Tiger (18 page)

WALLY STIRRED AWAKE, HER HEAD HEAVY AND HER vision blurred from whatever kind of narcotic she had been dosed with. When she sat up, the rush of blood almost made her pass out, so she closed her eyes and shifted her body until her head started to feel normal again. She felt no new injuries to her body—her only physical damage was the sore place on her neck where she had been tased.

Wally took in her surroundings. She had been lying on an old, dank sofa in a very large room—it looked like a storage area of an ancient warehouse, dusty and creaky and probably unused since forever. Near the sofa, a fire burned in an old iron woodstove, warming the air within a circle of perhaps ten feet. There were a few cardboard boxes placed near the sofa. One wall of the room was covered almost entirely with windows, dirty and smudged with decades of grime. Though it was dark outside, Wally could make out the structure of fire escapes on the exterior of the building. On the inside wall of the huge room was an enormous sliding cargo door. It looked like it was made of steel, and contained a more human-sized door within it, also shut.

Wally struggled to remember how she had ended up in this place, but it was all very vague. She had been running through the Eagle Rock Reservation, chased by Kyle's father and his men. Her last memory was of Kyle's betrayal—she had done everything she could to help him, but in the end he had lured her into some kind of trap. She felt a fresh surge of anger toward Kyle, remembering the almost triumphant look he wore as he had watched her lose consciousness. She felt an intense need to meet him again, face-to-face, and make him regret his treachery, but she was also angry with herself. When she was with Kyle, Wally had given in to her emotions so carelessly. If she had been more guarded—more
herself
—maybe none of this would have happened.

First she would have to figure out where she was and how to escape.

Wally suddenly became aware of a low, barely perceptible wheezing. She scanned the area for its source and discovered that just ten feet away from the sofa in a shadowed area beneath the wall of windows stood a single bed with army-surplus blankets piled and twisted on top. The blankets covered the mattress in such a way that it took Wally a few seconds to realize that there was a person lying under them.

As quietly as she could, Wally stood up off the sofa to get a better look. From what she could tell it was a boy, but deeply asleep. She moved closer, until she was just five or six feet away from the stranger. Her heart stilled when she first saw the boy's face in profile, his features handsome and young, framed in flowing, shoulder-length black hair.

“Tiger?” Wally could barely believe it, her heart thumping hard in her chest as she hurried to her brother's side. Tiger wasn't conscious, but he was alive and breathing. His face was covered in bruises and cuts—like an ultimate fighter after losing a cage match—but nothing that seemed life-threatening. Wally pulled back the quilt; Tiger was fully dressed in cargo pants and a flannel shirt, and the shirt was very bloody around the area of his left shoulder. Other than that, she could see no signs of major trauma.

Wally shook him gently. “Tiger?” No response. She shook him again—harder—and this time he responded by bolting straight up, his eyes lit up in alarm. Wally jumped back as he launched himself off the bed and onto his feet, stumbling and dizzy at first but finding his balance quickly. Still disoriented, Tiger crouched in an attack position—and ready to fight—but then his eyes met Wally's, and he froze. Comprehension slowly dawned on him, his mind struggling to catch up. She could see the change overcome him as the reality of her presence sank in. His hands—raised and ready for battle—dropped to his sides, but the wariness in his eyes did not diminish.

“You,” he said.

Wally felt an urge to reach out and wrap him in her arms, but she stopped herself. She could see him holding back, unsure how to act in her presence.

“Hello, brother,” she said.

Wally watched as Tiger paced uneasily from window to window, peering out into the darkness like an animal through the bars of a cage. For him, their reunion was less important than the danger of their situation.

She knew what Tiger was seeing, because she had checked it out herself: there were two armed men on watch outside, one on the fire escape a floor above them and one patrolling the parking lot on the ground two floors below. When she had looked out the window, both men had immediately clocked her presence there. Their alert poses told her that they would be quick to react if she tried to exit onto the fire escape. It seemed likely that others were standing watch, out of sight.

Tiger had already checked the entrance door on the opposite wall—he had tried to open it but it was locked from the outside, and the act of trying to force it open had brought the sound of footsteps outside the door, someone moving closer and probably standing ready in case Tiger made an effort to break through the lock.

Wally and Tiger were prisoners with few options.

“Sit down,” Wally said. “Please. It'll just take a minute.”

Tiger reluctantly sat beside her on the ratty couch. Someone had left a small first-aid kit on the floor beside the sofa, and now Wally went to work tending the minor injuries to Tiger's face. Though her face was right in front of his, Tiger averted his eyes.

She wondered what it was, exactly, that kept him at a distance. Resentment for all that she'd been given, while his life had taken a completely different course? Embarrassment that she had surprised him online, seeking her out? Or maybe distrust was his default mode—he had been raised by criminals, after all. Had anyone ever taught him how to love someone?

Wally cleaned his wounds with antiseptic, then used a butterfly bandage on the gash that crossed his strong jawline. She cut off his shirt next. Tiger never winced, even as she pulled the material off his shoulder wound, dried blood ripping away from his skin.

At least twenty tattoos covered Tiger's torso, front and back, all crudely executed in dark black ink. Some were figures—stars at his shoulders, a large cross on his chest, a Russian minaret—while others were phrases written in Cyrillic that she could not decipher.

The cut on Tiger's shoulder began to bleed again, heavily enough to worry Wally.

“This will need stitches,” she told him.

She received no reply, and he kept his eyes directed away from her.

Wally poured alcohol on the wound—again Tiger showed no sign of pain other than a faint twitch of his eyelid. The first-aid kit contained a sterilized needle and thread, and Wally went to work with them. She had never done it before, but she figured it couldn't be much different from fixing a torn hem.

When she was done—twelve stitches in all and not a sound from Tiger—she bandaged him up, then found a clean shirt in one of the cardboard boxes by the window and helped him pull it on.

“You're welcome,
Tigr
.” The Russian pronunciation of his name. Wally said it with a teasing smile, hoping he would rise to the occasion and thank her. He didn't.

“Tiger,” he said, with barely a hint of a Russian accent. He had been assimilating, apparently.

The two of them were quiet for a moment, awkward in each other's presence. Wally understood that she would have to be patient with him—there was a whole lifetime of distance between them, and it would take time to reach across it.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“When I came to America with our father,” he began, looking uncomfortable with even basic conversation, “I brought a telephone number with me.”

The mention of their father—Alexei Klesko—brought an involuntary twinge of anger and loathing to Wally.

“Someone to call, if things went bad, you mean,” she said. “Which they sure did, I think we can agree.”

She was referring to Shelter Island, of course. Tiger gave a curt nod of agreement.

“What happens here?” she asked, urging him to continue.

“Most men here are wanted by the law,” he said. “For this man Divine, we work jobs. We are safe here. He protects us.”

“This is the Hole in the Wall,” she said.

Tiger gave her a puzzled look.

“It's a thing from old westerns. The Hole in the Wall was a secret hiding place. Outlaws would rob trains and then go there to lie low. I don't know if it was a real place from history or just the movies.”

He gave another of his curt nods, acknowledging the comparison.

“But what's at the end of it?” she asked. “What's the goal?”

“Money, of course. And opportunity.”

“For what?”

He thought for a moment. “For change.”

Wally considered this. “Ah. You're a wanted man. You work for this guy Divine, and he'll hook you up with what you need for a fresh start?”

Filling in the blanks made Wally feel like a ventriloquist, forced to carry both sides of a conversation with a wooden character.

The fire in the stove had burned down by then, and the air around them was losing its heat. As Tiger got up to feed a few dry logs into the embers, the reality of her situation—the reality of the past week, really—overwhelmed her with all its force.

“This man Divine—what's his first name?”

“Archer,” he responded.

“Archer Divine. Honestly, that sounds made up. Can you describe him to me?”

Wally watched as Tiger summoned a visual image of this guy Divine.

“Strong physique, more than six foot,” Tiger said as he sat back down with her. “Perhaps fifty-five years old. Silver hair.”

“Does he have children that you know of?” Wally had begun to feel certain she knew who “Divine” was.

Tiger gave her a curious look but nodded.

“Is there a son? Maybe named Kyle?” Her voice had taken on a sarcastic, angry tone that she couldn't control.

“Yes, Kyle. When we work, his name is “Seth,” but he rarely works with us, unlike his sister. He's privileged.”

Shit
. As she'd begun to suspect, Richard Townsend and Archer Divine were the same person. Kyle had really done a job on her, spinning his complicated lies while all the time luring her to this place. Wally felt sick to her stomach.

“My God,” Wally whispered, her mind reeling at the implications. “I am such a fucking idiot.”

She stood up and paced the floor anxiously as she explained to Tiger about Kyle, how she had fallen for the tragic account of his abusive father and tried to help him find his biological mother—all of it bullshit, apparently. She kept her head turned away from him most of the time, afraid to see his response to the pathetic tale. She'd been foolish and naive.

“His father's identity—Richard Townsend or Archer Divine. Maybe one is made up, maybe both. It doesn't matter. The plan all along was to lure me out.”

Wally thought about the trip to the Adirondack lodge, and the intense connection that she and Kyle had supposedly shared there. In fact, his only goal was to get her in a vulnerable place where she could be taken. The men there—Alabama, and the one she had shot and killed—had been working with Kyle the entire time. She thought about his “screams” when he had supposedly been interrogated by the men. All faked.

Wally felt her stomach turn all over again.

“Why do this?” Wally asked. “What's their game?”

Tiger didn't answer, but Wally could see he had been considering different possibilities in his mind, and all of them were dark—dark for Wally, and almost certainly dark for Tiger. Wally silently cursed herself and continued pacing. Lewis had told her to be careful, to be sure that she was making choices for the right reasons, and she hadn't listened.

“What's Divine's business?” she asked Tiger.

“We do different jobs for him,” Tiger said. “But his main trade is weapons.”

Like Klesko
, Wally thought to herself. And Tiger too. She had read the international warrants that awaited Tiger in the real world, and many of the crimes named involved black-market weapons. Wally thought about the reporter, N. F. Queely, and the story he'd written about the intense competition among Americans trading black-market arms overseas. Maybe Jake's guess had been right—maybe Queely really had died for that story.

Maybe Divine had ordered his murder.

“WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT OUR mother?” Wally asked.

Wally and Tiger had both been there when Claire Stoneman had died, holding her in their arms as she lay bleeding in the fresh November snow on Shelter Island. Wally had lived most of her life with Claire, but for Tiger, that one tragic moment of connection was all he had to cling to. Wally felt the enormity of the responsibility she carried: Tiger's knowledge of his mother would be created now, through her words.

“
Ne perezhvai
,” he said again, averting his gaze. “You needn't bother.”

“Well,” Wally said, “now you're just pissing me off.”

He looked toward Wally, surprised by her tone.

“What's done is done,” Tiger said, simply.

Wally glared at him, feeling both angry and hurt by his refusal.

“You can pretend you don't care,” she said, anger decorating every word, “but that's bullshit. You've looked for information about me online—I traced your searches. We wouldn't have met face-to-face that night if you hadn't been seeking me out the same way I've been looking for you.”

Wally could see him stiffen, embarrassed to be exposed in that way. She thought of a movie she had seen once about a man living alone in the wilderness who tried to forge a friendship with a wild wolf. It had taken months of the man laying out one morsel of food at a time, each day just a little bit closer until he finally could reach out and touch the animal.

“Claire held so much back,” Wally began, setting out a “morsel” for him. Who knew if she would have another chance to share her memories? “She lied to protect me, so I'm always questioning how well I really knew her. I can tell you she was a good person, and she was capable of love.”

Wally wanted to say that Claire had loved her, but then what conclusion would Tiger be forced to draw? That Claire had not loved him? That she had abandoned him as a child because she loved her daughter more than her son? Wally knew it wasn't true.

“She was sad a lot of the time,” Wally went on, “and I never really understood why until I learned about you. I sometimes wonder at how she lived with it—leaving you, I mean. It was obvious that she carried around a ton for the rest of her life. It must have been horrible.”

Tiger said nothing, but he was clearly deep in thought, the flickering light of the fire playing on the features of his face, which were delicate and hard all at once.

“You look like her,” Wally told him, only just realizing it herself. And now she had his attention. “Your profile,” she continued. “The shape of your nose and brow, so intense. It makes me remember her to look at you. It hurts.”

She had reached him. “I'm afraid to ask you about your life,” she blurted out, surprising herself. “Because I was given so much. And you were left practically on your own.”

“I didn't need anyone. I made my way and asked for nothing.”

“It's not supposed to be that way, you know,” Wally said.

He merely shrugged. She realized that breaking through Tiger's defenses would be a long-term challenge, and she wouldn't be able do it without his help.

Noticing the similarities between Tiger and Claire had made Wally wonder something.

“Am I like him?” she asked.

Almost against his will, Tiger looked at Wally, contemplating her features. She watched as his eyes finally settled on hers.

“Yes,” she said. “I know.
Ochee chornya
.” Dark eyes. Deep gray, almost black. The one feature Wally undeniably shared with their father. “I think about it,” she said. “About my nature, and where that comes from. I'm selfish and reckless. I've brought harm to the people I cared about most. My mother wasn't like that, so where does that come from if not from him?”

“You can believe me,” Tiger said bitterly, “you are nothing like him.”

By the tone in his voice, Wally couldn't tell if his words were a compliment or an insult.

She suddenly felt exhausted. Carrying on ninety percent of a conversation was brutally difficult work.

“I'm hungry,” she said, scanning the room. “And I have to pee.” She got up and found a filthy, crudely constructed bathroom in the far corner of the room. Once inside, she sat on the cold seat, facing the yellowed ceramic sink. A small hairbrush, a toothbrush, and a half-used tube of toothpaste rested on its surface. The dismal tableau made Wally even angrier than she was already.

“Where do they feed you?” Wally asked Tiger when she reemerged.

“The sixth floor,” he said. “There are things to make sandwiches and leftover food in the refrigerator.”

Wally made her way to the locked door and pounded on the dense metal surface.

“We're hungry,” she shouted. “Open up!”

Tiger stood and approached her, looking cautious, but Wally signaled for him to keep back.

“It'll be fine,” she told him.

There was no response to her pounding, so she began kicking the door with her boots again and again. Each hit sounded like thunder as the metal creaked and echoed through the warehouse. After half a minute, the lock turned and the door opened to reveal two people standing outside. One was a young woman with brown hair tied back in a bun and a tremendously buff physique—juiced, probably. She held a
9
mm Glock at her side, one finger resting on the trigger.

The second person was Alabama, whom she'd last seen chasing her down through the Eagle Rock Reservation. He had gauze on the side of his face and neck where she had burned him, and small dark spots had formed on the bandage where the oozing fluids from his wounds had begun to seep through.

“Alabama,” Wally nodded at him. He returned her greeting with a stare so cold and murderous that it sent a shiver down her spine—but Wally was determined not to let him know that he was intimidating her in any way.

“What do you want?” the girl asked.

“We need food.”

The girl mulled it over. “I'll give you one minute in the kitchen. Come with me.”

She continued into the hallway, catching the silent exchange between Alabama and the girl. He relocked the door and held his post while the girl followed Wally up the stairs. As they climbed upward, Wally could see a dozen or more closed doors in the hallways of the upper floors—the only other person they encountered was another guard, tall and wiry, who raised a shotgun as Wally passed by.

“What's your name?” Wally asked the girl as they climbed the stairs.

“Shut the fuck up,” the girl growled.

“Catchy.”

The sixth floor was one large, open room with a kitchen-and-dining area and a lounge space with a big-screen TV. There was a row of locked offices at the inside wall, and Wally could see a large computer monitor on one of the desks—the same computer, she guessed, that Tiger had used to watch her.

Wally went straight to the kitchen area and easily discovered leftovers in a large industrial refrigerator. There was pepperoni pizza, along with some green apples. She couldn't be sure how long they would be held in the room downstairs, so she grabbed pretty much everything that looked edible, including some sweet things. There was beer in the refrigerator, and Wally grabbed a few bottles. She found an empty grocery bag and stuffed the goods inside.

Back inside Tiger's room, Wally heated the cold pizza on the top surface of the woodstove until the air was full of the salty, greasy, delicious smell of pepperoni and cheese. Wally was gratified that Tiger ate with her, at least.

They each ate two apples and drank the bottles of beer, but they were both still hungry. Wally dug through the remainder of what she had grabbed from the kitchen, including most everything from the cabinet that held the sweet things. There were some gingerbread cookies, graham crackers, marshmallows, two large jars of applesauce, and some chocolate bars.

“Oh my God,” Wally said, pulling the graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate from the bag. “S'mores.”

Tiger looked confused.

“It's kind of a dessert,” she explained.

Wally found some wire hangers that Tiger had used to hang up a couple of shirts. She unbent the hangers and produced two long, thin metal skewers. Tiger watched curiously as Wally speared two marshmallows on each skewer and handed him one.

“You hold them over the flame,” she said. “It'll only take a minute.”

Wally held her marshmallows over the hot embers of the woodstove, and Tiger followed her lead. They watched as the heat began to caramelize the surface of the marshmallows, turning them dark brown.

“Mom made these for me,” Wally said, thinking back. “The first time, we had rented a beach house for a week on Martha's Vineyard—I think I was seven or eight years old. One night we made a little fire pit in the sand down by the water's edge. As the sun went down these swarms of mosquitoes descended on us, so we huddled close to the fire and the smoke kept them away. It was so . . . just, really nice. Mom brought the ingredients out and told me they were called s'mores. As in, if you eat one you'll always want some more.”

She could feel Tiger watching her as she relayed the memory, and couldn't help but wonder—did he have even one memory in his troubled life to equal hers? Could he even relate to the sensations and feelings that she was describing? That expression on his face, was it resentment—anger, even—as he was forced to listen to the details of happy moments between mother and child that he had been forced to live without?

When the surface of the marshmallows started to char, Wally pulled hers from the stove and motioned for Tiger to do the same.

“Here,” Wally said. “Let me.”

She broke a graham cracker in two, placing a large piece of chocolate on one half. She then took Tiger's skewer and placed his toasted marshmallows onto the chocolate. Setting the second half of the graham cracker on top of the marshmallows, she pressed down on the cracker and pulled the skewer away, creating a sandwich with chocolate and toasted marshmallows on the inside and graham crackers on the outside. She passed it to Tiger.

“It's important to squeeze down now,” Wally said. Tiger obeyed, pressing on the sandwich until the hot, gooey insides of the marshmallows broke through the charred outer skin and spread out onto the chocolate, melting it.

“That's it,” Wally said. “You have to eat it right now.”

Wally watched as Tiger bit into his s'more, a vivid expression of pleasure crossing his face as the sweet flavors mixed together. His mouth stopped moving, and his eyes glazed over as he focused all his attention on the sensation of taste, as if the flavor was some kind of revelation. Wally could feel her heart breaking—for Tiger, for herself, and for their mother, Claire. For all the moments the three of them should have shared, but had missed and lost forever.

They came for Tiger at dusk: Divine and Rachel and four of their men, all except Divine armed and training their weapons on Wally and Tiger.

“Tiger,” Divine said simply. “Let's go.”

Wally turned to Tiger and looked into his eyes. Had she reached him, in any way? She felt a surge of panic, all of a sudden worried that the few hours spent together were all they would ever have, and that she had failed. There was nothing in his expression to confirm her fears or reassure her, either. She stepped forward and wrapped him up in her arms, holding him as tightly as she could.

He didn't return her embrace, but he took advantage of the moment to whisper in her ear.

“The south wall,” he said. “Search the loose bricks.”

“But—”

“Believe nothing they say,” he added. “Just run.”