Authors: Owen Laukkanen
CARLA WINDERMERE
spent the night in the situation room at the FBI office in Brooklyn Center, working the phone and struggling to coordinate the efforts of the FBI, the BCA, the Minneapolis and Saint Paul police departments, and the Hennepin and Ramsey County sheriff’s offices as the search for Irina Milosovici continued.
So far, she’d been shut out. A couple cranks had phoned in reports, but for the most part, the wire was silent. She’d sipped bad coffee and waited out the night, had turned down an offer from Mathers to crash at his place—“Closer than your condo,” he’d said, “I’ll sleep on the couch”—and tried to stay upright. Finally, around a quarter to four, she passed out on a desk somewhere, got a couple fitful hours.
She woke up to her phone ringing. Reached for it, groggy, wiping the hair from her face and the sleep from her eyes. “Windermere.”
“Agent Windermere, it’s Andy Tate in Reno.”
“Tate.” Windermere blinked, tried to shake herself awake. “You guys miss us already?”
“Something like that.” Tate gave a low laugh. “Could have used you tonight, anyway. Reno PD managed to track down those girls you were after. Place called the Bunny Lounge in Damonte Ranch. Guess a couple of the working girls had heard of it, been trying to get an officer out there for months.”
“No shit.” Windermere was wide-awake now. “So you found the place. You get a chance to look around?”
Tate chuckled. “Oh, I’d say so,” he said. “Found us a tidy little ranch house with about fifteen girls inside, none of whom speak a lick of English. Couple low-life meth heads running the show; they were too damned high to care we were putting them in handcuffs.”
Windermere rubbed her eyes. “Anything to point us back to Irina Milosovici’s kidnappers?”
“Not from what we can tell. We’re debriefing the girls, but, like I say, most of them don’t speak English, and half of them are stoned, to boot. We’ll be lucky if they can tell us their names.”
“Right,” Windermere said. “I mean, whatever you can find. Maybe we get lucky and one of them knows the score.”
“Prevailing opinion around here says they don’t, but I’ll work on it anyway,” Tate told her. “I’ll call you if we make any progress.”
Windermere thanked him. Remembered Sanja from the Blue Room, and asked Tate to keep an eye out for the girl’s friend Amira among the Bunny Lounge women. Fifteen more girls rescued, she thought, as she ended the call. It was a pretty damn big achievement, all things considered; should have made her want to jump for joy.
Not now, though. Not with both sisters missing and the whole case stalled around her. Not now. This morning, the news only made her more tired.
VOLOVOI ARRIVED IN NEW JERSEY
early in the morning. He was running on fumes, literally and figuratively.
The stolen Accord was almost out of gas when he pulled into the container lot. Catalina Milosovici was asleep in the passenger seat. Volovoi eyed her enviously, wishing he could do the same. He was exhausted. Hadn’t slept in more than a day. His shoulder stung raw. The bleeding had stopped at least, but the wound needed treatment. Volovoi needed treatment. He needed a rest.
He parked the stolen Accord at the back of the container yard, hidden from the road among stacks of empty boxes. There was a building back there, too, a long, low, ramshackle thing. Locked doors. Volovoi woke the girl up in the passenger seat. Pulled her out of the car and across the lot to the building, made her wait while he unlocked a door. Then he pushed her inside.
The building’s interior was dark, musty. A couple grimy windows and a bare lightbulb. Volovoi heard the girl gasp as she took in her surroundings. As her eyes adjusted, and she saw what the building contained.
Women, about twenty of them. Young girls in a large prison cell, stick-thin, their eyes wide. He’d been culling them from the boxes as they arrived in America, had Bogdan and Nikolai pick out the youngest and prettiest for safekeeping, just in case. Just in case the Dragon’s demand for royalties pushed him into a corner. Just in case he needed to appease his partner’s appetite for young female flesh quickly. Just in case the last week or so happened.
Volovoi had heard on the news about the brothel in Reno, the Bunny Lounge. Another buyer raided. The Blue Room in Billings was out of commission, too. The FBI insects were hot on the trail; soon enough, they would follow the trail here. His entire operation would be closed up and ruined. He would have only New York.
Well, so be it. He would get richer in Manhattan than he’d ever dreamed in New Jersey, and the Dragon would ensure the FBI agents wouldn’t connect the two operations. Let them tear down his New Jersey enterprises. Volovoi would move to Manhattan with the Dragon and flourish again.
Just so long as he could survive the next couple of days.
Volovoi shoved Catalina Milosovici in a cell with the other women. Then he pulled out his phone and called one of his idiot foot soldiers.
“The container yard,” he told him. “Bring me a new car, and a first-aid kit, immediately.”
“With pleasure,” the foot soldier replied.
Volovoi studied the girls in their cell. Pictured Lloyd, the New York buyer, leering over his steak, and felt his stomach turn. “And have someone come out here with a truck,” he told the foot soldier. “We need to get this product to Manhattan.”
Volovoi killed the connection. Turned back to Catalina Milosovici and the rest of the girls. The Dragon’s prize did not look out of place among the rest of Bogdan and Nikolai’s selections. He wondered why the idiots hadn’t picked her out in the first place.
Because they were idiots,
he told himself.
One more reason they’re dead
.
Catalina Milosovici stared at him. She didn’t say anything. The other girls watched him, too, some of them wary, some resigned. Volovoi let them look at him. He double-checked the lock on the cell door. Then he walked to the back of the building, to a dusty leather couch, and he lay down and slept for a while.
WINDERMERE SURFED THE INTERNET
until dawn, hunting down leads and trying to chase the sense of foreboding from her mind. When the sun finally showed itself through the eastern windows, she forced herself to stand, washed up in the ladies’ room, pulled a change of clothes out of the suitcase she hadn’t had a chance to take home yet, fixed her makeup, and rode herd on the morning shift at the various law enforcement agencies around town.
Around eight, Stevens straggled in, looking like he’d taken her advice to get a little sleep and straight ignored it. He gave her a weak smile and a cup of fresh coffee. “How was your night?”
“Restless and uneventful.” She told him about the news from Reno. “You?”
“Dramatic,” he said. “Walked in on my daughter playing grab-ass in the living room with some punk from school. I took umbrage and World War Three erupted.”
Despite her fatigue, Windermere had to smile. “You shoot the poor kid, or what?”
Stevens gave her a sheepish look. “Sent him packing, anyway. Told him to keep his hands to himself or I’d lock his ass up. Andrea didn’t take it so well.”
“I bet she could have just died. The living room, huh? She doesn’t have a bedroom of her own?”
“Not for entertaining gentleman callers,” Stevens said. “No boys on the second floor, house rules.”
“Damn,” Windermere said. “You know this kid?”
“Only from what Nancy tells me.” Stevens sighed. “It’s not even the kid himself who’s the problem, I guess. I just don’t like my daughter running with that kind of crowd.”
Windermere laughed. “What crowd, Stevens? The hormonal teenage crowd? She’s, what, sixteen? It’s going to happen.”
“Not yet,” Stevens told her. “Not if I can damn well help it.”
She was about to tell him he’d have better luck reversing the earth’s rotation, but then Mathers walked in, Drew Harris right behind him.
“Good morning.” Harris regarded Windermere, then Stevens. “I take it from your general state of bedragglement that we’re not making much progress.”
Windermere shook her head. “Every law enforcement agency in the region has Irina’s picture,” she said. “Her face is on the news. We have people looking, but—”
“But so far, no good.” Harris walked to the front of the situation room. “Where do we figure she went?”
“Nobody’s sure,” Windermere said. “We know she’s trying to find her sister, so we’re watching the bus stations, train station, airport, major highways.”
“Except she doesn’t speak English and she doesn’t know the country,” Stevens said. “How in the hell would she know where to go?”
“And how would she find her sister when she got there?” Windermere made a face. “Hell,
we
don’t know how to track down these bastards.”
“So we’re waiting on Facebook to point us to little sister,” Harris said. “Odds are the traffickers have the girl locked up somewhere on the East Coast. And you guys have the name of the delivery driver and an address where he might be found.”
“Yes, sir,” Windermere said.
Harris looked at her. “But you came back here instead of going to find him.”
“Yes, sir. The Newark guys have an eye on Nikolai Kirilenko’s apartment. He hasn’t shown up since they started watching.”
“Still,” Harris said, “that’s your lead, isn’t it? Wherever this guy is, he could crack your case open.”
“Yes, sir,” Windermere said.
“So why’d you come back to Minnesota?”
Windermere felt her temperature rising. “Sir, I thought we should help with the search for Irina Milosovici. She’s a key witness in this whole thing, and—”
“And she doesn’t speak any English, doesn’t have any money, doesn’t know the city,” Harris said. “Moreover, she didn’t do anything technically wrong by leaving the safe house. She’s free to travel the country, Carla. And Agent Mathers is perfectly capable of chasing down Catalina’s Facebook account.”
Agent Mathers keeps screwing up my investigation,
Windermere thought. Mathers met her eyes, his expression guarded, like he was just waiting for her to sell him out. Windermere looked away. “Sir, I just didn’t feel comfortable leaving my witness in danger like this.”
Harris leaned against a table. “Agent Windermere, this is a major investigation,” he said. “The biggest of your career, so far. It’s your ball to carry. If you want to worry about every little thing that goes wrong, you won’t get the damn thing solved. You have a lead in New Jersey that could save a girl’s life. Farting around with a missing person’s case in Minneapolis isn’t going to help the big picture.”
Windermere could feel Stevens watching her. Mathers, too. She made herself meet Harris’s eyes. “Yes, sir,” she said. “You’re right.”
“Good.” Harris looked at her, then Stevens. “Now get your butts on a plane and go solve this thing.”
MATHERS FOLLOWED THEM
out to the parking lot.
“Carla, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think he’d take that kind of line.”
Windermere kept walking, crossed the pavement toward her Chevelle, a cherry red ’69 that had belonged to her father. Beside her, Stevens typed something into his phone.
“It’s fine, Derek,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Yeah, well,” Mathers said, “I am worried, okay? This is way beyond me fucking up our relationship, or whatever you want to call it. This is serious. This is one of us transferring to Anchorage if we don’t work this out.”
Windermere didn’t reply. Glanced at Stevens, who’d had the good sense to fall back a step or two. “Look,” she told Mathers, “it’s not that bad.”
“Bull,” Mathers said. “You don’t trust me. That’s why you came back to Minneapolis. You figure I’ll blow up your investigation again if you’re not here to hold my hand.”
“Derek,” she said. “Not now, okay?”
“You know it’s true, though,” he said. “You put your whole case on hold just to come back and make sure I wasn’t screwing everything up.”
“I just—” She reached the Chevelle. Turned to face him. “This is a huge case, Derek. Every time I turn around, there’s another fuckup at home base. You think that makes it easy to go out and solve this thing?”
“This is the FBI you’re working with, Carla,” Mathers said. “This is
me
. You think I’m a meathead, that’s fine, but I know I’m a good cop, and you know it, too.” He set his jaw. “And you know I’m good for you, too.”
Windermere stared at him, a big hard-ass cop everywhere but those blue eyes. She realized she’d missed him, this whole case be damned. Realized she was sick of fighting with him, of not seeing his stupid smile in the morning.
He screwed up your case,
her mind screamed.
And now this, this whole awkwardness bullshit, what did you think would happen?
She’d known it was a bad idea to hook up with Mathers. Sooner or later, the romance would wear off, and somebody’s feelings would get hurt. Damn it, though, she still missed him.
But there were two teenage girls missing. Probably a hundred more in boxes, on ships or on trucks. This was no time to get moony.
Windermere squared her shoulders. Fixed Mathers with a long, hard look. “We’ll talk about this later,” she told him. “Just find Irina, okay? Don’t do a damn thing else until you find her.”
Then she climbed into the Chevelle, slammed the door, and instantly regretted not telling him good-bye.
STEVENS’S PHONE RANG
as Windermere parked the Chevelle in the long-term lot at Minneapolis–Saint Paul International. Nancy, at work.
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t tell me our little angel is up to no good again.”
“Clearfield, Pennsylvania.” His wife’s voice was electric. “That’s where Irina is trying to go.”
Stevens frowned. “Pardon?”
“She left a message on my phone at work, Kirk,” Nancy said. “My cell phone died last night before I went to sleep, but she must have tried it before she called the office. Anyway, she said she’s going to someplace called Clearfield, Pennsylvania, to find Catalina.”
“Clearfield.” Stevens climbed out of the car and hurried after Windermere. “Where the heck is that?”
“According to Google, it’s a little town in the north part of the state, along Interstate 80,” Nancy said. “That must be where Catalina sent her message.”
Interstate 80,
Stevens thought.
Pennsylvania
. So the Dragon didn’t have Catalina just yet. Or he didn’t last night.
“Hold on one sec.” Stevens caught up to Windermere, caught her arm. “Irina phoned Nancy at her office last night,” he told her. “Left a message that she’s headed someplace called Clearfield. It’s a little town in Pennsylvania.”
“So, what?” Windermere said. “Should I swap our tickets? Get us to this Clearfield place?”
Stevens thought about it. “I don’t think so,” he told her. “Kirilenko’s in New Jersey. All of those shell companies LePlavy dug up are there, too. I don’t think the Dragon’s in Pennsylvania.”
“So Catalina Milosovici is still in transit.”
“Exactly,” Stevens said, starting toward the terminal again. “Let’s be there when she arrives.”