英文有声《第43条疤痕》三部曲

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Chapter 8

John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York

Against every principle of work and survival, Munroe boarded the flight to Buenos Aires with a three-person entourage. 

She hadn’t asked Logan and his friends to come, and didn’t waste energy refusing when they insisted. 

In her own time and on her own terms, she’d have her way.

She worked alone. Information was a solitary job. She was a shadow, a ghost, blending to become whatever was necessary to get the assignment done. 

She endured no partners or tagalongs, no buddy to screw things up, and relied on and worried about no one and nothing but herself. 

This was the policy that kept her invisible and kept her alive.

Aside from the stint in Africa with Miles Bradford at her side, the closest Munroe had to a partner was Logan. 

From a distance, Logan watched her back. If she needed help, he ran the other end of the assignment. 

He was the supply source, the go-to guy, the one who fed the air hose when she descended into the trench.

And at the moment he was quickly moving from being useful to being a liability.

She’d assumed that saying yes would have calmed him, that knowing her as he did, he would have relaxed, handed the job to the professional and allowed her to do what she did best. 

Instead, Logan hovered, micromanaged, and, so typically difficult to faze, had become obsessive in his need to run updates, opinions, and information.

He was one of the three who’d demanded to be a part of this circus, 

and now Munroe followed him along the dry interior of the plane, through economy class, scanning the faces of those already boarded, 

and, as was her habit, touching seatbacks in a silent count from the nearest emergency exit. 

Behind her trailed Heidi, then Gideon, all of them waddling down the aisle like hatchlings after a parent.

Nonstop from New York to Buenos Aires meant eleven hours of flying time, 

and the short-notice ticketing meant that the best they could do for seating was groupings of two, separated by fourteen rows.

Halfway through the cabin, Logan paused to lift his carry-on into an overhead bin, and Munroe stopped him, slipping the boarding pass from his hand as she did.

She’d humored him and tolerated his incessant interruptions and questions as long as she could, 

but having him in the seat next to her overnight would likely find him murdered in the morning.

“I’m sitting with Heidi,” she said.

In a moment of quiet confusion, Heidi looked to Logan for assurance. 

Logan hesitated and then nodded, lips drawn tight. By way of rapport, Munroe gave his shoulder a playful jab, and his eyes returned gratitude.

She stepped aside. Heidi slipped beyond her to the window, and Munroe moved out of the aisle to let Gideon pass. 

The boys continued toward the rear of the plane, and as Munroe stared after them, her original suspicion that Logan was withholding something turned to certainty.

Luggage and paraphernalia stowed, Munroe tossed a thick manila folder onto the open seat tray, all of it overnight reading.

Heidi said, “You don’t sleep much, do you?”

Munroe opened the folder, an assemblage of documents that Logan had handed her shortly before boarding, and said, “You noticed.”

Heidi smiled, radiating warmth. “It’s hard to miss, and it always seems that brilliance accompanies lack of sleep. 

“Being one of those eight-hour-a-night people, I envy the extra hours of living.”

At five-foot-six, Heidi was a brunette with baby blues, a few extra pounds, and a magnetic personality that belied her thirty-six years. 

She also had the ability to articulate complex ideas with concise simplicity, and although this surely made her an excellent project manager, 

to Munroe, this capacity was a portal to be tapped— a temporary window into life as a child of The Chosen.

Munroe paused at the subtle compliment, tried to discern flattery, felt only sincerity, and said, “Don’t envy it too much. Sometimes the price isn’t worth it.”

Heidi pulled a book from her purse and creased it open. “Logan says you were raised a missionary kid, kind of like us.”

Munroe nodded. “Born in Cameroon,” she said, “West Africa.”

“Is that why you have a guy’s name?”

“In a roundabout way,” Munroe said. 

“When I was seventeen, I bribed my way on board a freighter headed to Europe— didn’t want to invite trouble by looking like a woman, 

“so I shaved my hair, bound up my chest, and wore boy’s clothes. I needed a name to go with the look, and that’s where Michael came from.”

“Did it work?”

“The name?”

“The look.”

Munroe gave Heidi a sideways glance. “If I did it again today, you’d think I was a guy.”

Heidi raised a chiding eyebrow, and Munroe didn’t begrudge the disbelief. You had to see it to understand.

“Why’d you choose Michael?” Heidi said.

Munroe said, “It seemed appropriate. She was King David’s wife in the Bible, and she couldn’t have children.”

Heidi smirked. The Bible was familiar territory. “The spelling was different,” she said.

Munroe nodded. “And she wore girl clothes.”

“So do you,” Heidi said. “So why the guy’s name?”

“I spend more time out of girl clothes than in them,” Munroe said. “Work takes me to some pretty rough places, and quite like boarding that freighter, it’s easier to get what I want done as a guy. 

“My clients don’t expect me to be a woman either, so the name fit, and it stuck.”

“What’s your real name?”

With a lengthening grin, Munroe said, “Vanessa.”

As if sharing a secret, Heidi tipped closer. “My real name’s Bathsheba,” she whispered. “I hated it so much I had it changed after I got out of The Chosen— adopted my middle as my first.”

“Michael and Bathsheba,” Munroe said. “We should find us a David.”

Heidi laughed and returned to her book, and Munroe to the papers in her hands. 

She removed a paper clip, shuffled pages, and phased from one mode into the next.

In the world of information, life depended on accuracy. Assumptions and familiarity were treacherous, 

and it was a far different perspective standing here on the precipice of infiltration and kidnapping than it was glimpsing snapshots of Logan’s life while chugging beer and shooting pool.

The challenge of weaving herself into this particular assignment would be absorption without bias, to replace everything she thought she knew with what she must know. 

These documents, all of them background information on The Prophet and The Chosen, were vital to understanding.

She sat with highlighter in hand, notepad on the side, and takeoff, with its obligatory seats to their upright position, was a bleep on the periphery of Munroe’s concentration, 

and the hours passed until she leaned back to stretch and realized Heidi was studying her.

Munroe ignored the overt interest, circled and diagrammed across the printed page, and finally put the pen down. 

At this Heidi said, “It’s a lot to cover— you read fast.”

“This is the first run,” Munroe replied. “I’m laying tracks, building a skeleton. 

“Doing it last-minute while en route makes it very easy to miss critical pieces— 

“it’s why I wanted you sitting with me,” she said. “There’s a lot inside you that will never show up on these pages.”

Predictably, Heidi relaxed. Munroe said, “Was it like this for you also? This fifth- or sixth-grade education thing?”

“Very much so.”

“You give the impression of having been well educated,” Munroe said. “How, having been given so little, did you manage to get so far?”

“Education isn’t the same thing as intelligence and drive,” Heidi said, and she smiled again. 

It was a sweet seduction, so subtle that most would not have even been aware of it, perhaps even Heidi wasn’t aware. 

It was a natural part of her charm, and in this, Munroe noted, Heidi and Logan were very similar.

Heidi said, “Back in the day, some of us craved input so badly that we’d sneak stuff to read. Dictionaries. 

“Occasionally an encyclopedia volume— we sometimes had them in the Havens, we just weren’t allowed free access to them. So we’d sneak them.”

“Did you ever get caught?”

Heidi sighed, almost nostalgically. “Yeah. One time I ended up locked in a closet for three days without food 

“while they prayed over me and tried to cast out the demons that would have caused me to yearn for knowledge from the Void.” She laughed. “Guess it didn’t do much good.”

Munroe turned the last of a series of pages, flipped back, scanned her notes, and then returned again, searching for answers to a still formulating question. 

The haste with which the project had moved forward had left her dependent on Logan for details, 

and although nothing could replace the quality of her own work, he knew well the type of background she looked for and had handed her a thick stack of photocopies, 

internal documents, newspaper clippings, book excerpts, and hard copies of Internet pages. 

This had seemed enough to get her started, yet already she was stalled.

To Heidi she said, “Based on what’s in these pages, it makes no sense for The Prophet to live on the run or be wanted by Interpol. 

“People aren’t arrested for being different unless those differences break laws.”

Heidi’s nose crinkled. She tilted her head, as if puzzling the question herself, 

and then after a second pointed to the documents and said, “Can I see those for a moment?”

Munroe passed the pages over, and Heidi gave a cursory glance through them. “There’s a lot of stuff missing,” she said.

“Why?”

Heidi shrugged. “You’d have to ask Logan, but it’s not exactly stuff that’s easy to forget.” 

And then, waiting only a half beat, Heidi changed the subject, spilling in a rush the question that had undoubtedly been eating at her for the last several days.

“Michael, why are you doing this?” she said. She paused and started again, slowly, as if she were measuring words, afraid that they might be misunderstood. 

“Why have you agreed to this job? Not money, that’s for sure, and not for the cause. So why? Because Logan’s your friend? Is that enough?”

Munroe leaned back, the question of the missing documents shoved away for the time being. 

How to explain what she herself barely understood? She said, “I have a unique skill set, Heidi. I’m doing this because I can.”

Sliding doors opened to the shock of chill, and following the others, Munroe stepped from the terminal into the overcast midmorning at Ezeiza, Argentina’s largest airport.

The hours in flight had taken them from the soggy heat of New York to the middle of a Buenos Aires winter, 

and Munroe inhaled deeply, taking in the mixture of diesel fumes, exhaust, and cold, misting rain: 

the fragrance of an airport, the same mixture of smells that preceded every job, the perfume of assignment, of focus and concentration.

During the trip Logan and Gideon had mapped out an itinerary and, now that they were on the ground, had assumed a shared command of the little group. 

Heidi seemed to have no problem allowing them to lead, so Munroe nodded assent and, in apparent quiet acquiescence, said little.

How Logan could possibly believe that her skill was best served by taking orders from someone who hadn’t even a fraction of her knowledge or experience was difficult to comprehend, 

and performing as a lackey, marching to someone else’s pattern, was out of the question. 

She’d come on board to bring the little girl home, and her expertise had been called on because she could do a job that nobody else could. 

Any perceived compliance was only temporary and would never be genuine.

The others tossed luggage into the trunk of a taxi. Gideon, due to his size, rode shotgun, the three remaining sharing the backseat.

Unlike the rest, who had packed appropriately for the trip, Munroe had brought only a single change of clothes and a jacket barely warm enough to keep out the penetrating chill. 

She carried these in a small backpack that she now kept with her. Traveling light came naturally after years on the job. 

Things had to be carried, concerned about, fussed over, and since they would only slow her down, were usually abandoned anyway. 

She would procure and shed as she went, holding on to only that which was critical to get the job done.

The taxi pulled away from the curb, careening directly into traffic. 

The driver sped forward, merging with kamikaze-like aggression in the direction of the airport exit and the freeway that would run them toward the heart of the country’s capital.

Munroe gazed out the window, the cityscape passing in rapid flashes. 

Square block apartment houses and residential districts swapped with shopping areas and advertisements several stories high, and traded again. 

At its heart, the forty-eight districts of the city proper composed an urban area of three million people, 

but in reality the metropolitan mass stretched outward to the suburbs, tying together ten million more.

Half the population of Argentina lived in this vast urban sprawl, and when it came to needle searching through haystacks, Buenos Aires was one of the largest in South America or, for that matter, the world. 

Somewhere out there, among those millions, was a child, 

and in one of those many houses and high-rise apartment blocks, the Haven that hid her.

In the city proper the scene shifted yet again. It was for good reason that Buenos Aires had been called the Paris of South America. 

Old World–inspired architecture, tree-lined avenues, and sleek, modern designs bespoke not only the city’s current sophistication but also a culture steeped in European history.

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Chapter 7

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Hannah snuck down the stairs and tiptoed toward the kitchen. 

It was terribly disobedient being out of bed at this late hour, but she had to look, she couldn’t sleep until she found out, and since she hadn’t been in any trouble lately, if she got caught, it shouldn’t be too bad.

Compared to her room, which was crowded and never really quiet, the house was very dark and very lonely, and the schedule board seemed at first just a blob along the hallway wall. 

Hannah stood in front of it, squinting at the marker print, looked for her name, and found it under the kitchen crew.

She groaned. Normally she liked kitchen duty. 

It was way better than going out on the streets or to offices and stores in order to raise money, and definitely better than scrubbing floors and cleaning toilets. 

But if she was assigned to the kitchen, it would make it very difficult to find Rachel alone, 

because unlike Hannah, who rotated between the ministries, filling in wherever she was needed, Rachel had a full-time one. 

Rachel was a whole year older and stayed with her children’s group all day, nights too, every day except on part of Sunday.

If Hannah was in the kitchen, she’d need a really good excuse to get to the toddlers’ area to talk with Rachel, so tomorrow would have been a good day for cleaning toilets.

To tell what happened was disobedience, but Sunshine hadn’t said anything about asking. 

And if what had happened to Hannah yesterday had also happened to Rachel, then nobody was really telling anything to anyone because they both already knew, and that made it sort of a gray area. Maybe. 

But the only person that Hannah could possibly go to, the only one who might understand, was Rachel.

Hannah would try, because sometimes the only way to feel better, when forgetting didn’t work, was to talk to someone who knew how bad the thing could be.

It had taken Sunshine three whole hours to come back yesterday. 

The more time that passed, the meaner that man had become, and it had been harder and harder to stay far away in her mind and to hold back the tears. But she had.

And it seemed like Mr. Cárcan knew exactly when Sunshine was coming, because he’d let Hannah get dressed and then sent her to the reception room to be alone right before Sunshine walked in the door.

Sunshine had taken her back to the van, where Zadok was still waiting, and nobody said anything. 

If ever by accident you were alone with someone in the Void, the adults wanted to know everything, every word, to be sure you hadn’t been spiritually poisoned or said something Secret to the wrong person. 

But this time they didn’t seem to care, and maybe it was better that way because Hannah was ashamed and embarrassed and really, really didn’t want to talk to them; she wanted to forget.

She understood that Sunshine had said it was Secret and that to talk about it was disobedience, but Sunshine needn’t have bothered. 

Hannah would never talk to another adult about it; even without the warning, she knew better than that. 

If any of the Representatives found out, they would blame her, just like last year in Chile, 

when she’d told about Uncle Gabriel and they’d said that it was Hannah and her influencing demons that had tempted him, 

and it was she who had been shamed in front of the entire Haven, and then later punished more.

Hannah turned from the schedule board and tiptoed back down the hall, snuck up the stairs and then into bed, 

all the while trying to figure out how to arrange a way to talk to Rachel— Rachel, who had not so long ago been a good enough friend that the Haven leaders forbade them contact.

That was the way things were— you could be friends but not get so close that you were the best of friends. 

Best friends, like married people, might put another person above the Lord, or The Prophet, or the Haven, and tempt her to keep secrets. 

Sometimes, even if you were just good friends it might appear like best friends to the Haven leaders, and since you couldn’t explain, you had to be careful, which they hadn’t been.

Things were better now, at least they were allowed to talk to each other again, 

but the leaders still kept an eye on them, and that’s why they’d moved Rachel into the toddlers’ room and her full-time ministry, so there wouldn’t be many opportunities.

In morning devotions, Hannah sat as still as possible, staring at the pages even though she wasn’t reading. 

 own conscience rebuked her, but she gave up trying to focus, 

 no matter how hard she tried, the words just filtered in and filtered out, and whole pages would pass before she realized she hadn’t really read a single word.

The Instructives, the words of The Prophet, were important for her spiritual health and absolutely necessary to keep the Devil and his demons at bay, but her mind kept jumping. 

She tried not to fidget, tried not to look at the clock until, at last, the two hours ended, and the living room emptied.

More than a dozen people, some of them adults, but mostly young people who were rotators like Hannah, went to the schedule board to find their assignments for the day. 

Hannah already knew where she belonged but followed anyway, and after an appropriately long glance, went to the kitchen, where lunch preparation would soon go into full swing.

She found an opening in midafternoon when Hezekiah, the kitchen leader gave her a fifteen-minute break before dinner prep started. 

She liked Uncle Hez because he was easy on the rules and he wasn’t serious and strict like most adults. 

As long as you worked hard and didn’t disrespect, he didn’t care about much else, and sometimes he even joked around.

Hannah knew the schedule, knew Rachel would be outside with her group, which wasn’t as good as if they were in the toddlers’ room, where no one would pass by and see them talking, but it was the best she would get. 

As long as nobody got very interested, and as long as neither Hannah nor Rachel went to the leaders about it, there shouldn’t be a problem.

Today, Rachel sat on a makeshift bench, and nearby the six little ones played while Mercy, Rachel’s eleven-year-old helper, stood watch over them.

When Hannah approached, Rachel scooted over on the bench to make room, but she didn’t say anything. 

That was how it was when you got in trouble and were separated; it was hard to know how to start again.

Hannah sat down, but still Rachel stayed quiet, so Hannah watched Mercy play with two of the kids. 

The ten- to twelve-year-olds had it so much easier than the thirteen and ups— they worked only half days, still got to see their parents after dinner, and, best of all, still got to have a few hours of school. 

Hannah missed the school, mostly, and the fact that she never got a chance to learn how to do fractions.

Mercy moved a little closer to the bench, and Hannah could see on her face that she was curious about why she’d come. 

Even though Hannah would be very careful with what words were used, she didn’t want Mercy to get close enough to hear the conversation, 

so quickly and quietly she said to Rachel, “Did he hurt you too?”

Rachel didn’t look up, but after a while she nodded. 

The good part was that, without really having broken any rule, Hannah had learned something, 

and without being specific, they both knew what they were talking about.

But it was too risky to say more unless Rachel contributed. 

Hannah waited, but Rachel kept quiet, and before long Mercy was there right next to the bench like a nosy eavesdropper waiting to hear anything they said.

Hannah’s time was up, and it had been mostly wasted except that now she knew she wasn’t the only one— but because Rachel had been so quiet, she was a little worried that Rachel might say something to the leaders. 

With her stomach swirling, Hannah went back to the kitchen, and since her hands could work without her really needing to think much, 

and Hez wouldn’t say anything as long as she kept up the pace, she let her mind wander through most of the afternoon.

It was late that evening when Uncle Elijah came for her. He stuck his head into the girls’ room and asked her to step out for a bit. 

He needed to talk to her, he said, and that was enough for Hannah to feel she’d have to throw up. There was never anything good that came from a talk.

She’d been careful, she’d not technically broken any rules, 

but in the end that didn’t matter because apparently Rachel had reported her, and there was no way to know whether what she’d said was true or not.

Elijah took Hannah to his little office, put a sign on the handle, and shut the door. That was worse. 

Elijah was the main leader of the Haven. If he said don’t come in, nobody would come in, and that meant anything was possible.

He told her to sit on one of the folding chairs. She did, and he sat opposite. 

He was quiet for a minute, staring down at her, and even if she wanted to look back at him, she just couldn’t. 

Inside and out, her body was shaking, and the best she could do was to just hold back the tears that always came when she was afraid.

“The Lord has shown me that you’ve been disobedient,” he said, “and we just can’t have that. It’s an opening for the Devil into our ranks.”

Elijah didn’t say what she’d done, they never did, and she was afraid to ask, because she might make it worse if she were to offer something he wasn’t already aware of. 

And even though Hannah hadn’t truly disobeyed today, she couldn’t explain herself and so had to accept whatever he measured out.

It was so frustrating never being able to explain, to just swallow the punishment without at least having a chance to change things.

Hannah’s eyes smarted.

“You’ll be on probation for two weeks,” Elijah said. 

“I’ve asked Morningstar to be your Keeper for that time, and you’ll be on silence restriction until I feel your heart is right with the Lord again.”

Hannah nodded, and though she tried to fight back the tears, she couldn’t. 

The fear, the things that happened on that trip into town, Rachel reporting her, this punishment— all of it was too much, too fast, one thing on top of another without anything in between to help dull the effects and no time to process and shove them away.

And there was relief too. Two weeks of being watched full-time by Morningstar and not being allowed to talk to anyone else wasn’t so bad, not nearly as bad as being paddled in front of all the members of the Haven until she begged for mercy.

But the tears came, and once they started, they just kept coming. 

A few were okay, they showed she was repentant, but too many could mean more trouble, and still she couldn’t stop them. 

Big, huge racking sobs until finally Elijah reached for her hand and pulled her onto his lap.

“Maybe I’ve been a bit harsh with you,” he said. “The Prophet teaches that punishment without love is against the laws of God, and it’s important that you know how very much the Lord loves you.”

Elijah’s hands wandered up to the inside of her nightshirt and rested on her bare legs. 

His touch made her uncomfortable and even more nauseous than when she walked with him to the room knowing that the talk would bring something bad.

Elijah said, “Perhaps the problem… perhaps the reason you were led into disobedience is because you haven’t been receiving enough of the Lord’s love, sweetie.”

Hannah tried to stop crying, she knew where this was going and wanted to get away. But until the tears were gone, she had no excuse. 

Elijah had put her here on his lap and she couldn’t just get up without inviting a whole new bunch of problems.

“Being reproved is the Lord showing his love for you, sweetie. 

“Sometimes God has to hurt you so that you can learn to behave. 

“But yes, maybe I’ve been too harsh, and tenderness is what you need.”

Hannah wanted off Elijah’s lap, and even if it made Jesus angry, she didn’t want this kind of love. 

She fought back the tears, fought them, but they wouldn’t stop, and the only thing she could do now was to go to that other place, to let her mind run far, far away again so she wasn’t here in this room, with this man or anywhere near anything to do with the blessing of love.

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Chapter 6
Munroe pulled down the cap that shadowed her face, shoved her hands into the pockets of cargo pants, and with a furtive glance over her shoulder crossed the street.
Even in the early morning, that cooling time marking the close of day for some and the beginning for others, the city remained wrapped in a familiar heat, torrid and sticky. 
She inhaled the aroma of civilization and moved up Fifth Avenue, in the direction of Central Park, hoping against the inevitable, for an evening without mishaps.
Mishaps. Like last night. It would be easy to plead innocence, to say that she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time, to say that it had been self-defense. 
But excuses were for cowards. Excuses couldn’t bring the dead to life or undo the damage wreaked by a second of instinct. 
Blood was blood, no matter the reason shed. She pushed back the thoughts. It was over and couldn’t be undone.
She strode forward, one foot in front of the other, reaching the southeast corner of the park and following the illuminated paths, 
without regard to where she was or where she was going, focus turning from what had already transpired in this city to where she would go from here.
She was glad to have made the trip, if only to meet Logan’s friends, to hear what they had to say and from their collective stories glean a clearer insight into Logan’s past— 
although she was far more familiar with his history than he gave her credit for.
How could she not be? No matter the details that he’d conveniently left out over the years, he was her best friend and, like her, had a childhood marred by trauma. 
With the glimpses and tidbits he’d shared, she’d done what any good informationist would do. She’d looked.
Like his friends, Logan had been birthed into The Chosen of God, a movement spawned in the late 1960s 
that attracted thousands of teenagers and young adults out of society, the Void, and into the arms of The Prophet, a modern-day Moses who promised to lead his people out of Egypt.
They cut ties with family and friends, severed relationships with anyone who didn’t believe as they did, 
creating instead a collective new family bound together by loyalty to The Prophet.
The Chosen established communes— Havens— around the globe, 
and like Logan’s parents, those thousands of young people birthed even more thousands of children into the life of The Prophet, separate from the outside world. 
There was no consideration that the children might want another path, no possibility that the world might not end in their own lifetimes, 
and when, like Logan, the children grew and began to leave, they were cut off, demonized, and abandoned to fend for themselves in a world they didn’t understand.
Logan’s story, like that of so many of his friends’, told of falling through the cracks of a society unaware that children like him existed, 
of watching many of his childhood friends succumb to drug abuse and suicide, 
of experiencing anxiety and stress disorders, of being clueless about social mores and customs, 
of fighting the prejudice and social stigma that followed, and then of clawing his way upward one exacting day at a time.
In one way or another, the stories, no matter how different or with how much levity they might be told, were still the same, 
and without intervention, it was this same story that little Hannah would be telling in ten years, if she was alive to tell it at all.
Munroe came to a fork in the path, flipped a mental coin, and then left the lights and the trail for an area that promised darkness and seclusion. 
A breeze swept through the treetops, and the moon, ripe above them, lit the way.
She was a child of the night, and nocturnal movement was familiar and cathartic— 
far better than remaining inside, cooped up, unable to sleep and cautious of stanching the tide of dreams one time too many.
But letting her mind wander, seeking solitude and getting away from Logan and his friends, wasn’t the main reason for this foray into the park. 
She’d come here tonight because, just as had happened when she’d left the hotel the night before, she was being followed.
Her nature would have her make a game of it— keep up the guise of oblivion as long as possible for no other reason than that she could. 
But tonight wasn’t the night for games. She needed to bring the pieces together.
She came at last to a bench, stopped, and waited, listening to the darkness. 
Certain he was there, she sat and, after another moment, spoke to the shadows. “Come and join me,” she said. “I’m tired of being stalked.”
She heard his approach before she saw him, the bulk of his outline materializing from the dark as he drew near. 
His stride was casual, his shoulders squared, and his hands relaxed in a summer jacket’s pockets. 
He stopped within a foot of her and gazed down with a subtle smirk, and she smiled in exchange. Head tilted up and in his direction, she said, “Hello, Miles.”
He nodded, returned the smile, and with arms crossed remained standing for a moment before joining her on the bench.
Silence.
“How long have you known?” he said finally.
“I spotted you at the airport,” she said, and he chuffed.
In the full light of the moon she noted the way the months had left their mark. 
There were a few more wrinkles around his eyes and a three-inch sliver that traced from the base of his left ear across his jaw.
She touched his face, ever so slightly, to tilt it away for a better view.
“I took a hit of shrapnel,” he said. “I’m one scar closer to catching up with you.” 
There was a longer silence and finally Bradford said, “Why didn’t you say something and save me the hassle of playing surveillant?”
“And ruin the illusion of Logan’s little”— Munroe paused and finger quoted the air— “intervention?”
“He’s concerned— says you’re medicating.”
“Yeah, I am. But not for the reasons he thinks.”
“Should I be worried?” he said.
She shifted forward, elbows to knees, face to the darkness. “Maybe.” 
And then in the silence she struggled to find words that would adequately explain the veritable nightmare the land of dreams had become.
“Does it have anything to do with Africa?” he asked.
She glanced back toward him. “Who knows,” she said. “I’m sure it didn’t help.” 
She turned again to face the darkness and, with half-shut eyes, said, “I’ve made my peace, Miles. 
“I can’t rewrite the past no matter how much I wish I could, and nothing I could have done would have changed anything.”
She was quiet for a long while, and if Bradford wished to hurry her, he gave no indication of it.
“It started about a month and a half ago,” she said. “Began as the occasional really bad dream and progressed into full-fledged violence. 
“While I’m asleep, I have no awareness of what’s going on, I only see the destruction after I’ve woken.” 
She paused, turned toward him again. “It’s bad enough to have a death on my hands when I’m awake,” she said, “but now it can happen in my sleep. 
“I don’t trust myself, I have no way to control it, and so I knock myself out.” She shifted back to staring at the dark. 
“I can only go so many days without sleep before I start to break down,” she said. “Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.”
“Have you seen a doctor? At least gotten a proper prescription?”
She cut a glance in his direction. “We’ve already had that conversation.”
It had been at their first meeting, a discussion about the value of psychiatric evaluations after Munroe had learned that Bradford was the one responsible for pulling together the research on her past on behalf of her employer.
She let the weight of her words settle and said, “Has Logan told you about the favor he’s asked— his reason for bringing me here?”
“He hasn’t. I’d assumed he got you here for your own sake.”
“He wants me to make a trip to South America,” she said, “to infiltrate some bad guys and steal his childhood friend’s daughter back home.”
Bradford said nothing and Munroe remained silent, allowing him to piece together the extent of Logan’s altruism. 
Bradford let out an audible sigh and with a protective edge said, “Where in South America? Is this thing drug cartel related?”
“Argentina,” she said. “Not drug related, religion related. It’s kidnapping, it’s complicated, and probably the right thing to do. 
“Truth is, even though the reasons behind it are sound, it’s a crapshoot, and if anyone but Logan had asked, I’d have already said no.”
“If you knew this,” he said, “why did you come to New York?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Noah?”
She nodded, although truthfully Noah was only part of it.
“Will you be going back to Morocco?” Bradford asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
He was quiet, and Munroe knew that as much as he wanted to pry, he wouldn’t. 
In time, perhaps, there would be reason to bare her soul, expose the pain, to put into words what Bradford already instinctively knew. But not now.
After a pause, Bradford said, “Besides the lack of sleep and the drugs, how are you really?”
She shrugged. “Messed in the head as ever— you saw what happened last night.”
“Some of it,” he said. “I lost you around a corner, and by the time I caught up with you there was one dead guy at your feet and another limping away.”
“It happened fast,” she said. “Sadistic fucks.”
“Defending yourself isn’t messed in the head,” he said.
She turned to him. “Isn’t it? No one makes me walk the streets at two in the morning. I don’t have to lurk in the dark alleys, or the lonely trails, just waiting for trouble to invite me to play.” 
She looked out toward the path they’d taken to the bench. “What’s the difference,” she said, “between seeking out a victim and playing the victim, knowing that predators will seek me out?”
“There’s a huge difference.”
She opened her mouth to say something and then stopped. This was another topic for another time. 
“How long are you in town?” she said.
“That depends,” he said. “How long are you in town?”
She let out an involuntary laugh. “You can’t be serious. Is Logan paying you?”
“Don’t be an ass, Michael. No, Logan’s not paying me.”
“What then?”
A pained look crossed his face. “You have to ask?”
She exhaled audibly, slowly, stretched back and stared up at the sky. 
“I apologize,” she said. “I know what being here for me costs you.” 
She turned toward him and then back to the night. “I truly appreciate it— more than you might ever know— I just don’t think it’ll do much good.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. And then after another pause, “You know I respect you, right?”
She nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Because I think you’re insane to carry those knives while you’re impaired. 
“You intend to medicate consciously and you’re trying to master the usage, but it’s like driving drunk, you think you’re in control and you’re not. 
“Michael, you’re dangerous enough clean and weaponless.”
“I’m not off on some loony drug-induced binge,” she said.
“I understand that,” he said, “but we both know you don’t carry those knives for self-defense— you don’t need them. 
“Kill someone with your hands and you might have a plausible reason to escape jail for the rest of your life. 
“With a knife, you’re screwed, and you know it. Why take the risk?”
Risk. A word bandied about so easily by people who had no clue as to what risk really meant. 
From anyone else those words would have been trite and easy to brush aside, 
but this was the man who had saved her life, a man who knew the truest meaning of what it was to risk everything.
After another space of silence, she pulled three knives from their hidden places. Without ceremony, she placed them on his lap.
He reached for the blades and held them in his hands. “Would you also let me take the drugs away?” he said.
“If you can take the nightmares with them.”
He didn’t reply, and she let him have the silence. 
In time, perhaps he’d understand. She tilted her head back and looked east, where the sky had turned purple. She stood.
“I need to get back to the hotel,” she said. “Walk with me? You can stay in the suite if you like— it’ll be more comfortable than holding vigil on the street.”
“Don’t you have a full house?” he asked.
“It’s a big place,” she said, “but either way you’d stay with me.”
His brow furrowed, and, understanding the source of his confusion, Munroe hooked her arm in his and led him forward. 
“I’m trying, Miles,” she said, “really trying. If you want to help and I’m willing to allow it, then let’s do it right. Stay with me.”
The sun had fully risen by the time they returned to the hotel, and when Munroe opened the door Logan was striding toward it. 
His face held a mixture of anguish and relief, as if he’d been pacing until her return and expected that it would never come. 
Then he saw Miles. Logan blanched and stopped short. Shock replaced everything else.
Miles nodded and Logan continued frozen for a half-second before turning speechless toward the television, then to Munroe, back to the TV, and to Munroe again.
Tiring of his indecision, Munroe said, “What is it, Logan?”
In a disjointed movement he motioned toward the television, which, now muted, flashed pictures of the local news. 
“An NYPD officer was murdered night before last,” he said. “This morning someone pulled the body out of a Dumpster.”
He stared at Munroe’s hands and arms, long since washed clean, and whispered, “Was that your doing?”
Mental dissonance filled her head. She couldn’t reconcile what Logan said with what she’d experienced. Police officer. 
Wordless, she turned her back to him and, with the world moving in slow motion, joined Miles in front of the TV.
The sound was still off and a breaking news banner streamed beneath a looped clip. 
She watched in silence, and after a moment Logan asked again, this time his question an accusing hiss. 
Munroe shifted away from the flat screen to face him and then, without a word, leaving him bewildered and panicked, turned and strode to her bedroom and closed the door.
She stood by the window, morning light reflecting onto her hands, and she gazed at the invisible macula of death that marked them. 
There was a quiet knock and the door opened. Bradford stuck his head inside the room and then, without waiting for a response, entered fully. 
He closed the door and walked over to her, staring out over the city. “Did you leave evidence behind?” he asked.
She turned her eyes slowly to him and said, “Not that I know of.”
Bradford reached forward, touched his thumb to her chin, and said, “Maybe taking this assignment would be a good thing.”
She leaned her head into his hand. “If those men really were police, there’s sure to be fallout, and I won’t run from my mistakes.”
“That would only be a side bonus,” he said. “God knows you’ve needed a break, and I’m sure you’ve kept busy, but have you considered that the extended downtime might be part of your problem?”
She turned again toward the window, to the ants and toys that crawled along the city streets. 
There was no doubt that she needed to work; it had been almost eight months since Mongomo, and the internal pressure was steadily building— 
a violent tension that could only be eased by the pure focus of an assignment. 
But this thing that Logan offered? This was a form of madness.
“Death follows me,” she said. “I can get the girl out, but I can’t guarantee that others won’t die, and one way or another, those people are all connected to Logan.” 
She turned again toward the window and the city streets. 
“Logan is blinded by desire and need, so much so that he’s ignoring the possibilities, ignoring the potential for”— she found Bradford’s eyes— “the potential for savagery.
“There’s something he’s not telling me,” she said. “He wants this far too badly for it to be as simple as what he’s explained.”
“But still, you go.”
She nodded. “I’m bracing for it and the many repercussions.”
Muted sounds of laughter filtered in from beyond the door, and they both turned toward it. 
“The rest of them are awake,” she said. “It’s time to play the game.”
She pulled an ankle-length dress off a hanger in the closet and said, “Excuse me for a moment,” and then stripped down, not caring if Bradford stared or averted his eyes, knowing he would want to do the former but do the latter.
Having shed the fatigues of the night and reverted once more to harmless and demure, she paused with her hand on the door handle.
“Coming?” she said. Seeing her manner of dress, Bradford raised an eyebrow, 
and she grinned in reply, then closed her eyes, a brief flash in time while she shifted from one mode to the next. 
When she opened her eyes, she had become the girl who would walk out the door.
The four who had stayed the night had joined Logan in the living area, and as far as Munroe could tell, the lively discussion centered on breakfasts of times past. 
The television had been switched off, and although Logan interacted little, he did well at masking the undercurrents of stress that had so recently played across his face.
Munroe entered the room with Bradford beside her, and as had happened the day before, the conversation hiccupped when a stranger joined the mix; 
it was not so much a closing of ranks as a concern that the newcomer might misunderstand what he’d heard.
With a mischievous grin Munroe introduced Bradford. “Soldier of fortune,” she said, “mercenary for hire, and sometimes my bodyguard.”
Hands were shaken, small talk made, and Gideon said to her, “The way Logan tells it, you shouldn’t need a bodyguard.”
His words, spoken lightly, held the undercurrent of challenge, and Munroe, finding no reason to defend or explain, turned from him. 
She reached for the phone intending to order room service for the group, and Gideon stopped her, hand to her shoulder.
Gideon was thirty-five and bore himself with the assurance of a man who had experienced hand-to-hand combat and lived to tell about it. 
At six-foot-four and 240 pounds, he held a six-inch, hundred-pound advantage, 
and by his behavior seemed to believe that Munroe, in her late twenties, light, lean, and innocent, would be easily schooled.
Munroe froze. The room went silent. Her vision faded, the world turned gray, and her mind ran a series of rapid calculations. 
In that moment of suspended time, she yearned for the catharsis and soothing relief of pain, for the exhilaration of spilled blood.
Logan should have warned Gideon; he should have known.
She’d taken on larger men and feared nothing of it. To strike was instinct; second nature. 
She could move with devastating speed, a frightful sense of crazy that bordered on true insanity and became, not shock-and-awe, but shock-then-die; 
a drive to kill that had been carved into her psyche one savage knife slice after another.
Standing straight, her back still to him, her voice low and monotone, she said, “Remove your hand.”
In minute calculations that reported back like echolocation, she placed each person in the room and readied for what was to come. 
Bradford had stood up from the sofa and then stopped. Logan had stayed seated. Neither would dare move for fear of triggering a violent reaction. 
The others had remained where they were, and Gideon’s hand was still weighted on her shoulder.
Forcing down the urge to strike, her back still to him, she said, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Gideon’s fingers tightened. He pulled. “I’m talking to you,” he said.
Darkness descended. Time ceased. Movement blurred. Instinct without thought, 
and then Gideon was on his knees, hands to his throat, gasping for air, and she was standing over him prepared to strike again.
Munroe’s eyes darted to Logan, and instead of finding horror on his face, as she expected, he was smirking.
She understood then that this was Logan’s doing— Logan and his stupid, dangerous games, proving points that didn’t need proving. 
She stood upright, reached a hand for Gideon, pulled him to his feet, and gave him a gentle jab to his arm.
“Give it a few minutes,” she said. “You’ll be fine.” Conversation in the room slowly resumed and gradually the moment passed as if nothing had occurred. 
When breakfast arrived, the discussion turned again to the issue of bringing Hannah home. 
Logan said little and his eyes hurried often to seek Munroe’s, as if begging assurance. 
She smiled in reply, but under the circumstances the gesture was probably more confusing to him than not.
In the stories of the children of The Chosen, in the sincerity of their pain, she understood the insanity of accepting the assignment and exactly why she would. 
There was no logic in it, no list of pros and cons; it defied the calculation and the meticulous exactness that had thus far defined her career. 
This desire to accept welled from deep inside; a child’s innocent yearning from years long past; the prayers for rescue never answered.
In this round of discussion, Bradford asked the questions, and while the others answered, Munroe withdrew in order to observe body language and facial cues. 
As it had been yesterday, there was a collective aura of disbelief. And rightly so.
Unlike typical clients who wore expensive suits and made decisions with businesslike detachment, who had millions of investment dollars at their disposal, who plotted outside of board meetings, and who knew Munroe only by reputation, 
this assignment was being run on a shoestring and intensely personal— everything was being staked on the commitment and ability of a stranger.
The conversation increased in volume, and Munroe watched amused as the silent battle lines were drawn. 
Bradford’s questions were direct, tactical, had less to do with sentiments and feeling than with logistics. 
He was a soldier ignoring emotion in order to calculate risk. 
His detachment wasn’t personal, it was the way of war, and of those around the table only Gideon and Logan, each former military men, seemed to grasp it.
Munroe stood. A long and slow movement that pushed the chair back fully and stopped the conversation cold. 
She shifted forward, palms against the table, and said, “I’m ready when you are.”

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Chapter 5
Logan pulled the picture from his wallet and placed it on the table. 
The photo had been taken when Hannah was five years old, just three days before she’d been walked out of class, down the hall, through the school’s front doors, and, as they’d later learned, driven over the border and into Mexico.
From across the table, Gideon, the IT director, pulled a printout of a scanned photograph from his computer bag. He placed it on the table next to Hannah. 
The photo was old, dated in the way most photographs are— by hair and clothing, and the odd color it assumed over time.
“David Law,” he said.
A breeze caught the edge of the paper, lifting it slightly, and Gideon placed his glass on the corner to hold it in place.
Munroe’s eyes came alive, and she reached for the page, David Law’s picture, that spark the first hint of hope that Logan had sensed since she’d arrived on the terrace.
She’d seen the photo of Hannah now three times, but this was the first time she’d been shown David Law’s, 
and even a casual observer would have spotted the intensity with which her eyes roamed over his picture.
Her glance darted back and forth between David and Logan and their striking similarities: blond hair, green eyes, similar bone structure.
“David and I aren’t related,” Logan said to her unasked question, “at least not that I know of. 
“David was Charity’s boyfriend at the time— a cult baby, like us. He’s the one who kidnapped Hannah and took her back inside.”
“Where is Charity?” Munroe asked. “Why isn’t she here?”
“She wanted to be here,” Logan said. “But she couldn’t make it and so asked me to speak on her behalf. She says ‘hi’ by the way.”
Munroe nodded.
Logan paused, mentally framing the context and where to continue. 
Over the years Munroe had heard snippets of this story, and twice her path had briefly crossed with Charity’s. 
Munroe knew vague details of Hannah’s kidnapping because during an unusual outburst of frustration Logan had railed against the injustice of it all, but beyond that, he’d told her little.
“It took me four years to coax Charity out,” Logan said. He tapped his head. “For many of us the thickest bars are in here. 
“It takes time to overcome the fear and the guilt that a life of conditioning has put into you— especially when all you’ve ever known has you terrified of the outside. 
“Anyway, I had an apartment ready, a job lined up for Charity and day care for Hannah, and when Charity finally made her break, David came along. 
“Five months after they’d gotten settled, David took off with Hannah and went back.”
“What do you mean, ‘he came along’?”
“David was Charity’s boyfriend, not Hannah’s father,” Logan said. 
“And he and Charity hadn’t been together long— maybe a year total, if that— so he kind of just hitched a ride, so to speak.”
“You’re certain he wasn’t Hannah’s father? No chance at all?”
“Not according to Charity.”
“Then why did he feel he had a right to take her?”
“No idea,” Logan said. “Because he didn’t have one. 
“He got hold of her passport and then forged a power of attorney, took her across the border, and from there hopscotched into South America.”
“So this wasn’t a custody issue of two parents fighting over who keeps the kid?”
“Not at all,” Logan said. “It was out-and-out child abduction.” He paused and tried to find the words. 
“It’s hard to find the ground under your feet when you leave,” he said. “Life comes at you so fast, there’s so much you weren’t prepared for, 
“and it sometimes feels like every day is a new attempt to break up to the surface for air. 
“But since I’d already made the way for Charity, David didn’t have that problem. 
“If he’d really wanted to do something with his life on the outside, he had more opportunity than any of us did, had it very easy by comparison—”
Heidi, the project manager who was sitting next to Gideon, interrupted. “David never really fit in though,” she said.
Munroe said, “You knew him?”
Heidi nodded. “He didn’t seem to care much, didn’t make much of an effort to do anything, just kind of mooched off Charity, really. 
“Not everyone can make it out here. Some go back. A lot of it depends on why they left in the first place.”
“We don’t know why he left— why he came with her,” Logan said. 
“He could have loved her for a while, or it could have been curiosity, or maybe he didn’t like being ordered around every day…”
“Never a good reason,” Heidi said.
“Or it could be that he was asked to leave with Charity and then bring Hannah back.”
“Would the leaders do that?” Munroe said. “Order him to find an opening to take her back?”
Logan shrugged. “They don’t feel society’s laws apply to them.”
Heidi said, “Their views on the children born into the group are more like property ownership. 
“Even if they didn’t order it, even if he got the idea and planned it on his own— which we doubt— they’ve done well at protecting and hiding him ever since. That’s why it’s taken us so long to find her.”
“And now that you’ve found her?”
“We want you to get her out.”
Munroe returned the photo to the table and slowly placed Gideon’s glass back on top. 
She sat back and then grinned. “You want me to kidnap her.”
She’d made a statement, not asked a question, and Logan knew with certainty that she’d said it for his benefit and no one else’s. 
It was classic Munroe. Have you really thought this through?
There was silence around the table.
Munroe said, “Now that you know where she is, wouldn’t this be the time to go the legal route?”
“It’s not that simple,” Logan said.
Eli, the med student, said, “We’ve already tried that. 
“If David returns to the U.S. he’ll be arrested. He’s also wanted by Interpol, and we figure that’s why he keeps to less-developed countries— less technology, harder to find him. 
“But even still, none of it does any good when it comes to actually getting to Hannah.”
“And we’re trying to get to her with minimal collateral damage,” Logan added.
Munroe said, “Collateral damage?”
“We know where she is, we know the country and the city. 
“We don’t know specifically which commune. There are at least three in the immediate area. 
“If we get law enforcement involved, in order to find her they will raid the communes. 
“All of the children will be taken into protective custody, and events have a way of spiraling out of control. 
“There’s also a good chance that in the confusion we’ll lose Hannah again, especially if they’ve forged her documents using a different name.”
“Don’t misunderstand,” Heidi said. “We definitely think it’s an unhealthy environment, and it’s not that we don’t care about the other kids, 
“but at the same time, ripping them away from the only structure they know and putting them in South American juvenile centers isn’t the solution.”
Munroe paused and then said, “I assume this has happened before?”
“Yes,” Logan said. “And then some. 
“No matter how we may feel about The Chosen and its leaders or even about some of the individuals within it, the children are our brothers, sisters, and cousins. 
“Right now, this is about Hannah. Charity has full legal custody, there are warrants out for David’s arrest, and it’s just a matter of getting close enough. The cleanest way to do it is to get behind their doors.”
“None of us can do it,” Gideon said. “They know us. As soon as we get close, they’ll know what we’re doing, and they’ll move her again.”
“So what you’re saying is that in order to get her out, I’ve got to get in.”
“Pretty much.”
Munroe was silent for a moment, and Logan could see analysis written on her face.
“This happened eight years ago,” Munroe said, “so Hannah is what? Twelve? Thirteen?”
“Thirteen,” Logan said.
“In the United States, children’s passports are only good for five years, and parents have to be present in order to renew them— 
“a situation like this, renewal in a foreign country, only one guardian who’s not even a parent— it’s going to raise serious questions. 
“If the alerts are out, as you say they are, why hasn’t she been picked up at a consulate or embassy when her passport expired?”
“It’s happened before,” Heidi said, “with another family. So now the leaders are wise to that and won’t let it happen again. 
“As best as we can tell, she’s no longer using an American passport, but we’re not sure which country she carries.”
“So, what you’re saying,” Munroe said, “is that for all intents and purposes, in whichever country she’s living, she’s not an American citizen.” 
She paused for effect. “Which means that essentially you want me, an American, to go into a foreign country, kidnap what may possibly be a citizen of that country, and bring her to the United States?”
“If you want to put it cut-and-dried like that, then yes.” Bethany had spoken, the real estate agent, and her tone had a sarcastic edge. 
“We’re looking for someone who has the acting ability to get inside, the fortitude to endure it, and the skill to get her out.”
“Okay, look,” Munroe said. “Assuming that I’m capable of doing it, assuming that I even want to do it, 
“I can see Logan’s point in all of this— Charity being his childhood friend and his having been involved in searching for Hannah all these years. But what’s in it for the rest of you? 
“You didn’t fly in from around the country and offer to put money in a pot just because of an arbitrary connection to a thirteen-year-old girl. 
“Are you each related to Charity or Hannah or Logan in some way? There’s got to be more.”
“Eli is Charity’s half brother,” Logan said. “And although we each have our private reasons— certainly some of this is about us and our personal issues with the past and the people who were responsible for what happened— it’s primarily about Hannah.”
Munroe said, “Or revenge?”
Logan said, “If we want to avoid semantics entirely and call it by its most simple definition, then yes.”
She stood and said to Logan, “I need to think about it.” After Munroe left, there was a momentary silence, 
and then one on top of the other the opinions and comments flowed, a mesh of conflicts and agreements that grew in volume.
“Goddamn it, Logan,” Gideon said, “the way you described her, described the plan, the whole thing seemed plausible, 
“but seriously, who are we trying to kid? We might be able to get Michael in, but how the hell is she supposed to get herself, much less Hannah, out?”
“She can do it,” Logan said.
“Just because you like her and trust her doesn’t mean we do. 
“Just because she’s willing to do the job— assuming she’s willing to do it— that doesn’t mean she should do it. 
“We get one shot at this. If she screws up, it’s game over.”
“She can do it.”
“It’s not just about Hannah,” Heidi said. “You know that if this goes wrong, it’s going to come back to burn us.”
Logan rolled a bottle of water between his palms, then set it down on the table and stood. 
“Eli, how much are you putting into the pot?”
“About three grand.”
“Ruth?”
“Five.”
Bethany held up two fingers and the others did as she had, fingers speaking the words, as Logan’s eyes went from one to the other.
“That’s what? Twenty-five grand between us in order to pull this off, right? Anyone want to venture a guess on what Michael’s last contract paid out?”
Gideon said, “I dunno, fifty thousand?”
Logan paused, waited a beat, and then said, “Five million dollars.”
The table fell silent. “Yes, Michael is my friend,” Logan said. He paced. 
“She’s my friend, which is the only reason this project even registers on her radar screen. Twenty-five grand won’t even cover expenses on a job like this. 
“Michael’s not looking for crazy, she’s here because I asked her to come. If she does this, it will be for me. 
“We can sugarcoat it as much as we like, but she’s not stupid, she’s been down this road before and knows that even the cleanest of ins comes with a complicated out.”
“How’s her Spanish?” Bethany asked.
“Last count, she spoke twenty-two languages.” 
Logan sat and leaned forward, elbows to knees. “I don’t know, it could be more by now. But yeah, she’s fluent.”
Bethany continued, “So, assuming she gets in and locates Hannah, assuming she’s able to get her away from the commune, does she even know what it’s like dealing with corrupt officials— 
“and what if things go wrong and she ends up having to take the rural routes out of the country? Can she do it?”
“Let me put it this way,” Logan said. “If it came down to pulling a trigger to protect Hannah and get her safely out of the country, Michael wouldn’t hesitate.” 
He paused and held his hands up in a form of backed-off caution. 
“I’m not saying she would go in guns blazing, I’m just saying that she’s capable of doing it if necessary. 
“And she’s spent more of her life navigating shit-hole, despot-run countries than any of us, including Gideon.”
“I have a hard time seeing it,” Gideon said.
“Hey, don’t take my word for it,” Logan said. “She’s downstairs. I dare you. I dare you to go pick a fight. 
“No wait, you don’t even have to do that. I dare you to lay a finger on her. Touch her shoulder, grab her wrist, anything.”
“I liked her,” Ruth said, putting a pause on the tension. 
Ruth, the lawyer, who had until now remained silent. “She’s smart, very smart, and I think she actually gets it.”
“I’ll agree to that,” Heidi said. “She gets it. But can she do it?”
“The question is not can she do it,” Logan replied. “It’s will she do it.”

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Chapter 3
Logan didn’t need to say more because, without explanation, Munroe understood why he’d come 
And, if not the specifics, at least the essence of what he wanted. She reached across the table and placed her hand on his.
In the quiet he wished more than anything to plead his case and argue reason. But he kept silent.
Munroe knew the cost, knew what it meant, and he could see the calculation reflected in her eyes. 
Finally, she shifted her gaze toward the windows. “I don’t know, Logan,” she said. “I just don’t know.”
He paused, waiting, allowing the stillness to swallow them, 
and then, with a lump rising in his throat, said, “Would you at least listen to what we know? The details? Would you hear us out?”
She gave no response.
“Come with me,” he said. “Just for a week— just to meet the others.”
“Return to the States?” she said.
“They can’t all come here,” he said. “It’s too expensive and there’s not enough time, 
“But that doesn’t mean you have to return home. It can be anywhere— New York; how about New York? 
“We go for a week, stay at a nice hotel, talk to some interesting people, 
“and when all is said and done and you’ve had time to think about it, then you make a decision.”
She stood, refilled her coffee mug, and continued to stand, staring at nothing.
“Please,” Logan whispered. “For me.”
In the silence, sounds of traffic and occasionally pedestrian chatter filtered through the open windows. 
She remained motionless, eyes distant, vacant, unreadable. 
Finally, she turned to him. “I’ll go,” she said. “For you.”
He exhaled, realizing only then that he’d been holding his breath.
“Logan, I can’t promise you anything,” she said. “I’ll go. I’ll listen. But I make no commitment, and I won’t stay, you know?”
He nodded. She’d offered enough: a start.
She was still standing at the kitchen counter when she said, “I need a bit of time before I can leave.”
“Noah?” Logan ventured.
She nodded and made no pretense at hiding what he could so clearly read in her face. 
In the heaviness of the moment, he felt sadness at the inevitable and understood why she hadn’t fought harder against his request to go with him. 
She braced for good-bye, hating it, hurting from it, and feeling no way out.
Logan said, “He thinks it’s him— or maybe me. Noah has no idea, does he?”
She shook her head and turned slightly so that she stared again at some invisible point. 
“I’ve tried to explain it,” she said, “but how could he possibly understand?”
No matter how well Noah believed he knew Munroe, there was so much he would never grasp, 
undercurrents that would, Logan or no Logan, inevitably pull her away, all of it guaranteeing pain and confusion as the natural course of things. 
The man had given Munroe laughter and a reason for happiness, and for this Logan wished it were possible to offer reassurance that things would be okay. 
But they weren’t and might never be.
“It’s better this way,” he said.
Munroe’s eyes shifted back, a long and languid gaze until finally she whispered, “I know.”
The pain in those words left him speechless. 
She’d offered a brief glimmer, a crack through which Logan saw beyond her eyes, past her soul, and into the torment of her private hell. 
Then, without warning, as if a switch had been thrown, Munroe’s face shifted and the glimmer ended. 
She said, “Tomorrow we race on the water,” and Logan, still struggling for words, responded with a tired smile.
She bartered her time for his. A week in New York for a week in Tangier, 
and beyond the emotional tension that accompanied Noah’s reaction, the days were action-fueled and driven by an undercurrent of laughter that continued through the return flight home. 
If Munroe was medicating, she hid it well, though Logan had woken often in the night to the sound of her footsteps passing in the hall and knew that she slept little.
They entered the United States through JFK and took a taxi into Manhattan, to The Palace, where Munroe had reserved one of the hotel’s triplex suites. 
Even with his racing career and celebrity status as an adrenaline junkie, Logan’s bank balance wasn’t high enough to defend splitting such a bill, and so he didn’t argue when she insisted on covering it.
At the top of the towers, the suite was three bedrooms spread over three floors and five thousand square feet, 
a direct and opulent contrast to the sparse conditions Munroe had lived in during the last several years. 
On the second floor she opened the door to the master bedroom and fell backward onto the king-size bed, arms splayed, laughing at the ceiling.
To Logan, she said, “You like it?”
He was wearing an ear-to-ear grin, staring out across the skyline. “It’s insane,” he said.
“This is your room,” she said. “You’ll need the space for your friends. Take the upstairs areas, spoil them a little; my treat. I’ll stay downstairs.”
Logan held her smile for a long while. In the joy of that moment, words were unnecessary,
because without doubt this was the proverbial calm before the storm.
At nearly one in the morning, Munroe stood staring out the living room window. 
Logan had gone to bed over an hour ago, and she had lingered this long, observing the city streets, listening to the heartbeat of the suite, waiting for the night to lengthen, if only to be sure he was truly down for the evening.
For her, rest— sleep— would come much later, if at all, because to be awake when darkness threw a mask of beauty over the world was to be alive.
Munroe turned from the window, from her ghostly reflection, headed back through the room and out the door. 
She took the elevator down to where midnight air refused to let go of the day’s humidity, 
down to civilization and asphalt, gas fumes and garbage, the mix of odors that only the heat of a big city could produce, New York in the middle of summer.
She’d left the hotel to breathe outside air, to walk out the body kinks that were the by-product of too many hours of air travel, 
and so stayed on foot, moving fast, heading west to nowhere in particular.
It was a mewling sound that turned her from passing a service entrance and drew her into the blackened depths where the outlines of trucks and parked vehicles filled space: 
it was a sound out of place in the city night, the cry of a lost kitten, 
or, as became evident as Munroe’s eyes adjusted to the deeper darkness, the abject terror of a girl pinned to the ground by two men.
The young woman was eighteen, tops, still partly child, a perfect representation of the innocent, hopeful and na【马赛克1】ve, 
who, on a quest for something more, streamed steadily into the metropolis only to find themselves sacrificed to the fires of Moloch.
The men hovered over her body, every movement menacing, brisk, and hostile. 
Munroe couldn’t hear their words, only the raw threat of intent, which carried to her on the still air. 
The woman had given up fighting and appeared paralyzed. 
She’d not come to the oil-stained and garbage-strewn area willingly. Dragged, perhaps. 
Her shoes were missing. Her dress was torn and hiked up around her waist. Her chest heaved with silent crying.
Munroe stopped and, for a second that passed like millennia, stared. 
She felt no surprise or horror at having been guided into the arms of the wicked, 
only an unquenchable burning rage against the violation of innocence, 
an unbridled anger that surged from inside depths, up, up, into her head, pounding out a rhythm of retribution and destruction. 
Even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t have turned away, so strong was the drumbeat of war.
Not once did her eyes wander while she placed one foot in front of the other, moving forward, each step slow, certain, deliberate, until her toe thudded against something soft and pliable.
Munroe paused. Looked down. The woman’s purse with contents strewn.
Eyes ahead, she continued on, unseen and unheard, until she was within feet of the men, and they, taking notice, hesitated in their violence.
The larger of the two, leader of the pair, stood to face Munroe.
Time and space slowed into sharp focus, and in her vision he was a target narrowed into a shadow of gray against the night.
Her hands remained relaxed at her sides, her body calm, almost nonchalant, 
while her eyes darted from one spot to the next within the enclosed area, judging distance, surfaces, weapons.
The man stepped close, invaded her personal space.
He was rank breath and flared nostrils; he was eyes that didn’t see and air without oxygen. 
He looked down at Munroe and inhaled, trailing his nose around her hair.
Inside her core the percussion beat harder, louder: marching orders to every cell in her body.
“Look what we have here,” he said, and his partner chuckled, a nervous bark, while holding tight to the victim still on the ground.
The big man ran his fingertips along the edge of Munroe’s hair.
“Don’t touch me,” she said. “Not if you want to live.”
Her voice was low, monotone, and although the man couldn’t know it as the sound of impending destruction, his partner understood the threat, 
and in a form of solidarity came forward to stand next to his leader.
The girl on the ground scrambled upward and, with the men’s backs to her, and only a second’s glance in their direction, bolted behind them to the street.
In silence the three watched her run, and then, with the little figure fading in the dark, the leader turned again to Munroe.
“Now see what you’ve done,” he said. He was smiling a row of clean white teeth.
Munroe, motionless, turned her eyes back to him and said nothing.
“You owe me a fuck,” the man said. The smile was gone.
“I’d advise you to walk away,” she said. “If you touch me, I’ll kill you.”
He laughed. Hard. A loud boom against the walls that rose up on either side, and then, in an instant, he stopped.
A fight was inevitable, and with Munroe’s realization came the rush. 
She pulled it all in and closed her eyes in a slow, extended blink.
A heedful observer would have noticed the twitch in her hands, would have wondered at the lack of fear, would have been cautioned against the level of self-assurance. 
But overconfidence had blinded these men from observing much.
There came a moment of silence, of deliberation, as if this man and his partner might, after all, be smart enough to recognize a form of insanity greater than their own and back down.
But no. The big man grabbed a fistful of her hair. Yanked. Dragged her to her knees. “Fuck you, bitch,” he hissed.
Munroe’s eyes smarted, and in response the corners of her lips turned upward.
Time passed in microsecond gaps, movement in nano-slices of space, intense clarity, which like a flash flood through a gully rushed in a torrent through her blood.
His left hand still gripped her hair. His right arm pulled back for a strike, and this man with his smile, his laugh, his breath, became a familiar enemy who had to die. 
She was no longer in the middle of a sweltering city but in the heat of the jungle with its pervasive raw earthiness.
Hands still to her sides, her fingers reached for the knives sheathed against her shins. Skin connected with metal. Instinct followed. 
The internal percussion rose to climax screaming the order to survive, to win, to avenge: commanding the order to kill.
The bedside clock read eight in the morning. Logan glanced at the digital readout and in a half breath understood the fear that had brought him awake.
He threw off the sheets and headed down the stairs at a near run, calling Munroe’s name as he went, stopping short at the ground-floor bedroom.
The door had been left slightly ajar, and as he had done that first morning in Tangier, he placed his palm to it and the hinges swung inward.
In a shock of déjà vu, Logan stared, open-mouthed.
She lay sprawled across the bed, knives on the bedside table, dead to the world. 
He remained for a moment, pushing down the frustration and resentment, and then, turning to go, eyes adjusting to the dim of the room, recognition settling, stopped midstep.
Heart pounding, stomach churning, he moved closer to the bed, closer to her. Knelt. 
And being careful not to touch her, followed the trail of crusted blood that smeared and streaked across her forearms.
He had never heard her leave the suite, hadn’t heard the sounds of the private elevator as it came or went. 
He drew a quiet intake of air and clenched his fists. In a few hours the others would begin to arrive. 
They would come to provide bits and pieces of an eight-year-old story that she needed to hear, 
and there she was, the one person who could turn it into a goddamn happy ending, strung out in a drug-induced haze.
He wanted to wake her; to find out what the hell had happened last night, what she had done; to yell and smack some sense into her. 
But he knew better, and so he returned to the kitchen to try to bolt down something against the returning nausea.
Over the course of the morning and into the afternoon, the others came, and against mounting anxiety over Munroe’s condition, Logan played host.
Amused at their reactions to the opulence of the place, he walked them through it and answered their questions about how the suite was paid for.
An odd, mixed lot, they congregated on the rooftop terrace amid wrought-iron furniture and wooden planters that provided a quiet, Old World feel in contrast to the city chaos below.
Their looks, tastes, and styles, the directions of their lives, were as far removed one from the other as any group of random strangers, 
but childhood, the common thread that banded them together, was tighter still than any difference. 
They shared easy conversation, the camaraderie of soldiers bonded through the trauma of war, until the glass doors to the terrace slid open and Munroe stepped out.
She’d cleaned up: The blood was gone, and at the door’s threshold now she stood a picture of demure innocence in a girlish dress and flat shoes.
She returned Logan’s glance, and there was a touch of mischief in her eyes.
Logan sighed. Whatever else she might be, na【马赛克1】ve and pure she wasn’t. 
She’d deliberately assumed this likeness, this facade of diffidence and modesty that so easily became a veil to the unlearned, 
and as was evident in that glance, she knew that it frustrated him badly.
He broke off eye contact, and her smile widened, as if to say, Yes, Logan, I know what you’re doing. His heart pounded heavily.
It was always a mistake to underestimate her, and although he’d not lied to or misled her, there was much that he hadn’t mentioned.
Logan glanced again at Munroe’s girly clothes, hesitated, and then introduced her to the others. “This is Michael,” he said, “the one I told you about.”
In addition to Logan, there were six around the table: real estate agent, lawyer, project manager, IT director, photographer, and medical student, 
all in their late twenties to mid-thirties, each one having fought to where they were now in life at such personal cost and private sacrifice that there were spouses who didn’t know the details.
Munroe took a seat, and one by one they introduced themselves. 
There wasn’t much small talk, albeit a measure of flippancy, while each in the little group told a variant of the same story: 
one of a life controlled and structured from birth, of consecration to God and The Prophet, of poverty, servility, and eventually a gamble— 
family, social structure, and their entire known world wagered on the hope that there was another life, a better life, out here in the Void.
Logan could hear the desperation that lay behind each measured word and wondered if they could hear it too. 
They were gauging her, uncertain if she was capable of comprehending the gravity of what was at stake, 
wondering how this timid girl could be the one to make wrong right, doubt written clearly across their faces.
Looking at her now, Logan found it difficult, even knowing her as well as he did, to visualize how such apparent innocence could be the harbinger of so great a justice. 
He understood their disbelief and pushed his own doubts aside, because he needed that favor.

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Chapter 2
Ten in the evening local time meant late afternoon in Dallas, still within the office hours of most businesses, although Logan expected that Capstone Consulting kept the phones running far later than the standard nine to five.
He picked up the handset, exhaled, and dialed a call he’d never expected to make.
Capstone was owned and operated by Miles Bradford, former Special Forces turned private contractor, the man who’d been by Munroe’s side when the world had turned upside down. 
If there was ever a person who’d want to know about her current state, who’d be willing to get involved in a nightmare predicament for no other reason than that it involved her, that man was Bradford.
Anticlimactically, Logan was put on hold. 
During the frustrating wait, he moved methodically about the room, scanning surfaces and opening drawers, careful to leave everything as he’d found it while the phone to his ear provided background music. 
He was checking beneath the sofa when Beethoven’s Ninth was clipped short by a cheery voice announcing Capstone, 
as if it were some high-stakes New York marketing firm instead of the bullets-and-blood mercenary outfit Logan knew it to be.
According to the receptionist, Bradford was out of the country.
“I know you have a way to get in contact with him,” Logan said. “Tell him that Michael’s in trouble and that if he wants to talk to me, this line’s only going to be clear for the next three or four hours.”
He recited the apartment’s phone number, and after a routine reassurance that someone would get back to him, he hung up and moved on to the meager pantry.
He was violating Munroe’s space and her privacy, a deed not done lightly, hunting for what he knew was hidden somewhere nearby. 
He didn’t need a visual to confirm his suspicions, but he did want the specifics in order to assess the damage.
He was in the middle of Munroe’s bathroom when the phone rang. Logan fumbled and then recovered. 
The wait had been thirty minutes, not a bad measure of Bradford’s concern.
There was static on the line and a few seconds’ delay, but even through that Logan could hear the clipped, impatient quality of Bradford’s tone.
“I just got your message,” he said. “What kind of trouble is she in?”
Carefully scripted, Logan said, “The self-inflicted, oops-look-at-that-I’m-dead kind of trouble.”
There was a pregnant pause and Bradford said finally, “Suicide?”
Logan closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. “No, she’s very much alive. But she’s self-medicating. And she’s started carrying knives again.”
Silence, and then, “How long has this been going on?”
“I have no idea. I flew into Morocco this morning and she met me at the airport. 
“The signs are all there, she doesn’t try to hide them— flaunts them, even— she’s poking at me with them, like she wants me to know. 
“I’m going to take a guess and say it’s only been a few weeks. She just moved to Tangier, and it could be related.”
“Any idea what she’s taking?”
“Not sure,” Logan said. “I’m trying to find out. 
“Never thought I’d see the day she started this shit again, but if history’s any predictor, it’ll be legal and she’ll have a fake prescription.”
Logan searched the nightstand drawers. “Anyway, she’s out with Noah right now. I’m ransacking her apartment.”
Bradford exhaled a low whistle.
“She won’t know,” Logan said. “Been there, done that, won’t get caught.”
There was another pause and then Bradford said, “Logan, I’m in Afghanistan. 
“There’s no way for me to get out of here for another week and until then I’m at a loss as to what I can do.”
Logan knelt to look under the bed. “I’m not sure either,” he said. “I just figured you’d want to know. 
“You’re the obvious intervention partner of choice— I mean, you were there, you know better than any of us why she’s doing it— 
“and really, Miles, I think you’re the only other person who cares the way that I do.”
Logan opened the doors of a large armoire and glared at a small box barely visible under a pile of clothes. “I think I’ve found it,” he said.
From the box he pulled a smaller box, opened it, and shook free a bottle of syrup. He read off the label, “Phenergan VC.”
“Is that the codeine version?” Bradford said.
Logan searched the label, lips set tight.
Bradford knew his pharmacopoeia. 
“Yes, codeine,” he said. “The box holds twelve and two are missing.”
“If we’re lucky, that’s the first box,” Bradford said. He hesitated. “Okay, look, I understand why you called and I thank you for it. 
“The earliest I can get out of here is next Thursday. Do you think you can find an excuse to get her to the States?”
“You know how she is about returning.”
“I could come to Morocco,” Bradford said. “But I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” 
There was a long silence, and although Bradford never verbalized it, Logan understood the reason. 
Noah and Bradford around Munroe at the same time brought far too much potential for conflict.
“Best would be to get her to the U.S.,” Bradford said. “Or really anywhere out of Morocco.”
Logan nodded agreement to the empty room. “I’ll figure something out and let you know how it goes,” he said, 
although in truth his favor already required that he take her from here.
“I’d give you a number,” Bradford said, “but it’s pointless, I move around too much. 
“Call the office. They’ll be able to reach me. If you can’t get her to go back, I’ll come to you, but I need at least a week.”
The call over, Logan continued to stare into the armoire at the box and all that it stood for. 
Codeine wasn’t the heaviest stuff she’d taken, nor was it the worst to be abused; the issue was that she was self-medicating at all.
Heavy, burdened, he replaced the bottle and rearranged the clothes.
He could work this thing. Getting Bradford involved was a definite step forward, and pulling him in had been rather easy.
Logan shoved away the stab of guilt. He would have made that call even if he didn’t need Munroe’s help, 
and Bradford wasn’t offering to do anything he didn’t want to do.
Logan returned to the bedroom and the weight of two days’ travel pressed against his eyelids. 
Intent on remaining alert until whatever godforsaken hour Munroe came back, 
he closed his eyes for a second and opened them to bright sunlight streaming through the curtains.
He bolted upright with no recollection of falling asleep or of Munroe returning, or with any concept of how much time had elapsed. 
He fumbled for his watch. Seven in the morning, local time. God, he was tired.
He rolled his legs over the side of the bed and listened, shook his head in an attempt to clear the fog that wrapped around his brain. 
There was no sound or movement in the apartment, so he stood and padded to the window. Parked along the curb were a few cars, but no BMW.
Logan opened the bedroom door and, with the stealth of a kid preparing to sneak into the kitchen to grab a cookie, peered down the hall. 
Munroe’s door was slightly ajar, definitely not closed the way he’d left it the night before. 
Barefoot against the tiled floor, he moved toward her bedroom, and there, hearing nothing, pressed his palm to the door.
She was alone: sprawled across the mattress, face in a pillow and tangled in sheets that trailed to the floor. 
The knives sat on the nightstand and against the foot of the bed lay the clothes she had shed before climbing into it. 
The armoire doors were partially open, and although there was no visible sign that she’d helped herself to the contents of another bottle, crashed out and dead to the world as she was, Logan had no doubt that she had.
He left her room for the guest bathroom, irritation and anger washing over him. 
He needed her right now, needed her to be herself, lucid, aware, not this— brain- and emotion-numbed, and half-alive. 
No matter the reasons, what she was doing was such a goddamn fucking waste of brilliance.
He turned on the shower and let it run. There was no point in keeping quiet; 
the insomniac woman who would normally go from a dead sleep to a fighting stance over less than a whisper had drugged herself into a state of unconsciousness.
It was afternoon when the light tap of footsteps first echoed down the hall. 
Logan waited until they passed, then left his room in search of Munroe and found her in the kitchen filling a coffeepot with water, 
dressed in a tank and boxers and sporting a case of bed hair so bad he would have laughed if things had been otherwise. 
He didn’t see the knives, but then she’d never needed them to kill, and that wasn’t why she carried them anyway.
“Want coffee?” she said.
“Sure,” he replied. “Where’s Noah?”
She yawned and scratched the back of her neck. “He’s at his holiday house. What time is it?”
“Around three o’clock,” he said.
Munroe placed the pot on the stove and lit the burner. She sat at the kitchen table, then tilted her head up and smiled. A real smile. 
And in spite of himself and the frustration and anger, Logan smiled back.
“I needed the sleep,” she said. “And thought you might need some too, what with the jet lag and the long trip. I won’t make you wait on me like that again.”
This was as much of an explanation as she’d give, but Logan knew she did it with calculated reason. 
The sleep and making him wait had been as much a deliberate display as the knives on the train. 
She wanted him to know her state of mind, to take it all into account should he continue toward whatever favor he must ask.
Logan said nothing, and she smiled again— that killer smile.
“Have a seat,” she said. “I’ll make you lunch.”
He nodded toward the empty cupboards. “From what?”
With a straight face she said, “Coffee,” and the heartbeat of silence was followed by commingled laughter that came as a welcome release of tension.
Logan couldn’t help but grin, so good was it to see her lucid and to have her again, the real her, 
the Michael that he knew and loved; and he relished the moment because he knew it would be short-lived.
As if she’d read his mind, she said, “Tell me why you’ve come— what is it you need?”
He froze.
The coffeepot percolated on the stove, but Munroe made no move to get it. 
She nodded toward the seat opposite. It wasn’t an invitation, it was an instruction. 
There was no point in arguing, so Logan sat in the proffered chair. 
Forearms on the table, he shifted forward, and as he opened his mouth to speak, she put a hand on his wrist.
“Hold the thought,” she said. She stood, stepped to the stove, and turned off the burner.
She’d so perfectly disarmed him. He watched her move about the kitchen: fluid, methodical, neither hurried nor pausing, much like a well-trained dancer. 
She turned to catch his eye, smiling conspiratorially as she set out the coffee mugs.
She placed a cup in front of him and held her own while she sat, her posture taut, her face relaxed. 
“Go on,” she said, blowing steam as she held the coffee to her lips.
He reached for his wallet and slid the faded photo with its beauty and tragedy, memories and heartbreak, across the table. 
Munroe paused to look. “Is that Charity’s daughter?”
Logan nodded.
Charity. The person he’d loved longer and truer than any other being.
Charity, who was his fellow childhood survivor. 
She’d lived the life, knew the pain and trauma better than he, and shared the burden: the lies, the secrets, and the scars.
Logan gazed down at the photo of the little girl with the blond ringlets and bright green eyes, traced his fingers along the edge of it, and then stopped. 
All reason, all argument, all the words that had been turning around in his head for the past three days fled, and he was left vacant. 
Logan looked up and staring into Munroe’s eyes said only, “I’ve found her.”
章Chapter 3
Logan didn’t need to say more because, without explanation, Munroe understood why he’d come 
And, if not the specifics, at least the essence of what he wanted. She reached across the table and placed her hand on his.
In the quiet he wished more than anything to plead his case and argue reason. But he kept silent.
Munroe knew the cost, knew what it meant, and he could see the calculation reflected in her eyes. 
Finally, she shifted her gaze toward the windows. “I don’t know, Logan,” she said. “I just don’t know.”
He paused, waiting, allowing the stillness to swallow them, 
and then, with a lump rising in his throat, said, “Would you at least listen to what we know? The details? Would you hear us out?”
She gave no response.
“Come with me,” he said. “Just for a week— just to meet the others.”
“Return to the States?” she said.
“They can’t all come here,” he said. “It’s too expensive and there’s not enough time, 
“But that doesn’t mean you have to return home. It can be anywhere— New York; how about New York? 
“We go for a week, stay at a nice hotel, talk to some interesting people, 
“and when all is said and done and you’ve had time to think about it, then you make a decision.”
She stood, refilled her coffee mug, and continued to stand, staring at nothing.
“Please,” Logan whispered. “For me.”
In the silence, sounds of traffic and occasionally pedestrian chatter filtered through the open windows. 
She remained motionless, eyes distant, vacant, unreadable. 
Finally, she turned to him. “I’ll go,” she said. “For you.”
He exhaled, realizing only then that he’d been holding his breath.
“Logan, I can’t promise you anything,” she said. “I’ll go. I’ll listen. But I make no commitment, and I won’t stay, you know?”
He nodded. She’d offered enough: a start.
She was still standing at the kitchen counter when she said, “I need a bit of time before I can leave.”
“Noah?” Logan ventured.
She nodded and made no pretense at hiding what he could so clearly read in her face. 
In the heaviness of the moment, he felt sadness at the inevitable and understood why she hadn’t fought harder against his request to go with him. 
She braced for good-bye, hating it, hurting from it, and feeling no way out.
Logan said, “He thinks it’s him— or maybe me. Noah has no idea, does he?”
She shook her head and turned slightly so that she stared again at some invisible point. 
“I’ve tried to explain it,” she said, “but how could he possibly understand?”
No matter how well Noah believed he knew Munroe, there was so much he would never grasp, 
undercurrents that would, Logan or no Logan, inevitably pull her away, all of it guaranteeing pain and confusion as the natural course of things. 
The man had given Munroe laughter and a reason for happiness, and for this Logan wished it were possible to offer reassurance that things would be okay. 
But they weren’t and might never be.
“It’s better this way,” he said.
Munroe’s eyes shifted back, a long and languid gaze until finally she whispered, “I know.”
The pain in those words left him speechless. 
She’d offered a brief glimmer, a crack through which Logan saw beyond her eyes, past her soul, and into the torment of her private hell. 
Then, without warning, as if a switch had been thrown, Munroe’s face shifted and the glimmer ended. 
She said, “Tomorrow we race on the water,” and Logan, still struggling for words, responded with a tired smile.
She bartered her time for his. A week in New York for a week in Tangier, 
and beyond the emotional tension that accompanied Noah’s reaction, the days were action-fueled and driven by an undercurrent of laughter that continued through the return flight home. 
If Munroe was medicating, she hid it well, though Logan had woken often in the night to the sound of her footsteps passing in the hall and knew that she slept little.
They entered the United States through JFK and took a taxi into Manhattan, to The Palace, where Munroe had reserved one of the hotel’s triplex suites. 
Even with his racing career and celebrity status as an adrenaline junkie, Logan’s bank balance wasn’t high enough to defend splitting such a bill, and so he didn’t argue when she insisted on covering it.
At the top of the towers, the suite was three bedrooms spread over three floors and five thousand square feet, 
a direct and opulent contrast to the sparse conditions Munroe had lived in during the last several years. 
On the second floor she opened the door to the master bedroom and fell backward onto the king-size bed, arms splayed, laughing at the ceiling.
To Logan, she said, “You like it?”
He was wearing an ear-to-ear grin, staring out across the skyline. “It’s insane,” he said.
“This is your room,” she said. “You’ll need the space for your friends. Take the upstairs areas, spoil them a little; my treat. I’ll stay downstairs.”
Logan held her smile for a long while. In the joy of that moment, words were unnecessary,
because without doubt this was the proverbial calm before the storm.
At nearly one in the morning, Munroe stood staring out the living room window. 
Logan had gone to bed over an hour ago, and she had lingered this long, observing the city streets, listening to the heartbeat of the suite, waiting for the night to lengthen, if only to be sure he was truly down for the evening.
For her, rest— sleep— would come much later, if at all, because to be awake when darkness threw a mask of beauty over the world was to be alive.
Munroe turned from the window, from her ghostly reflection, headed back through the room and out the door. 
She took the elevator down to where midnight air refused to let go of the day’s humidity, 
down to civilization and asphalt, gas fumes and garbage, the mix of odors that only the heat of a big city could produce, New York in the middle of summer.
She’d left the hotel to breathe outside air, to walk out the body kinks that were the by-product of too many hours of air travel, 
and so stayed on foot, moving fast, heading west to nowhere in particular.
It was a mewling sound that turned her from passing a service entrance and drew her into the blackened depths where the outlines of trucks and parked vehicles filled space: 
it was a sound out of place in the city night, the cry of a lost kitten, 
or, as became evident as Munroe’s eyes adjusted to the deeper darkness, the abject terror of a girl pinned to the ground by two men.
The young woman was eighteen, tops, still partly child, a perfect representation of the innocent, hopeful and na【马赛克1】ve, 
who, on a quest for something more, streamed steadily into the metropolis only to find themselves sacrificed to the fires of Moloch.
The men hovered over her body, every movement menacing, brisk, and hostile. 
Munroe couldn’t hear their words, only the raw threat of intent, which carried to her on the still air. 
The woman had given up fighting and appeared paralyzed. 
She’d not come to the oil-stained and garbage-strewn area willingly. Dragged, perhaps. 
Her shoes were missing. Her dress was torn and hiked up around her waist. Her chest heaved with silent crying.
Munroe stopped and, for a second that passed like millennia, stared. 
She felt no surprise or horror at having been guided into the arms of the wicked, 
only an unquenchable burning rage against the violation of innocence, 
an unbridled anger that surged from inside depths, up, up, into her head, pounding out a rhythm of retribution and destruction. 
Even if she’d wanted to, she couldn’t have turned away, so strong was the drumbeat of war.
Not once did her eyes wander while she placed one foot in front of the other, moving forward, each step slow, certain, deliberate, until her toe thudded against something soft and pliable.
Munroe paused. Looked down. The woman’s purse with contents strewn.
Eyes ahead, she continued on, unseen and unheard, until she was within feet of the men, and they, taking notice, hesitated in their violence.
The larger of the two, leader of the pair, stood to face Munroe.
Time and space slowed into sharp focus, and in her vision he was a target narrowed into a shadow of gray against the night.
Her hands remained relaxed at her sides, her body calm, almost nonchalant, 
while her eyes darted from one spot to the next within the enclosed area, judging distance, surfaces, weapons.
The man stepped close, invaded her personal space.
He was rank breath and flared nostrils; he was eyes that didn’t see and air without oxygen. 
He looked down at Munroe and inhaled, trailing his nose around her hair.
Inside her core the percussion beat harder, louder: marching orders to every cell in her body.
“Look what we have here,” he said, and his partner chuckled, a nervous bark, while holding tight to the victim still on the ground.
The big man ran his fingertips along the edge of Munroe’s hair.
“Don’t touch me,” she said. “Not if you want to live.”
Her voice was low, monotone, and although the man couldn’t know it as the sound of impending destruction, his partner understood the threat, 
and in a form of solidarity came forward to stand next to his leader.
The girl on the ground scrambled upward and, with the men’s backs to her, and only a second’s glance in their direction, bolted behind them to the street.
In silence the three watched her run, and then, with the little figure fading in the dark, the leader turned again to Munroe.
“Now see what you’ve done,” he said. He was smiling a row of clean white teeth.
Munroe, motionless, turned her eyes back to him and said nothing.
“You owe me a fuck,” the man said. The smile was gone.
“I’d advise you to walk away,” she said. “If you touch me, I’ll kill you.”
He laughed. Hard. A loud boom against the walls that rose up on either side, and then, in an instant, he stopped.
A fight was inevitable, and with Munroe’s realization came the rush. 
She pulled it all in and closed her eyes in a slow, extended blink.
A heedful observer would have noticed the twitch in her hands, would have wondered at the lack of fear, would have been cautioned against the level of self-assurance. 
But overconfidence had blinded these men from observing much.
There came a moment of silence, of deliberation, as if this man and his partner might, after all, be smart enough to recognize a form of insanity greater than their own and back down.
But no. The big man grabbed a fistful of her hair. Yanked. Dragged her to her knees. “Fuck you, bitch,” he hissed.
Munroe’s eyes smarted, and in response the corners of her lips turned upward.
Time passed in microsecond gaps, movement in nano-slices of space, intense clarity, which like a flash flood through a gully rushed in a torrent through her blood.
His left hand still gripped her hair. His right arm pulled back for a strike, 
and this man with his smile, his laugh, his breath, became a familiar enemy who had to die. 
She was no longer in the middle of a sweltering city but in the heat of the jungle with its pervasive raw earthiness.
Hands still to her sides, her fingers reached for the knives sheathed against her shins. Skin connected with metal. Instinct followed. 
The internal percussion rose to climax screaming the order to survive, to win, to avenge: commanding the order to kill.
The bedside clock read eight in the morning. Logan glanced at the digital readout and in a half breath understood the fear that had brought him awake.
He threw off the sheets and headed down the stairs at a near run, calling Munroe’s name as he went, stopping short at the ground-floor bedroom.
The door had been left slightly ajar, and as he had done that first morning in Tangier, he placed his palm to it and the hinges swung inward.
In a shock of déjà vu, Logan stared, open-mouthed.
She lay sprawled across the bed, knives on the bedside table, dead to the world. 
He remained for a moment, pushing down the frustration and resentment, and then, turning to go, eyes adjusting to the dim of the room, recognition settling, stopped midstep.
Heart pounding, stomach churning, he moved closer to the bed, closer to her. Knelt. 
And being careful not to touch her, followed the trail of crusted blood that smeared and streaked across her forearms.
He had never heard her leave the suite, hadn’t heard the sounds of the private elevator as it came or went. 
He drew a quiet intake of air and clenched his fists. In a few hours the others would begin to arrive. 
They would come to provide bits and pieces of an eight-year-old story that she needed to hear, 
and there she was, the one person who could turn it into a goddamn happy ending, strung out in a drug-induced haze.
He wanted to wake her; to find out what the hell had happened last night, what she had done; to yell and smack some sense into her. 
But he knew better, and so he returned to the kitchen to try to bolt down something against the returning nausea.
Over the course of the morning and into the afternoon, the others came, and against mounting anxiety over Munroe’s condition, Logan played host.
Amused at their reactions to the opulence of the place, he walked them through it and answered their questions about how the suite was paid for.
An odd, mixed lot, they congregated on the rooftop terrace amid wrought-iron furniture and wooden planters that provided a quiet, Old World feel in contrast to the city chaos below.
Their looks, tastes, and styles, the directions of their lives, were as far removed one from the other as any group of random strangers, 
but childhood, the common thread that banded them together, was tighter still than any difference. 
They shared easy conversation, the camaraderie of soldiers bonded through the trauma of war, until the glass doors to the terrace slid open and Munroe stepped out.
She’d cleaned up: The blood was gone, and at the door’s threshold now she stood a picture of demure innocence in a girlish dress and flat shoes.
She returned Logan’s glance, and there was a touch of mischief in her eyes.
Logan sighed. Whatever else she might be, na【马赛克1】ve and pure she wasn’t. 
She’d deliberately assumed this likeness, this facade of diffidence and modesty that so easily became a veil to the unlearned, 
and as was evident in that glance, she knew that it frustrated him badly.
He broke off eye contact, and her smile widened, as if to say, Yes, Logan, I know what you’re doing. His heart pounded heavily.
It was always a mistake to underestimate her, and although he’d not lied to or misled her, there was much that he hadn’t mentioned.
Logan glanced again at Munroe’s girly clothes, hesitated, and then introduced her to the others. “This is Michael,” he said, “the one I told you about.”
In addition to Logan, there were six around the table: real estate agent, lawyer, project manager, IT director, photographer, and medical student, 
all in their late twenties to mid-thirties, each one having fought to where they were now in life at such personal cost and private sacrifice that there were spouses who didn’t know the details.
Munroe took a seat, and one by one they introduced themselves. 
There wasn’t much small talk, albeit a measure of flippancy, while each in the little group told a variant of the same story: 
one of a life controlled and structured from birth, of consecration to God and The Prophet, of poverty, servility, and eventually a gamble— 
family, social structure, and their entire known world wagered on the hope that there was another life, a better life, out here in the Void.
Logan could hear the desperation that lay behind each measured word and wondered if they could hear it too. 
They were gauging her, uncertain if she was capable of comprehending the gravity of what was at stake, 
wondering how this timid girl could be the one to make wrong right, doubt written clearly across their faces.
Looking at her now, Logan found it difficult, even knowing her as well as he did, to visualize how such apparent innocence could be the harbinger of so great a justice. 
He understood their disbelief and pushed his own doubts aside, because he needed that favor.

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Chapter 1
Casablanca, Morocco
At last, the crowd moved forward.
He picked up the duffel bag and slipped the strap over his shoulder. 
Aching and nauseous, he placed one deliberate foot in front of the other, 
part of the collective escape from transatlantic captivity— down the aisle, out of the belly of the plane, along the Jetway and through the sunlit terminals of Mohammed V Airport.
Three days of little sleep had brought him here, three days and three lifetimes since that call in the wee hours that had, without warning, provided long-awaited news. 
He’d sat in the dark, rigid on the edge of the bed, searching his way through possibilities 
until, certain there was really only one option, he’d picked up the handset once more and placed the call to Morocco.
I need a favor.
Those had been his only words. No introduction, no explanation, only the plea.
“Tell me,” she’d said.
“I’m coming to you.”
And that was it. No good-bye, just his unspoken fear wrapped into those words and whispered into the night, across the wires. 
He’d put down the phone and then, with palms sweating and hands shaking, sat in front of the computer and purchased a ticket.
He needed that favor and had flown halfway around the world to ask it.
Now, without thinking, he moved with the throng while inside his head the words of entreaty came and went; 
rewound and started over; front to back, end to beginning in the same perpetual loop that had not stopped since the call.
He slowed. Stood in front of a plate-glass window. Stared out over the naked runway while those behind him hurried past.
Even if he tried he could never count the number of airports and train stations that delineated his youth; 
a collection of visa stamps and endless moves that defined his life as one of eight siblings hopscotching the globe with cult-member parents, together a ragtag group of economy-class vagabonds.
Into the glass he whispered his name, strange as it was even to him. 
The sound drifted in a low and hushed tribute to the past that had brought him here, the past that refused to die no matter how long or how often buried.
Sherebiah Gospel Logan.
His name was Logan. Only Logan. Always Logan. 
And to those few who knew the rest, he blamed it on drugs and hippies, which was so much easier than trying to explain what most could never comprehend.
Desperation had compelled him here, to the one person who did understand, the one capable of burying the past for good. If she so chose. 
He needed that favor, needed her to say yes, 
and instead of arriving with something to barter, he’d come a beggar, hat in hand with nothing to offer but their shared bond and the secret dread that her answer would be no.
His eyes tracked the last of the thinning stream of passengers and the airline crew as they trailed luggage down the hall, and finally his feet again followed.
He moved through customs and the whole of the border crossing on autopilot, until he came at last to the waiting area, and there among the sea of faces searched hers out. 
He passed over her once, twice, before finally spotting her with arms crossed and leaning into a column with a grin that said she’d been watching him for a while.
Vanessa. Michael Munroe. Best friend. Surrogate family. Personal savior.
She looked nothing like the battle-hardened woman who’d returned from Africa’s west coast eight months ago, 
now nearly unrecognizable in flowing pants and delicate head scarf, 
everything about her soft and feminine and the opposite of what he’d expected to find. But seeing her, he could hope again.
He stood in place while she shoved off the pillar in his direction, smirk indelible, slicing through the crowd nimble and catlike, 
her gray eyes not once breaking contact until she was within arm’s length.
And then, in a movement that would have resulted in a broken nose for anyone else, she reached out and tousled his blond hair, laughing that deep carefree laugh of hers that said she was genuinely happy to see him.
The inward rehearsal and stress that had consumed him the last few days was replaced by the possibility of hope. 
Logan grabbed her in a bear hug, which she halfheartedly attempted to escape; 
he spun her full circle, and when he’d finally let go and there was a second of awkward silence, she tousled his hair again.
“Jesus, Logan,” she said. “From the look on your face, you’d think you’d come to ask me to marry you.”
He ran a hand through his hair to mitigate the damage and, unable to contain the ear-to-ear grin, said, “Maybe one day I will.”
“You should be so lucky,” she said dryly, then with a light punch to the shoulder that held his bag, “That all you got?”
He nodded, the stupid grin still plastered on his face.
She smiled, hooked her arm in his and, shoulder to shoulder, nearly equal in height, led him away from the crowd, saying, “It’s really good to see you.”
The lilt of her voice, the uncharacteristic enthusiasm of her touch, gave him pause, and as they continued arm in arm, he turned to catch her eye. 
She grinned, impishly squeezed his biceps, and then placed her head on his shoulder.
“You hungry?” she asked. “We’ve got a long trip ahead of us.”
“I ate on the plane,” he said, and then confused, he hesitated. “How long could it possibly take to get into Casablanca?”
“Not Casablanca,” she said. “Tangier.”
The last map of Morocco that he’d seen showed Tangier nearly two hundred miles northeast. 
He grasped for reasons. “You and Noah broke up?” he said.
Munroe shrugged and turned ever so slightly, so that she walked backward as she spoke. 
She flashed him another smile, and in that smile Logan saw a glimpse of the same, odd, telltale stupefaction that hadn’t washed over her face in more than half a decade.
“Hard to call something that could never be whole, broken,” she said. “But no, things haven’t changed, we’re still together.”
She smiled yet again, went back to walking side by side, and in the wake of this last, the burden Logan had come to share grew that much heavier.
He understood from that look what she’d not said with words, and he fought for composure, to prevent the shock of knowledge from escaping to his face. 
He kept beside her, matching her step for step across polished floors to the lower level, where they’d catch a train into the city.
Logan said, “Why the move to Tangier?”
“I like it there,” she said.
Her words came blank and deadpan. No humor, no sincerity; her unusually indirect way of saying none of your damn business, and so he let it go for now. 
He’d find another way to probe the extent of the damage behind the smile, to come at it from a different direction, 
because both as friend and as supplicant, he had to know how hard he could push, how solid the chassis, how twisted the wreckage.
They reached Casa Voyageurs, the regional train station, and there, Munroe led him through the cool, high-domed terminal to the ticket counter, where she segued into an exchange of Arabic.
Logan handed her his wallet and she pushed it back. “I’ve got it,” she said. “This isn’t breaking the bank.”
Tickets in one hand, she took his hand in the other and moved beyond the clean and tidy interior to the outside, to the tunnel and its confusing array of tracks, to the train that would take them north. 
They were still walking the corridor to the first-class compartment when the car lurched and the train began a slow crawl out of the station.
Logan paused and, as he’d done so many times in years past, stood watching the platform shrink into the distance. 
Tracks and walls and city structures began to blur, and he turned toward the empty six-seat berth that Munroe had entered.
She sat beside the window with her head tilted back and eyes closed, so he dumped the bag on his assigned seat and took the spot opposite her. 
She opened her eyes a sliver and stretched so that her legs spanned the aisle, resting her feet between his knees.
Logan said, “I could have flown to Tangier, you know, saved you the trip down and back.”
She nodded. “But I wanted to have the time alone with you,” she said.
He faltered and left the unasked “why” hanging in the air.
She’d handed him an opening, presented the opportunity to unburden himself and say in person what he’d flown across the Atlantic to say, but he couldn’t. 
Not now. Not with her like this. He needed time to think.
Munroe paused. It was a small hesitation, but enough that he understood she’d given notice. 
She was aware he’d parlayed the opening gambit and was willing to go along with him.
“Noah’s there right now,” she continued. “He’s edgy, jealous.” 
She turned her eyes back to meet his. “I didn’t want you to have to face that right off the bat.”
“Doesn’t he know that I’m gay?”
She flashed a cheesy grin and crinkled her nose. “He knows. But he also knows that I love you.”
“So that makes me a threat?” Logan said.
She nodded.
He sighed.
The only way his arrival could be deemed a threat was if something else wasn’t right. 
Under ideal circumstances Logan would ask for details and she would tell; their conversation would flow in that bonded way of confidants that had defined years together. 
But this wasn’t ideal, not anything close to ideal.
They settled again into small talk, then gradually into silence as Logan, lulled by the peace of her presence, the rhythm of the wheels against the tracks, and fighting three days of being awake, drifted into the oblivion of sleep.
It was the subtle exchange of metal on metal that gradually pulled him back. 
According to the sun’s path, hours had passed. Dazed and disoriented, he turned to Munroe. 
She was smiling again, that odd telltale smile. 
She flipped the knife from her palm, her eyes never leaving his as she played the blade across her fingers.
Logan cursed silently, fighting the urge to stare at the weapon, and said, “Been a while since you’ve carried them.”
She nodded, eyes still to his, still grinning, the steel continuing to play.
Logan leaned his head back and closed his eyes— his way of shutting out the pain of seeing her in this state. 
The knives and all that they symbolized spoke volumes to how far she had fallen.
The sky was dark when they arrived in Tangier, Morocco’s gateway to Europe. 
Tangier Ville was the end of the line, and the station, with its clean and polished interior was in turn its own gateway to nighttime streets that birthed life and motion into the humid air of Africa’s northern coast.
Their destination in the eastern suburb of Malabata was close enough that they could have walked, 
but instead of footing it as Logan had expected, Munroe flagged a petit taxi. 
In the glow of the terminal’s fluorescent lights she bantered with the driver over the rate, and Logan sensed disquiet in her haste.
The ride was but a few minutes, and the vehicle stopped in front of a three-story building that faced the ocean. 
The apartment block, like most of the others Logan had seen on the journey, was whitewashed, stacked, 
and topped with a flat rooftop that he knew to be as much a part of the living space as the rooms inside.
He stepped from the cab and sniffed the salt-tinged breeze.
Parked against the curb not far from the building entrance was a black BMW, 
and Munroe swore quietly as she took note of it. “He’s already here,” she said.
Logan lifted the strap of his bag to his shoulder. “I’ve wanted to meet him anyway,” he said.
She stared at the car and after a long pause walked through the front door with Logan following close behind.
The stairs from the entrance led to a tiled mezzanine that amplified their footsteps, and they went up again, another half floor, stopping in front of the only apartment on the landing. 
Munroe turned the key and swung the oversize door wide to a deep and sparsely furnished living area.
“Home,” she said with a flourish, and Logan grinned at the joke. 
Six months in Morocco and she’d already jumped cities. For her there would never be anything so permanent as home.
The apartment was quiet and dim, the silence made larger by high ceilings, patterned floors, 
and a light current of air that billowed through open windows into gauzy curtains. 
Footsteps echoed from the hall and Logan turned in their direction as Noah entered the living room.
Noah Johnson, a Moroccan-raised American, had been a chance encounter on Munroe’s last assignment, 
an encounter that had eventually evolved into her latest and possibly final departure from the United States.
Although Logan knew much of the man from pictures and conversations, this was the first time he’d seen him in person, and it was clear why Munroe had taken such a liking to him.
He was an easy six-foot-plus, black hair, fair skin, and a rock climber’s physique.
In a gesture proprietary and tender, Noah pulled Munroe close and kissed her on the forehead, then extended his hand to Logan in greeting.
Munroe ran interpretation between Noah’s rudimentary English and Logan’s broken French, 
and in the easy exchange Logan sensed a fracture in the closeness the two had shared. 
He wondered as he stood there now, making small talk through Munroe, what it must be like in Noah’s shoes, 
to helplessly watch the woman he loved withdraw emotionally, to fear she would soon walk away, while extending a hand of friendship to the man he suspected to be the cause.
Munroe returned Noah’s kiss, said softly, “Let me show Logan around. I’ll be ready in twenty minutes,” and with that took Logan’s hand and led him toward the hallway.
Three bedrooms and two bathrooms made up the bulk of the one-level apartment, and a narrow staircase beyond the kitchen led to the laundry and work area on the rooftop. 
Like so many places in the developing countries in which Logan had once lived, the apartment was bare and rustic, the kitchen and bathrooms minimalistic, 
and as a whole the flat went without many of the standard fixtures found in even lower-income homes of the United States.
The brief tour ended at the guest bedroom, and when Munroe had shown Logan what little he needed to know, she left to dress for the evening.
He turned off the light and in the dark dumped his bag on a chair.
The room was enveloped in the quiet of night, and in that quiet there was a form of peace. 
Here, alone in the dimness, he could think; he could process and plan and try to figure out how to dig his way out of a hole that had, in less than a moment of clarity, doubled in size. 
He’d come to Morocco focused on nothing more than begging for Munroe’s help, a yes or no answer, 
and had instead been blindsided by the complex series of hoops he’d have to jump through to get it.
The sound of running water filtered from across the hall, and in the streetlight glow he sat on the bed, elbows to knees, methodically forcing calm; waiting.
A shift in the light under the bedroom door announced her presence before the footfalls. 
Logan lay back on the bed, hands behind his head, ready for the knock that came a second later.
She was stunning in silhouette, the loose and modest clothes replaced by a very short, figure-hugging dress that accentuated a long, lean, androgynous body and brandished sensuality. 
In heels, she had at least an inch over Noah’s height, and together they would make a visually intimidating pair.
With a hug and then a house key placed in his palm, she was gone.
The front door echoed a thud and Logan rose from the bed to watch from the window as the BMW peeled away from the curb. 
He waited until he was certain they would not U-turn for a forgotten item, then headed toward the living room where he’d spotted a telephone.