The Stolen Ones

Book 4: A Stevens and Windermere Novel

by Owen Laukkanen

Genres: Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

The blistering new novel from the author of the multi-award-nominated The Professionals—“Laukkanen is one of the best young thriller writers working today” (Richmond Times-Dispatch). When you’ve got nothing left, you’ve got nothing left to lose. Cass County, Minnesota: A sheriff’s deputy steps out of a diner on a rainy summer evening, and a few minutes later, he’s lying dead in the mud. When BCA agent Kirk Stevens arrives on the scene, he discovers local authorities have taken into custody a single suspect: A hysterical young woman found sitting by the body, holding the deputy’s own gun. She has no ID, speaks no English. A mystery woman. The mystery only deepens from there, as Stevens and Carla Windermere, his partner in the new joint BCA–FBI violent crime task force, find themselves on the trail of a massive international kidnapping and prostitution operation. Before the two agents are done, they will have traveled over half the country, from Montana to New York, and come face-to-face not only with the most vicious man either of them has ever encountered—but two of the most courageous women.
They are sisters, stolen ones. But just because you’re a victim doesn’t mean you have to stay one.

Release date: March 17, 2015

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Print pages: 368

Sample

1


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.”

2


Cass county sheriff’s deputy Dale Friesen finished his
coffee and stepped out through the front door of the Paul Bunyan
Diner and into the waning light as another summer day met its end.
He stood on the steps for a minute, savoring the still air, the mad
rush of campers and city folk all but gone from the 200 highway just
across the way, everyone now hunkered down in their tents and cabins,
swatting mosquitoes and telling ghost stories and hoping the thunderheads
in the distance veered south before nightfall.

Friesen circled around the side of the diner to his Suburban, figuring
he’d be happy if the road stayed dry just long enough for him
to get back up to Walker, just long enough that he didn’t look like a
drowned rat showing up at Suzi’s door with a bottle of wine after
blowing off their big date day to go bass fishing. Shit but he was in
trouble.

As Friesen reached his Suburban, a big semitruck pulled into the
lot, a nice Peterbilt towing a rusty red container. The guy pulled in
and parked behind Friesen, the ass end of his truck hanging out into
the driveway, and as the guy climbed out of the cab, Friesen called
over to him.

“You’re a little long for that spot,” he said, thinking, That’s what
she said. “Gimme a sec and I’ll pull ahead.”

The driver, a big guy with a shaved head and a face like he’d never
smiled in his life, looked back down the length of his rig, then back
at Friesen. “Yeah,” he said. “All right.”

“Don’t get too many long haulers up here in lake country,” Friesen
said. “Where you headed?”

The driver glanced into the truck, and Friesen followed his gaze
and saw the guy had a partner, another big, bald fella. This guy had a
scar on his forehead like he’d lost a fight with a band saw.

“Out of state.” The driver had an accent, some kind of European.
“Going to I-94.”

“I see you boys got the standard cab,” Friesen said. “No bunk in
the trunk, so to speak. You want a decent motel recommendation?
Town of Walker’s just up the road, about five miles or so. There’s a—”

“We make Fargo tonight.” The driver shifted his weight. “Got a
schedule.”

Friesen grinned. “That’s a hundred twenty miles away,” he said.
“Gonna storm, too. Chamber of commerce would hate me if I let you
get away.”

“Thanks.” The man’s voice was flat. “We’re making Fargo.”

“All right.” Friesen gave it up. Something wasn’t meshing about
these two jokers, but hell, the county didn’t pay him enough to play
every hunch. Besides, it was his day off. He was turning back to the
Suburban, the driver and his buddy more or less forgotten already,
when he heard something out the back of the rig. Sounded like bang
ing. “You hear that?” Friesen asked the driver.

The driver shook his head. “I didn’t hear nothing.”

Friesen studied the truck again. New tractor. No logos. No markings
of any kind, except the USDOT registration number and an
operator decal. Standard cab, like he’d noted. Meant no beds, no
creature comforts. Had to be an original badass to be driving a
truck like that in northern Minnesota, hundreds of miles from anywhere.

“Where you guys coming from, anyway?” Friesen asked.

The driver shifted his weight again, glanced back into the cab at
his partner. “Duluth,” he said finally. “Look, buddy, I don’t have time
for this—”

“Deputy, actually.” Friesen showed the guy his identification. Kept
his smile pasted on as he started toward the rear of the truck. “Look,
humor me, would you? Maybe you got a stowaway back there. Couple
of rats or something. What’s your cargo, anyway?”

The driver hesitated a split second, then followed Friesen to the
back of the rig. No markings on the container, just more old USDOT
numbers. Ditto the chassis. New Jersey plates, though. “You guys
sure are a long way from home,” Friesen said. “What’d you say you
were carrying?”

The driver just looked at him. “Electronics,” he said.

Friesen felt his Spidey sense tingling. Slid his hand to his side, slow
as he could, and snapped open the holster on his hip. Kept his eyes on
the driver, kept his voice calm. “You wanna open her up for me?”

The driver didn’t blink. “I think you need a warrant to open up
my container.”

“Heard something moving around in there,” Friesen said. “That’s
probable cause. Now, you gonna make me phone this thing in, or can
we just clear this up before the storm sets in?”

As if for emphasis, thunder rumbled in the distance. The driver
pursed his lips. Pulled a key ring from his pocket and fiddled with
the back-door lock. That’s when things got crazy.

As soon as the lock disengaged, the rear door swung open, knocking
the driver backward. Friesen caught a glimpse of a wall of cardboard
boxes, DVD players or something, and then a woman came
flying out, grungy and wild-eyed, barely more than a girl, yelling
something in some crazy foreign language as she launched herself
through the open door.

Friesen scrambled back, drawing his sidearm, hollering at the girl
to slow down. The girl didn’t listen. Probably couldn’t even hear him.
She knocked the driver to the ground as another girl appeared in the
container doorway. Even younger. Just as dirty. What the hell was
going on?

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 shook 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.
<