The Overseer (20 page)
John Temple brought the bags into the hotel room and looked around. Anything would have seemed top-notch in comparison to his “living in huts and hovels” missionary life. But this was especially impressive. A gleaming kitchenette with granite countertops. A huge flat-screen TV. A view overlooking the blinking lights and outsized casinos on the Strip. A fake Eiffel Tower, lit up like a Christmas tree, caught his eye. Bright, flashing billboards were everywhere below, filling the night with an electrifying promise of adventure.
He glanced back over his shoulder. Trista had evidently retreated into the bedroom of their suite. He approached, considered knocking, then stepped away. If Trista didn’t want to see him, there was no point in waking her up. They’d both had a long and confusing day.
He sank into the couch and picked up the remote, turning on the television. He keyed the volume as the set came on too loud. The television was set to the hotel’s main channel. He began flipping through channels, looking for something to fill the void—an overwhelming sensation of need for human contact.
The Firstborn had disowned him, and his closest friend in the Ora, Vincent, had spearheaded it. Devin still didn’t trust him, and Hannah didn’t need him.
John glanced at the bedroom door.
And Trista.
He turned back to an infomercial, a miracle cure to boost every man’s confidence in the bedroom. He changed the channel. A music video with a twenty-something coed dancing in next to nothing. He changed the channel. A television talk show with women discussing “technique.” He changed the channel. An after-hours premium cable show—soft-core pornography. John lifted the remote control to change the channel, then paused, watching the screen.
He felt the sense of loneliness leaving him. Something held him there as a beautiful brunette winked at him through the screen.
Beyond the conventions of society and small talk, he looked at the screen and saw something.
Intimacy.
Scripted, cheapened, and pumped full of plastic. But there it was: a sense of personal prowess and belonging. There was another word. What was it?
Acceptance. As if the woman on the screen—who had never, and would never, meet him—was smiling directly at him.
He lifted the remote, turning the television off.
“Nothing good on, anyway,” he said to himself as he lay back on the couch. The sensation of loneliness returned, and he stared at the ceiling for a moment.
John looked around, reached for the Gideon Bible in the desk, and flipped it open.
“God,” he said to himself. God was the cure to all loneliness. And the only way to connect with God was through the Bible, right?
To read a book that had been penned thousands of years ago on another continent, in a different culture.
He read a chapter from the psalms and told himself that he felt better.
John stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours. Finally, he fell asleep.
T
HE SUN HADN’T
come up yet. Devin had slept only a few unsettled hours. He hoped Hannah had slept better in the room next door. He’d found two rooms with made beds that seemed more sanitary than the others and slept above the covers, hands clasped, pistol under his pillow. It wasn’t the most restful sleep he’d ever had, but sleep, he reminded himself, was a crutch anyway.
He got up and found a shower, checked for clean water— undressed and stepped in. He set the pistol on the edge of the sink, only a foot or so away, keeping an eye on the cracked door as he bathed as quickly as possible. He dressed, his suit feeling better after he’d had a chance to hang it out for a while. Devin smoothed the few wrinkles in a mirror and decided to make a second search of the motel.
The place was dilapidated. Obviously built sometime in the late fifties and abandoned. Who knew if the people who had been using it actually owned the place or not—it wasn’t like anyone was going to check on them in this rat-infested heap. Nearly every room looked as if it had been rampaged through by a herd of wild animals—clothing, sheets, and even mattresses were tossed everywhere. The windows were open in a few rooms, letting the outside world tear in.
Devin stepped into another of the empty rooms—the smell of dirt and mildew, just like the others. He approached the closet and opened it: intimate apparel, video camera equipment, a cardboard box filled with lewd paraphernalia. He pulled on a pair of leather gloves from his car and pushed some of the items aside, cautious of the health hazards involved.
A box moved, and there was a jingling sound as something hit the wooden floor of the closet. He reached down, searching carefully. Devin had found used needles in several of the other rooms and had no interest in finding another one—especially not by the exposed tip.
The last of the debris shifted, and he saw what made the noise: a tiny ring with a set of small keys. Devin picked them up and looked them over. He scowled in thought. They didn’t belong to anything in the closet. He scanned the room again, stepping toward the nightstand.
Nothing in the drawers. He went prone, looking beneath the bed. There was a wadded shirt that someone had forgotten— and a box. Devin reached in, pulled the box out by the handle, and set it on the bed.
A large, fireproof lockbox. Heavy-duty construction. He tried the key in the lock, and it turned with ease.
Devin opened the box.
These people were more dangerous than he’d realized.
“Hannah.”
She shifted slightly, suddenly becoming aware of her body again as she awoke.
“Hannah,” Devin said again, stepping further into the room.
Her body unfurled from the curled position she had slept in. Still in her clothes, on top of the covers of a motel room bed. She stretched as she watched Devin walk up to the night table and shove the items off of it.
Hannah sat up, yawning. “What is it?”
Devin spilled the contents of a fireproof box onto the table.
“Guns,” he announced, describing the dumped contents. “Two Magnum revolvers, a Sig Sauer with the serial number filed off, and two MAC-10 submachine guns.”
Hannah blinked; she knew the name. “MAC-10?”
Devin picked up one of the submachine guns. It looked like a smallish metal brick with a stubby barrel and small grip. An ammunition clip that was almost as long as the gun itself protruded from the base of the grip.
“The MAC-10,” Devin said as he looked it over. “Rickety little submachine guns used by street gangs. Fully automatic with a high rate of fire, made out of stamped metal—inaccurate to the point of unusable.”
She rubbed her eyes, looking over the firearms. “How is that bad?”
“It means that they’re trying to intimidate more than girls.”
Hannah stared at the small pile of guns, her breathing getting slower.
“What do you know about human trafficking?” Devin asked, waiting for Hannah to reply.
She thought for a moment, still focusing on the weapons in front of her. “I’ve heard some things about it. In other countries mostly. Why?” She studied the lines on the dark gun metal of the Sig Sauer compared to the glint of light on the silver-looking revolver.
“Hannah,” Devin said from another world.
She was used to guns. She’d grown up around rifles and shotguns and cousins who liked to hunt. But the weight of a firearm—the precise construction of such a brutal mechanism always seemed to startle her.
“Hannah, look at me.”
It never seemed real until she touched them. Even now it all felt like a dream from some other—
“Hannah,” Devin said firmly. She turned her head, looking at him—commanding in his suit and perfectly fastened tie. He pulled up a chair next to the bed and sat down, closer to her than she had expected, eyes focused and unblinking. “Do you understand what you’re getting yourself into?”
Hannah studied his serious face. She answered with honesty, shaking her head. “No.”
Devin remained still and silent for a moment, as if he were preparing his words with precision and care. “Human trafficking is the illegal buying and selling of unwilling human beings into sexual slavery.”
Her breathing stopped. She knew that. But to say it? That was something completely different somehow.
“Every day girls and”—he was careful to add—“boys are captured, tricked, and cajoled into the hands of traffickers who sell them as sexual slaves. In fact, eight thousand human beings are bought and sold in the United States alone every year. It is real, and it is dangerous.”
Hannah nodded without speaking.
“It is, by some counts, the second-most profitable illegal trade in the world, directly following after the drug trade.” His face became sober, looking her deep into her eyes. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She didn’t respond.
“Selling human beings into a life of rape and captivity is more lucrative than money laundering, counterfeiting, loansharking, and the international arms trade.”
Hannah blinked. “The international arms trade?” she repeated.
Devin nodded. “More money is made from the trafficking of human beings than from the sales of every single firearm sold illegally to every street punk, terrorist, and third-world dictator on the face of Planet Earth.”
Hannah’s heart rate seemed to change—not faster or slower, but somehow painful, as if it were trying to tear itself apart. “Are you trying to scare me?” she asked.
Devin held up a MAC-10. “I’m trying to ask you how firmly you believe this is worth it. Because these people are criminal. There is no government regulation on the human sex trade. There are no receipts, returns, or unions. There is no Better Business Bureau for the buying and selling of twelve-year-old boys as perverse playthings—there’s only this.” He tapped his index finger on the submachine gun.
Hannah nodded.
“People get shot every day over meth deals that have gone bad. It’s the nature of the black market. But these people aren’t cooking meth in their basements so they can sell it to kids on the street—they’re selling the kids on the street into other people’s basements—and they are not interested in losing their investment. And they’ll chop you into slices of meat if they catch you. Do you understand?”
Something seemed to rumble inside of Hannah. Like a tremor exploding from inside of her. Some part of her wanted to cry— another wanted to scream. But she held it in—a fireworks display of emotion escaping in the solemn phrase: “I understand.”
Devin looked over her face for an inordinate amount of time, studying her, trying to pick up on any hint of hesitation or fear that might work its way to the surface. Hannah focused on her breathing—pushing every thought out of her mind, dwelling as much as she could in the stillness and serenity of single-mindedness.
“Good.” Devin nodded. He stood up and walked toward one of the grimy windows. “We need to do one last sweep of…” He stopped dead and stared out the glass.
“What?” Hannah moved from the bed and came alongside Devin at the window.
He pointed with one hand, grabbing her arm with another. “That’s them.”
Hannah followed his pointing finger to a tiny dot on the distant highway—a mile or two away. A car or truck—impossible to tell at such a distance.
“They’re coming back here,” Devin announced, pulling her away from the window. “They’re on their way now.”
“Now?” she repeated, shocked. “How long?”
“Two minutes. Maybe.”
Hannah felt panic stab at her.
Help me, God
, she prayed silently in the recesses of her mind—then chastised herself. Now wasn’t the time to tell God what to do but to listen to what He had to say. She focused on the stillness.
Devin moved to the table, picked up the Sig Sauer handgun, and began stuffing magazines of ammunition in his pockets. One magazine locked into place in the grip as Devin threw his back into the wall, handgun clenched at the ready, head peeking out the window.
Hannah was suddenly overcome by the rashness of his actions. “Do you plan on shooting your way out?” she asked skeptically.
Devin paused, obviously digesting some kind of vision he was having. “No,” he said definitively, “there are too many of them, and they’re too well armed. We have to get out of here.” Devin pointed to a nightstand. “Get my car keys.”
Hannah rushed to the nightstand, seeing the keys lying there. Her hand reached out, and something stopped her.
The girls being photographed.
The pictures uploaded onto a computer.
The images on the Internet—advertising to potential buyers.
Logging vital information.
Stashing the laptop in the room.
Hannah stopped, fingertips barely touching the keys. Her focus shifted to the right.
“What are you doing?” Devin asked, firm.
“The laptop,” she said with purpose.
Devin’s attention flashed to her. “What laptop?”
She moved to the wardrobe against the wall, pulling the doors open, searching through the clothing hung there. “I have to find the laptop,” she said without hesitation.
“There isn’t time,” Devin said roughly, grabbing the keys from the table himself. “We have to go.”
“No.” Hannah shook her head. “They stored information on the laptop—where they’re keeping the girls. How and where they’re going to sell them!”