “another pair of eyes, one more set of feet on the ground. I can help you.”
“No,” Munroe said. She crossed her arms. There would be no discussion, no room for argument, no area for debate. Just no.
“Michael, please,” he said. “Not only am I highly motivated, I’ve done this with you a dozen times. I’m an asset, and you know it— it’s not like I’m some outsider to this game.”
She paused, put her hands on his shoulders, and held him at arm’s length. Stared at him eye to eye. 
“You are an asset,” she said. “No question. No doubt. And under any other circumstance we’d be in this together. But not this time. I can’t. It’s too personal to you, and too personal for me.” 
She paused, fighting for the words to explain the blade of pain that pierced each time she slept.
“I need you alive,” she said. “I can’t afford to lose you, and even more than that, Logan, I won’t have your blood on my hands.”
She paused again, and then in almost a whisper said, “I can’t.” 
She stopped. Cleared her throat and upped the volume. “If you go into this, my attention will turn toward keeping you safe. 
“You will distract me, and what I really need right now, more than anything else, is the ability to focus. 
“It’s in your best interest, Hannah’s best interest, and my own best interest to keep you as far away from this project as possible.”
Logan took a step back. His face creased with a mixture of frustration and resignation. “Okay,” he said. 
And then he turned from her toward Bradford, jabbed an index finger in Bradford’s direction, and said, “If anything happens to her, what she just said goes out the window. I’m the Reserves. You’d better fucking call me in.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” Munroe said, and she steered Bradford toward the street before the two alpha dogs could tear into each other.
To go after Hannah meant finding Hannah, and finding Hannah meant the possibility of breaking kneecaps. 
The vehicle plates led to home addresses, the home addresses to people, and where people lived, information could be forcibly extracted, although ideally, it would never get to that. 
If things went the way of the backup plan, something said within the Haven and picked up by one of the listening devices would point them in the right direction.
But so far, things weren’t ideal and hadn’t exactly gone according to plan.
In the hotel room Munroe headed for the desk. She was in predator mode, hunting and out for blood, and with her back to Bradford she said, “Get some sleep, you’ll need it.”
Her manner was brusque, and after the display of care and emotion she’d given Logan, probably hurtful. 
He’d have to deal, and the kinder, gentler moments would have to wait for better times. 
Bradford wouldn’t fight her over the suggestion of sleep, not only because she was right but also because at the moment there was nothing further he could do. 
At two in the morning his contacts and connections were all in bed, and what she needed was both quiet and time to listen through several days’ worth of data.
Behind her the blankets rustled, followed by the quiet of Bradford’s settling. 
He switched off the bedside lamp, and the room was bathed in the computer screen’s ambient glow.
The window of time was narrow, and in these hours of darkness Munroe would— had to— find what she needed. It was either that, or the kneecaps. 
She placed the headset over her ears, and in a purity of concentration that only focusing on an assignment could bring, allowed the rest of the world to fade away.
Collectively, pooled over the past two days were twenty-eight hours of voice, split unevenly among the three Havens, a lot to cull through, 
but not nearly as much as it would have been had Bradford not already clipped out the extended silences and unintelligible chatter.
The bulk of the recordings came from the Ranch, which was good in that it increased the odds of finding what she wanted, but daunting for the amount of time it would take to locate it.
She started with the two hours from Haven Three, the smallest and nearest, with only one channel open for audio. 
She expected to find little there, and wanting to eliminate this chunk before moving on to the rest, 
Munroe set the software to allow for listening at a distorted high-speed, closed her eyes, and ran it.
The recordings were an aural version of voyeurism, peeping into the lives of those exposed, and the momentary snapshots, as they filled the hour, confirmed what she’d supposed. 
There was nothing of value. Of the remaining twenty-six hours, eight were from Haven One, and like those she’d just scanned, she expected nothing and set them aside.
Munroe paused before the machine and took the headset off, feeling comfort in the darkness of the room and in the rhythm of Bradford’s sleep. 
She waited, listening, falling into the cocoon of silence, willing her mind to emptiness, and then turned again to the headset and the voices.
The hours from the Ranch were divided among six channels, one for each of the listening devices placed by either herself or Bradford. 
She started with what would have seemed the most obvious, the device on the stairwell, listening to gibberish and group talk, 
picking out snippets in Spanish and English and the occasional stray conversation in Finnish or German. 
Time passed. She moved to the girls’ room, to the living room, and finally on an urge to clear the smallest channel, found the first clue. 
In a fitting form of irony, it came from the bug Bradford had planted in the electric socket of the boys’ bathroom.
The voices of the visitors filled the headset— their words, more than tone or accent, had given notice to the change in speakers, 
and the difference was enough for Munroe to recognize what she had. She reset the software, slowing to normal speed.
The conversation from the hallway, picked up but not perfectly clear, was a discussion of Hannah, 
what appeared to be a restated agreement to take the girl and a guardian away for an indefinite period, 
but there was no indication as to where, and nothing more was said about it.
The only other piece to go on, a hint of what would come next, happened in the moments when Munroe had left the kitchen. 
The talk between Morningstar and Hannah was of packing, of a stay, and no answer to Hannah’s question of how long. 
They hadn’t discussed the why, but then, for Hannah, that was probably never much of a question.
Munroe set the headset on the desk and for the first time noticed the change of light in the room. 
Small rays creeping past the curtains announced that day had come. She turned. Bradford lay on the bed, arms behind his head, watching her.
“How long have you been awake?” she said.
“Half an hour.”
“Hungry?”
“Starved.”
They took breakfast at a café down the street, coffee and croissants with the sun coming in off the window, and the warmth comfortable and drowsy.
“How good is your guy?” Munroe said.
“Guys,” Bradford said. “Plural. 
“It’s been a long time since we’ve worked together on anything big, but if the past is any indication, they’re solid.”
“Connected?”
“I expect so.”
“I’ve got a lead on Hannah,” she said. “Not much, but something. 
“If it was me, I could work with it, but I don’t have the time to entrench and do it myself. If your guys are worth anything, it’ll be faster to go through them.”
“What did you find?”
“Hotels.”
“Hotels?” he said.
She nodded. “Hotels. Bed-and-breakfasts. Inns. Youth hostels. Anything of that nature within the boundaries of the city.”
“It’s a wide net.”
She shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. They might own one, they might own three dozen. 
“It’s still a smaller net than the entire city. I’d like to put out a line, see if we can draw a bead on anything in particular.”
“There shouldn’t be a problem to throwing it out there.”
“How fast till we get something back?”
“That I don’t know,” he said. “But I can push. What about you, are you going back to the Ranch?”
“I need to sleep,” she said. “I can feel myself slipping, losing my edge. 
“If what we’re going up against is even half as bad as you say it is, I need to be at full capacity. 
“I can dose enough to take myself out for eight hours— and it’ll free you to work without worrying about me.”
He cringed.
“I haven’t medicated for over a week, Miles, one day isn’t going to make me an addict. 
“It’s either that or you lose a day of work and take the risk of me trying to kill you again.”
“The risk I can handle.”
“Go work,” she said. “I’ll sleep.”
He didn’t say anything, and so she stood. 
They returned to the hotel in silence, and once in the room, she moved to the bag that lay slumped against the foot of her bed. 
As much as Bradford would have wanted to dump the bottles in her absence, he wouldn’t have. 
She unzipped it and rummaged through the contents, knowing they’d still be there.
She grabbed a bottle and broke the seal. Tipped the liquid into her mouth and then, matching his stare and with a hint of defiance, wiped the trace of syrup off the corner of her lip. “One day,” she said.
The potion was a sweet seduction as it trickled down her throat. 
Not nearly as strong or as addictive as hydrocodone or morphine, the codeine still did the trick. 
The warmth of the opiate was a heady relief from pressure and pain and responsibility, a relief from feeling anything at all, a rush, not unlike adrenaline, coursing in the opposite direction toward repose. 
Had Bradford any idea how strongly Munroe fought the desire to live in a perpetual state of this bliss, he would have tried to fight her, perhaps even attempt to remove the bottles by force. 
And that would have been a mistake. But he hadn’t. And she’d drunk. 
And now on the bed with a smile on her face, she closed her eyes and descended into the ecstasy of oblivion.
When she woke, it was to Bradford’s touch on her shoulder. Perhaps more than a touch. Maybe he’d been shaking her for a while. 
Awareness came slowly through a haze, and even if she’d wanted to react, her only response was to smile a drunken smile. 
She rolled on her back, still smiling, still stupid. She laughed at the look of concern on his face, ran her finger along his cheek, and said, “How’s it going?”
“I think I might have what you’re looking for,” he said.
She nodded, pressed her lips together to suppress the internal laughter.
“Maybe I should get you some coffee,” he said, “and a heavy meal.”
“I’ll be fine, just needs to wear off. How long has it been?”
“Five hours.”
“It’s a big dose I took,” she said. She closed her eyes and resisted the urge to drift back into the web of darkness. 
“Give me what you’ve got. I’m not functioning at a hundred percent, but the brain is still working, even if my lack of sense of humor is impaired.” 
In the wake of his silence, she soughed at her joke, and then she laughed.
Bradford sighed. “Okay,” he said. “The Cárcan family does have an interest in a number of hotels around the city, most of them are midsize, one step up from the Budget Inn–type places. 
“But those are all owned by companies and partnerships, nothing privately held, everything out in the open and legal. 
“Except for three smaller places that belong to one of the sons— a little side project of his, you could say.”
Munroe scratched the back of her neck, her eyes still closed. “Sounds like a good starting place,” she said. 
“We’ll need to get some form of surveillance set up on each— some way to find out if that’s the right direction— if she’s there in one of those.”
“Go back to sleep,” he said. “I’ve got some ideas. I’ll let you know what we’ve got to work with.”
It was dark when Munroe pulled out of the haze. She’d been asleep and was then awake. Just like that. Light off, light on. 
Bradford was still gone and his phone was missing. She assumed it was with him. She reached for her watch. Seven o’clock. 
Doing the math, she figured it had been around three when he’d woken her. He’d been gone four hours. A little long for a drive-by.
She stepped from the bed to the shower, turned the water fully cold, and the shock against her skin was an unpleasant return to the land of the living that took away with it the final effects of the bottle.
There was still no sign of Bradford when she came back to the room.
She dressed for recon, pulling on pieces that belonged to the night and the dark alleys. 
They felt good, like a second skin, the stuff you wore when scaling walls, walking ledges, and sliding into tight spaces, nothing like the upscale feminine clothes of the last few days.
And still no sign of Bradford. She didn’t need him in order to make the next move. 
The information he’d gleaned during her hours asleep had been left on the desk, his notes clearly legible and obviously intended for her benefit as much as for his. 
She could set out to gather her own intel and at worst double on Bradford’s effort, 
but it was uncomfortable not knowing where he was or what he’d been doing since he’d left.
Munroe stood in front of the mirror, face-to-face, eye-to-eye with herself, as she plotted through the events to come. 
One way or another, Hannah was hers. Recon or no, Bradford or not, alone or together, she was going after the girl, 
and if she returned to the Ranch, she wouldn’t be going as a guest.
From a pocket in her overnight bag Munroe pulled out one of the several purchases from her shopping spree. 
She unwound the cord. Snapped the plastic guard into place and switched on the buzzer. 
Head over the sink, she sheared off the last remnants of femininity, and years of practice left a young man with a military buzz cut looking back at her. He wore an evil smile.
She cleaned the mess and packed away the machine, and still no Bradford.
Munroe trusted his judgment, his survival instinct, assumed that when he said the Cárcan family was not to be trifled with that the warning applied to himself as much as it did to her. 
He would be careful. She checked her watch. It was late by what he’d told her, still early by the city’s standards.
Munroe sighed and returned to the desk. As odd as it was to allow another her role, she would let Bradford work. 
If he wasn’t back by early morning, she’d try to raise him on the phone, and if she couldn’t contact him then, she would go alone. 
In the meantime, there were the last of the audio tracks.

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Chapter 29
Bradford stood motionless while the full meaning of Munroe’s words sunk in. 
She would follow the license plates as far as the information took her, and this was the way of madness, the way of death. 
He sat on the edge of the bed, raked his fingers through his hair, and didn’t move to make the call Munroe expected him to make.
After a moment of silence, she turned the desk chair to face him, sat, and in her typically intuitive way, joined him in the quiet until he’d gathered his thoughts.
“Look,” he said finally, “pulling Hannah out of a sleeping commune, or snatching her off the street, that’s one thing. 
“But going after the Cárcan family? An operation like that is a whole different caliber. 
“I understand you feel an obligation to finish what you started, you made a promise to Logan and you gave him your word. 
“But this changes everything. We’re looking at an entirely new sitrep. 
“We have none of the same targets, none of the same risks, we’d be going in blind against a group of ruthless people who are on their home turf and are well armed and well connected. 
“This isn’t something the two of us can take on with just a day’s notice.”
Whatever reaction Bradford expected after having vented, it wasn’t to find Munroe in his lap.
She’d sat for a moment, still and thoughtful, and then rose from the chair and stepped to the bed. 
She placed a knee on either side of his legs, held his face in her hands, and kissed his forehead. “I won’t argue with you,” she said, “because you’re right.” 
She remained like that for a moment, her cheek to his hair, and he closed his eyes and breathed her in, hurting and happy in the same moment. 
He wanted to hold her, hold on to her, protect her from herself and from the world, but she wasn’t his to protect and never would be.
She let go and backed away, walked to the window, and stared out. “I have to finish this,” she said. “I’ll get it done one way or the other, and if I have to, I’ll go alone.” 
She turned from the window. “I’m not threatening you, Miles, and I’m certainly not trying to manipulate you. I know you. 
“I know that if I say I’m going, then you believe you have to go, if for no other reason than to watch my back. But I don’t want that. 
“This might very well be a suicide mission, but it’s my mission, not yours, and I accept that fully.”
“Why?” he said. “For God’s sake, why, Michael?”
She quoted his words back to him. “I have a gift,” she said, “and I’m letting it serve me.”
Bradford sat silent, the timpani of frustration building into a crescendo. Her decision was about Logan, it had always been about Logan. 
And some misplaced loyalty and her bullheaded stubbornness and refusal to know when enough was enough simply because her life didn’t mean as much to her as it did to other people. 
He paused and measured his words carefully. “Logan would throw you under the bus in a minute to save his daughter if it came down to it.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. “But Hannah’s his daughter. Who is there to look after a child if not her parents?”
“Well, sure,” Bradford said, his voice rising slightly. “But if Logan is truly what he means to you, then he should have your back, not use you as some form of human shield. 
“That’s what this is coming down to. You’ve become a human shield. Can you even see it?”
She shrugged, as if the implications of such were not even worthy of consideration. “I can take care of myself,” she said. “I don’t need someone to protect me.”
“And yet you do this willingly, knowing that you’re his tool.”
Munroe paused, and then turned slightly so that she faced him dead-on. She stared. Long. Hard. 
“Yes,” she said. “I do it willingly, knowing that I’m a tool, because my decisions have nothing to do with reciprocation. 
“I choose to do this because it suits me. I choose to help Logan because I want to. I choose to save his daughter because I can. I choose to care. 
“Do you understand the difference? It’s a choice, Miles, not an obligation. Not a burden. Not emotional blackmail. 
“Not something I have to do simply because Logan needs me. I don’t do it for gratitude or for quid pro quo. 
“What Logan does, how Logan feels, how Logan reacts, has no bearing on my decisions. They’re my choices, not his.”
Bradford stopped, said nothing more. He understood, then, her bond to Logan, her continued love for Noah, and so many of her life’s decisions. 
Self-preservation for her was instinctive, feral, and wild, inevitably bringing death to those around her, instinct that controlled her body and kept her alive, and she refused to allow that instinct to encroach upon her heart. 
She acted and loved who she wanted, when she wanted, and how she wanted, and having made those decisions consciously, for reasons that were her own, 
even against self-preservation, she would abide by them, even if it killed her.
“Okay,” he said. “I won’t try to stop you or convince you not to go. I’ll get you all the information that I have, get you whatever you need.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“On one condition.”
She paused. Stared at him sharply.
“I’m going with you,” he said. And then as she’d done to him earlier, he quoted her words back. 
“It’s my choice,” he said. “Not a burden, not an obligation, not emotional blackmail or something that I have to do. I do it because I choose to.”
They gathered at a watering hole off one of the many side streets in San Telmo, near the hostel, 
nothing more than a room fifteen feet wide, no windows, dim, smoke-hazed and crowded all the way to the bar counter on the end wall. 
The place was chosen because it was where Logan and Gideon already were when Bradford called, and for what Munroe needed, here was as good as anywhere.
Munroe stepped into the din, Bradford at her heels, and spotted Logan and Gideon in the front corner. 
The boys were nursing the local brew, had been for a while by the looks of it, 
and although Munroe would have preferred they be solid and completely sober, she’d take what she could get.
Logan spotted them, stood, and motioned them over. They made small talk for the few minutes it took for Heidi to arrive, 
and then, with the five of them pulled tightly around the table, Munroe said, “Unless one of you has done something really, really stupid, there are factors in play that you’ve failed to mention.”
There was a shock of silence around the table, and Gideon put his hands up in a defensive position. 
“I gave you my word,” he said. “Whatever it is you’re going on about, it wasn’t me.”
“Maybe you should start from the beginning,” Logan said. “Because, for the most part, we haven’t been included in your chain of ‘need to know.’”
Bradford tensed. Logan’s sarcasm was an obvious dig at Bradford and the way Munroe had allowed him to usurp Logan’s position on the assignment. 
Under the table Munroe placed a hand on Bradford’s knee to quiet him.
She was silent for a moment, not because of Logan’s snipe, but to plot her way through several days’ worth of details to the precise moments that would encapsulate where they now stood.
“I’ve been inside The Chosen for three days now,” she said. “Welcomed, and for the most part blending into the scenery— 
“close enough to Hannah to snatch and pull her out the front door, which I didn’t,” she said, “in order to limit damage potential.”
She paused, took a sip of water, and forced silence on the table.
“Tonight was the go night,” she said, “with everything in place for a clean extraction. 
“But since I’m sitting here and I’m not smiling, you can bet things didn’t go as planned. I’ll give you one guess as to what happened.”
Gideon looked at Heidi, who looked at Logan, and among the three there was a form of baffled confusion until Gideon said, “They pulled her out?”
“Yes,” Munroe said. “They pulled her out. Anyone want to tell me why they would do that? 
“I was spending the night one bed over, so I think it’s safe to assume it isn’t me they’re hiding her from. 
“Why’d they pull her out, guys? Why now, all of a sudden, are they spooked?”
There was a subtle exchange of glances between Logan and Heidi, a sort of knowing between them, and Munroe paused. 
“What?” she said. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Heidi ran into a group of The Chosen,” Logan said.
Munroe bit back spite and mulled over this unexpected piece of news, because even out of the blue like this, it still didn’t quite fit. 
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said finally.
“They didn’t see me,” Heidi said.
Munroe nearly stood and pointed her index finger in Heidi’s direction. “I told you to stay away,” she said. 
And to Logan, “You were aware of this?”
Logan nodded. “I saw it happen.”
“When?”
“Yesterday,” he said.
“You can verify, without a doubt, they didn’t see her?”
“I would have called immediately,” he said, and Munroe calmed. 
With Logan so thoroughly vested in finding his daughter, he would be hyperattentive to the details, and so she trusted him completely. 
More so, if The Chosen had spotted Heidi yesterday, Hannah would have been gone that same night.
Munroe leaned forward, elbows on the table. “We’re back to the original issue,” she said. “If they didn’t see Heidi, why are they suddenly spooked?”
She allowed the ambience of the bar to engulf the table, allowed them to mull and stress over the answer to the problem at hand, an answer that so obviously stared them in the face. 
She waited, hoping that at least one of them might fall into it before she had to articulate it, 
because if it had nothing to do with any of them, then in her gut she knew the answer, if not the details, 
and what she needed before she could figure out what to do next were the details.
Logan spoke first. He was staring at the table, the look on his face reflective of the mental obstacle course his mind was running. 
“They are preparing for something,” he said. “They’re bracing for a move on Hannah, and they’re getting her out of the way, they just have no idea that it was you.”
Munroe nodded, wasn’t going to help him out yet, wanted to make sure all three fully grasped the complexities they were dealing with.
“Why now?” she said.
“They knew we were coming,” Logan whispered. 
He said it more to Heidi and Gideon than he did to Munroe, and it came out more as an uncertain question than a statement, 
but the glances exchanged by the three spoke to the realized horror that passed among them.
Munroe said, “So here’s the thing. If the three of you are certain— and I mean certain with not an iota of room for error, 
“certain because you know, and not because you’re afraid I’ll break your legs— that this thing has nothing to do with anything that’s happened in the city, then I can work with it, 
“but if it has something to do with any of you I need to know now or we could all end up dead.”
“It wasn’t anything on my part,” Logan said. Heidi shook her head as the answer, and Gideon put his hands up once more. “Not me,” he said.
“Okay,” Munroe said, and she was silent for a long while, allowing the weight of the situation to spread. 
“If it’s not you, then I can posit two possibilities, neither of which matter much to me at this point, but it might be helpful for you to be aware of them. 
“One: someone you’ve talked to, someone in your close circle who knows what you’re up to, has said something they shouldn’t to someone they shouldn’t.”
She waited a beat. Held up two fingers. “Possibility two,” she said. “The information on where to find Hannah was fed to you deliberately to bring you— something— to their doorstep.”
The first possibility brought with it a round of sighs that spoke to the high potential for such a calamity; 
the second resulted in a round of simultaneous response, all three of them answering at once, all three expressing pure incredulity. 
So Munroe probed at the disbelief. “You said your source was Maggie, Charity’s sister,” she said to Logan. “That she’s the one who contacted Charity with the news?”
Logan nodded.
“Does Maggie live in Buenos Aires?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I mean, we’ve been working a lot of contacts for a long time, and Maggie was just one of many— 
“we don’t always know where to find people, just how to get in contact. E-mail. Networking. Friends of friends. That sort of stuff.”
“It came unexpectedly, though, right? I’ve seen the way siblings react to news of their estranged sisters.” 
Munroe gave a subtle nod in Heidi’s direction. “I’m guessing Charity’s sister wasn’t exactly at the top of the list of people you’d expect to cough it up, was she?”
“Correct,” he said.
“What’s she look like? Does she strongly resemble Charity?”
Logan paused, as if he wasn’t completely sure, and Gideon answered for him. “No,” he said. “They have different dads.”
“It would be too much to hope for a photo, huh?”
Gideon paused and said, “Maggie has dark hair, she’s shorter, and she’s more Asian-looking— I think her dad is half-Japanese.”
Hannah’s adopted mother. Munroe swore silently and said, “But she has really light hazel-green eyes like Charity.”
The three hesitated, at first as if they were puzzled as to how she could possibly know and then because they realized why.
“You guys have been the perfect tools,” she said. “And the only reason you’re even close to getting Hannah is because you did the unexpected. You found a way to the inside.”
Logan was the first to protest. “It doesn’t add up,” he said. “Even if Maggie is here, isn’t it possible that she was sincere in wanting to help? 
“It doesn’t have to be a setup. She could have wanted to help her sister, wanted to make things right.”
“If Hannah were still in the Haven tonight, you might have a valid point.”
“What could they possibly hope to gain from this?” Heidi asked. “Why would they deliberately invite trouble? 
“It’s completely counterintuitive, and it can’t be a setup without a motive.”
Munroe turned to Bradford. “She’s very good, Miles. If I had a company like yours, I’d offer the lady a job.” 
And then to Heidi, “You’ve got to ask yourself, in cases like this in the past, what typically happened when an abducted child was located?”
“There’s been government intervention, usually police raids on the Havens.”
“And eventually the dust settles, charges are dropped, and the kids go back home, right?”
Heidi nodded.
“Has someone ever infiltrated a Haven to kidnap the kid back?”
“No.”
“Is it fair to assume that looking to the past as a guide to the future, they’ve moved Hannah out because they’re bracing for a raid? One that they themselves are trying to provoke?”
Gideon said, “Are you crazy?” and both Logan and Heidi simply stared at her as if she’d sprouted a horn in the middle of her head.
Munroe shifted back, the preliminary movement to leaving the table. “Look,” she said. “The biggest mistake you can make is to underestimate your opponent. 
“At this point, it makes no difference to me one way or the other, but it might to you— or to your friends. 
“From a purely analytical, disinterested point of view, The Chosen have expended considerable resources to keep Hannah hidden, and now out of the blue have tipped you off, 
“as if they’re setting the kid up as perfect bait, expecting someone to come looking for her and being able to show a clean bill of health when all hands turn up empty. 
“Is there anything going on in your community? Custody battles? Upcoming TV shows? Something that might make them look bad if it were to come to light?”
“Maybe,” Heidi said. “I mean nothing specifically, but last I heard from my own connections inside, The Prophet is making a push toward mainstream acceptability and image improvement. 
“As a whole, they’re trying to bury unpleasant issues and show themselves as merely a different sort of church. 
“But people like Charity, they don’t go away, and as long as they’re in the media, the negative spotlight continues to return. 
“It’s possible that The Prophet— The Chosen— the local leadership— would want something flashy, a raid perhaps, something that media outlets couldn’t ignore,
“as a way to prove that their ex-children are a bunch of crazies, that we’re liars who exaggerate and whose word couldn’t be trusted. 
“It would be a dramatic way to prove that they are being persecuted and vilified.”
“Well, there you go,” Munroe said. “There’s a motive.”
“But in that case, why not tell us she’s in Jakarta or Mumbai or even Asunción and send us on a wild-goose chase? Why take us to where she actually is?”
Munroe shrugged. “Maybe they think you know more than you do and didn’t want to risk you calling their bluff. 
“I mean, from everything I’ve read, The Prophet is a narcissistic nut job. Do his reasons even have to make sense?”
Munroe stood and Bradford did as well, and she dropped a wad of pesos on the table.
Heidi said, “But wait, you just leave it at that?”
“It’s not my fight,” Munroe said. “I’m going after Hannah.”

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Chapter 28
Munroe processed through the evening, seeing and experiencing everything as if through gauzy curtains, interacting by rote 
and, through force of will, betraying no sign of the turbulence beneath the fa*ade.
As per the night prior, dinner segued into further discussions, and as the conversations lengthened, those at the table slowly drifted away. 
Munroe watched Hannah warily, anxious about not letting her out of her sight, yet knowing there was no option but to do so.
They congregated again in the living room, another evening of songs and motivational words, another act from The Chosen, all of it fast becoming tiresome, especially after the events of today. 
Munroe wanted this over. Wanted to escape to the top-tier bed, where she could stare at the ceiling in darkness and her mind could churn and analyze unhindered, 
and from where she could observe Hannah until the night lengthened.
After a final round of singing, the Haven’s members dispersed in their many directions, and Munroe walked with Elijah to the makeshift office. 
There he pulled out another book for her. He suggested she read until lights out, and Munroe was happy to oblige. 
Not the reading per se, but the escape to the girls’ room and the sanctuary of the upper bed.
Unlike earlier in the day, the beds were now mostly filled. 
The girls wrote in journals, read, or talked quietly, bunk mate to bunk mate, the sleeping places used like personal pods on some alien craft. 
Touches of individuality were tacked to ceilings or posts here and there, these small spaces the only thing uniquely theirs, 
as if in this crowded house, the boundaries of each one’s personal universe extended only to the four borders of her bed.
Munroe recognized some of the faces from time spent around the Haven but knew none of the names. 
Their expressions were welcoming, and as no one moved to challenge her presence, 
Munroe assumed they were at the least aware in some general sense of who she was and why she was here. 
Introduction and some form of familiarity with these eager teenagers would have been the better course, 
but Munroe wanted only quiet, and so instead she headed up the end boards.
Neither Morningstar nor Hannah was in the room. Given that several of the beds were still empty, it was safe to assume that all was in order, 
but their absence was anxiety inducing. Munroe wanted Hannah where she could see her. 
On her bed Munroe waited, eyes closed and mind running, scattered. 
Her priority was Hannah, but Hannah was not the only child in this Haven at risk, and that burden, the conflict of retribution, weighed heavily on her. 
No matter the choice she made tonight, there would be suffering, 
and although it would be easy to ignore the decision completely and leave the outcome to fate, fate like the other options bore its own implications.
According to plan, she would wait until after one in the morning to contact Bradford, and from there she’d guide him in. 
Getting past the gate and the dogs would be a nonissue for him, and the front doors had no security beyond the inside dead bolts. 
Once Bradford set foot on the property, she would already have the girls in this room unconscious.
Time passed, the room filled, Morningstar returned, and by the time the lights went out, Hannah was still not in her bed. 
The violence that had been brewing throughout the day, the death and vengeance that had thus far been held in check by willed control, pressed relentlessly against restraint.
Munroe climbed from the bed, and Morningstar sat up when she did.
“I left my phone in the car,” Munroe said. “My parents were supposed to call and I forgot all about it— if they can’t reach me they get panicky— I think I need to check.”
Morningstar slid out of bed. “I’ll go with you,” she said, and Munroe nodded, expecting nothing less.
The goodwill purchased earlier in the day was still between them, and as they walked, Munroe, in as casual a tone as she could conjure, said, “I thought all the girls are supposed to follow the lights-out rules.”
“They are,” Morningstar said. “But we won’t get in trouble if you need to get something from your car.”
“I was thinking more of Faith,” Munroe said. “She seems like a special exception.”
“Oh, that,” Morningstar said, and in those few words, Munroe caught the darkened tone of envy. “No, she’s not staying here tonight.”
That simple sentence changed everything.
The excuse of needing the phone was meant to be but a way out of the room and alone with Morningstar. 
Now the little device was burning a hole in Munroe’s pocket, screaming to be used.
“Where’d Faith go?” Munroe asked.
She’d asked a direct question with no couching, barely concealed under the guise of innocence, 
a tactic that would normally shut a mark up faster than any other and was typically best saved for interrogation.
Morningstar paused, and after a long hesitation said, “She’s staying with friends.”
Outside, five vans were parked under the stars and both sedans were gone. 
Munroe opened the passenger door of her vehicle, and by sleight of hand pulled the phone from the glove box. 
She flipped it open, and with Morningstar curious and watching closely, sighed heavily and said, “God, I feel stupid. Several missed calls.”
She went through the act of listening to voice mail, and when all was done, concern set across her face. 
“I need to return this call,” she said, “it’s my boyfriend, and it’s urgent.”
Morningstar made no move to reenter the house or to allow Munroe space or privacy, and so with the girl standing there, watching and listening, she dialed Bradford.
“La youmkinouni an atakalam be houriya,” she said. “We’ve got a problem, and I need you to work fast. Have you gotten any of the footage from the front-door camera?”
“I’ve gotten it,” Bradford said. “But only hips, legs, and feet.”
“I’m looking for a teenage girl heading out the front— I suspect she’s accompanied.”
The last time Munroe had seen Hannah had been during the evening vespers. “Start scanning at eight-thirty,” she said.
There was silence on the line, the quiet broken by the barely audible clicks and beeps of Bradford searching through footage.
“I think I’ve found it,” he said. “There are only a few ins-and-outs after eight, and of those, the only one that seems to fit what you’re asking for shows a group— 
“two sets of female legs— one of them definitely a girl— and a couple of suits.”
There were no words for this. Munroe stood stupefied and, caring nothing for how it might appear to Morningstar, swore silently. 
Everything was wrong. Very wrong. Wrong on the macro level, in the screwed-up-strategy, something-critical-had-been-overlooked sort of way. 
For whatever else Munroe didn’t understand, two things were immediately clear.
This had nothing to do with keeping Hannah away from her— her masquerade was as of yet uncompromised, and Hannah going away for a night was by no means routine or normal.
Munroe had seen firsthand the proprietary nature of the Cárcan boss men and knew from the documents how easily The Chosen shared their women with those in power. 
Hannah, though young, was a beautiful girl, and even though providing underage girls was officially forbidden, that didn’t mean it didn’t happen, as was clear from Gideon’s experience.
Until Munroe had more information she saw only two viable possibilities: 
Hannah was being handed over to the Sponsors as a plaything, or The Chosen were pulling her out of the Haven— hiding her. 
If it was the latter, if it was the result of Gideon having spooked them, she was going to break his fucking neck.
“I’m coming back,” she said to Bradford. “There’s nothing for us here tonight.” And she shut the phone.
To Morningstar, she said, “I have a family emergency, I need to leave.”
Morningstar looked puzzled. “Let’s go talk to my dad,” she said.
Elijah’s reaction was as Munroe expected, confused and disappointed, 
and the only reason she stood here now in his presence, even bothering to explain that her mother was in the hospital, was to keep open the option of returning to the Haven in case it proved necessary.
“Put your mother in the hands of the Lord,” Elijah said. “His work, His plans for you come before anything else, and if you do what He wants of you, He will take care of your mother.”
Munroe grit her teeth and forced to the surface the closest illusion of calm she could manage. 
“She’s my mom,” Munroe said. “She needs me, and my family expects me to be there.”
The door opened, and Esteban stepped inside the room, making it now three Haven members to her one. 
It should have been intimidating, and as they saw her as nothing more than a girl, perhaps it was intended to be so.
“By staying in the center of God’s will,” Elijah said, “you can have perfect peace that no matter what the outcome is tonight, it’s according to God’s plan. 
“God wants you to stay. And you have to ask yourself, who is your mother or your father? Who are your brothers and sisters? 
“Your true family are those who do the will of God. We are your family, Miki, here is where you belong.”
If there was anything that Munroe knew and knew well, it was scripture; 
voices from the Book were so branded onto her consciousness that until recently they were a background whisper that permeated her everyday life. 
She understood upon what Elijah based his values, and trying one last tack before she cut him off, said, “She may die tonight. I need to go.”
Elijah responded in a flat patriarchal reproach. “Jesus was once faced with that same issue,” he said. 
“One of the men who came to him, who wanted to be a disciple just like you do, begged for a little time so he could first bury his father, 
“and Jesus said, ‘Let the dead bury the dead.’ Are you one of the spiritually dead, Miki?”
“No,” Munroe said. “I’m very much alive, but I need to go.” Without allowing for a further response, she turned toward the door. 
Morningstar stood by with mouth agape, and Esteban was close enough to the exit that he seemed to be blocking the way. 
Munroe didn’t wait for him to move. She strode past, brushing against him as she did.
Outside the doorway she turned. “I am ready to give everything I have to the Lord’s work,” she said. 
“But if I’m not there at that hospital and my mother dies, there will be nothing for me to give.”
With those two sentences, they would forgive her anything.
She returned to the girls’ room long enough to grab her purse and then headed down the stairs to the foyer.
Morningstar ran after her, and as Munroe stepped out into the night, she paused to give the girl a genuine hug. 
“You can keep the suitcase,” she said, “and if I don’t make it back, the clothes are yours as well.” 
And then, after another pause, “Let me drive you to the gate so that you can open it.”
Morningstar hesitated and then got in, and they rode the few hundred yards to the gate in silence.
When Munroe opened the door to the hotel room, Bradford was pacing. 
He stopped when she entered but remained planted in the middle of the floor, like some battle-scarred statue. 
His expression was hard. Pure business. And it softened only slightly as she dumped her coat on the bed and strode toward the desk.
He said, “Michael, what’s going on?”
She leaned over the desk and loaded the footage, then sat down and stared as the segment played. 
According to the time stamps, while she had been upstairs being handed a book of indoctrination, Hannah had gone out the front door. 
She restarted the piece, and then played it again. In the nightmare scenario of having the child spirited away, there was a ray of hope. 
Munroe’s first set of fears— that the child had been handed over to the men for entertainment— was calmed somewhat by the details on the screen.
The luggage pointed to a protracted stay away, and the frayed and worn clothing was nothing even close to what the women on the staircase had been wearing. 
There were no guarantees, but by all appearances, The Chosen were moving Hannah out and away from the Havens.
And after a third time through the footage, Munroe stood, and without facing Bradford, she answered his question. 
“I don’t know what’s going on,” she said, “but I’m sure as hell going to find out.”
She pointed at the screen, made a tap toward it. “Those license plates,” she said. “Wherever those plates lead, that’s where I’ll find Hannah. I need everything you’ve got.” 
She paused, turned toward Bradford. “Is Logan still carrying the emergency phone?”
He nodded.
She stood with her arms crossed, mind racing. 
“Arrange a meeting,” she said, “as soon as possible. Tonight. All three of them. There’s something someone’s not telling me.”