The Innocent: A Vanessa Michael Munroe Novel (28 page)

These three teenagers were no different from even the hardest of marks with secrets to keep and the moral upper hand in keeping them. Flip a mark from offensive to defensive, poke at his softest spots and put him under attack, whether real or imagined, and barriers are lowered and information becomes available.

Munroe bent the conversation offhandedly, focusing on their church,
as they called it, on the joys of serving the Lord and the blessing of sacrifice, reflected on the sacrifices made by those who’d given up everything to serve God, and then she pushed on, asking the young ones to explain how, having been blessed to be born into the movement, they could possibly match or appreciate what the first generation had given up.

The segue came so subtly that the girls never saw the angle. Morningstar and Sarai spoke freely of their own lives, their own sacrifices, and Munroe waited patiently, absorbing, while oddly, Hannah remained silent.

Munroe said finally, pointedly, “What about you, Faith?”

Hannah gave a furtive glance in Morningstar’s direction, and then, after what seemed like but the slightest nod of assent, Hannah said, “I sacrificed my dad for the Lord’s work. He serves in a special way, which means I don’t see him anymore—haven’t for a few years, so just like the first generation that joined and gave up family, I’ve done it too. I know what it’s like. It’s hard. But the Lord will bless me for it.”

Hannah’s words were confirmation of what Munroe suspected regarding David Law, but the blatant truth brought with it a pang of agony. Munroe’s face mirrored the placid reaction of those around the table while her own inner cauldron began to bubble once more. Hannah was a child that mattered enough to steal, enough to kidnap and remove from parents who loved her and who would have given her the world, but she didn’t matter as much as service to The Prophet.

Morningstar shot Hannah a withering look, and Hannah paused in her explanation. Munroe moved to salvage the moment. “At least you have your mom,” she said.

Hannah nodded. “She’s my mother in the Lord—kind of like an adoptive parent.”

“Is your real mom together with your dad?”

Hannah shook her head. “She’s in the Void, she’s an Enemy of God. We’re not yoked with unbelievers.”

Munroe knew the scripture and what that meant, and this was an opening to run in a million directions. She chose the path least natural
and most sympathetic to The Chosen. “So it’s for the best,” she said. And then, after a pregnant pause, “Do all of you have unbelieving family outside The Chosen?”

“Not all of us,” Hannah said, “but Morningstar does.”

Munroe expected another look of reproach from the nineteen-year-old, but instead the girl sighed and set to work mincing onions. The sting was powerful enough to set eyes watering around the table. “I have a couple of sisters in the Void,” she said.

“Older sisters?”

Morningstar nodded. “But I don’t talk to them, not just because they’re unbelievers but because they’re liars.”

“What do they lie about?”

“Things that didn’t happen in our church that they say did happen,” she said, “things that we believe and things that we don’t believe—stuff like that.”

“Like what, for example?”

Direct probing was a tactic Munroe generally tried to avoid, but here, Hez and the boy paid no attention, and it passed unnoticed by the girls.

“They say that children in The Chosen are abused and that we have no education and that adults have sex with kids,” she said. “Obviously, looking at me, you can see I’m not abused. Personally, this life is the best education any teenager could hope for, and no adult has ever had sex with me.”

Across the island, Hannah shifted her eyes. Her glance was barely noticeable, the type of look a guilty man gets when his subconscious overrides a lie and awareness quickly overcomes it. It was a split second of recognition, but it was all that Munroe needed to draw the connection. Her stomach dropped and her pulse rate rose. Instant. Calm to rage in a split second.

She put the knife down and slid it point first under the cutting board. Not because it was what she’d been instructed to do when it wasn’t in use, but because getting the knife out of her hands was the fastest way to keep from shedding blood.

M
unroe’s heart pounded. Her mind reeled, working at double speed not only to maintain control but also to process what she’d just heard. She only half-listened as Morningstar’s explanation continued, and then, in the resultant silence, without truly thinking of the potential repercussions, Munroe said, “It’s possible for things to have happened to your sisters, even if they never happened to you.”

Morningstar, caught up in the moment, and oblivious of both Munroe’s reaction and her undercurrent of challenge, plunged on. “I have hundreds of friends,” she said, looking like a younger, harsher version of Heidi. “And these things never happened to any of them. I can guarantee you that none of us are abused. It’s impossible to live this close to each other and not know what’s going on—surely out of all those hundreds, someone would have said something to me.” She paused, deliberated. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just can’t accept those stories as true.”

Munroe nodded. She knew the drill, had read it all before. This response was standard Chosen mind-set—one person’s reality used to reject anything other than the official truth, and the term “abuse” so easily denied because it held a different meaning for the children than it did for those out in the Void. Same word, different language. Munroe grew dizzy.

Yes, it was possible for this to happen in such close quarters and to
never know. The proof was there, right in front of them all, young and blond and innocent, with eyes on the zucchini, chopping away with not a word spoken to correct her elder in the Lord. Hannah’s truth was so obvious to anyone who truly cared to look—who truly cared at all.

The pounding in Munroe’s head was extreme; the knife in front of her a rapturous way to salvation. Munroe fought back the urges. Fought back the rage. Fought to maintain focus. “I have to use the restroom,” she said.

“It’s the first left down the hall,” Morningstar replied, and Munroe was already on her way to the door before the sentence was finished.

In the bathroom, Munroe pounded the back of her head against the wall. Eyes to the ceiling, she took in air but could not calm the burning. The lust for blood was there, pure and unadulterated; the desire for revenge; to bring redemption and right wrongs that should have never been committed. She’d planned to avoid violence, to wait for the night and take Hannah away quietly, but she could not. Her head beat against the wall, a quiet thud, thud. Could not. Could not.

And then the fire, raging out of control, collapsed in on itself into a heat of pure focus. Munroe moved from the bathroom toward the kitchen and the hall that would lead to the foyer. She would grab a weapon, pull Hannah out, and be done with it all. Five minutes. The rest of them could pick up the pieces, and to Heidi, Gideon, and Logan—well, screw it all, she’d tried—they had her condolences for the fallout to come.

She strode past the kitchen and around toward the main hallway, moved steadily toward the foyer, and as she came to the stairwell, stopped short.

At the foot of the stairs and still descending was a group of five men and three Chosen women. It wasn’t the numbers or the odds that gave Munroe pause. She could get out, could get Hannah out no matter what the numbers, provided fatalities were an acceptable by-product. She slowed because of the men. These were the visitors, the owners of the black cars outside.

They wore tailored suits and expensive shoes, and three of the
jackets bulged inconspicuously where there should have been no bulge. The three women, better dressed and groomed than any of the other Chosen Munroe had yet encountered, doted on the center two, who were at most early forties and easily brothers. The smiles were flirtatious, the conversation light, the entire crowd oblivious to Munroe’s presence until they’d all reached the lower stairs.

In slow-motion clarity the picture snapped into place. Posture. Positioning. Mannerisms. Airs. These were businessmen, yes, but more than that. Munroe had spent enough time greasing the palms of society’s underbelly to know corruption when she saw it, and this was it—two of them with their bodyguards, with courtesans provided courtesy of The Chosen—and the explanation for the Ranch’s better furniture and newer vans.

The group was on the ground floor now, between Munroe and the door, in no hurry and perhaps not even going anywhere in particular. They remained in the hallway, and when there was a pause in their conversation, Munroe continued forward, pushing toward the right wall as a way to get past.

Her slow progress came to a complete stop when one of the two bosses reached for her. He moved in a playful yet proprietary way, as if somehow he had a right to touch her. “Hello, beautiful thing,” he said, and Munroe smacked his hand away in a move so sudden that none but he and a bodyguard were aware of it.

She had acted without thinking, rationale and logic clouded by emotion, and the shock of it pulled her back. As the others turned to see whom he addressed, she softened into the meekness of damage control and instantly shifted roles. She stared at him now, under lowered eyelids, her body speaking submission to everyone else, but her eyes glaring at him, daring him to try it again.

Munroe waited a beat and, receiving no reaction from the others, attempted to move forward. The bodyguard who’d seen her act blocked the way.

Under other circumstances this scenario would have propelled her to a different sort of action, but today she wanted none of it. Her focus
was on getting Hannah out, and getting her out now; but her immediate plan to carry it through was rapidly deteriorating, not because of the manpower that stood in her way, but because as long as these armed men were near, there was no longer a quick and clean way out. Someone would be shooting back, and Hannah could get killed in the process.

The boss man whispered to one of his men, who in turn whispered to one of The Chosen women. Munroe remained where she was, her way still blocked, the boss man eyeing her like party food.

The woman’s face clouded when she realized what the men wanted, and once the response filtered down the line, the bodyguard stepped back and allowed Munroe to pass.

At the car, she walked to the trunk and stood there, motionless, staring at everything and nothing for a long while. The pause in the hallway had forced her back to reason, and with that reason returned the chessboard, the strategy, the plan that had already been laid out if she could maintain composure and hold it together long enough for the night to come.

She left the trunk and opened the driver’s door, slipped inside, and shut herself in. She took from her pocket the emergency cell phone and dialed.

Bradford picked up on the first ring.

“I’ve only a minute,” she said. “Did you get the information; did you run it?”

“Yeah, I just got my query back,” he said. “The vehicles belong to the Cárcan family, they’re business owners in Buenos Aires, highly connected, powerful, their names linked to organized crime. Most of it is high-level money laundering, although they’re suspected of far more. They work below the radar, definitely not friendly, definitely not to be trifled with.”

In Bradford’s subtle pause were many questions—like where she’d gotten the plate numbers and what the hell was going on, but he didn’t ask. “You’ve run into a vipers’ nest,” he said. “Please be careful.”

Munroe paused, thanked him, and shut the phone.

Beautiful
.

She stared toward the front door.

The scions of the Cárcan family had not yet exited the Ranch, and Munroe had no desire to still be sitting here when they did. Until they were off the property, extracting Hannah was out of the question, and if she wanted to keep the option of a late-night job on the table, Munroe had no choice but to return to the kitchen.

The hallway was empty when she walked back through it, and with each determined step to the kitchen, she worked herself backward, reverting to the same frame of mind she’d had before Hannah’s private revelation had set her off.

The kitchen was as she’d left it, busy and warm, and now down to the final fifteen minutes before the food was expected in the serving area. When Munroe entered, there were no questions other than to assure that she was okay, and on her affirmative response, all was as it had been when she’d first walked out the door.

Munroe moved on autopilot, her face a placid veneer to the simmering inner turmoil, grateful for the quickening pace in the kitchen, which left little time for any nonwork-related talk. And then, the pots and trays were out the door, servers from the dining room came to collect them, and the kitchen, which just a moment before had been nearly frenetic with activity, went suddenly silent.

With a theatrical sigh, Morningstar turned to Munroe. “My dad said you’re staying the night,” she said.

Munroe nodded, ersatz smile still painted on her face.

“We’ve got ten minutes till dinner,” Morningstar said, stepping toward the door. “Let’s get your things, I can show you around, show you where you’ll stay.” She opened the door for Munroe to follow.

This should have been a moment of exultation, the perfect opportunity to plot the house, the whole of it presented without ever having asked and without the need for subterfuge. But Munroe was emotionally tethered to Hannah, and to leave the room, even for much needed recon, put her further on edge. With tense reluctance, Munroe picked up her purse from the floor and left the three teenagers to their cleanup.

Munroe and Morningstar walked to the car, and there, outside, under the dimming sky, and next to the ever present sedans, Munroe pulled her overnight bag from the backseat. Morningstar watched with veiled curiosity, and her look gave Munroe pause. Morningstar’s glance at the car and then at the bag wasn’t the observation of a Keeper but that of a questioner, as if she were truly seeing the car for the first time, connecting its ownership to Munroe, and from there to the previous conversation about sacrifice.