ALSO BY OWEN LAUKKANEN
The Professionals
Criminal Enterprise
Kill Fee
The Stolen Ones
The Watcher in the Wall
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2017 by Owen Laukkanen
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Ebook ISBN: 9780698194106
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Laukkanen, Owen, author.
Title: The forgotten girls / Owen Laukkanen.
Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016036563 | ISBN 9780399174551 (hardback)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Crime. | FICTION / Suspense. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PR9199.4.L384 F67 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016036563
p. cm.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
To the memory of the missing and murdered women of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. You are not forgotten.
CONTENTS
Also by Owen Laukkanen
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PROLOGUE
You don’t ever surf trains on the High Line.
The wind howled like a creature. Screamed. Steel shrieked against steel. The night was a dark blur: pine trees by the thousands, Douglas firs looming out of the darkness, the occasional red smear as a signal tower whizzed past. And above, the night sky, the stars, so many and so bright.
Ash pulled her coat tight around her thin frame. Clutched her pack and ducked low behind the shipping container to ward off the cold. Couldn’t escape the bite in the air, late October in mountain country, the wind like icy fingers through her worn, ragged clothing.
She’d been riding this train for two days, all the way from Chicago. Figured she’d make the coast sometime midday tomorrow. The hotshot was Ronda’s idea, a solid mile of containers on flatbed stack cars, three locomotives up front, the fastest train on the railroad, a string of green go signals pointing the way west.
“Seeing as you’re so damn set to risk your ass out there,” Ronda told Ash, “you might as well make it fast.”
Ronda wasn’t sold on the High Line idea. Ronda said what they all said, what Ash herself had told other girls more times than she could remember. You don’t ever surf trains on the High Line. Not alone. Not at all, if you could help it. Bad things happened to women up here.
And yet here Ash was, bundled up by her lonesome, fifteen to twenty cars from the back of the train, the sun long set, the weather already bad and fixing to get worse. The last weather report Ash had seen called for snow flurries through the passes, maybe worse. You could take cover on the slow trains, tuck into the little cubbyhole on the end of a grain car, find an empty boxcar and curl
up, build a fire. The hotshots were open-air, though—and they moved. Ash had been near hypothermic since the last crew-change point, and it didn’t stand to get warmer anytime soon.
Mark this down on your long list of bad ideas. It was always her mother’s voice Ash heard in situations like this. You’ll screw around and die of hypothermia and have no one to blame but yourself.
Not like Ash had a choice. Time was of the essence. Ronda had let slip about Texas Johnny the last time they’d talked, said he was holed up at Ronda’s place, the last round of tests at the hospital pretty well sealing his deal. And Ash had spent enough time with Texas Johnny, eaten enough of his food by the campfire and borrowed enough of his money, that she figured she owed the old rider a visit before the end came.
“That’s noble of you, kiddo,” Ronda’d said when Ash told her. “Only thing, this is a limited-time offer. Poor guy’ll be lucky to last out the week.”
Three days, Ash told her. Keep him alive until Tuesday. I’ll catch out on the next thing smoking.
Three days. No time to dip south, take the warmer, safer route. No choice but the hotshot, the High Line. Bogeyman stories and the constant threat of hypothermia.
The train was slowing now. The wheels beneath her flatbed shrieked in protest, a shrill, deafening wail, the containers shuddering and swaying above Ash like ships in a storm. Ash peeked over the stack car’s sidewall, looked out into the night. Saw a cluster of lights through the trees, a couple of storage tracks branching off from the main line.
A town—small, from the look of it, a few houses and some railroad outbuildings, maybe a store or two. The train slowed and then jarred to a stop beneath a roadway overpass. The air was suddenly quiet, still, the silence ringing in Ash’s ears. A few flakes of snow drifted down, then a few more. Even without the wind, the night was bitterly cold.
Nothing moved in the town, but up the tracks, toward the engines, she could see other trains on the sidetracks. Headlights and shadows, flashlights and voices. Men, railroad men.
The hotshot just waited there. None of the other trains moved, either. This wasn’t a crew-change point; Ash was pretty certain. There was no reason for the train to be stopped.
But they weren’t going anywhere. And the low wall of the stack car didn’t provide much protection. Ash huddled against the container, trying to block out the wind. Glanced across the tracks and caught a glow flickering under the roadway bridge.
A fire.
A fifty-five-gallon oil drum, a weak flame stoked by garbage and scrap wood. The fire meant warmth. It meant real food, something cooked, maybe even hot coffee. It also meant other riders. And other riders meant danger to a girl traveling alone.
Ash was sick of being cold. She was sick of eating trail mix and granola bars, all of it gritty with road grime and diesel fumes. She could handle other riders, she’d proved that already—been out here six years, some puny punk rock chick from the ass end of Wisconsin, a hundred pounds tops, and no other rider, man or woman, had ever laid a hand on her. Damned if they were going to start now.
Ash shouldered her pack. Found her knife in her coat, her grandmother’s knife, rubbed the hilt for good luck. Pulled herself to her feet, climbed up out of the stack car, and dropped down to the trackside. Picked her way across the storage tracks to the edge of the right-of-way, a rutted mud road, and followed it back toward the bridge and the fire.
There was only one person, as far as Ash could see. A bundle of filthy coats and an old sleeping bag, age and gender unclear, just a vaguely human form leaned up against the concrete wall of the overpass, close enough to the fire to keep warm.
Ash hesitated, heard Ronda’s admonitions. But the promise of warmth got the best of her, and she squared her shoulders and walked closer.
“You mind if I join you?” she asked the pile of coats.
The other rider stirred and peered out at her, met her eyes and looked away. “Make yourself at home,” he said, shifting slightly. “Looks like we’re in for a wait.”
Ash nodded her thanks, crossed in close to the fire. Held her hands to the flame. “You know why they’re all stopped?” she asked. “I figured my hotshot would roll all the way through.”
“Derailment in the mountains west of here,” the rider told her. “Shut down the main line. They’re holding all trains.”
Ash looked up the tracks: three trains stranded, her chances of making Seattle tomorrow dwindling fast. More snow was falling now, gusting around the wind, and Ash shivered. “It’s cold out there.”
“Only getting colder,” the rider said. “It’s fixing to be one hell of a winter.”
He looked at her again, bolder now, and Ash could see hunger in his eyes—and something else, too, something darker. She glanced up the line again, the railroad men in the distance, too far away to be any comfort.
Forget this. Better freezing cold than dead, right?
Behind her, the coats rustled. Ash turned back, ready to tell the rider she was going to take a rain check, take her chances on the hotshot, but discovered as she did that he’d shrugged the coats off and was standing now, bigger and taller and meaner than she’d imagined.
“Don’t you try anything,” she told him, watching the way his lip curled as he circled the drum toward her, a predator stalking prey, moving in for the kill. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
The rider didn’t flinch, didn’t slow. Ash reached for the knife as he came for her. Closed her fingers over the handle, struggled to pull the blade out. And then he was on her, and she was fighting for her life.
1
Tanya Sears had to admit the guy was cute, anyway. It was just that she couldn’t remember his name.
Mike something, maybe. Mitch. Matt. He’d told Tanya three times already, not that it mattered. It wasn’t like she was going to marry the guy. Still, as a matter of self-respect, Tanya figured she’d better get his name sorted out before they wound up in bed together.
As it was, they were huddled in close outside Mike/Mitch/Matt’s front door, swearing and stamping and shivering as Mike/Mitch/Matt fumbled with his keys while the frigid subzero wind tore into them both.
Minnesota in January. Heaven on earth.
“Hurry up.” Tanya snuggled in closer to the guy. “I’m freaking freezing out here. And the colder I am, the more work you’re going to have to put in warming me up again.”
Mike/Mitch/Matt glanced down at her and turned on that smile again, that thousand-watt stunner that had more or less melted her into a pool of Jell-O after he’d nearly taken out her eye with that pool cue back at the Lamplighter. That smile was the main reason Tanya was here—that and the tequila. And Mike/Mitch/Matt knew it, too.
“I’m working on it,” he told her. “Just a little hard to concentrate when you’re all up in my business.”
Tanya arched an eyebrow. “Performance anxiety?”
Mike/Mitch/Matt slid a key into the lock. Twisted it and pushed the door open. Turned that smile on her again and stepped back so she could enter. “Not on your life.”
His place was kind of small, but clean, neat and tidy, no dirty dishes in the kitchen, no clothes lying around, all the furniture tasteful and modern—hell, even the books on the bookshelf were arranged alphabetically. The place was almost too tidy, Tanya thought, like, might-not-really-like-girls tidy. And wouldn’t that be her luck, to finally meet a decent guy and he’s gay. Or he happens to keep a stock of severed heads in his freezer.
Mike/Mitch/Matt took her coat and showed her to the living room. Dimmed the lights and played with his phone until music started up from some speakers somewhere, something moody and instrumental, sexy but not cheesy, didn’t scream one-night stand, but didn’t quite say You’re the love of my life, either.
Mike/Mitch/Matt disappeared into the kitchen, said something about fixing drinks. Left Tanya sitting on the sofa with nothing to do, and she wa
s just about giving in to the urge to rearrange the books on the dude’s bookshelf when she saw he’d left his phone on the coffee table and decided it was time she sorted out the name situation once and for all.
She picked up the phone, sly as she could. Slid her finger across the unlock screen, entered Mike/Mitch/Matt’s passcode—eight-eight-nine-three; she’d watched him type the code back at the bar—and presto—she was in, a background picture of some Twins player and a handful of apps. Tanya opened Facebook and tapped through to Mike/Mitch/Matt’s profile. Squinted at the screen, everything kind of fuzzy.
Mark, the guy’s name was. Mark, Mark, Mark. Thirty years old, single. Worked for the Marsh Implement Company, the local John Deere retailer. A tractor salesman. Okay, boring, but he still had that smile. Tanya could live with it.
She crept on Mark’s Facebook profile for a bit. Sent herself a friend request. Closed Facebook and opened the photo library. Chose a picture at random and started scrolling through.
Most of the pictures were boring stuff: Mark on a hunting trip, Mark in a fishing boat, Mark with some buddies in Minneapolis somewhere. Then a couple landscape shots, real artsy stuff, soulful. Looked like the desert; it definitely wasn’t here.
Tanya kept scrolling. Found a picture with a road sign. SANTA FE. “Why were you in New Mexico?” she asked before she could stop herself. Mark poked his head through the doorway, and Tanya held up the phone. “I spied on you when you typed in your passcode. Total invasion of privacy, I know, but these pictures are really beautiful. When did you take them?”
Mark frowned a little, confused. Then he laughed. “That’s a funny story, actually,” he said. “Hold on.”
He disappeared back into the kitchen. Tanya scrolled some more. A few more landscape shots, a few more pictures of Mark. Mark standing proud in front of a new combine, handing over the keys to some wizened old farmer. A picture of a mountain valley, pristine, no sign of human life, a stunning picture. Tanya admired it for a moment. Then she scrolled right again, to the last picture, the newest.
This picture was different from the others. Tanya stared at it, her mind not comprehending. Couldn’t look away.
“What’s the matter?” Mark came back, holding a cocktail glass in each hand. “Don’t tell me you found that stupid selfie from the Kenny Chesney show.”
The Forgotten Girls Page 1
