Authors: Owen Laukkanen
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 banging. “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.
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.
“
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?”