The Forgotten Girls Read online

  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

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Owen Laukkanen

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  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.”