The Stolen Ones

ALSO BY OWEN LAUKKANEN

The Professionals

Criminal Enterprise

Kill Fee

G
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P
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P
UTNAM’S
S
ONS

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Copyright © 2015 by Owen Laukkanen

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Laukkanen, Owen.

The stolen ones / Owen Laukkanen.

p. cm. — (A stevens and windermere novel ; 4)

ISBN 978-1-101-62478-4

I. Title.

PR9199.4.L384S76 2013 2014023351

813'.6—dc23

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.

This one’s for Stacia

ONLY HER SISTER KEPT HER ALIVE.

The box was dark and stank of shit. Sweat. Urine. Misery. Irina Milosovici had lost track of how long she’d been inside. How long since Mike, the charming American, had disappeared with her passport in Bucharest. Since the two stone-faced thugs had shoved her into the box with the rest of the women, maybe forty of them. And Catalina.

Irina had lost count of how many days they’d spent in the pitch-black and silence, sharing stale air and meager rations behind the shipping container’s false wall. How many times they’d clawed at the steel that surrounded them, screamed themselves hoarse, as the box lurched and jostled on its terrible, claustrophobic, suffocating journey.

Only Catalina kept her alive. Only her younger sister’s warmth pressed against her in the darkness staved off the fear and, above all, the empty, sickening guilt.

>   >   >

THEY WERE IN AMERICA NOW.
For days the box had swayed with the lazy rhythm of the ocean, had shuddered with the ever-present vibrations of a big engine somewhere far below. Some of the women had been seasick, and the smell of vomit filled the box, mixing with the foul stench from the overflowing waste bucket in the corner.

Irina had passed the time telling Catalina stories. “This is the only way into the country for us,” she told her. “When we arrive in America, they’ll give us showers and new clothes and find us all jobs.”

Catalina pressed tight to her in the darkness, said nothing, and Irina wondered if her lies were any comfort at all.

Then the waves calmed. The pitch of the engine slowed. The box seemed less dark, the air slightly fresher. The women screamed again, all of them, pleading for help as the box was lifted from the ship, the lurching of the crane sending them tumbling into one another, momentarily weightless.

The box touched down again. Irina could hear a truck’s engine, and the box rumbled and shook along an uneven road for a short while, maybe fifteen minutes. Then the movement stopped and the engine cut off. A door opened in the container’s false wall.

The light was blinding. The women blinked and drew back, shielding their faces. Irina pulled Catalina to the rear of the box, far away from the light and whatever waited beyond.

Two men appeared in the open doorway, big men, their heads shaved nearly to the skin. One had a long, jagged scar across his forehead. The other held a powerful-looking hose. “Get these bitches out of here,” he told his partner in English.

“What did he say?” Catalina whispered, and for a moment Irina was angry. Her sister’s English was no good. What on earth had possessed Catalina to follow her here?

But then Catalina had always been running to keep up with her older sister, and Irina had baited the hook. She was as guilty as the traffickers, she knew.

The men dragged the women out in pairs, past the stacks of cardboard boxes holding DVD players and cheap electric razors, until the container was empty and the women stood disheveled and weak in the harsh sunlight.

They were in a shipping yard. Irina could smell the ocean nearby, but the stacks of rusted shipping containers prevented her from seeing anything but the box and the two thugs.

The men sprayed out the inside of the false compartment. They dumped the waste bucket out onto the gravel and sprayed it clean also. Then they turned the hose on the women.

The water was cold, even in the warm summer air. Catalina’s fingers dug into Irina’s skin when the water hit her, spurring her on, tempting her to run. She didn’t run, though. She withstood the spray, coughing and sputtering, and then the hose was turned off, and they stood shivering in the yard again.

The thugs began to maneuver the women back into the box. They took one girl aside, a pretty young blonde about Catalina’s age. Then the scar-faced man saw Catalina, and beckoned to his partner. “Her, too,” he said.

Irina felt suddenly desperate. “No,” she said. “Get away from her.”

The scar-faced man reached around her, grabbed at Catalina. Irina blocked his way, ready to fight. To claw at him, to hurt him. She would die before she let her sister go.

But the thug didn’t try to kill her. He studied her for a moment. “Whatever,” he said finally, and moved on down the row of women. “The bitch is too old anyway.”

He picked out another girl instead, a black-haired girl even younger than Catalina. Dragged her away from the container, the young blond girl, too, and then the scar-faced man’s partner was herding Irina and Catalina back into the box with the rest of the women, confining them in the darkness again.

>   >   >

THE DOORS HAD OPENED TWICE
since the day of the hose. Days passed in between. The box rumbled and lurched, and the girls heard traffic outside, cars and trucks. The box rarely stopped moving. Irina screamed for help, but no help ever came.

The doors opened. The thugs peered in, spoke to each other quickly, unintelligibly, scanning the huddle of women. The man with the scar on his face climbed into the box and chose two girls at random. Another blonde, perhaps twenty, and a very young brunette. He dragged them out of the box by their hair, ignoring their screams, and came back for two more women, and then again, until he’d taken a total of ten. Then the doors closed and were locked, and the box resumed its journey.

The next time the door opened, the scar-faced man took only two women. Irina clutched Catalina and fought with her sister to the rear of the box, desperate to avoid being chosen. She screwed her eyes tight, heard the screams from the unlucky ones, and only breathed again when the men sealed the compartment.

The box rumbled onward. There was more space in the darkness now. The men had taken almost half of the women away. Sooner or later, they would come for the rest. They would come for Catalina.

The men had been careless when they’d sealed the box. The lock on the compartment door had failed to engage properly; it rattled and shook with a promise that hadn’t existed before. Irina crossed the compartment and pushed at the door. Clawed at it. Punched it until it swung open to the mountains of cardboard and the rest of the container.

Already the air seemed fresher. Here was opportunity. Let the men do what they wanted to her, but they would not get Catalina. She would get her sister home.

“Come on,” she said, pulling Catalina to the doorway. “The next time they come for us, we’ll be ready.”