The Stolen Ones

by Owen Laukkanen

  “Watch her, goddamn it,” she told the Billings agent. “And call for more backup.”

  The doorway loomed now, wide open. More women’s screams from inside. There was no time to wait. Windermere ran for the doorway, heard Stevens fall in step behind.

  > > >

  STEVENS FOLLOWED WINDERMERE into the building, his heart pounding. Inside, the Blue Room was chaos: overturned threadbare furniture, dim blue light and gun smoke, panic and pornographic posters and a maddening soundtrack of heavy rock music. Nobody in sight.

  Ahead of Stevens, Windermere took up a Weaver stance and crept into the room, her back to the wall, her Glock aimed at a doorway marked by gauzy curtains, and the stairway that led to the upper floor of the brothel. The screaming was coming from upstairs.

  Windermere motioned at the row of curtains. Covered the doorway as Stevens circled around. At her signal, he pulled the curtain aside and ducked back, ready for the shotgun.

  Nothing.

  The curtain opened onto a slim corridor. A couple doorways facing toward the street, another blacked-out window at the end, this one intact. Both doors opened inward; both were open. Stevens checked the first room, found a tiny bedroom just large enough for a single bed and a makeup table. A rack of skimpy costumes in a tiny closet. The window was blown out, revealing the street and the cruisers beyond. There was nobody inside.

  Stevens covered Windermere as she checked the second room. Identical, and just as empty. The rock music throbbed somewhere overhead. They crept back out to the Blue Room’s antechamber.

  Footsteps on the staircase, fast and urgent. Stevens swung around with his sidearm, found another terrified woman running for the exit. The shotgun boomed down from behind her, obliterating a lamp and a poster of the ’98 Playmate of the Year. More footsteps now, heavier—work boots on wooden stairs. The guy made it halfway down before he noticed Stevens and Windermere. He was a big guy, middle-aged, a red beard. He swore and swung the shotgun around, and Stevens shot him without thinking, reflexive. The guy gasped, dropped the shotgun. Tumbled down the stairs and landed in a heap at the bottom.

  The whole room seemed to pause. The shooter didn’t move. Stevens trained his Glock on him as Windermere crossed to the guy, kicked the shotgun away. Looked up the stairwell and then back at Stevens. “Nice shooting, partner,” she said. “That guy would have splattered us.”

  Stevens leaned against the wall. Tried to catch his breath. “Gotta be more of them.”

  “You wanna check the second floor?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  She looked him over. “You okay?”

  Before he could answer, another scream from upstairs. This one more urgent, a desperate plea. Stevens started up the stairs. “Let’s go.”

  They hurried up the staircase, as stealthily as they could. Stevens led this time, made the top of the stairs and swung around, getting his bearings.

  Another long corridor. More doorways. Red light up here, and more awful rock music, more X-rated posters on the walls. The lingering scent of sex and sweat and marijuana smoke. The first door was open. The screams came from inside.

  Stevens crept across the hall to the doorway. There was a girl in the room, he saw, the same one they’d seen from the street. She was young, sixteen or seventeen, no more than a child, her face bruised and tearstained, her skin pale. She wore pigtails and heavy makeup and a child’s white underwear. There was a man with her, his back to Stevens. He struggled with her, swearing, fighting to hold on to her.

  The girl screamed again. Tore away. The man slapped her and something triggered in Stevens, and he was inside the room before he realized it had happened, crossing the floor toward the man and the girl, his blood like a bass beat in his ears. The girl saw him coming, betrayed him with wide eyes, and the man spun around, raising a pistol.

  It happened in milliseconds. The man reached for the girl with his free hand, wrapped his meaty forearm around her neck, and pulled her closer. Brought his pistol to aim with the other hand. Stevens locked eyes with the girl, froze for just a moment. Just long enough for the bastard to get a shot off.

  Then Stevens shot back. Windermere, too. The guy dropped the girl and went staggering backward. Hit the wall and slumped down to the floor as the girl crawled away, sobbing. Windermere rushed the shooter, kicked his pistol away, as Stevens reached for the girl.

  He wanted to comfort her, tell her she was safe now. Knew he should get her out of the building to safety, knew there might be more gunmen. He couldn’t move, though. Couldn’t breathe. Felt like he’d been kicked square in the chest. He brought his hand to his shirt, felt the torn fabric. Tried to exhale and coughed instead, violent. Windermere looked back at him. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, shit.”

  Stevens made a face. “Goddamn it, Carla,” he said. “I think the bastard shot me.”

  65

  VOLOVOI DROVE WEST in the morning, aimed his Escalade out of Manhattan and along I-80 across New Jersey. Called Bogdan Urzica on his cell phone when he crossed the Pennsylvania line.

  “It’s me,” he told the driver. “Where are you?”

  Bogdan’s voice was fuzzy with fatigue. “Just outside Toledo,” he said. “We hit traffic through Chicago.”

  “The girl is okay?” Volovoi asked him.

  “She’s fine,” Bogdan said. “I fed her a couple hours ago. She’s still breathing. No further problems.”

  “Excellent,” Volovoi said. He glanced across the Escalade at the AAA road atlas he’d picked up when he’d stopped to fill the Cadillac’s tank. “I am coming to get her,” he said. “We will meet in Hermitage, on the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line. Call me when you’re close and I’ll give you your instructions.”

  “Hermitage,” Bogdan said. “The state line. We’ll be there.”

  “Excellent,” Volovoi said again. He shifted the road map in the passenger seat. Underneath was his pistol, a .45 caliber Beretta, sleek and black and deadly. “I’ll be waiting.”

  > > >

  VOLOVOI DROVE ACROSS Pennsylvania through the morning, sharing the interstate with long-distance truckers and tour buses, the odd state patrol cruiser lurking on the shoulder. He drank coffee and loaded and reloaded the pistol on the passenger seat, and he thought about Bogdan Urzica and Nikolai Kirilenko, and about his meeting with the Dragon.

  So he would expand into New York after all. He would sell girls to rich perverts, instead of women to country bumpkins. What, in the end, was the difference? Volovoi knew he should be happy. No longer would he be enslaved to the Dragon. No longer would he stock his shitty New Jersey loft with a collection of drug-abusing idiots. He would move up in the world. He would be rich, soon enough.

  Still, though. To this point in his career, Volovoi had succeeded in convincing himself that the young women he imported to America deserved what fates befell them. They were stupid, greedy bitches, too naive to recognize the hustle. They were adults; they’d made adult decisions. It was their own fault if they fell into Mike’s trap.

  Children, though? Volovoi knew that the American wouldn’t gather up the girls for the New York buyers the same way he tricked Andrei Volovoi’s women. No thirteen-year-old schoolgirl would fall for Mike’s tricks, his promises about movie stars and magazine shoots and expensive, fancy cars. Mike would have to find the children some other way. He wouldn’t leave them a choice.

  Volovoi knew he was splitting hairs. He knew he was a hypocrite, and that all of the self-justification in the world couldn’t rationalize how he paid for his Cadillac. The Dragon wanted children, and children would make Andrei Volovoi very rich.

  Still, though, it gnawed at him.

  He drove until he reached the interchange at Hermitage in the midafternoon, just miles from the Ohio border. Pulled off the interstate and drove south, away from the town, down a lonely, two-lane country road, until he came across an abandoned gas station.
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br />   It was an unremarkable little spot. A couple broken pumps and the cinder-block building, the windows boarded up or smashed in, nothing but shadows inside. There was a small garage tacked on to the building, one work bay and a broken door, the ground within littered with garbage and detritus.

  Volovoi backed the Escalade into the garage, as far back as he could go. The Cadillac was sleek and black; it disappeared in the shadows. He took the pistol from the passenger seat and tucked it in his waistband. Pulled out his cell phone again and called Bogdan Urzica.

  “Are you close, Bogdan?” he said when the driver picked up. “Here is where you will meet me.”

  66

  BOGDAN URZICA’S HEART POUNDED as he slowed the Peterbilt at the interstate off-ramp. Outside, the afternoon was fading to evening; in his mirrors, the sunset was blinding, and to the south, where Volovoi waited, the shadows grew longer.

  In the passenger seat, Nikolai tapped his feet and drummed on the dash, all energy and nervous anticipation.

  “Shit, I can’t wait to be rid of this little tramp,” he said. “Hurry up, Bogdan. It’s Andrei’s turn to worry about her for a while.”

  Bogdan searched for road signs through the bug-spattered windshield. “Soon enough, Nikolai,” he said. “Soon enough.”

  He was sweating, he realized. It was a hot day, and the Peterbilt’s air-conditioning system was wonky, but it wasn’t the heat that was causing Bogdan to perspire.

  In a few minutes, Nikolai Kirilenko would be dead. Bogdan watched his partner fiddle with his ubiquitous Big Gulp cup, utterly oblivious. He wondered if Andrei Volovoi would make the kill painless. If Nikolai would scream when the end came, if he would beg for mercy.

  Bogdan wondered if he would miss Nikolai. He slowed the truck at an intersection. In the distance, he could see the old gas station Andrei had described. The place appeared deserted. There was no sign of Volovoi anywhere.

  “There’s the spot,” Bogdan said, releasing the brakes and idling the truck into the gas station’s little lot. “Maybe we’re early.”

  Nikolai reached for the door. “Small mercies,” he told Bogdan. “I’m desperate for a shit.”

  Bogdan parked the rig. Watched his partner drop from the cab and hurry across the parking lot to the gas station buildings. Watched him circle behind them, his face a mask of urgency and pain.

  There was movement from the little garage at the front of the gas station. As Bogdan watched, Andrei Volovoi emerged from the shadows. He regarded the Peterbilt, then the gas station, where Nikolai had disappeared. After a moment, he walked, slow as death, around to the rear of the building.

  He’ll die with his pants down, Bogdan thought. Fitting.

  Volovoi disappeared around the side of the building. Bogdan watched the shadows for a moment, waiting, tensed for the shot that would end his partner’s life. Nothing happened. The evening air was still. Bogdan hesitated, then reached for the door handle.

  No sense just sitting here, he decided, sliding his pistol into his waistband. I’ll get the little tramp ready for Andrei.

  67

  VOLOVOI WATCHED THE IDIOT Nikolai run to the gas station as Bogdan Urzica waited inside the truck.

  Perfect, he thought, creeping out from the little garage. Stay where you are, Bogdan. I’ll deal with you in a minute.

  Nikolai was making foul noises behind the little building. Volovoi could hear them as he approached the rear wall. The bastard was disgusting, a pig, a waste of space and air, and momentarily, Volovoi wondered how Bogdan Urzica had tolerated the man for so long.

  Patience, he decided. Or desperation. Bogdan Urzica had debts with unsavory people, an addiction to underground poker games. He needed the money. The steady work. Driving women for Volovoi was the closest Bogdan Urzica could get to a reputable job.

  Still, Volovoi thought, listening to Nikolai cackle as he unleashed another hellacious fart, what a hardship.

  Volovoi pulled out his pistol, and circled around the rear of the gas station just as Nikolai hitched his pants up, catching him fumbling with his belt, a stench in the air. Nikolai saw him, grinned wide.

  “Andrei,” he said. “How fortunate for us both you didn’t arrive a minute earlier. You may have been scarred for—”

  Then he saw the gun.

  Volovoi didn’t hesitate. He raised the gun and pulled the trigger, watched the smile fade away from Nikolai’s face.

  “Andrei,” Nikolai said, grabbing at his wound. “What are you—” He collapsed to the ground before he could finish the sentence. Volovoi shot him again anyway.

  One idiot down, he thought, watching Nikolai gasp and bleed and die in the dirt. One to go.

  > > >

  BOGDAN HEARD THE FIRST SHOT as he unlocked the false compartment in the back of the box. Heard the second shot a moment later. Felt a sudden relief as the shots echoed briefly, as the silence descended again.

  So long, Nikolai Kirilenko, he thought. It wasn’t nice to know you.

  The girl’s eyes were wide in the back of the box. “Not to worry,” Bogdan told her. “That was only my partner. He will not bother you anymore.”

  The girl didn’t answer. Didn’t move. Bogdan held out his hands. “Come on,” he told her. “Change of scenery. You’ll be going the rest of the way with my friend.”

  The girl still didn’t move. She stared at him, a pitiful little wench. Bogdan studied her, the grime on her skin, her filthy, ragged clothing. Really didn’t want to have to carry her.

  “Come on,” he said. “Are you going to make me drag you out of there?”

  The girl walked slowly to the false door. Bogdan watched her approach. Moved back from the doorway to give her space to walk out.

  “Nothing funny,” he told her. “I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

  The girl said nothing. Stepped out of the compartment and into the back of the box. Bogdan turned to the back doors. Then he stopped.

  “Andrei,” he said. “Jesus. You scared me.”

  Andrei Volovoi stood at the rear of the box. He was a good-sized man, dark, his eyes devoid of humor. In his right hand, he held a pistol. A big one, a .45, from the look of it.

  Volovoi said nothing. He looked at the little urchin, then at Bogdan. “This is the girl?” he asked.

  “This is the girl,” Bogdan said. “I don’t know what the Dragon wants with her, though. He could get a hundred better-looking girls just by snapping his fingers. Why is this one so special?”

  “She’s special, Bogdan, because her sister is in FBI custody,” Volovoi said, watching the girl step down from the box. “She’s special because you let her sister get away.”

  Bogdan stepped out of the box and landed beside Volovoi and the girl. His heart was pounding again. His nerves tense. He felt his own pistol in his waistband, ready for the worst-case scenario. Beside him, the little girl’s eyes were wide. She could feel the tension, too.

  Bogdan forced a smile. “Anyway,” he said. “Here she is, for the Dragon’s approval. Unharmed, more or less.”

  “More or less,” Volovoi repeated. Then he turned toward the gas station, the Escalade parked inside the garage. “Come on.”

  Bogdan led the girl across the gravel lot. The girl stumbled; the ground was uneven and rough, no doubt, on her bare feet. Bogdan dragged her, ignored her protests.

  Just get me the hell out of here, he thought. Just end this fucking situation and let me go home.

  The garage seemed impossibly dark, the light of day making its last stand outside. The Escalade was a void in the middle, a black hole. Volovoi climbed in the driver’s seat, turned the engine over. Idled the big truck halfway out of the garage. Then he stepped out again, the engine still running. Circled back to Bogdan and the girl.

  “The passenger seat,” he told Bogdan. “Strap her in good.”

  Bogdan pulled the girl forwa
rd. The girl whimpered, but she didn’t struggle. She let Bogdan open the door for her, climbed up into the truck. Sat, stone-faced, as Bogdan fumbled with her seat belt, as he tightened it around her.

  “There,” he said. “Good enough.”

  He straightened, ready to tell Andrei good night and good riddance, tell him he’d dispose of the truck and the box and see him back in New Jersey, maybe ask for some time off before the next shipment arrived. He was already imagining a hot shower, a bed, maybe a girl of his own, hell, maybe a fucking vacation, some beach somewhere. He was ready to forget about the little tramp and about Andrei Volovoi, about the Dragon. Maybe he was even ready to buy a farm somewhere, go back to the simpler life. Who knows? He was free. He could do anything. He—

  Then Bogdan heard the click as Volovoi cocked back his hammer.

  68

  BOGDAN DIDN’T TURN AROUND, didn’t look at Andrei Volovoi. Kept his eyes on the girl in the passenger seat.

  “Andrei,” he said. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Step away from the car, Bogdan,” Volovoi said. “Nice and slow, if you please.”

  Bogdan’s mind raced through about a million thoughts at once. He had suspected this would happen, had hoped that Volovoi would be reasonable, but knew the Dragon, especially, may have demanded blood. And Andrei Volovoi wasn’t in the business of saying no to the Dragon.

  This ambush, then, wasn’t entirely a surprise. Hell, Volovoi had killed Nikolai. Of course he’d be tempted to clean up all of his loose ends.

  “Back,” Volovoi said. “Back away now, Bogdan.”

  Bogdan steadied his breathing. Tried to calm his heart, keep his voice flat. “Okay, Andrei,” he said. “Whatever you say.”

  He made to back away from the truck’s door. Heard Andrei step back along with him, create a little distance. He inched down with his right hand until he felt the pistol at his waistband. Volovoi was still backing up. He hadn’t noticed.