The Doll Read online

  “We might have an understanding,” she said, and the Doll Man’s smile widened into a look of contentment and his body visibly relaxed.

  “I’m so glad,” he said. “I much prefer to do business with a rational person. It keeps the mess to a minimum.”

  A slow smile of agreement forced itself across her face. Given the state of Logan’s abused body, it would seem he didn’t dislike the mess too terribly much. “I should probably see the package,” she said.

  He motioned toward the door. “Valon will show you,” he said, and then to the young man, disdainfully in their own language, with none of the passing tenderness he’d previously shown, “Bring the doll transport to me when you’re finished.”

  Lumani nodded, his earlier elation replaced by something hard and expressionless. He turned to the door and, barely glancing in Munroe’s direction, nodded her forward and waited for her to move.

  She stood, slow and languid.

  Stepped across the floor in no obvious hurry, thoughts jumping and hopscotching from one random piece of information to another, scrambling to assemble a composite of the present and make sense of the unexplainable.

  The two sentries still stood outside the office door, and with Lumani leading the way, they followed Munroe back down the gold-worker-flanked pathway, through the metal door, to the underground again, beyond the cell in which she’d been kept, all the way to the end, while the same Hungarian voices droned on as background noise.

  Against the far wall of the narrow hallway was yet another guard, who rose from a metal folding chair as the small group approached. With a flick of a finger, Lumani ordered him to unlock the last cell, and the man withdrew a chain from a pocket and from the chain a key.

  Clanking metal reverberated through the tight space and then the door slid open. Munroe leaned forward to enter the low doorway and Lumani put out a hand to stop her. She paused, and in that pause a spoon flew past her leg followed by a rush of garbled slurs.

  The voice was female, the accent West Coast USA, and as Munroe saw and smelled when she ducked to enter, the holding cell had the retching stench of a pigsty.

  Lumani didn’t enter. Like the guards, he remained poised to allow Munroe to go in alone. Behind her, he flipped a switch and the dim light cast a macabre glow over the bedraggled creature that had retreated against the wall. Filth and rot overpowered the permeating wet of damp mold. Whatever food this girl had been given, she’d flung rather than eaten, mostly in the direction of the door. Munroe moved closer to get a better view.

  The girl was shackled, one foot chained to a metal ring in the wall like a prisoner in the goddamn Dark Ages. She couldn’t crawl far off the pad that worked as her bed and had been forced to soil herself. Her clothes were filthy, stained, and torn; her hair matted, her face and arms so streaked with grime, it was impossible to see what color her skin had originally been.

  Eyes adjusted against the light, the girl moved toward Munroe in a crawl, spewing creative profanity. At her approach, the stench grew stronger and Munroe fought the urge to vomit. The girl lunged, then jerked, caught by the chain. Munroe remained just beyond her clawing reach, the creature cursing and screaming, straining at her bonds with all the anguish and rage of a wild animal taken into captivity.

  In response to this, tears of anger and powerlessness welled hot beneath Munroe’s surface. Under other circumstances, violence would have erupted on behalf of this girl, whoever she was, and Munroe, unable to fight back the urge as she had in the hallway prior, or in the office upstairs, would have struck out to destroy the men who had done this.

  Innocent life.

  To save Logan would be to abandon this girl to whatever fate the Doll Man prescribed. To save the girl was to abandon Logan. The first wave of defeat crept toward the edge of Munroe’s soul, tugging at the upturned corners of thought, begging to be let in. She was a prisoner of the same story, her own chain just as solid, her walls equally thick.

  Munroe turned. She’d seen what she’d come to see.

  Outside the cell, where the air was bleach-tinged and free of the nausea-inducing, fetid, sick stench, she could breathe again. No words were exchanged in the hallway, not between the guards, not between Lumani and her. He simply nodded once more in the direction of the stairs and Munroe moved toward them.

  From behind, the thud of a hose hitting the concrete floor was followed by the squeak of an unwilling tap and a rush of water. And then the girl’s scream again—that gut-piercing, wailing scream.

  IN THE LARGE room, Lumani directed Munroe away from the doll office to a smaller room that turned out to be a bathroom with only a toilet and a sink with a speckled and aged mirror. With yet another flick of a finger in place of speaking, Lumani summoned and a young boy approached with a cardboard box.

  Lumani took it and glanced at the contents, then held it out to Munroe.

  She didn’t move.

  “For your hair,” he said.

  He paused, then pointing toward the bathroom added, “In your hands, that mirror is a dangerous weapon, yes? You could kill me. Kill a few others. I take this risk. You understand that anything you do will come back to hurt Logan?”

  Munroe, eyes steady on his, nodded.

  “My uncle deals harshly with failure,” he said. “You understand?”

  This young man, Lumani, this boy, had no right to Logan’s name, to spit it out so casually, with such familiarity, as if he were some long-lost acquaintance.

  Munroe took the box, turned her back to him, and shut the door.

  Slumped to the floor. The pit of blackness welcomed her to let go and fall into the murky depths where conscience and pain ceased to exist.

  Hands to her head, face to the stone, screaming without sound, she pushed back hard. For nine months she’d tasted happiness, a chance at the closest thing she’d known to peace and a real life. For nine months the rage and violence that had defined so many of her years had finally ebbed, and now those who had no right had come with impunity to rip her out of this newfound calm, throwing her into an impossible situation where no matter what she did or what she chose, the end result would be a return to madness.

  She breathed in rapid gulps. Needed time to think, to sort through details that made no sense; needed to find a way to reach Bradford and tell him to find Logan, to unloose her shackles, to buy her options, to buy her time.

  Lumani pounded on the door.

  “A minute,” she said. “Toilet first.”

  She stood and flushed. Opened the box and found hair clippers. Located an electrical socket and plugged in the appliance. These people knew what drove her, knew what mattered, appeared to know everything there was to know about her, yet strangely they didn’t suspect she understood their language. How could they not? Albania and Macedonia shared a border—Albanian was frequently spoken in Macedonia, especially among the border cities. It was an oversight so basic that no one from this part of the world could have made it unless everything they knew about her had been fed secondhand from someone who wasn’t fully aware of the geographical implications of wars and borders and centuries of conflict.

  Munroe flipped on the buzzer and stared at the broken, chipped reflection in the mirror. With hands skilled from practice and familiar with routine, she ran the buzzer from forehead to back, side to top, changing and adjusting blade guard heights as needed. Strands of dark hair fell away, shed into the sink. In the mirror’s reflection a young man with a military buzz cut and civilian clothes stared out with bloodshot eyes.

  To create the gender roles and slip between them was a tool of the trade so long utilized in her working life that it had become as natural as blinking, and like her gift for language, was a skill with which her captors were familiar and clearly intended to put to use.

  They knew.

  Munroe straightened and tucked the clippers away.

  Box in hand, she still studied the image in the mirror when Lumani opened the door. He hadn’t bothered to knock. She turned toward
him, her eyes the last part of her face to leave the reflection.

  He hesitated. Surprise faded into a grin that surfaced and spread slowly while he scanned her with the same blatant curiosity with which he’d first watched her in the cell. Finally he nodded, apparently satisfied.

  “The clippers,” he said, and Munroe handed the box to him.

  “You go to my uncle,” he said, and she understood then that in the twisted way of this crazy world, the creature in the cell below was the doll of which the Doll Man had spoken.

  Arben and his nameless counterpart flanked her again for the brief journey across the work floor to the office, a journey that mentally slowed while Munroe absorbed the details of the workstations, the miniature torches, the pointed tools, and the furniture pieces, each calling out to be put to use in the way of salvation. But this instinct toward survival and its rush to violence was futile, because choke chain to the junkyard dog’s neck, there was Logan. Always Logan.

  THE DOLL MAN stood when Munroe entered, and once more, with the geniality of an age gone by, offered her one of the high-backed chairs facing his desk. He waited until she sat before returning to his own.

  He motioned to her hair. “Very nice,” he said. “The illusion is better than I had anticipated.” And then he smoothed his tie and placed his hands on the desk. Folded them. “You’ve seen the package,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I have questions.”

  “Let’s take coffee, and we can discuss.”

  He picked up the phone. “Mala, donesi nam dvije kave, brzo. I to u najboljem porculanu kojeg imaš, čuješ?” Not English, not Albanian, not Macedonian, but close. She ticked more information off a mental checklist. Like her, this man spoke many languages, and as it was with her, language had nothing to do with his place of origin.

  There was a knock and then a slight creak as the door opened. The Doll Man motioned curtly and a young woman entered carrying a silver tray with full china service. Munroe and the Doll Man stared at each other without breaking eye contact, while the woman laid out piece by proper piece, as if this was the end of a meal at the Ritz instead of some alternate universe where Logan had been kidnapped by a madman and to save him Munroe would violate every sense of self and self-preservation by delivering that girl downstairs to … Where exactly?

  Alone again, the Doll Man, poised and proper, poured cream and sugar and when Munroe made no move to do likewise, he poured a second cup and took a sip from it before placing it in front of her. “There are no drugs,” he said. “And, please, what are your questions?”

  “Where do I deliver the package?” she said. “And through what means?”

  “You will travel by car. It’s a hard one-day drive, two days, perhaps, depending on circumstances.”

  Circumstances. Like dodging borders, outrunning authorities, and trying not to attract attention to the animal in the front seat. Or did they intend to use the trunk?

  “Tomorrow you receive details,” he said. “And the rules, and then the package will be your problem.”

  “You have men,” she said. “You’ve got guns. You don’t need me to do this. Why go through the trouble and expense—and risk—of kidnapping me and bringing me across the ocean just so I can deliver that girl—the package—to some location that’s only a two-day drive from here? You’ve already got what you need to do the job yourself.”

  The Doll Man put down his cup and sighed. “Such trouble I’ve had, my friend, such trouble. Issues with the delivery. Issues with the client. Issues with the package. Far, far too many complications and too much attention. I won’t risk myself or my operation, so you will take her.”

  Munroe picked up the cup that had sat cooling and, with elbows to the table and eyes over the rim, glanced at him. He’d had her shot, drugged, and abducted, held Logan hostage to guarantee compliance, then served her coffee in a fucking china cup and called her “friend.” This was like waking up in a Dalí painting of porcelain dolls.

  She blew on the liquid. “I can’t transport her in her current condition. Not even locked in the trunk.”

  The Doll Man smiled, his expression both chiding and tolerant. “She is custom ordered,” he said. “We would never send a doll to a client looking as she does now. These details are our problem. When we have solved them, then the package is your problem.”

  “Who is the package?” Munroe asked.

  “Neeva Eckridge,” he said.

  Munroe sat silently for a long while, mulling irony and cursing fate. To protect the one person who meant more to her than life, she would be forced to betray the one person she was contractually and morally obligated to save.

  “Human trafficking is a serious crime,” she said. “The whole world is looking for her. If I get caught, I will kiss away years of my life. What if that person in the video doesn’t mean enough? What if that girl in the dungeon doesn’t mean enough? What if I don’t fucking care?”

  The Doll Man’s smile faded only a little. He said, “Hmm,” then stood and walked to a table behind her and picked up one of the dolls. He carried it back to the desk, holding it in the crook of his arm the way one might hold a cat. “You’ll care,” he said. “If not for him, then for another, and then another.”

  He sat again. Stroked the doll’s hair and brushed his fingers along the dress with its intricate lacework. “She’s very beautiful, isn’t she?” he said. “She is perfect to me. I had her made to order. Like the package downstairs, made to order. I’d no idea the problems this girl would cause. I’m late in delivery. You’ll fix it.”

  “You don’t need me to do this job,” Munroe said.

  The Doll Man’s smile remained though his eyes never left the toy child. “You won’t like the mess,” he said. He raised his eyes to hers. “Let’s avoid the mess. It keeps things pleasant for everyone.”

  “Why me?” she whispered.

  “I’ve already explained this,” he said. “You owe a debt, and so for you this is a fair exchange. Your difficulty in understanding baffles me.”

  “I might be more compliant if you’d go over the details of this debt.”

  “What more details do you need?” he said. “Because of you my American facilitator is in jail.” The Doll Man paused, shifted forward, and began again slowly, as if trying to explain quantum physics to a four-year-old. “First the facilitator goes, then the logistic problems begin. After that, the money loss follows. It’s quite simple, really. So I leave it to you to earn the money back. This package is a high-high-dollar shipment. You deliver, we call it even.”

  Munroe sighed and allowed him the visible triumph of her defeat. “Okay,” she said.

  Very few knew who she was or how to find her. Fewer still knew of her attachment to Logan or had the balls to come after her, but throw a facilitator into the mix and only Katherine Breeden came to mind. In that instant of understanding, Munroe connected this crazy man to Bradford’s files, to the trafficker who made dolls of women; understood now that everyone she cared about was at risk, that agreement was the only way to purchase time, and on behalf of Logan and the treacherous waters they’d now tread, her soul grew heavy.

  The door slid open, a hollow metal clank that let in better air, way too much light, and set Neeva’s pulse racing. It couldn’t have been five minutes since that … that person … he, she, “it”, whatever, had come to gawk, and visits were never this close together.

  Teeth clenched, she positioned to a crouch, waiting for whatever would happen to happen: Bring it on, fucktards, and get it over with. Bunch of freaking perverts all of them. Carry in a tray of food and then drop your pants, stare at the chick in chains, and jerk off before you go. Reasoning, questioning, none of that seemed to matter here. Even pitiful tears hadn’t worked. And, anyway, these assholes didn’t speak English.

  No matter how many vile names she called them, they never reacted—except for the pretty boy. He’d smiled once when she’d been exceptionally creative, but that was sixteen meals ago and she hadn�
�t seen him again until today, when he’d brought that … person.

  Maybe that person was the one running things.

  Maybe that person knew the whole point of why she was here.

  Maybe they’d explained the reasons in their gobbledygook and she just hadn’t understood, although that was pretty unlikely. Men didn’t do a whole lot of talking when they were getting themselves off, and whenever one of these Neanderthals did speak, it was only to grunt commands she didn’t understand or to swear at her, which she didn’t need to understand to know.

  They couldn’t have brought her here just to feed her crap food and touch themselves, not even if they knew who she was. She’d dealt with crazy fans, even psycho fans—it’s wasn’t as if she’d never gotten sick stuff in the mail. But no matter which way she strung it, and she’d had plenty of time to think it through, this just didn’t fit the psycho-ax-murderer-stalker-total-creep-fan concept.

  She’d kicked, fought, bit, and screamed, and not once had they hit her back. They wanted to—she could see that—sometimes it even seemed as if they would—but instead they’d retaliated by taking away the bucket that functioned as a toilet and tightening the chain so that she couldn’t reach the drain in the corner.

  She hadn’t seen that one coming.

  Then they took the blankets and without them she shivered constantly.

  The only good thing, if there could be a good thing, was that the worse the smell grew, the more they left her alone. It had been five meals since the last gorilla had dropped his pants. Oh, sure, they could get off just fine staring at her chained and degraded body. But now that she stank? Not so much.

  Assholes.

  A shadow filled the doorway but didn’t enter.