The Stolen Ones Read online

Friesen holstered his gun and grabbed at the first girl, couldn’t hold her. She fought free of his arms and ran, bolted to the edge of the parking lot, and the woods that butted up against the back of the Paul Bunyan. The driver pulled himself off the ground. Made a run at the second girl, who’d dropped down to the dirt. Tackled her from behind as she ran after the first girl, wrenched her back toward the box.

  “Jesus.” Friesen had started after the first girl. Now he stopped. The second girl was screaming, fighting in the driver’s arms, crying and clawing. The driver picked her up like she was paper, dragged her back to the box, and Friesen just stood there and watched like the dumbest kid in class, his mind struggling to piece the whole scene together.

  The driver threw the younger girl into the container and scanned the lot for the older one. She’d disappeared into the forest somewhere, out of sight, and the driver hesitated for just a moment before he slammed the door closed, and locked it again. Finally, something triggered inside Friesen’s head. He drew his sidearm again. “Wait a minute,” he told the driver. “Just hold your damn horses.”

  The driver ignored him. Started across the parking lot, toward the girl in the forest. Friesen followed. Was about to reach out and grab the guy when he felt something behind him.

  It was the other guy from the truck. The guy with the scar, and he was holding a big goddamn gun.

  “Shit,” Friesen said. “What—”

  Then the guy pulled the trigger.

  3

  IRINA RAN INTO THE WOODS as fast as her weak legs would carry her, into the underbrush, fallen trees, and tangles. Somewhere nearby, lightning flashed and thunder rolled. The first drops of rain began to fall.

  Catalina wasn’t behind her.

  The realization came suddenly, like hitting a brick wall at high speed. She was alone in the forest. Her sister was gone.

  Heart pounding, panic in her throat, Irina hurried back through the woods, toward the patch of parking lot, the truck. She was almost at the clearing when she heard the gunshots.

  Three fast shots, then silence. Voices—the thugs, arguing with each other. They sounded frustrated, their tones urgent. Irina heard doors slam, and the truck rumble to life.

  Irina forced her way through the last of the forest. Burst out onto the edge of the parking lot, where the big truck was pulling away from the restaurant, where the third man lay dead in the mud. There was no sign of her sister. The two thugs were leaving. They were leaving her here. And they were taking Catalina with them.

  Irina hurried across the lot to the third man’s body. He’d dropped his gun in the struggle with the thugs, and she picked it up, fumbled with it. Aimed it at the truck and fired.

  The truck didn’t slow. Irina fired until the gun was empty and the truck had disappeared. The men and Catalina were gone.

  It was raining now, steady. Thunder and lightning like an artillery barrage. Irina looked around the parking lot. Saw mud, forest, nothing that looked like home. She dropped the gun beside the dead man. Then she sat down next to him and cried.

  4

  “PLEASE, DAD, can we go somewhere with cell reception next year?”

  Kirk Stevens swapped an exasperated glance with his wife as, from inside the doorway of her tiny tent, his sixteen-year-old daughter stared at her new iPhone, searching in vain for a signal.

  “What do you need reception for?” Stevens said. “This is nature, Andrea. The storm’s passed. Come on out and help me build a fire.”

  Andrea swatted a mosquito and made a face. “It’s dark and muddy out there,” she said. “I hate nature.”

  Stevens watched his daughter zip the tent closed behind her. He sighed and dried a spot on the picnic bench next to his wife. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Last year, she was begging to go camping. What happened?”

  Nancy Stevens looked up from her novel. “She’s growing up, Kirk. It happens.”

  “Not like this,” Stevens said. “This isn’t maturing. This is Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This isn’t the same girl.”

  “Sure it is.” Nancy turned her flashlight toward the lakeshore, where ten-year-old JJ chased fireflies with his dog by the water. “She’s just getting older. Her priorities are changing.”

  “So now her priority is a stupid cell phone.”

  “Not the phone, Kirk.” Nancy gave him a sly smile. “It’s the boy on the other end of it.”

  Stevens frowned. “A boy.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Andrea has a boyfriend?”

  Nancy turned back to her book. “You didn’t hear it from me.”

  Stevens considered his daughter’s tent again. The light from her phone shone through the thin nylon walls. Every minute or so, those walls shook, accompanied by a slap and a groan as Andrea swatted another mosquito.

  A boyfriend, Stevens thought. Already?

  > > >

  AS LONG AS STEVENS could remember, his daughter had loved the family’s annual summer vacation in the woods. Every year, he and Nancy would pack up his old Cherokee with tents and coolers and inflatable rafts and take the kids north from Saint Paul into some real terrain—well, mostly just family campgrounds on one of Minnesota’s famous ten thousand lakes, but if you got a quiet campsite and were willing to pretend, you could almost imagine you were Louis Hennepin or Pierre-Charles Le Sueur, venturing into uncharted wilderness.

  This year, more than ever, Stevens needed a break. A special agent with the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, he’d worked the spring months on a blockbuster case, another Carla Windermere special. In the three years that he’d known his beautiful FBI counterpart, Stevens had helped Windermere put down a kidnapping ring, a violent bank robber, and, this past April, the ringleader of an online contract-killing operation called Killswitch. It had been another exhausting, exhilarating ride, and as soon as the case was closed, the paperwork was stamped and signed, and JJ and Andrea were out of school for the summer, Stevens had filled up the Jeep with family, dog, and provisions, and pointed it north for a couple well-deserved weeks off, away from the BCA, Windermere, and any cell phones.

  This summer’s destination was Itasca State Park, the headwaters of the Mississippi River, some two hundred miles northwest of the Twin Cities. Stevens had been looking forward to exploring the park with his family, hiking, fishing, swimming, and maybe checking out a few of the pioneer landmarks in the area. Usually, his daughter was an enthusiastic sidekick. This year, though, Andrea was treating her vacation like a prison march.

  Stevens looked around for the matches. Found them beneath one of Andrea’s teen-heartthrob magazines. Both the magazine and the matches were soggy; the storm had kind of surprised the Stevenses in their campsite.

  Stevens held up the matchbox. “Not going to have much luck cooking dinner without a fire,” he told Nancy. “Maybe I’ll take lover girl to town with me, get some more matches.”

  > > >

  “SO WHAT’S SO IMPORTANT that you can’t spend a couple weeks in the wilderness with your old dad?” Stevens asked his daughter as they drove away from the campground toward the Lake Itasca townsite. It was fully dark now, the headlights of Stevens’s Cherokee lighting up the dirt road and the forest beyond, the moths and mosquitoes and the odd pair of eyes from a creature in the woods.

  In the passenger seat, Andrea rolled her eyes. “Nothing, Dad. Don’t worry about it.”

  “You used to love this stuff, kiddo. Now you fiddle around with that phone all day. You haven’t even gone swimming.”

  “The water’s too cold,” Andrea said.

  “Never used to bug you before.” Stevens grinned at her. “Your mother says you might have a new friend back in town.”

  “Dad!” Andrea went bright red. “She did not say that.”

  “I think the term she used was ‘boyfriend.’”

  “Oh. My. God. Not even.” Andrea s
hook her head furiously and turned to look out the window. “We’re just friends. I can’t believe Mom told you that.”

  “He have a name, this guy?”

  Andrea hesitated. “Calvin,” she said.

  “As in Calvin and Hobbes? He come with a tiger?”

  “What?”

  “Before your time,” Stevens said. “Look, here’s the townsite. Maybe you’ll get some reception.”

  Andrea pulled out her phone as the lights of the townsite—barely more than a hostel and a corner store—came into view. To Stevens’s surprise, though, it was his own phone that began to buzz. Three missed calls, all from Tim Lesley.

  Strange, Stevens thought. Tim Lesley was his boss, the Special Agent in Charge of Investigations at the Minnesota BCA. And even though Stevens was on vacation, pending a new assignment on a joint BCA-FBI violent crimes task force, something was bothering Lesley enough to call his star agent in the middle of the woods.

  Stevens glanced at his daughter. “Any luck?”

  Andrea fiddled with her cell phone, held it aloft, and made a face. “No,” she said.

  “Tough beans.” Stevens sighed as he dialed Lesley’s number. “Wanna trade?”

  5

  THE BARBECUE WAS WINDING DOWN when Andrei Volovoi’s phone began to ring. Instinctively, he stiffened in his seat, scanned the backyard as, in her lawn chair beside him, Veronika giggled.

  “What kind of ringtone is that, Uncle Andrei?” she said as the phone continued to ring in his pocket. “It sounds like your phone is from 1980.”

  Volovoi smiled back at his niece. “It’s a genuine antique, Veronika,” he told her. “I bought it when I was your age.”

  He excused himself from the table, stood, and wandered into his sister’s backyard, where darkness had fallen fully and mosquitoes swarmed. He removed the phone from his pocket, a cheap, corner-store throwaway, and checked the number on the screen. Bogdan Urzica, one of his drivers. He would be calling from the road, probably Minnesota.

  Volovoi glanced back at the table, made sure none of his family could overhear. Then he answered the phone. “Bogdan.”

  “We have a problem, Andrei.”

  Even from fifteen hundred miles away, Bogdan Urzica’s voice made Volovoi nervous. The driver and his partner, the idiot Nikolai Kirilenko, were at this moment delivering another cargo of Volovoi’s women to their buyers. Any problem Bogdan might have was bound to be serious.

  Volovoi retreated farther into the backyard. Watched his sister gather his two nieces, Veronika and little Adriana, and herd them toward the house. In the distance, Volovoi could hear traffic on Ocean Parkway, happy laughter, the sounds of another Brighton Beach summer night. Inside, though, he felt cold, despite the humid air. He turned away from the house and spoke quietly into his phone. “What kind of problem?”

  “A girl escaped the box,” Bogdan told him, “in northern Minnesota, just now. There is a dead man. A police officer. We had no choice.”

  Volovoi closed his eyes. He trusted Bogdan Urzica. If the man was not a friend, he was a good acquaintance anyway. He was a hard worker. He was cautious. He avoided problems. He was a man Andrei Volovoi could respect. If Bogdan Urzica had killed a police officer, he’d had a good reason to do so.

  Still, the thought made Volovoi’s stomach churn.

  “We are safe,” Bogdan told him. “We escaped with the rest of the cargo. If you have no hesitations, Nikolai and I will continue our deliveries.”

  Volovoi forced himself to exhale. Relax. It was not the first time a girl had escaped from the box. It was not the first time the drivers had been forced to kill someone.

  In any case, the girl probably didn’t speak English. Most of them didn’t, but they still bought the dream that Volovoi’s pickers sold them. A new life in America. Supermodel. Actress. Fame and fortune.

  Hell, Volovoi thought, any woman dumb enough to fall for the trap deserves the box and whatever comes after. Generally, though, he tried not to think about the women. He was too busy keeping his business afloat.

  Bogdan Urzica cleared his throat. “Boss?”

  It was troublesome that a girl had escaped. It was bad, very bad, that a police officer was dead. But these things happened when you made your living selling women. There were always going to be risks, no matter how fervently you fought to contain them. No matter how often you tried to preach prudence.

  This was not a disaster, Volovoi decided. Therefore, there was no reason to mention it to the Dragon.

  He crossed the backyard to where Veronika watched him from the doorway, her blond hair falling in ringlets across her face. Volovoi waved at her, watched her face light up as she smiled back at him. He exhaled again, felt the tightness in his chest dissipate.

  “Everything will be fine,” he told Bogdan Urzica. “Carry on with your deliveries as planned.”

  6

  “IT’S JUST FOR THE DAY,” Stevens said. “We’ll check out Leech Lake, have a nice dinner. Stay for the night, maybe.”

  Andrea pumped her fist. “Yes,” she said. “Mom, can we?”

  “I just don’t understand why Lesley can’t find someone else,” Nancy said from across the campfire. “You’re on vacation, Kirk.”

  Stevens pulled his marshmallow away from the fire. Even, golden brown. He reached behind him for a Hershey bar and a couple of graham crackers, assembled the perfect s’more, and handed it off to JJ. “There you go, kiddo,” he said. “Make sure Triceratops doesn’t get any of that chocolate, right?”

  Triceratops, JJ’s big German shepherd, fixed Stevens with a mournful expression. Stevens scratched behind the dog’s ears. “It’s forty miles away,” he told his wife. “I’m closer than any other agent. He said it’s an open-and-shut kind of deal. The sheriff’s department just wants someone there to oversee the procedure. Make sure every i’s dotted, that kind of thing.”

  “And it has to be you,” Nancy said.

  “Sounds like it,” Stevens said. “On the bright side, Cass County’s springing for motel rooms.” He grinned at her. “Two of them.”

  > > >

  IN TRUTH, Stevens was a little miffed that Tim Lesley had decided to interrupt his vacation for some kind of procedural exercise. Yes, Itasca State Park was less than forty miles from the Cass County Sheriff’s Office in Walker, but so was Bemidji, where the BCA’s forensics team was based. Surely someone could spare the drive.

  The case itself was kind of a head-scratcher. A sheriff’s deputy, headed back to Walker from his favorite fishing hole, stops at a local diner for a cup of coffee and a slice of pie before the rain sets in. Finishes the pie, wanders out into the parking lot, and gets himself shot. When the deputy’s colleagues arrive, they find a hysterical young woman holding the guy’s personal Smith & Wesson, the mag empty. Gunpowder residue on her hands. Three holes in the guy’s chest and forehead.

  “Easy-peasy,” Lesley had said. “Sheriff’s office just wants some outside oversight. They don’t get too many homicides, so they want to make sure they’re doing this one right.”

  “Who’s the woman?” Stevens asked.

  “Nobody’s sure yet,” Lesley said. “She didn’t have ID on her, and best anyone can tell, she wasn’t speaking much English.”

  “So why’d she kill this guy Friesen?”

  “Who knows?” Lesley replied. “Like I said, she’s not saying much.”

  A mystery woman. No ID. No English. No clue how she got to the truck stop, or how she got her hands on that deputy’s piece. Maybe the sheriff’s department has a better line on her, Stevens thought, surveying his family across the campfire. The last thing I need is another blockbuster.

  7

  HOWEVER SHE FELT about the rest of Derek Mathers, Carla Windermere had to admit that the junior FBI agent was pretty damn good in bed.

  And a good thing, too. Windermere had almost given up
on sex after Mark had walked out on her and moved back to Miami two and a half years ago. She had pretty well resigned herself to living alone, avoiding complications. People were overrated, she’d decided. Relationships got messy, and Windermere liked her life clean.

  She sat up in bed and studied Mathers, all six-plus feet of goofy corn-fed Wisconsin farm boy tangled up in her new cotton sheets, smiling that dumb smile that, despite her best efforts, always seemed to worm its way past her defenses.

  “Goddamn it, Carla,” Mathers said. “I think we’re on to something here.”

  She’d have bet money he was wrong a few months back, after they’d hooked up the first time in a Philadelphia Four Points, middle of the last case. She’d figured the big lug would make a decent stress reliever, that a guy with his looks and easygoing personality would have no trouble buying in for some no-strings-attached action.

  Hell, he’d told her he joined the FBI because he wanted to be like Keanu Reeves in Point Break. At the time, Windermere figured the guy had a whole harem of badge bunnies waiting for him back in Minneapolis.

  But Mathers had surprised her. He’d pursued her once the case broke, and when she finally relented and agreed to see him again, she found he wasn’t just the dumb lunkhead he liked to pretend to be. He’d traveled. He read books. He was a terrible dancer, but he was willing to try salsa, willing to laugh at himself when he sucked at it. And when Windermere needed her space, he didn’t get needy, or whiny, or start brooding, didn’t sulk the way Mark had always done.

  And moreover, he was dynamite in bed—not that Windermere would ever let him hear that. She stood, pulled on a hoodie, and drew open the curtains of her downtown Minneapolis condo, letting the morning light into the bedroom.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Whatever. That was okay, I guess.”

  “‘Okay’?” Mathers sprang up from the bed and was instantly beside her, his arms wrapping her up and drawing her close. He was so big and strong and relentlessly enthusiastic that she felt herself caving, as always.