The Stolen Ones (19 page)

THE MAN DROVE FOR HOURS.
He didn’t say a word.

Catalina woke up to darkness. Her head hurt, and the new car smelled funny. She groaned and sat up and saw a vast highway outside the window, a few cars. She watched the cars as they passed her, wanted desperately to signal somebody for help. Knew the silent man would kill her the moment she tried.

He’d given her clothing at least, a T-shirt and shorts. The clothes were too big, and kind of ugly—the T-shirt had a picture of an oversized panther on it—but they were better than her rags. She’d slipped them on, taking care not to dislodge the thug’s iPhone she’d hid in the waistband of her underwear. Felt a little better, now that she was covered. She was still dirty, though. She smelled bad, and her head hurt. And the silent man scared her.

The man drove at a steady speed as the darkness passed outside, and Catalina slumped down and tried to doze in the passenger seat. She could not. She was terrified. Where on earth was this man taking her?

Then the man drove his little car off the highway. Pulled into a service station. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Behave yourself.”

Catalina did as she was instructed. Sat in the car as the man filled the tank. When he came back, she shifted in her seat. “I would like to go to the bathroom,” she said.

The man looked at her, then at the service station. It was a vast, shiny plaza. There was a McDonald’s inside, and a coffee shop, and a little store. There were other cars around, other people. “Five minutes,” the man said. “Nothing stupid.”

Catalina followed the man out of the car and into the plaza. There was a map on the wall in the corridor to the washrooms.
CLEARFIELD, PENNSYLVANIA,
the map said. Catalina didn’t know what it meant, or how to pronounce it, but now she knew at least where she was.

The man walked her to the women’s washroom, made her wait until there were no other women inside. Then he pushed open the door. “Five minutes,” he said again.

“Five minutes.” Catalina hurried into the washroom. Studied herself in the mirror and tried to wash the blood and grime from her face. The blood smeared; she was far too filthy for hand soap and paper towels. Anyway, she didn’t have much time.

Catalina ducked into a stall and sat down on the toilet. Then she reached into her waistband and pulled out the thug’s iPhone. Mercifully, the phone was unlocked. But she had no idea who to contact, or how.

She did not know the number for the police. Anyway, she could not speak enough English to tell them her situation. The police could not help her. But she had to do something. And time was running out.

Catalina felt her heart pounding.
Think,
she thought.
Think, you stupid little cow.

She stared at the phone. At the menu of buttons and icons. At the bottom was an Internet icon. Catalina pressed it, and a search window came up.
Okay,
she thought.
I can use this
.

THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS
was named Kara. She wore a tight dress and an easy smile, and she stood out like a precious stone among pebbles in the Peppermill Casino’s dreary confines.

“Yeah, I remember him,” she told Stevens and Windermere. “Nikolai. The dog. Looked at me like he hadn’t had a woman in years.”

“You met him here?” Stevens said. “At the casino?”

Kara nodded. “Craps tables. Double vodka sodas. Every time I came around, he would double his bet, showing off. Couldn’t keep his hands off me.”

“You talk to him?”

“A little.” She shrugged. “He was betting pretty decent. They like us to flirt with the clientele, keep them happy.”

“Sure,” Stevens said. “Nikolai say anything about where he’d come from, what he was doing in Reno? Anything like that?”

Kara shook her head. “He was too busy trying to put his tongue in my ear. Like I said, this guy was really forward.”

“Not forward enough that you’d call the manager on him, though,” Windermere said.

“Are you kidding?” Kara laughed. “The pit boss saw the whole thing. It’s part of the job. Make sure the customer walks away happy.”

“And did he?”

She laughed again. “Nope. Wasn’t like I was going to sleep with him, anyway, but before he could try anything serious, his buddy—the other guy from the pictures you sent out—came rumbling in like the no-fun police, grabbed the guy and dragged him out to the parking lot. Was the last I ever saw of him.”

Stevens swapped glances with Windermere. “And he didn’t tell you anything. Just that his name was Nikolai and he was looking for a good time.”

“Pretty much,” she said, “except he didn’t even tell me that.” She slipped a piece of paper out of her tip wallet, handed it to Stevens. It was a slot machine ticket, a name and a number scrawled on the back with a keno crayon: Nikolai Kirilenko.

“Told me to call him up if I ever made it out east,” Kara said. “I admit, I maybe thought about it. He wasn’t bad-looking, if you forgot about the scar.”

“Maybe not,” Windermere said, “but he is definitely bad. You mind if we hold on to this number?”

“Be my guest,” Kara said. “I got a whole locker full of guys’ numbers in the back.”

THERE WAS A KNOCK
at the door. Irina sat up from the window with a start. Felt her heart pound in her chest.

The safe house was quiet. The U.S. Marshals remained outside in their car, watching the building in shifts, as they’d done for days. They rarely moved. They didn’t come inside the house. No men came inside the house. For this, Irina was grateful.

Sometimes Maria came to visit, and sometimes Nancy Stevens. Sometimes a counselor accompanied them, a doctor, always a woman. Sometimes, when Irina didn’t feel like eating in the dining room, a staff member would bring her dinner up here. For the most part, however, she was alone.

There were other women in the shelter, of course. Some were young and some were old, some were American and some were foreign, some were loud and brash and hid their wounds, and others were quiet, timid, shy, bruised inside and out. They talked to her sometimes, in the dining room, or in the computer room while they waited for their turn on the Internet, and Irina tried to answer in the bits of English she’d picked up. She didn’t know much, mostly “Hi,” “How are you?” and “Good-bye,” and the energy required to communicate exhausted her. She retreated to her room often, paged through American gossip magazines, stared out the window at the American Marshals, and tried not to think about Catalina.

And now there was a knock at the door. Irina sat stone-still and waited, not daring to breathe. She had a sudden, terrifying premonition, saw the two ugly henchmen bursting into her room and dragging her, screaming, back to the box.

Except it wasn’t the thugs who opened the door. It was a woman, another guest of the shelter. Marta, her name was. Or maybe Magda. A Hungarian woman; she knew a little Romanian. She’d come over with an abusive husband, though. She hadn’t come in a box.

“I was on the computer,” Magda said, her voice rushed. She was flustered about something. “Just now. After you were on.”

Irina looked at her. “Yes,” she said. “Okay?”

“You left your Facebook page open,” Magda said. “I accidentally clicked on it.”

“Okay,” Irina said again. “I’m sorry. I will close it next time.”

Magda waved her off. “It’s not that,” she said. “It’s . . . There was a new message from Catalina Milosovici, but . . . didn’t you say your sister was still in trouble?”

Irina blinked. “What?”

“Come see,” Magda said. “Maybe I’m mistaken.”

Irina followed the woman out of her little room, down the hall, and downstairs to the little cubbyhole closet that the staff had turned into a computer room. The computer was old and slow, and each woman was allowed only a half hour a day, but Irina had been using the machine more often, going on Facebook to tell her friends she was okay, going on the news websites to keep track of her sister’s case, to search for information about the man Nancy Stevens called the Dragon.

Magda had left Irina’s Facebook page open. Irina scanned it: her happy, cheesy profile picture, the insipid status updates from friends. She sat down in front of the computer, clicked through to Catalina’s message. Stared and couldn’t figure out what she was supposed to be seeing.

It was a blurry picture, taken with a camera phone. A map on a wall somewhere.
CLEA
RFIELD, PENNSYLVANIA
.

“What is it?” Magda said. “What does it mean?”

Irina opened a new window in the browser, her heart pounding. Typed
Clearfield
into the search box. The results came back entirely in English, but there was a map. Pennsylvania. Irina clicked on the map, zoomed out until she could see Minnesota.

“Yes?” Magda said. “What is it, Irina?”

Catalina had sent this picture twenty minutes ago, Irina realized. Somehow she’d gotten hold of a phone.

Irina logged out of her Facebook account. Then she dug into her pocket for Nancy Stevens’s business card and walked to the phone in the hallway. She dialed Nancy’s office number, but there was no answer. Of course there wasn’t; it was late in the evening. The woman was probably at home with her family.

Except Nancy Stevens didn’t answer her cell phone, either. The call went straight to voicemail. Irina hung up the phone. Tried Nancy’s office number again.

The phone rang and rang. Finally, her answering machine picked up. Irina waited. Looked back at Magda, who watched her, her eyes wide. Then the answering machine beeped.

“Clearfield, Pennsylvania,” Irina said. “My sister. She’s there. I . . .” She’d nearly exhausted her supply of English. “I have to find her.”

Then she hung up the phone. Magda was still watching her. “What are you going to do? Do you want me to call the police?”

“No.”
Irina didn’t dare trust the marshals. They were bigger than her, much stronger. What was to stop them from taking advantage?

Magda waited. Irina scanned the hallway. There was a staff member at the desk by the door, and the U.S. Marshals beyond, but she knew a back exit. Nancy Stevens was gone, and her husband couldn’t help her. He’d been looking for Catalina for days without luck.

“I will do this myself,” Irina told Magda. “This time, I will find her.”

CATALINA SAT IN THE PASSENGER SEAT
of the smelly car, feeling the weight of the phone in her pocket as the silent man drove away from the service station.

She wondered if Irina would get the message. If anyone would read it. She wondered if she should have tried another strategy. The Facebook message had been the best she could think of, under the circumstances. Her English wasn’t good enough to type a text message. She didn’t know any phone numbers, besides. But she didn’t even know if Irina had Internet access. Her big risk was probably for nothing.

Her heart still pounded. She’d taken a huge chance. She’d known if the silent man caught her, he would probably kill her. But she had to do something, so, before she could stop herself, she’d pushed out of the washroom stall, crept to the restroom door and peered out, down the corridor, toward the big map.

The silent man stood at the end of the corridor, where it opened to the restaurants and the stores and the seating area. He was talking on his cell phone. He had his back to her.

As quick as she could, Catalina dashed out of the women’s restroom. Held the camera phone aloft and aimed it at the map and pressed the button. She only had time for one picture. Then she hurried back into the washroom again.

The man must have sensed that something was the matter. He knocked on the door a moment later.

“Just a minute,” she called out, locking herself in the stall. She fumbled with the phone, logged herself into Facebook, and sent Irina the picture. Then she peed, washed her hands, and adjusted her clothing. Hid the phone in her waistband again.

The man was waiting when she left the restroom. “You took too long in there,” he said.

“I’m a girl,” she said. “What do you expect?”

The man looked her over. “Next time you will not take so long,” he said, “or we will not stop again.”

He held her gaze until she nodded, and then he led her out of the service station and back to his smelly car. Catalina stumbled along beside him, dizzy with fear and relief, hoping that her gamble had worked.

DEREK MATHERS
was sitting in his cubicle, trying to decide whether to call it a night or give Windermere a call, see if he could coax a smile out of her, when the phone beat him to it. Rung, loud, startling him, and he sat up quickly and grabbed for the phone, picked it up before he was fully composed. “Carla?”

“Uh, sorry.” A man’s voice. “This is Richardson, with the Marshals in Minneapolis. I get the wrong number?”

Mathers cleared his throat. “Shit, sorry,” he said. “This is Agent Derek Mathers, FBI. What do you need?”

“I’m trying to get ahold of Kirk Stevens and Carla Windermere,” Richardson said. “They around?”

“Reno,” Mathers said. “Chasing leads. I’m covering this thing from home. What’s up?”

The guy paused. A long pause. “Okay,” he said. “I’m down at the halfway house, you know? We’re supposed to be watching that Romanian girl.”

Supposed to be,
Mathers thought.
That doesn’t sound good.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. And?”

“And, yeah.” Another beat. “We have a bit of a problem here, Agent Mathers. According to the staff inside, that girl isn’t in her bunk for lights-out. And she’s nowhere else in the building, either.”

Mathers sat up. “So where the hell is she?”

“That’s the thing,” Richardson said. “The girls inside seem to think she just took off.”

“Jesus,” Mathers said. “Jesus Christ.”

“You said it. What do you want us to do?”

Mathers leaned back and closed his eyes, already picturing Windermere’s reaction. “Find her,” he said. “Find her, for God’s sake.”

“JERSEY CITY,”
Windermere called across the office to Stevens. “That’s where we’ll find Kirilenko, partner.”

Stevens looked up. “You think?”

“The guy gave that waitress a North Jersey cell number,” Windermere said. “And it turns out there’s only one Nikolai Kirilenko in North Jersey,
and
his address and lengthy rap sheet are in the NCIC database,
and
he’s got a scar on his face and he’s ugly as sin.”

“Hot damn,” Stevens said. “Send me that NCIC file. Let me get a look.”

Windermere typed something into her computer. “Sent,” she said. “Now I’m calling LePlavy. Any luck, he can have this guy locked up tonight. And then I’m going to call the travel agent and get us a couple tickets back to the East Coast.” She grinned at him. “If we can turn this guy against his bosses, partner, this case is made.”

She was feeling the rush, Stevens knew. He was feeling it, too. After all the mud they’d slogged through on this case, he’d started to wonder if he and Windermere might be snakebit. Now they’d caught a break, and Stevens could hardly wait to get back on a plane.

Windermere put down the phone and started pacing. “Newark’s on it,” she said. “I’ll brief Agent Tate. Get him to bring up a couple agents from the Las Vegas field office, hunt around for the girls Kirilenko delivered. We gotta figure there’s one or two more stops on the supply chain if there were forty girls in that box, right?”

“Right,” Stevens said. “Either before Reno, or after.”

“Or both.” Windermere’s phone rang. “Mathers,” she said, bringing it to her ear. “Hey. What’s up?”

She listened. Stevens watched her, watched the smile fade from her face. Watched her skin color, her eyes darken. “Jesus Christ, Derek,” she said finally.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”