The Stolen Ones (13 page)

CATALINA PULLED HER CLOTHING
together as best she could as the truck began to move again. The scar-faced monster had torn her shirt nearly in half, had ripped the buttons from her pants. Never mind that the clothes were dirtier than anything she’d ever seen in her life; now she had to clutch them about her like rags just to cover herself.

Still, the monster hadn’t raped her. Catalina wondered if the man’s friend would have shot him if he’d continued to try. If the man would kill his partner to protect her. The two men had argued in English, and she’d understood none of it. Had no idea why the other man had defended her.

He wants to keep you safe,
she thought.
For wherever they’re taking you
.

This was the logical answer, she knew. The thugs had kept her behind when every other woman was gone. They were saving her for something, somebody. The man without the scar knew it. The man with the scar didn’t. Or he didn’t care. It was that simple.

Still, she’d seen something in the other man’s eyes when he looked at her. It wasn’t just that he was doing his job. The man looked at her like she was human. His scar-faced friend looked at her like she was meat.

The truck rumbled on. Catalina sat in the darkness, clutching her clothes to her, wondering how long she would be left in here. Wondering what would be waiting for her when the truck finally stopped, and wondering how she could convince the man without the scar to protect her.

VOLOVOI STARED AT HIS PHONE.
“Tried to rape her,” he said. “And where the hell were you, Bogdan?”

On the other end of the phone, Bogdan Urzica didn’t answer for a beat. “I was asleep,” he said finally. “He said he was going to feed the girl. I had been driving all day, Andrei. I’m sorry.”

Volovoi paced the sidewalk outside the restaurant. Through the windows, he could see Veronika and Adriana at a table, coloring with crayons as they ate their pizza. He’d driven out to Brighton Beach to meet them for lunch, take them off his sister’s hands for a few hours. He had hoped, after another long night of spreadsheets and red ink, to escape from the headaches of his job for a while. He had hoped he could avoid thinking about business.

Only now, Nikolai Kirilenko was assaulting the merchandise.

“The Dragon wants that little girl for himself, Bogdan,” Volovoi said. “He will kill us all if he doesn’t get her. For Christ’s sake, keep Nikolai off of her, okay?”

“I’ll try,” Bogdan told him, “but I have to sleep sometimes.”

Volovoi closed his eyes.
Christ.

“Where are you?” he said finally. “How long until you’re here?”

“We’re in Omaha,” Bogdan told him. “A couple more days. We’ve been trying to be cautious, keep to the speed limit, keep off the main roads. After Club Heat—”

“Yes,” Volovoi said. “Caution is good.”

But the longer the little girl is out on the road, the greater the danger that something will happen to her, he thought.
And Bogdan Urzica has already proved once that he is incapable of controlling Nikolai’s urges. The dead cop in Minnesota can attest to that.

Volovoi looked in at his nieces again. Rubbed his eyes. In a day, he was to meet with the Dragon’s buyer in Manhattan. Bogdan and Nikolai would still not be home. And who could predict what new stupidity Nikolai would invent in the meantime?

“Keep the little girl safe,” Volovoi told Bogdan. “I will come out to meet you. I will take her off your hands, and I will deliver her myself to the Dragon. That way, we can both be assured that nothing will go wrong.”

Bogdan considered this. “Okay,” he said. “When will you meet?”

“Tomorrow evening,” Volovoi told him. “I will drive out into Pennsylvania, Ohio. We’ll meet, and I’ll take the girl.”

“Understood,” Bogdan said. “And what about Nikolai?”

Volovoi turned from the window. Looked out across the parking lot. If the angle was right, he could just about see Manhattan in the distance. “I’ll deal with Nikolai,” he told Bogdan. “Just keep the girl safe.”

ANDREI VOLOVOI
knew he was a hypocrite.

He was a man who made his living stealing women, and selling them as though they were commodities. He’d paid for a Cadillac truck this way, a penthouse loft. He’d built a life in America—hell, he’d made the down payment on his sister’s house, paid for the first year of Veronika’s private school tuition. He made a good living, relatively speaking, and all of it thanks to the women in his boxes.

By rights, he should not have been able to sleep at night. By rights, he should not have been able to sit across from his young nieces in a Brighton Beach pizza parlor, watching them color their unicorn pictures and debating with them whether to have ice cream or brownies for dessert. By rights, Andrei Volovoi should have known he was a monster.

But Volovoi didn’t think of himself as a monster. He was a criminal, sure, more or less amoral. He was a hard man in many ways; one had to be, to succeed in business in America. And Volovoi was a businessman. He was a man who could fill a void in the American marketplace, and anyone who could manage that deserved to get rich. The women who filled his boxes had written their own tickets. Mike hadn’t kidnapped them. They’d been naive, and stupid, and they deserved their lot in life.

This is what Volovoi believed. This is how he rationalized his occupation on afternoons like this, with Adriana tugging his arm and asking for more juice, with Veronika teasing him, asking him when he was going to get a girlfriend. This is how he looked his nieces, his sister, in the eye.

This New York project, though, and this situation with Catalina Milosovici—hell, everything to do with the Dragon—it all rubbed Volovoi raw. These were girls—barely teenagers—the Dragon was selling. In a few years, Veronika could be one of these girls.

This was a different situation altogether. And now Volovoi had agreed to meet the Dragon’s buyer, and in reality, there was only one answer the Dragon would accept. No matter how hard Volovoi worked to reduce his redundancies, the Dragon would always have his hand in Volovoi’s wallet. And the only way to get him out was to join him in New York. To sell young girls.

“You’re not terribly ugly, Uncle Andrei,” Veronika was telling him. “How come you never meet any women?”

Volovoi tried to think of the last woman he’d taken to dinner. Couldn’t. Saw Catalina Milosovici instead, pale and grimy in her photograph. Saw Veronika, instead, in her place. Adriana.

The best way to keep your nieces safe is to keep the Dragon happy,
Volovoi thought.
And the best way to keep the Dragon happy is to join him in New York.

Veronika cocked her head. “Uncle Andrei?”

So he would be a hypocrite. He would sell his soul. So be it. Volovoi turned away from Veronika, pretended to look out the window. “I am too busy at work,” he said, hiding his eyes. “No time for a woman.”

STEVENS AND WINDERMERE
spent the night in Newark and flew home to the Twin Cities the next morning. Mathers was waiting for them in CID when they arrived. He had rings under his eyes; his clothes were rumpled, and he hadn’t shaved. Windermere wondered if he’d spent the night at his desk.

Serves him right,
she thought.
That’ll teach him to ignore my instructions.

“Carla.” Mathers stood as they approached. “Kirk. Jesus Christ, I’m sorry. I—”

“Can it.” Windermere breezed past him. “My office, Derek. Give us a status report.”

Mathers hesitated, and Windermere forced herself not to turn back to him. She knew Mathers felt shitty. Hell, she felt sorry for him, knew he was hurt, knew she’d done it to him. She wanted to forgive the big lug, but she’d do it later. There were bigger issues right now.

Mathers followed her and Stevens into her office. Just as he closed the door, the phone rang. Agent Harris. “I need a progress report within the hour,” he told her. “Get your shit in order.”

“Yes, sir.” She hung up the phone and turned back to Mathers. “Go.”

“Okay.” Mathers drew himself up. “I spent the night on the phone with a friend of yours from New Jersey, an Agent Zach LePlavy, who put me in touch with some people at Interpol. Apparently they know this Mike character Irina was talking about, the American guy who put her and Catalina in the box. They’ve been chasing him for years, but they’ve never been able to catch him.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better, Derek?” Windermere said. “There’s a girl’s life at stake here.”

“I’m working on it,” Mathers said. “Interpol says this guy Mike deals with an importer they call the Dragon. Some shadowy underboss type, real bad reputation. They believe his name is Demetriou, Pavel Demetriou, but nobody has actually seen him for years. If Mike’s the one selling women, though, they’re going to this guy.”

“The Dragon,” Stevens said. “Can we get that back to LePlavy and his Organized Crime people? Maybe they know something.”

“Already done. So far, no hits. Sounds like this guy’s a bigger deal in Europe than he is over here.”

“So basically, we have nothing,” Windermere said. “That’s what you’re saying.”

“We have the big boss man,” Mathers said. “And maybe Interpol can—”

“We have a guy named ‘The Dragon,’” Windermere said, “who nobody’s ever seen. Big goddamn deal.”

“We’re working on it,” Mathers said. “I lit some fires. Short of going over to Romania myself, I think I did all I could.”

Maybe you
should
go,
Windermere thought, but she held her tongue.

“Oh,” Mathers said, reaching for a sheet of paper. “Interpol faxed over this.” He handed the paper to Windermere. On it was the picture of Catalina Milosovici and the note that Mike had left for her parents. The girl was a smaller, dirtier copy of her sister, her eyes sunken, her skin pale. Windermere passed the picture to Stevens, who stared at it a long time without saying anything.

“What about Irina?” he asked finally. “Where do we stand with her?”

“She still wants to go,” Mathers said. “She’s terrified here, and that translator’s telling her she doesn’t have to stay. Which she doesn’t, but why the hell would she want to leave?”

“Because you gave her that phone call,” Windermere said. “And you scared the shit out of her.”

Mathers winced. “Come on, Carla. I’m doing all I can here.”

He looked across the room at her, and she quickly turned away. Couldn’t stand to see him.
Anyone else,
she thought.
Anyone else makes this mistake and I tear them a new asshole and walk away satisfied. It
had
to be fucking Mathers
.

For a moment, nobody said anything. Then Stevens cleared his throat. “Let’s see if we can’t convince Irina to stick around at least,” he said, glancing at the picture of Catalina again. “Try and keep this situation from getting any worse.”

“SO HERE’S THE THING,”
Stevens told his wife. “Irina Milosovici called home, as was her legal right. Got ahold of her parents, who told her that some gangsters had come by with a picture of her sister, and had cut up her dog as a warning.”

He’d dropped in on Nancy at work, figured maybe his wife could help him navigate the legal issues around Irina’s sudden desire for freedom.

“My God,” Nancy said. “But that means Catalina’s alive at least, right?”

“We think so,” Stevens said. “I mean, the implication of the warning was that if Irina continued to cooperate with us, the traffickers—we think the boss is this guy called the Dragon—would hurt her sister.”

“The Dragon, huh?” Nancy said. “He sounds cuddly.”

“I guess it doesn’t change much,” Stevens said. “We’re still looking for a way to find Catalina. But in the meantime, the parents want Irina home. We, obviously, don’t want her to leave. But legally, we’re not sure we can keep her.”

Nancy thought it over. “I think, legally, she can walk if she wants,” she said. “If I were her lawyer, I’d certainly advise her to stay put, but if she wants to pack it in, the government isn’t going to want to detain her, no matter how many murders she’s witnessed. She calls the consulate, it’s an international incident.”

“Yeah,” Stevens said. “That’s what we’re afraid of.”

“You want her to stay. Her parents want her to go.” Nancy looked at him. “What does she want?”

“She wants to get out of FBI custody. Wants to get out there and find Catalina.”

“What, just set off on her own?” Nancy grimaced. “Well, she obviously can’t do that, Kirk. Let me talk to her.”

>   >   >

IRINA MILOSOVICI
sat in a holding cell, staring at the walls and trying not to think about Catalina. It wasn’t working.

You did this,
she thought.
You doomed your own sister. You need to get out of here and go and save her yourself.

Footsteps down the hall. Irina stiffened. There were guards outside, more big American policemen with bulletproof vests and guns. More potential threats, more risks. More men she would never be able to trust.

But when the door swung open, it wasn’t the devil-faced man or a terrifying policeman, but Kirk Stevens and his beautiful wife. Maria followed them in, stood between Irina and the Stevenses like a protective parent.

Nancy Stevens said something to Maria. “They want to talk to you,” Maria told Irina. “The woman says you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”

Irina looked at Nancy Stevens and her husband. The police agent looked tired. He looked anxious. Irina felt sorry for him. He was only now realizing how outmatched he was.

“Will they let me out of here?” Irina asked.

Maria relayed the question. Nancy glanced at Stevens. Pulled up a chair and sat beside Irina, her elbows on her knees. “Here’s what we know,” she said, as Maria translated. “The man who has Catalina is a gangster named . . .” She turned to her husband again.

“Pavel Demetriou,” Stevens said. “Also known as ‘The Dragon.’”

“The Dragon,” Nancy said.

Irina frowned. “Why are you telling me this?”

“We’re telling you because we want you to know what we’re dealing with, Irina,” Nancy said. “We believe this Dragon man used his contact in Romania to give your parents the warning.”

“Mike.” Irina felt her breath catch. “My parents said his letter swore they wouldn’t hurt Catalina if I just kept my mouth shut and went home.”

“They were lying,” Nancy said. “You think they’re just going to forget about you? You know too much, Irina.”

Nancy reached out, touched her arm. “You don’t have to talk to us,” she said. “You don’t have to say anything if you think it will risk Catalina’s life. But if you leave, Irina, we can’t protect you, and chances are you’ll die. And if you die, they’ll probably kill Catalina, too.”

Nancy’s eyes were kind, her expression sympathetic. She was right, Irina knew, and she hung her head and said nothing.

“I can get you out of this cell,” Nancy said. “Into a halfway house, with plenty of protection. You can talk to your family and go outside if you want to, and in the meantime, my husband and his partners will bust their humps searching for Catalina. Just promise me you won’t run away.”

Irina looked around the holding cell. Imagined a warm bed, a shower. Knew the traffickers would have her killed as soon as she returned to Berceni. Her parents, too, probably. Knew she’d never get far in America on her own.

Irina looked up at Nancy, at Agent Stevens, at Maria. “No men,” she said. “Please. Not even policemen.”

“No men,” Nancy said. “I promise.”