The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (22 page)

Bradford headed right, down the winter-brown lawn and toward a
parking area that would have been heavily shaded in summer, nearly disappearing among pedestrians, and after a short while, reemerging to hail a cab. A moment later the vehicle swerved into the stream of traffic. Bradford was gone.

Logan shifted to twist out the kinks of the last half hour and, supposing that Heidi would arrive shortly, continued to watch the exit. He counted down the minutes, and as if on cue, there she was.

For four days he’d been following as she went about town visiting one random spot after the next. He followed because he didn’t trust her. By outward appearances Heidi was all-innocent and angel smiles, but behind everyone’s backs she was sneaking around. Unlike Gideon, with his in-your-face attitude, Heidi was subtle enough that it had taken Logan a couple of days to pick up on her patterns: a shopping trip here, an eatery there, her absences easily explained and hardly noticeable, especially since she’d turned into an early riser, and he and Gideon tended to be out late and wake up late.

In his gut, Logan knew what Heidi was up to, though he had only suspicions to go on. They were damn good suspicions—good enough to keep him following—just not quite good enough to bring Munroe into the equation, to get her involved the way he had with Gideon. Besides, he didn’t need Munroe for Heidi. He could handle Heidi on his own.

His biggest issue right now was exhaustion. Trying to juggle Gideon and Heidi, to keep an equal eye on both of them with their opposite schedules, was creating burnout, and fast.

He’d thought that Munroe’s intervention, her update on the project and warning to stay the hell away from it, would have affected Heidi—put some sort of pause on whatever it was she was doing, the way it had with Gideon. But so far, nada. It was up to him to put a stop to things before the situation got out of hand, before it came back to haunt him. But for that he needed some kind of proof, and
that’s
where the fine line between hope and disaster was drawn.

Logan stepped from his spot to the sidewalk and, without ever truly taking his eyes off Heidi, followed parallel to the end of the street,
to the waiting cab, reaching it right about the time that Heidi found one of her own. She climbed in, and the hunt was on again.

Keeping up with her day after day seemed so melodramatic, like a movie chase scene—“Follow that car!”—but that was as light as it got. Heidi, with all of her warmth and delicate ways, had just as much potential as Gideon to blow this project, and this close to finding Hannah, there was no way in hell Logan was going to let it happen.

Heidi’s vehicle led through Recoleta back toward downtown, and Logan knew now where they were headed. Not through any clairvoyance on his part, but rather because this would be the third time in four days that she’d made the trip to Calle Florida.

The shopping street was a consumer’s paradise and a surveillant’s nightmare: blocks and blocks of stores, cafés and restaurants, street performers, hawkers, and jostling throngs, which made it easy to lose track of a person. He knew instinctively why Heidi kept going back. If there was ever a place The Chosen would target in order to hand out pamphlets during their begging, Calle Florida, with its abundant tourists and dense crowds, was it.

The taxi dropped Heidi off near Plaza San Martín, and from there she walked the remaining distance. Logan kept behind her, just far enough back that in her casual stop-starts and occasional window browsing he remained out of her line of sight. Like on the days before, it was easy enough keeping track of her while on the nearby streets, which by comparison were relatively empty. But once she turned down Florida proper, where the crowds unpredictably ebbed and rapidly thickened, all bets were off.

Logan moved in closer, grateful for the teal in Heidi’s coat, which made it possible to pick her up again after he’d lost sight for longer than was prudent. The first time Heidi had come here, she’d walked the entire length of the strip, then caught a cab and returned to the hostel. But the second and third times, she’d moved on to other locations, and he suspected today would be more of the same. For that reason he needed to stay close.

And then Heidi was gone. Just like that. The crowd had parted, then surged, an undulating wave of people that had blocked his sight for but a moment, and then … nothing.

Logan picked up the pace, moving past a tight pack, switching right, then left, and no Heidi. He turned a slow circle, feeling a twitch of panic, trying to figure out where she’d gone, wondering if all this time she’d known he was here and only now had decided to make a run for it. He wondered if she’d led him to this street deliberately to lose him. The crowd parted. It was for a second, but he saw her, ten feet away, stock-still, solid in place, hands clenched, staring.

Logan followed her line of sight, and in that moment he froze. A block of concrete hit him midchest and his legs locked up. Every muscle, every nerve ending called out to do what Heidi was doing right now, to stand and stare at the small group of girls up ahead, with their bags and their papers, to search out faces, and from there to move quickly in a search for Hannah, because he knew instinctively that if
they
were here, then she might be close.

But even if he found her, then what? Grab her and run? To where?

Michael was in the city, near the Havens, on her way inside, and Michael could do what he or any of them could not: get Hannah safely out of the country.

Against everything he wanted to do, every instinct, every desperate longing, on trust alone, Logan turned to face Heidi. On her he focused his frustration, and with the emotional fog lifting, anger filled the gaps. Right here, right now, Heidi could ruin everything.

Reason kicked in. He moved toward her, a rapid pace that brought him to her side within seconds, and next to her ear he hissed, “What the hell are you doing?”

Heidi jerked, spun, her face blank. This was surely a double shock. First the girls just down the street, now him, here, right beside her, while she was caught red-handed. Heidi’s mouth was moving, but no words came out, and she looked ridiculously fishlike.

She turned her head back toward The Chosen. Logan grabbed her
biceps, locked an arm around her waist to avoid attracting attention, and spun her around so that her back was to them.

He was eye to eye with her, and every bit of anger he felt must have been reflected on his face, because Heidi went slack.

He walked her forward, away from the girls with their pamphlets and sob stories, through the crowd, those many empty faces, one foot in front of the other while his own mind reeled out of control. He hailed a cab and rode with her back to the hostel.

She said nothing for the duration, and Logan also kept silent. He was working through the script, the things he would say once they were settled, the words that would guarantee she put off her headstrong notion for good.

There was no doubt in his mind who Heidi had spotted—the features were there clearly for anyone with half a brain to see. And he had even less doubt of the shock Heidi would experience on so suddenly coming upon her sister. Had Logan somehow spotted Hannah on these streets, there’s no telling what he’d have done, and it burned, knowing that Hannah
could
have been there. Continued to burn knowing that if Hannah
had
been there, and had any one of those Chosen spotted and recognized Heidi, Hannah would be lost again, forever.

Burned.

He kept it to himself during the drive and allowed Heidi to remain lost in her thoughts, whatever they might be.

The taxi stopped outside the hostel, and Logan paid the fare. He escorted Heidi to her room but braced the door open with his foot when she attempted to shut him out. With a sigh, apparently realizing it wouldn’t be over quite this easily, she let him follow.

In spite of his burning anger, the ride had given Logan time to settle, so that by the time he spoke, his voice was calm and even. “That was a nasty thing you did,” he said. “Do you have any idea what would have happened if they saw you?”

Her mouth said, “They didn’t.” But her eyes said,
How the hell did you find me
?

“The problem with being as smart as you are,” Logan said, jabbing an index finger in her direction, “is that you start to think everyone around you isn’t quite up to your speed, but you know what? You’re dealing with some pretty fucking intelligent people here, Heidi.”

She nodded. Face grim. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Oh, really? Is that what you would have told Charity, told me, told Michael, when The Chosen packed up and shipped Hannah off again?
I’m sorry
. That’s real grand of you.”

“They didn’t see me,” Heidi said.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

“I didn’t really think I would find them,” she said. “I was killing time, keeping busy.”

“Not anymore,” Logan said. “No more traipsing around town looking for begging spots or trying to find their secret mailboxes or any of that shit. You stay put. Out of the way. That’s what we’ve been asked to do.”

Heidi sat on the bed, arms crossed, quiet, and Logan knew exactly why. From her look, her expression, maybe he was wrong to assume that he could handle her. It was touchy ground, him asserting authority over her, telling her what she could or could not do. She might take it from a boss or a boyfriend. Might take it from a stranger. But with the familiarity of their background, the terms with which they were raised, there was no way she’d take it from him or any person once part of The Chosen. And he didn’t blame her. It would have been no different were their roles reversed.

Truth was, the only thing stopping her from doing anything rash at the moment was her devotion to the greater good—of finding a way to prove to the world, or anyone who would listen, that The Chosen leadership and The Prophet were scum. Getting Hannah out was a huge part of that.

After a long stalemate, Logan broke the silence. “Okay,” he said. “I apologize. I have no right to tell you what to do, and can’t make you do anything.”

Heidi nodded. Uncrossed her arms.

“That said,” he continued, “I
can
predict Michael pretty well, and I promise you that after everything she’s invested in this, and after all the warnings she’s given you, if you do anything that interferes with her getting to Hannah, she’s going to take it personally, and she will exact a price.”

“What kind of price?” Heidi said.

Logan shrugged. “Honestly, in your case, I have no idea. Something she deems a fair exchange,” he said. “Set you up for a crime and watch you squirm your way through the Argentine legal process and possibly into prison, maybe. Whatever it is, I would never want to be the person to cross Michael,” and then he stopped, because he could see from the shadow that passed over Heidi’s face that he’d driven the point home.

E
lijah didn’t come, and in the protracted silence, Munroe waited with the deliberate patience of a predator on the hunt. The world of information, of infiltration and surveillance, of buying and selling secrets, was a world of endless waiting, idle stress, and measured self-control, a learned and practiced skill of knowing when to move, when to stop, and how to maintain a holding pattern for indefinite periods of time.

This was a holding pattern.

Like the four hours that had been spent in this room yesterday in order to allow Bradford his ten minutes of reconnaissance and placement, the waiting would buy her what she wanted. If she hadn’t already been handed a book and asked to stay, she would have requested something, anything, to prolong the visit until the missing vans returned and the house began to fill again. Elijah, with his desire to bring her into the fold, had solved that problem.

As if on cue, from beyond the front door came a mounting wave of sound, of footsteps and voices, all drawing closer to the house.

Munroe switched off the light in the alcove and moved through the darkened living room toward the front door. She chose the chair closest to the entrance, positioned so that its back was to the front of the building, and its direct view to the foyer blocked by a small wall segment. Here in the darkened corner she could see the side and back
of each person who passed, and the disadvantage of not being able to clearly scan faces was compensated by placement. Unless someone specifically turned around and peered into the room, she would never be noticed.

Through the front door they came, mostly teenagers, tromping in from the cold with the weariness of a hard day’s work. Based on the size of the vehicles and the size of the crowd, if this was the return of only one van, it had headed out with more people than seat belts.

There was conversation and a form of lighthearted jostling among the youngsters as they passed, and with no consciousness of noise level, the building took on a tone closer to what Munroe expected to be its natural state.

They passed in groups of two or three, loaded with coats and heavy bags, and were it not for the information she already had, by looks alone it would have been easy to assume that they were students returning from school rather than from begging in the street, which made up much of their daily routines.

From beyond the open front door and still out of sight, the voice of a woman called to several in the group. Three of the teenagers, having just passed through the foyer, paused and then turned. They stood but several feet from where Munroe sat, each face clearly illuminated by the hallway lighting.

And in that moment, time stopped.

Munroe measured out the heartbeat trying to escape her chest.

Feet away was the mirror image of a younger, female Logan.

Munroe fought the urge to stand, to snatch, to run, and made the split-second decision to hold back, based on the factors hammering their way into mental position: location to the door, number of people nearby, time needed to get to the vehicle, and, provided she could neutralize Hannah, the process of fighting her way out with a hundred pounds of dead weight.