The Stolen Ones

by Owen Laukkanen

  Watkins said, “If memory serves, Dale had a forty-cal Smith and Wesson, tricked out for a .357 Sig shell, fifteen-round magazine. Didn’t have a bullet left when we took the gun from the girl.”

  “Sure,” Stevens said, thinking, If the girl shot off a full mag, there’s at least six more casings in this mud. Thinking, Let’s start digging.

  11

  THE DRAGON WAS WAITING in Andrei Volovoi’s home.

  The loft was a mess. It reeked of marijuana and dirty laundry and burnt fish, and it was filled, as always, with idiots.

  Volovoi felt the tension as soon as he walked in the door. A couple of foot soldiers sat on his leather couch, their women beside them. Normally, the soldiers would be playing video games, sharing a joint. The women would be bored as corpses. Today, though, the women sat as rigid as the soldiers. They weren’t speaking to one another. The TV played sports highlights on mute.

  One of the soldiers gestured out at the balcony. “He’s out there.”

  Shit. Volovoi followed the man’s eyes to the windows. Couldn’t see anyone in the darkness outside. Knew, though, instinctively, who the soldier meant.

  The Dragon was here.

  > > >

  ANDREI VOLOVOI had not meant to go into business with the man his men knew only as the Dragon. He’d never intended to partner with anyone when he’d started importing women from the Old Country. He’d been a petty thug, a lowlife like the idiots on his couch, a new arrival in America tempted by music videos and flashy action movies. He’d struggled and starved for years before he’d hit upon his idea.

  His idea was women. America was a country full of men accustomed to buying whatever they pleased, be it land, luxury cars, or political influence. Why should sex be any different? In Romania, Volovoi knew swarms of eager, starry-eyed young women, as desperate as he to make a mark on the New World. In America, he saw opportunity, an ocean of wealth and a dwindling morality.

  He’d imagined the scheme would be easy to execute. A shipping container full of fresh product, all of them believing they were destined for happy, glamorous, American lives. They would arrive terrified, disoriented, helpless, and he would sell them to pimps and brothel owners at a terrific markup. Sex was a commodity. Young women were currency. Andrei Volovoi would import them and make himself rich.

  It was not, as it turned out, that easy. No matter how dumb and impressionable the young women may have been, they still had eyes and ears. They still saw and heard and remembered, and sometimes they escaped. Sometimes, the police raided brothels. Sometimes, the women told their stories.

  Volovoi had not been aware how close he was to disaster until the Dragon found him. Until he saw, in disturbing detail, how near the American authorities were to closing down his operation.

  “You cannot simply ship boxes of women, Andrei,” the Dragon had told him, smiling his devil smile. “Sooner or later, somebody will notice. And if you haven’t taken the steps to protect yourself”—the Dragon mimed a knife to his throat—“you will not be in business very long.”

  The Dragon brought capital, enough money to expand Volovoi’s operation tenfold. He also brought expertise, culled from years of ruthless, back-alley dealings and criminal enterprise.

  The Dragon helped Volovoi hide his operation under layer upon layer of shell corporations and false fronts, behind byzantine trails of corporate ownership, anything to bypass the Americans and their laws. He was as good as his word. Volovoi’s basement operation soon blossomed into a flourishing business; revenue soared, and the authorities lost the trail. Volovoi bought a Cadillac, moved into a swank penthouse loft. And the women kept coming in their boxes.

  But the Dragon’s knowledge didn’t come cheap. Even as the boxes multiplied and the customer base grew, Volovoi struggled to make a profit. The Dragon wanted royalties on his investment. Percentages on every dollar. And Volovoi, loath as he was to admit it, could hardly keep up.

  Business was booming. Profits were not. Still, the Dragon wanted to be paid. And now that Bogdan Urzica had killed that police officer, Andrei Volovoi had one more worry to add to his list.

  > > >

  VOLOVOI PAUSED FOR A MOMENT at the balcony door. Then he pushed the door open and stepped out into the night. It was warm again, humid. The day’s heat wafted up, as if from a furnace, from the city streets below, but still the figure at the railing wore an overcoat, long and black and punk rock. Volovoi had rarely seen the Dragon without the coat; it complemented his spiky hair and coarse, wiry black beard, and made the gangster look like some kind of heavy metal rock icon or something—assuming you didn’t notice the long, wicked knife at his belt.

  The Dragon grinned as Volovoi approached, that devil smile, wide, all teeth and barely disguised menace. “Andrei,” he said. “Here you are, at last.”

  Volovoi hesitated. Then he shook the gangster’s hand. “To what do I owe the honor?” he asked.

  “You are behind on your payments.” The Dragon kept his tone conversational, but Volovoi felt the danger in the man’s voice, regardless, like the blade of a knife to his throat. “What’s going on, Andrei?”

  Volovoi tried not to betray his fear. His business partner had not earned his mantle through acts of kindness and decency. No, he was named after the balaur, the fearsome dragon of Romanian mythology. He’d earned his nickname peddling weapons and women during the insurgencies in the Baltic states, where his appetite for blood and his relentless greed made a natural pairing.

  “I apologize to you sincerely,” Volovoi told the gangster. “Our profits are down, but I have been trying to reduce overhead. Streamline the operation. You will get your late payment as soon as this latest shipment is fully delivered.”

  “And the next payment, Andrei?” the Dragon said, his lips pursed. “When will it come?”

  “I am ordering more women from our supplier,” Volovoi said. “My buyers are lined up and ready. Business is growing. It is only a matter of time before our profits catch up.”

  The Dragon didn’t answer for a moment. Left Volovoi hanging, wondering, his eyes drifting down to the knife on the gangster’s belt.

  “Your business isn’t the problem,” the Dragon said, finally. “It’s your buyers, Andrei. They’re too small for our operation.”

  “So you have said,” Volovoi replied. “But as our reputation grows, so does our reach. We have nearly thirty clients ready to buy women from us. They are—”

  “They are nobodies,” the Dragon said. “They are small-town operators. They are where, Andrei? Duluth, Minnesota. Chicago, Illinois. Pittsburgh. Saint Louis. Reno, Nevada. They are nowhere, Andrei, nowhere that matters.”

  Volovoi followed the man’s eyes. “You still think we should expand to New York.”

  “I don’t just think it, Andrei,” the Dragon said. “I have clients willing to pay ten times what your buyers pay for a woman now. They’re all stinking fucking rich, and they’re desperate to buy. We could drown ourselves in money if we tapped into the market.”

  Volovoi said nothing. He’d had this conversation with the Dragon before, and he knew what the gangster’s wealthy friends expected for their money: not women, but girls, the younger the better. The Dragon’s Manhattan friends were perverts and pedophiles—wealthy, yes, but still the scum of the earth—and every time Volovoi considered expansion, he pictured his young nieces instead.

  “I am not ready to expand to this market,” Volovoi said finally. “I will streamline my business. You will be paid.”

  The Dragon shrugged. “Someday you’ll see things my way, Andrei,” he said, and smiled that unpleasant smile again. “At least I hope you do. I would hate to have to terminate our partnership over something so stupid.”

  Volovoi was careful to keep his face expressionless, but he couldn’t chase the chill that coursed through his body. The Dragon was not known for his patience, or his mercy. If he terminated the
partnership, he would terminate Volovoi with it.

  Volovoi had resisted the Dragon’s Manhattan overtures thus far. He did not intend to give in.

  All the same, he’d recently instructed his thugs to stockpile the youngest-looking girls from each new shipment of women, just in case. Just in case profits continued to suffer, and things became desperate.

  Successful businessmen planned ahead. They made sure they had options. Volovoi tried to emulate that mentality. Still, he could see little fun in crawling further into bed with the Dragon. He hoped fervently that things wouldn’t become desperate.

  He eyed the Dragon again, thought of Bogdan Urzica and the missing girl. Wondered how in the hell he was going to sleep at night now.

  12

  THE TECHS SHOWED UP around four. Three of them. The lead was a young guy, Nazzali. “Heard they ruined your vacation for this,” he told Stevens. “Or did you get bored of the camping?”

  “Wife and kids are at the motel,” Stevens told him. “I’m just trying to close this and salvage some family time.”

  “Yeah?” Nazzali squinted across the lot at the Paul Bunyan. “And how’s that going so far?”

  Stevens looked down at the mud. “Ask me when we’ve dug up this lot.”

  Betty Horst hadn’t been thrilled when Stevens explained to her that he wanted to tear up the parking lot to search for more casings. “Ed said they found a bunch of casings already,” she told Stevens.

  “Sure,” Stevens said. “But I’m thinking we could be missing a couple. I’d like to do a little more looking.”

  The diner owner contemplated her parking lot, as if already seeing the diggers in action. “Well, okay,” she said, sighing. “If you think it’ll help, dig away.”

  > > >

  STEVENS WENT FOR A WALK while the techs did their thing. Checked out the gas station down the road from the Paul Bunyan, and the marine shop next door, your typical vacationland toy store. He browsed around the lot for a while, gaudy powerboats with monstrous outboard motors, Jet Skis, pontoon boats with patio tables and deafening sound systems. Imagined, briefly, being the kind of family that could afford toys like this. Maybe if Nancy worked corporate, he thought. Or we robbed a couple banks.

  He chased the thought from his mind, left the boats, and started back toward the diner. Was almost there when Nazzali stood up and waved. “Come see this, Agent Stevens.”

  Stevens hurried over, slogging through the mud. Found Nazzali holding six bullet casings in his open palm.

  “Check this out,” he said. “We found these in this puddle here, a couple feet from where you guys said the decedent was found. Kind of buried in a tire track and sunk in the mud.”

  “Six casings,” Stevens said. “That makes, what, fourteen total?”

  “Fifteen.” One of the techs poked her head up from the mud. “Just found another one, Ramze.”

  “Fifteen,” said Nazzali. “And counting.”

  “Here’s another one,” said the tech. “That makes sixteen.”

  “Sixteen,” Stevens said. “My guy had a fifteen-round mag.”

  Sheriff Watkins had wandered over from his truck. “So, what?” he said. “Are we thinking the girl reloaded?”

  “I don’t think so,” Nazzali said. “Those casings you found earlier, they were .357 Sigs, right?”

  Watkins nodded. “That’s right. That’s what Dale was shooting.”

  Nazzali held up a couple more casings. “We found a bunch more .357 casings in the muck here, Agent Stevens, but we found these, too,” he said. “These here are for nine-millimeter rounds.”

  Stevens frowned. “Two guns.”

  “Sure looks like it.”

  “Well, shit,” Watkins said. “Makes you kind of wonder which gun killed my deputy, doesn’t it?”

  The sheriff’s words lingered in the air, and Stevens let them echo, feeling his wholesome family vacation in the woods come to a final crashing halt.

  “Two guns,” he said. “Damn it. So where in the hell is our second shooter?”

  13

  CATALINA MILOSOVICI felt the truck slow, and wondered if this would finally be the stop where the men dragged her from the box. She knew she should be afraid. But she felt nothing. She felt numb.

  A part of her had known, all along, that Irina’s big American scheme was just madness. Her older sister was a dreamer, a hopeless romantic. She’d gushed about Mike, the charming, handsome American, relayed his promises to her.

  “He says he’ll make me a model, Catya,” Irina had told her. “He says I have the right look for a magazine cover.”

  It was fanciful. It was fantasy. It was plain foolishness, but Irina had been too caught up in the illusion to really understand. And Catalina had let herself be convinced, too. She’d seen pictures of Mike, and he really was handsome. Wholesome-looking. American. He didn’t look like any criminal Catalina had seen.

  Still, she must have known somehow, deep down inside. Why else would she have run away and joined Irina? It wasn’t like Catalina wanted to be famous. She didn’t even really want to visit America; had barely ever left Berceni, the little village south of Bucharest where her mother and father lived. But just as she’d trooped after Irina that day her ridiculous sister had run away into the woods, she’d followed her to America, her trusty old suitcase packed with snacks and clothing and toothpaste, always the practical sister while Irina pranced about with her head in the clouds.

  And now it had all gone to shit. Irina was gone, run off into the woods somewhere. With any luck, she had escaped, though Catalina held out little hope that her big sister would come back for her. How would Irina find her in this vast, foreign country? And even if she did, Catalina had seen the size of the thugs who drove the truck. They were ruthless killers. Irina would have no chance against them.

  So now the truck was slowing again, and the men would appear at the door, and they would drag out more women until all of the women were gone. And maybe this time they’d choose Catalina, and who knew what they’d do to her then? Something perverted, no doubt, and she’d never even kissed a boy.

  She pushed the thought away, tried not to think about it. Let them do what they wanted. Irina was free. Catalina had saved her big sister yet again, and wasn’t that enough?

  The thought was cold comfort, but it would have to do. The truck had stopped, and the men were unlocking the door. Catalina stood in the gloom and prepared to meet her fate.

  But when the men opened the door and searched the mass of huddled women, their eyes seemed to skip past her, unseeing. They took more women—ten of them, maybe—dragging them out of the box, screaming, and locked the door again.

  The box began to move. The women around her said nothing. Catalina sank into a gloomy corner, resigned to more boredom and terror, as the truck and its cargo continued the journey.

  14

  NANCY STEVENS put down her paperback and cast her eyes around the motel room. It wasn’t a bad little room, as these things went, and truth be told, she was secretly a little grateful for the hot shower and comfy mattress that Kirk’s unplanned vacation from vacation had provided, but still. Kirk wasn’t here, and as charming as the town of Walker was, she figured she’d pretty much shown the kids all of it. Now it was evening, the sunlight was waning, and Nancy needed something to do.

  No fair that Kirk gets to work while I can’t, she thought. It’s not like I don’t have a mountain of paperwork I could be working through while he’s off playing cowboy again.

  She stood and walked to the window, looked out across the motel lot toward downtown Walker, the shadows creeping across the pavement like fingers in the evening light. “I’m bored,” she said, turning back from the window. “Who wants to go for a walk?”

  On the bed, JJ didn’t even bother to look away from the TV, some shoot-’em-up action movie, no doubt completely age-inappropriate
. Andrea had curled herself into an easy chair and was texting incessantly, her iPhone tethered to a wall outlet and her eyes on the screen. Neither kid responded.

  Triceratops, though, knew a good thing when he heard it. The dog scrambled to his feet as soon as she said the W-word, and bounded to the door, where he stood, whining, tail wagging, his big eyes pleading with her. “Well, fine,” Nancy said, reaching for the leash. “Just you and me, dog.”

  > > >

  SHE CLIPPED THE LEASH on the dog and told the kids to behave, walked Triceratops down to the lake, and stared out over the water and missed Kirk, hoping he would finish his case and come back to them. And as she thought about Kirk, she thought about his case, about the thin, beautiful girl who’d shot the sheriff’s deputy. She wondered if the girl was eating yet, where she’d come from, and if she was scared. And before Nancy knew it, she was leading Triceratops up from the lake, toward the county courthouse where the girl was being held, walking without a plan besides the vague idea that she might as well try and do something useful.

  “Nancy Stevens,” she told the deputy at the front desk of the sheriff’s office. “My husband’s the BCA guy. I was just out walking the dog and thought I’d check in on him.”

  Behind the deputy, the department was empty. “I think they’re all still out at the Paul Bunyan,” he said. Then he gave her a sheepish smile. “Did you say you brought the dog?”

  Turned out the guy was a bit of a dog lover. Nancy brought Triceratops into the small lobby. The dog gave the deputy a good minute and a half of tail wagging and tongue slobbering, then put his nose to the ground and set about sniffing out his new environment.

  “Probably smells dinner,” the deputy told Nancy. “I was just about to bring some in for the prisoner, see if she’d decide to eat this time.”

  “She’s still not eating?” Nancy asked.

  “She’s not doing much of anything,” the deputy told her. “She just crawls back to the corner of her cell and looks at us like we’re coming to kill her whenever we step near the door.”