The Overseer Read online

  She kicked again and again—his head snapped back like a melon as her foot connected with his face. Her hands searched frantically for the door handle she’d lost track of in the furious exchange—fingertips catching on the outline, hand grasping. Dominik was recovering. Covering his face with his left hand, he reached out with the razorlike bottle with the other, like a shield.

  Hannah flung her body into the door as she pulled the handle. She felt her body tumble to the hard, wet pavement beyond. She looked back in time to see Dominik coming down at her, bottle in hand. She kicked his descending arm away, and the bottle exploded against the ground. Dominik reached for her body, trying to hold her down. She felt the car keys, still in her hand, clutched them like a dagger, and came down hard on Dominik’s arm. He winced, recoiling. She lashed out for his face, searching for his neck.

  He threw himself back against the car, evading Hannah’s swinging attack, then stood.

  Hannah pushed herself away, trying to keep her distance.

  And then he ran.

  Dominik rushed toward the end of the alley, water spattering against his face and arms.

  Who was this woman? This girl? She’d followed him. Knew where he was going and what he was doing. She had to know about his business. She wasn’t FBI. Police? Maybe.

  No. That wasn’t likely. She was too young for either. She was obviously trained in following people—but not with subtlety. Her mistakes were too glaring—too inexperienced.

  Surveillance for someone else was his only thought. Someone who wanted to rip off their shipment. It happened all the time with drug trafficking. Why not in this business too?

  Dominik made a sharp right, ducking into a trashy, overgrown backyard, shoving past a metal trash can. He had to fix this or it was going to cost him his head.

  Hannah tore after Dominik.

  Her one lead. Her only chance of finding these girls. She couldn’t let him get away.

  She turned the corner fast, running through someone’s backyard, chasing after as fast as she could, Dominik’s form merely a dark blotch against the impossible conditions of night and drizzle.

  He was ahead, crossing another yard, leaping a short chain-link fence. Hannah pushed herself, gaining slightly. She approached the fence, hands stinging as the cold, rain-soaked metal ripped at her bare hands. She hurtled the fence and continued her pursuit.

  Dominik rushed across the street, dodging between parked cars, knocking over a boxy plastic trash can, sending garbage spilling. Hannah dodged to the left, losing time from the circuitous route, but it was less than she would have lost from fighting the obstacle she’d been presented with.

  Her feet splashed through puddles as she forced herself forward, chasing as fast as she could. From yard to yard, across another street, low-hanging branches snapping at her face. A tall wooden fence, knotted and old. Dominik clambered over the fence. Hannah followed, charging toward the obstacle, hands digging in as she made her way to the top—throwing her body over the other side. Her feet connected with something she didn’t expect—a trash can—and she lost her balance, hitting the grassy lawn with a painful lurch.

  She looked up. Dominik was already making his way over the far fence at the other end of the yard. Hannah leapt to her feet.

  The back door to the home opened, and a young boy—maybe ten—watched her rush at the fence.

  “Mom! There’s someone in the backyard!”

  Hannah ignored the boy, throwing herself at the next fence, pulling herself into place with her arms, tossing a leg over the fence, hitting the ground with a splash on the other side. She pushed herself up from the muddy puddle, covered in dirt, and gave chase once more as Dominik turned a corner. She came to the gate in the fence. Locked. Hannah slammed her shoulder into the gate, sending it flying open, propelling her into the front yard.

  Rain covered her face, and she wiped the thick drops from her eyes. Her head turned hurriedly, side to side. He was nowhere to be seen.

  What had happened? How had she lost him? He must have taken a different turn.

  She walked into the street, looking around in all directions.

  This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t let this happen. The girls were too young—thirteen at most. She couldn’t let this happen to them. She couldn’t let them disappear into the night.

  Hannah pushed her hands through her soaked hair, trying to think. She needed to know where he had gone.

  A set of headlights rolled toward her, a sharp honk on the horn, and she stepped out of the car’s way, the vehicle rolling lazily past.

  The world was going on as usual. She was failing her charge, and the world didn’t even know enough to care.

  She needed to pick up the trail again. She needed to see the past. A vision of where he had gone. She needed a magic wand to wave, to bring her the sight she needed.

  But it didn’t work like that.

  Hannah looked up at the rainy sky. “God?” she beseeched. “I can’t do this. I can’t find them. I need You and Your sovereign power and…”

  No. She scolded herself. It’s like people to go to God, thinking they had something to say—yammering to an almighty God who formed the world from the palm of His hand. How like her to think that florid prayers somehow pleased God.

  No, it was not her place to talk. It was her place as a creation of God to do something else…

  “Listen,” she whispered to herself.

  She closed her eyes and listened to the rain, her thoughts filled with her calling and mission.

  No. She scolded herself again. Listening wasn’t done only with the ears but also with the mind and the heart.

  She cleared her mind. Focused on her breathing. Focused on God.

  The rain thundered in her ears, every droplet exploding against every surface of metal, asphalt, and grass. Each sound blurred into the other in a cacophony of white noise.

  Listen, she said to herself in her mind.

  The drops faded toward the background, only a thumping rhythm of a select few drops tapping out an erratic beat. Bit by bit the rhythm thinned, only a few proud beats pounding out a pedantic march.

  Listen, she said to herself again, her body relaxing.

  A single droplet of rain made a tiny plinking impact.

  Then silence. The world without time. Where she wasn’t hurried or forced into action.

  Listen, she thought again. And then she heard.

  Dominik’s shoes thudding against the path…

  Leading away…

  His ragged breath wheezing—

  Removing him from the scene.

  The cries of the girls reverberating in his mind—

  Remembering the thud of blows.

  The ringing slaps to tender faces—

  The sobs pounding into his brain.

  The house that he had been working from.

  Creaking from the strain.

  The place he was returning to.

  Thunder rocked the air as Hannah’s eyes opened, lifting to the house in front of her. A sigh of anguish escaped her lips.

  There.

  Hannah quietly grasped the doorknob and felt the door swing lazily inward, left ajar by someone before her. Stepping into the house as quietly as possible, she paused. If he was in the house still, she didn’t want him to know. Not yet. There would be a moment soon, when she had something to report, that she would need to call the police to finish this. But visions of the past weren’t evidence enough. She needed to find the girls. To know for certain they were here before she did something that might spook Dominik.

  She moved into the living room. Shoddy furniture bulleted with holes. An ashtray on the coffee table filled to the brim with dark ash and cigarette butts. The whole place reeked of stale smoke. Magazines littered the remaining surface of the coffee table—like a doctor’s waiting room.

  Men, sitting in the living room—each waiting their turn.

  A quick thump reverberated through her chest. These had been different girls
, before the ones Hannah was looking for. Older—Russian? It wasn’t any easier to consider.

  Her stomach churned, and she stepped into the next room— the kitchen. No signs of cooking or supplies. No one lived here. At least no one ate here.

  Hannah looked at the table—a sprawling forest of vials, needles, alcohol, and soda bottles. She picked up a container of medicine, reading the label.

  Flunitrazepam. Whatever that was.

  There was a smacking sound, and Hannah turned. The back door hung open, the screen door slapping loudly in the rainy wind.

  Dominik exiting out the back.

  She thought about following him—but this was what she was looking for. This was where they’d brought the girls—she could feel it. If she was going to find the girls, she was going to have to do it here.

  There was a set of stairs near the hallway, leading up. It felt right, like this was the way they had taken the girls.

  The girls, Hannah thought. She didn’t even know their names. But that wasn’t how this worked. She wasn’t called out of personal obligation. She was called to help them because it was her purpose.

  Hannah reached the top of the stairs, looking around. There was a set of three bedrooms lining the hallway. She stepped toward one with the door ajar. The door pushed aside easily, revealing a virtually empty room.

  An old mattress lay in the middle of the room, filthy blankets thrown across it in twisting heaps.

  And suddenly Hannah saw the horrible truth of what had been happening here.

  Dominik kicked open the door to the shed, scowling into the darkness as the spring rain shower assaulted the tin roof in a reverberating frenzy. He shoved the lawn mower to the side, ripping a canvas tarp away from a stack of tools. The cold canvas twisted with a kind of whiplash as its soggy corners tried to double over onto the shell of hard cloth that had molded itself to the stack of tools.

  A toolbox scattered with a rough toss, and it hit the floor somewhere to the right with a raucous clatter. He kicked a bag of screws out of the way, and the contents went spilling in a deluge of tinkling barbs.

  There.

  Dominik grabbed the gas can by the handle and gave it a forceful jiggle. Half a can’s worth of gasoline sloshed inside the container, undulating on a swishing axis that caused the whole can to swing in a wide arc.

  It was enough to do the job. To get rid of as much evidence as he could before whoever that girl was could find her way back here. Dominik hated the place anyway, all the time he’d spent there minding the shop while the others stayed in the big house across town. He wouldn’t miss it.

  It would be obvious that it was arson. The investigators might even find some of the things they had been hiding, but with luck they’d be out of the state by the time anything was found—and the merchandise would be out of the country by then. And it wouldn’t be traced back to them. They’d made sure the lease wasn’t in any of their names.

  Dominik reached into his pocket, found the metal object, removed it from his pocket, and flicked the cap open. His thumb spun on the back of the lighter, checking to see if there was enough fuel.

  A tiny flame leapt upward, then was dashed out by the snapping of the cap back over it. He walked back toward the house in the rain.

  Hannah backed away from the bedroom door, stumbled into the wall, and slid to the floor. Her body shook as she ran her hands over her head, trying to blot it all out of her head. So many girls had been brought through here. So much pain. And suffering. And hopelessness. So many monsters lurking in the shadows.

  The walls remembered what had happened here—and they were closing in.

  “O God,” she stammered in agonized prayer, mind freewheeling with the torment of it all.

  And she felt something else: another calling—

  She looked up at the ceiling and saw the wide hatch leading to the attic. A padlock dangled open at the end of a swinging latch that had been left undone.

  She reached upward, and the trapdoor snapped downward as she grabbed at the string, tugging, the ladder sliding downward with a gentle pull. Hannah stepped onto the bottom rung and moved upward, compelled by purpose but delayed by dread.

  She lifted her head into the attic. The floor was covered in brown carpet; drenched in dust that made her cough. Hannah lifted herself into the darkness. Tiny fingers of light glowed through the slits between the boards covering the one tiny window at the far end. The hatch below her swung gently upward, pulled back into position by creaking springs.

  Her hands groped for a moment as she stood, hunched in the low space. A dangling string brushed her fingertips, and she tugged. The lightbulb snapped on from an overhead fixture, and

  she looked around.

  She thought she might never start breathing again.

  Both sides of the attic were lined with bunk beds, chicken wire surrounding them in tightly fastened grids that filled in the gaps between small metal struts. Hinged doors with padlocks locked every set of beds, making each its own tiny prison.

  Lurid underwear hung from hooks and littered the floor. Dirty clothes were piled in the corner.

  Hannah walked to one of the beds, its door hanging open, and looked in. Sitting on yellowed sheets was a ratty stuffed bear with one eye missing. She picked up the bear and looked it over as a hot tear ran down Hannah’s face as she saw the face of the girl who had clung to this bear—

  Maybe fourteen years old.

  The bear fell from her hands and hit the floor.

  Whoever these people were—she would stop them.

  Wherever the girls were that they had taken—she would find them.

  Then she heard something.

  Petroleum-scented splashes of gasoline washed across the walls and tables as Dominik slung the can in all directions. He set the can down for a moment and rummaged under the sink for a trash bag. Quickly he swept the drugs off the table into the plastic and pulled the tethers shut with a swift yank. He set the bag near the door, stuffed his cell phone between his shoulder and ear, and reached for the gas can again.

  “Hello?” a female voice said in Dominik’s native language.

  “Do you know who she is?” Dominik replied in the same language as he soaked the curtains in gasoline.

  “Who?”

  “The girl that followed me. She knew where I was and where I was going.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Dominik sloshed more gasoline onto the living room carpet, sending a splash across the back of a ratty recliner. “Some girl—midtwenties maybe. She found me in the liquor store. She followed me. Chased me back to the house.”

  “You ran away from a girl?”

  “Shut up, Misha.” He grunted. “She came out of nowhere. She knew where I was and where I was going. She must have been watching us for days.” He moved up the stairs, spilling a trail of gas.

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  Dominik let the last drops trickle from the can, dousing a pile of sheets in the bedroom, then tossed the can into the corner. “I’m closing down the storefront.”

  “Use the gas can in the shed. Burn it down.”

  “I’ve already started.”

  “Good. Get going, and get out of there.” There was a click, and the line went dead.

  Dominik felt the lighter in his pocket as he moved toward the stairs, then stopped. A creaking in the ceiling from the attic above. He looked at the trapdoor in the ceiling, slightly ajar. Another creak and the distinct sound of footsteps overhead.

  He eyed the padlock dangling from the hatch—an overt violation of fire code if he wasn’t mistaken—but the reasons for that seemed more useful than ever.

  Hannah took another step back.

  Someone was in the house.

  They were down there, but there was no way to know for certain if they’d heard her. She wanted to get away from the hatch—away from the center of the noise she’d heard. There had been the sound of someone talking. It wasn’t English. Russian
maybe.

  She herself had been kidnapped just over a year before. Nothing as hideous as this—but it had still left its mark on her—a lingering fear, almost a dread, hung over her like a cloud. She’d chosen to face it head-on, to walk straight into the blackness alone. Now she feared it would engulf her.

  There was a clattering sound near the far wall and a funny smell.

  She took another step back.

  Footsteps moved toward the hatch—then stopped just below. What were they doing down there?

  Hannah turned, looking at the boarded window. Was it a way out? Maybe she could tear the boards away. The hinges on the hatch squeaked with a minute adjustment.

  Were they coming up here? To grab her? To kill her?

  Hannah forced herself to stop it. To let go of the questions. To silence her mind. Her life really could be in danger, but this time she could choose to do something. To take control. She was not tied up or caged, and she would not let fear paralyze her. She could act.

  Then she heard it.

  A click.

  She thought of the window. A moment of quiet, then footfalls moving down the stairs. They were leaving.

  Hannah moved to the hatch, putting a hand on the thick wood. It didn’t budge. She shoved. It wouldn’t move. She stomped.

  She was trapped.

  Dominik heard a loud thump strike the attic entrance. They’d figured out that it was locked. There was another thump. They’d specifically reinforced the hatch to keep the girls from knocking it open if they ever had the guts to try. The padlock would hold, and the thick bolts would stay in place.

  He kicked the back door open and stood in the threshold.

  The lighter came open with a snap.

  His thumb rolled across the wheel, and a thin blade of flame conjured itself up from the metal casing. He shielded the tiny flame for a moment, then tossed it into a puddle of gasoline.

  There was a split second where nothing happened—Dominik froze, worried that the puddle had drowned the fire. Then it spread in a violent blossom, devouring the surrounding air with an audible howl. The house caught ablaze in a matter of seconds, fire consuming up the stairs.