The Overseer (30 page)

The phone in Vince’s pocket rang again, and John stopped, like a dog that caught the scent of something. “It’s Devin,” he said, suddenly realizing. He raised his voice and said it again. “It’s Devin.”

Vince looked at him intensely, then reached for the phone.

Devin heaved an internal sigh as the phone finally connected to someone.

“Where are you?” the voice on the other end asked.

Devin frowned. “John?”

“Where are you?” the voice asked again.

“Vincent Sobel,” Devin said, recognizing the voice, suddenly concerned. “What are you doing at this number?”

“I caught up with them,” Vince replied, his tone casual.

“You’re keeping them locked down,” Devin stated, “so they won’t interfere with the assassination.”

Vince didn’t speak for a moment. “We should talk about this,” he suggested, “over coffee. Where are you?”

“I want to talk to John,” Devin said, edging toward ordering.

“Just a second, then.”

There were a few seconds of rustling as the phone was passed from one person to the next.

“Hello?” John asked.

“John? Are you OK?”

“I’m fine,” John replied, hurrying to add something else, but he was cut off by more rustling and the sounds of protest as the phone exchanged hands again, apparently against John’s will.

“There,” Vince said. “Now why don’t you come and meet me? Put down your guns and let this Foster thing go. OK?”

Devin turned to Hannah, standing with him there on the dusty bluff. There was something in her face—she understood what was going on.

“You’ve made me the only person who can deal with the assassination,” Devin stated, realizing the fact himself for the first time.

“Yes,” Vince agreed, almost as if he’d realized it for the first time himself, “and I promise you that I’ll do everything in my power to make sure—”

Devin hung up on Vince midsentence and put his phone into his pocket. He turned to Hannah.

“Do I need to do this alone?” she asked with an unmistakable air of courage.

He didn’t speak for a moment, trying to find a way—some chance that they, mere mortals, could know beyond a doubt what they should do. By saving the senator, he could well be dooming Hannah’s mission—and Hannah herself. He groped for some perfect answer to all the questions that flitted through his mind and pricked at his conscience. Discernment. He prayed for discernment. Just having visions wasn’t enough.

Then, looking into her resolute face, he found his answer.

“I don’t want you to do anything until I can help,” he ordered, stepping toward her. “I told John I wouldn’t let you act alone, and I intend to keep my word. Don’t make contact, don’t try to rescue, and don’t confront. And whatever you do—don’t get caught. Do you understand?”

She shook her head. “What do you want me to do, Devin?”

“You’re right,” he said, feeling an abstraction of the future. “If you don’t go right now—right this instant—and find out where these girls are, then we’ll never find them.”

Hope seemed to flood her face, filling her features with life. “You’re saying I’ll find them?”

“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head, somehow confused by his own words, “but I do know that the only chance they have is for you to find them now. And when you do, call me. If I can come, I will be there.”

“If you’re done,” she acknowledged. “If you’re still alive.”

It always sobered Devin after the fact that he could have died in a particular situation. But it was the kind of thing he pushed off until after, then dismissed as being a part of the long lost past. “Yes.” He nodded. “If I’m still alive.”

Hannah was silent for a moment, the breeze tousling a hair. Stepping forward, she hugged him.

“Dear God,” she muttered in Devin’s ear, standing on her toes to reach it, “protect my brother and friend, Devin. Give me stillness. Give me peace. But give him safety.”

Devin leaned down toward Hannah’s ear. “Lord, watch over Hannah. Protect her and keep her. Forgive me for not being able to be with her, but keep her safe!”

And then, without an amen, he pressed the keys to the car into her palm, stepped away from her, and walked toward the road.

Chapter 18

S
ENATOR
W
ARREN
F
OSTER
stood on the balcony of his hotel room, looking out over the city. Las Vegas was made for the night, when it could be its own evening sky, filled with colored lights. But during the day the place seemed dirty, grungy, and run-down. Vegas had been torn down and rebuilt several times over, and now with the current economic woes, it looked as bad as ever. Empty parking lots, devoid of their nighttime visitors. The kind of uninhabited wasteland that most places had to wait until two in the morning to become.

He was ready to leave. Not that Vegas wasn’t a charming place in its own right, but he was ready to sleep in his own bed.

He was tired. The scandal and the accusations had been more than he was ready for, and the nature of the situation had caused more than its share of controversy. It was hard on his marriage, hard on his kids. It was all more than he wanted to talk about or deal with. And then there was the issue of security.

As a senator, he didn’t have a Secret Service detail, not usually. Someone had made sure he had security, though. Private contractors who were supposed to keep him safe if something happened. Mostly he just found them a nuisance.

He’d spent the last two days touring Las Vegas, “investigating” for human trafficking activity. It was important; he knew that. Prostitution was legal here, like it was in Amsterdam and parts of Germany. In Europe, legalization of prostitution always seemed to be justified by the notion that it would protect women, allowing them insurance and medical care, and bring revenue to the state. The result was government programs that weren’t being used by the women—many of whom were too embarrassed to go on the record to say they’d made a living that way for a short period of time. Most of them didn’t plan to live that kind of life any longer than they had to and weren’t about to do something that would let their friends and family know they had taken up that kind of vocation.

But Nevada’s European counterparts had only really served as a means of hiding illegal trafficking in a forest of legal prostitution. The demand for girls was simply too high, and not enough of them actually
wanted
to make a living that way. The result was a flood of girls from all over the world, mostly the Ukraine, being bought and sold against their will, into a trade that would ruin their lives.

The point of the investigation was to see if the same things were happening here in Las Vegas, which was something he could hardly establish in just two days. But it was a publicity stunt. A series of photo ops designed to show people he was a good senator worth reelecting. And there had been something else that had made his associate, Mr. Crest, so interested in coming to this place.

Warren Foster took a long, deep breath of morning air. He wondered if he could change the time for the press conference, maybe catch an earlier flight back home. He could get some sleep on the plane and be home in time to see his wife.

“Senator?” someone said from behind him, and he turned.

“Mr. Crest,” he acknowledged. The man had a first name, but Foster couldn’t bring himself to use it. Crest was tall and very thin with round glasses. Yet there was something commanding about the man. The kind of thing that made first names inappropriate.

“I’d like you to take a look at the plans for the security,” Crest said, approaching with his briefcase.

“OK,” the senator said with a resigned nod, telling himself that he just had to get through this and then he could go home.

Hannah Rice drove the car through the streets, still miles away from the house where Devin had shot Scarza. She wondered if there were police there. Was it a crime scene? There was always the question of justification when killing someone. Devin had feared for his life, they were going to shoot him, but was it selfdefense? It was the kind of question she wasn’t good with.

She prayed. That was what other people called it, at least. A term that had little to do with the reaching of her soul into an ever-sharpening path toward God. She said nothing.

The car moved slowly, yet the passing of the neighborhood around her seemed to be a flickering of color. Everything seemed to be going faster than it really was. Her world seemed to blur, her eyes starting to relax. It was the kind of thing that didn’t impair her ability to drive yet let the muscles in her body relax.

A thought came to her—that these were the same streets the girls had been taken down. The relaxing of her body continued, the trees and houses blurring together in a faster and faster display of color and motion.

Then she felt it.

The girls in the truck. Dominik at the wheel.

She was on the trail. This was where they had gone, and she could follow it to where they were going.

Her vision became crystal clear. She knew where to go now. She was on the scent, and she would follow after these girls— even into the hell they were being taken to.

Devin walked down the road, almost marching. Time was slipping by. No matter how fast he tried to reach the future, it was always down to the wire, it seemed.

He felt the bulk of the FN Five-seveN in his belt, the weight of the magazines in his jacket. He’d been sure to grab the ammunition from the car after he left Scarza’s house. He’d feared that there would be more of them, and maybe they had followed. Luckily his fears had not come to pass.

Now he was simply glad to have them on his person. Stopping an assassination was not an easy task. He would, of course, do his best to involve the police. But it was always the same—the lesson you learned early as a member of the Firstborn—if you see things that others don’t, then you’ll be seen as crazy. Especially by government organizations like the police. Devin had no problem with the police, but he knew better than to turn to them as a first line of defense, and he certainly knew better than to expect them to understand.

There hadn’t been any cell phone reception when Hannah had taken off in the car, and now the battery was dead. It made calling for help difficult. But he still had time. Enough to make it.

He had been walking for miles, and already his feet hurt. His shoes were hardly made for walking, and they were torture to his feet. A fact he would never reveal. But he wasn’t there yet. He had a long way to go—and no idea if he would make it in time.