The Overseer

by Conlan Brown

  More girls—others. Two Latino girls, older than the others, pulled from the truck at an earlier stop.

  The three girls, taken to another place. Stripped to their underwear—pictures snapped of them.

  Thrown back into the truck and taken to the gas station— pulled from the truck again and thrown into the van.

  Hannah opened her eyes. Wherever she was being taken wasn’t where the girls were going. But maybe it was where they had been.

  There was still a chance to save the girls.

  But who was going to save her?

  Devin watched the truck pull off the highway.

  The middle of nowhere. A single structure under a bright light at the top of a pole. A ring of dead bulbs, several winking on and off, outlining the edges of a dim sign: Roadside Motel. Rooms available. Hourly rates.

  The truck’s taillights rounded the back of the motel and came to a stop. Devin slowed his car and turned off the headlights, trying to navigate the car through the dark. He pulled the car to the side of the road and stepped out—hunching down as he moved toward the motel.

  The driver must have been doing something in the cab because it took him several minutes to step out into the night. Boots hit the dirt—crunching dirt under his heels. The driver looked around. Devin ducked around the corner, trench coat swishing softly. His back pressed against the side of the motel wall as he tried to stay out of sight.

  Devin listened to the sound of the driver walking toward a door, jingling keys and a clicking lock. He peered around the corner: the driver was gone, weak light glowing through the glass doors where darkness had been before.

  There was a moment of waiting—to see if the driver was coming back soon—and Devin stepped out. He moved toward the truck as he glanced at the light that glowed from a back room beyond the front desk. He looked a little closer at the front desk and saw something he didn’t expect—

  A handgun. Semiautomatic. He couldn’t determine the make or model through the poor light, but it sat there on the desk, waiting for someone.

  Devin considered stepping in and taking the gun but glanced at the truck—his first priority was Hannah.

  He moved toward the truck. His hands touched the doors, and he looked up and down: a long bar ran the length of the door, clamped in place at the base with a heavy-duty padlock.

  He examined the mechanism, trying to determine if it was a lock he could defeat without the key—something he was fairly certain he could do, if he had a proper lock pick. That or bolt cutters. Either way, it was an obstacle he would have to deal with before he could even consider getting to her, and he didn’t have the tools on his person.

  His attention swung back to the glass doors and the warm glow. He stepped toward them. After a few quick strides, he reached for the door handle—

  Devin stopped. A silhouette of a man, from the light—

  The driver.

  They stopped. Held. Stared. Just for a moment—the driver’s attention flicking quickly to the side, looking directly at—

  The gun.

  There was a sensation of weightless that swelled in Devin for a moment—like the apex of a tall climb before a diving plunge.

  The driver launched toward the gun. An ancient bell jingled as Devin threw the door open.

  The driver grabbed the gun and spun toward Devin. Their bodies collided, slamming into the front desk—the service bell sounding off in the darkness as the counter rocked.

  The front end of the gun was Devin’s concern. He slammed the driver’s arm down, absorbed the retaliating blow.

  A gun blast—the glass door splattered with opaque cracks.

  Devin reeled—a punch to the jaw. Twisting the driver’s arm, he hurled him into the wall—plaster caving. The gun hit the padlike carpet.

  Devin pinned the driver at the chest, trying to hold him there. The driver fought—struggling, straining, then reaching down. The driver’s arm behind the small of his own back, suddenly snapped forward—Ka-Bar combat knife, old marine issue. The dark black blade faded into the darkness, serrated teeth only visible as a silhouette against the ambient light on the walls.

  A slash at face height—Devin shoved away, preparing for the return.

  Nimble fingers teased the handle of the combat knife, flicking it in quick tremors. The driver was an expert.

  A slash at Devin’s throat, missing. Half a dozen slashing strokes came at him, Devin swatting them away with swift and skilled jabs. The footing shifted, moving through the front room like a violent dance.

  A wrong step, Devin losing his footing—the knife slicing too close. He dropped his shoulders, shedding the trench coat from his back into his hands. The driver, mad with ferocity, swiped with the knife, pressing the advantage.

  Devin swung the coat like a bullfighter, catching the charging beast, razor-sharp tip thrusting. Three flicking stabs, slicing through the coat, cutting it to pieces—sounds of ripping cloth.

  They slammed into one another—hitting the wall, tumbling to the side—smashing through a shoddy wooden door—into a motel room.

  A punch to Devin’s face and the driver was at him, holding the knife. Devin kicked him in the face and the Ka-Bar hit the floor. The bloody-faced driver recovered—attacking, grabbing at the slashed trench coat, ripping a long strip free.

  Grappling. They rolled across the floor—struggling for advantage. A swift move and the driver was behind Devin, wrapping the coat scrap around Devin’s neck, throttling him.

  Devin tried to stand—the driver’s weight pulled him down by the neck. A swift lurch and Devin slammed the driver into a mirror, smashing it.

  They hit the floor again—the noose tightening around Devin’s throat. The driver’s knee in Devin’s back for leverage, pulling hard.

  The blood pumped in Devin’s ears—a screaming like a teakettle getting higher pitched with every second. The makeshift garrote cut into Devin’s flesh, stinging painfully.

  His bleary eyes searched the floor: across the carpet, the crumpled clothing, a spilled bag of potato chips—the Ka-Bar.

  He grabbed the big knife with one hand, the taut remainder of the garrote with the other—slashing.

  The driver tumbled back—hitting the floor, then stood and charged like a wild animal.

  There had been gunshots—something bad was happening.

  Hannah worked at the crack in the door, trying to find a way to lift the securing latch. Her fingers hurt from digging into the cold metal, trying to fight the door open.

  Nothing was working. Nothing at all.

  She couldn’t stay here. The engine had stopped—the truck was just sitting there. She could feel how much the girls who had been here before her had feared it. When the driver came for them, pulling them from the truck toward—

  Her work became more furious as she let the panic touch her. Then she stopped, breathing deeply. She had to be calm—to work with her surroundings, not against them.

  But there was something in her that wanted to fight. To scream. It all reminded her of when she had been kidnapped. Stuck in that basement for days on end in the frigid wastes of wherever it was they had dragged her to. But she couldn’t let that cloud her judgment. There was more than her mental wellbeing on the line.

  Then she heard it.

  The sound of the lock clicking on the outside of the doors— swinging open beyond the false wall. Someone reaching for the latch, metal working free.

  Hannah looked around. There had to be something she could use as a weapon, right? Nothing. She took a place at the back wall, ready to make a running start at—

  Too late. The doors were opening. They swung open, and she saw him standing there: a tall slender silhouette behind a bright wash of white light.

  “Miss Rice?” Devin said.

  And she exhaled with relief.

  Devin motioned to her without speaking, and Hannah followed him into the motel.

  “The place is clear,” Devin said definitively and efficiently. “We’re going to
rest here for a few hours.” He looked at her commandingly. “I want you to get some sleep.”

  Hannah looked around. “Where did the driver go?”

  Devin pointed to the credenza—something sat on top of it, propped against the wall—a white sheet thrown over the form. She disregarded the object for a moment, then did a double take. Legs dangled from beneath the sheet, arms hanging limp to the sides.

  “Is that…?” She looked at Devin.

  He didn’t reply.

  She pulled the sheet aside and saw the driver—a knife blade buried in his chest, the handle sticking out.

  Sleeping after seeing that was going to be hard.

  No matter how many dead bodies a person steps over in life, she thought, it still can keep you up at night.

  John Temple brought the bags into the hotel room and looked around. Anything would have seemed top-notch in comparison to his “living in huts and hovels” missionary life. But this was especially impressive. A gleaming kitchenette with granite countertops. A huge flat-screen TV. A view overlooking the blinking lights and outsized casinos on the Strip. A fake Eiffel Tower, lit up like a Christmas tree, caught his eye. Bright, flashing billboards were everywhere below, filling the night with an electrifying promise of adventure.

  He glanced back over his shoulder. Trista had evidently retreated into the bedroom of their suite. He approached, considered knocking, then stepped away. If Trista didn’t want to see him, there was no point in waking her up. They’d both had a long and confusing day.

  He sank into the couch and picked up the remote, turning on the television. He keyed the volume as the set came on too loud. The television was set to the hotel’s main channel. He began flipping through channels, looking for something to fill the void—an overwhelming sensation of need for human contact.

  The Firstborn had disowned him, and his closest friend in the Ora, Vincent, had spearheaded it. Devin still didn’t trust him, and Hannah didn’t need him.

  John glanced at the bedroom door.

  And Trista.

  He turned back to an infomercial, a miracle cure to boost every man’s confidence in the bedroom. He changed the channel. A music video with a twenty-something coed dancing in next to nothing. He changed the channel. A television talk show with women discussing “technique.” He changed the channel. An after-hours premium cable show—soft-core pornography. John lifted the remote control to change the channel, then paused, watching the screen.

  He felt the sense of loneliness leaving him. Something held him there as a beautiful brunette winked at him through the screen.

  Beyond the conventions of society and small talk, he looked at the screen and saw something.

  Intimacy.

  Scripted, cheapened, and pumped full of plastic. But there it was: a sense of personal prowess and belonging. There was another word. What was it?

  Acceptance. As if the woman on the screen—who had never, and would never, meet him—was smiling directly at him.

  He lifted the remote, turning the television off.

  “Nothing good on, anyway,” he said to himself as he lay back on the couch. The sensation of loneliness returned, and he stared at the ceiling for a moment.

  John looked around, reached for the Gideon Bible in the desk, and flipped it open.

  “God,” he said to himself. God was the cure to all loneliness. And the only way to connect with God was through the Bible, right?

  To read a book that had been penned thousands of years ago on another continent, in a different culture.

  He read a chapter from the psalms and told himself that he felt better.

  John stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours. Finally, he fell asleep.

  Chapter 12

  THE SUN HADN’T come up yet. Devin had slept only a few unsettled hours. He hoped Hannah had slept better in the room next door. He’d found two rooms with made beds that seemed more sanitary than the others and slept above the covers, hands clasped, pistol under his pillow. It wasn’t the most restful sleep he’d ever had, but sleep, he reminded himself, was a crutch anyway.

  He got up and found a shower, checked for clean water— undressed and stepped in. He set the pistol on the edge of the sink, only a foot or so away, keeping an eye on the cracked door as he bathed as quickly as possible. He dressed, his suit feeling better after he’d had a chance to hang it out for a while. Devin smoothed the few wrinkles in a mirror and decided to make a second search of the motel.

  The place was dilapidated. Obviously built sometime in the late fifties and abandoned. Who knew if the people who had been using it actually owned the place or not—it wasn’t like anyone was going to check on them in this rat-infested heap. Nearly every room looked as if it had been rampaged through by a herd of wild animals—clothing, sheets, and even mattresses were tossed everywhere. The windows were open in a few rooms, letting the outside world tear in.

  Devin stepped into another of the empty rooms—the smell of dirt and mildew, just like the others. He approached the closet and opened it: intimate apparel, video camera equipment, a cardboard box filled with lewd paraphernalia. He pulled on a pair of leather gloves from his car and pushed some of the items aside, cautious of the health hazards involved.

  A box moved, and there was a jingling sound as something hit the wooden floor of the closet. He reached down, searching carefully. Devin had found used needles in several of the other rooms and had no interest in finding another one—especially not by the exposed tip.

  The last of the debris shifted, and he saw what made the noise: a tiny ring with a set of small keys. Devin picked them up and looked them over. He scowled in thought. They didn’t belong to anything in the closet. He scanned the room again, stepping toward the nightstand.

  Nothing in the drawers. He went prone, looking beneath the bed. There was a wadded shirt that someone had forgotten— and a box. Devin reached in, pulled the box out by the handle, and set it on the bed.

  A large, fireproof lockbox. Heavy-duty construction. He tried the key in the lock, and it turned with ease.

  Devin opened the box.

  These people were more dangerous than he’d realized.

  “Hannah.”

  She shifted slightly, suddenly becoming aware of her body again as she awoke.

  “Hannah,” Devin said again, stepping further into the room.

  Her body unfurled from the curled position she had slept in. Still in her clothes, on top of the covers of a motel room bed. She stretched as she watched Devin walk up to the night table and shove the items off of it.

  Hannah sat up, yawning. “What is it?”

  Devin spilled the contents of a fireproof box onto the table.

  “Guns,” he announced, describing the dumped contents. “Two Magnum revolvers, a Sig Sauer with the serial number filed off, and two MAC-10 submachine guns.”

  Hannah blinked; she knew the name. “MAC-10?”

  Devin picked up one of the submachine guns. It looked like a smallish metal brick with a stubby barrel and small grip. An ammunition clip that was almost as long as the gun itself protruded from the base of the grip.

  “The MAC-10,” Devin said as he looked it over. “Rickety little submachine guns used by street gangs. Fully automatic with a high rate of fire, made out of stamped metal—inaccurate to the point of unusable.”

  She rubbed her eyes, looking over the firearms. “How is that bad?”

  “It means that they’re trying to intimidate more than girls.”

  Hannah stared at the small pile of guns, her breathing getting slower.

  “What do you know about human trafficking?” Devin asked, waiting for Hannah to reply.

  She thought for a moment, still focusing on the weapons in front of her. “I’ve heard some things about it. In other countries mostly. Why?” She studied the lines on the dark gun metal of the Sig Sauer compared to the glint of light on the silver-looking revolver.

  “Hannah,” Devin said from another world.

&nb
sp; She was used to guns. She’d grown up around rifles and shotguns and cousins who liked to hunt. But the weight of a firearm—the precise construction of such a brutal mechanism always seemed to startle her.

  “Hannah, look at me.”

  It never seemed real until she touched them. Even now it all felt like a dream from some other—

  “Hannah,” Devin said firmly. She turned her head, looking at him—commanding in his suit and perfectly fastened tie. He pulled up a chair next to the bed and sat down, closer to her than she had expected, eyes focused and unblinking. “Do you understand what you’re getting yourself into?”

  Hannah studied his serious face. She answered with honesty, shaking her head. “No.”

  Devin remained still and silent for a moment, as if he were preparing his words with precision and care. “Human trafficking is the illegal buying and selling of unwilling human beings into sexual slavery.”

  Her breathing stopped. She knew that. But to say it? That was something completely different somehow.

  “Every day girls and”—he was careful to add—“boys are captured, tricked, and cajoled into the hands of traffickers who sell them as sexual slaves. In fact, eight thousand human beings are bought and sold in the United States alone every year. It is real, and it is dangerous.”

  Hannah nodded without speaking.

  “It is, by some counts, the second-most profitable illegal trade in the world, directly following after the drug trade.” His face became sober, looking her deep into her eyes. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Selling human beings into a life of rape and captivity is more lucrative than money laundering, counterfeiting, loansharking, and the international arms trade.”

  Hannah blinked. “The international arms trade?” she repeated.

  Devin nodded. “More money is made from the trafficking of human beings than from the sales of every single firearm sold illegally to every street punk, terrorist, and third-world dictator on the face of Planet Earth.”

  Hannah’s heart rate seemed to change—not faster or slower, but somehow painful, as if it were trying to tear itself apart. “Are you trying to scare me?” she asked.