Tiger (7 page)

“I have that with a few friends,” she answered. “I can be away from them for a while, but the moment we're together again we pick up like we were never apart.”

She was thinking about Jake and Ella, of course. She wondered if it were still true, if the three of them really would meld naturally when—and if—they were all together again.

“Yeah,” he said. “It's the same kind of thing. It's good, you know?”

Slowly kicking her feet in the water, Wally found herself wondering if that was the way she and Kyle would feel about each other someday—
where the hell did that idea come from?
There was definitely something different about Kyle now, as if he had begun to rediscover himself. Wally figured she could get used to this new, confident version of him.

Kyle
2
.
0
.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked, his directness catching her off guard.

“Uh . . . ”

“It's not a complicated question,” he said, a mischievous smile on his face.

“Well, no,” she said. Her face felt a little hot, suddenly, and she prayed that she wasn't blushing enough for him to notice. She pulled her feet out of the water and hugged her legs close to her chest. “Not lately.”

“C'mon, that
can't
be true,” he said. “There's no one special you're close to?”

An image of Tevin suddenly flashed through Wally's mind, piercing her heart. “I was sort of involved with this one guy,” she said. “But it didn't end well.”

“Painful breakup?”

“You could say that.”

“Well?” he asked after a moment, treading water in front of her. The late-afternoon sun shimmered off the drops of water on his powerful shoulders.

“Well
what?
”

“Aren't you gonna ask me? It's only polite.”

Wally sighed dramatically. “Fine. Do you have a girlfriend?”

As soon as the question passed her lips, Kyle held his hands up out of the water in a gesture that said “back off.”

“Easy, woman!” he protested. “I don't need you pressuring me. My god, we've only known each other for like a day and a half!”

“Hilarious,” Wally said in an irritated tone, but again she couldn't help smiling.

He chuckled with self-satisfaction. He kicked his way to the dock, grabbing the edge and gracefully lifting himself out of the water. Before she even realized where her eyes were directed, Wally noticed that Kyle's boxers were practically transparent. She looked away quickly, but if Kyle was embarrassed he didn't show it. He wiped some of the water off his body with his hands and stepped—still half wet—back into his clothes.

“Now I'm cold and hungry,” he said. “Let's get inside.”

Wally opened her mouth to speak but found that she was at a loss for words. She climbed to her feet and followed Kyle toward the lodge.

 

 

 

KYLE FOUND THE HIDDEN KEY TO THE MAIN HOUSE and led Wally in through the door on the back porch. It was dark and nearly freezing inside, much colder than the outside air. The windows were covered with exterior storm shutters, and the room filled with light as Kyle went back out onto the porch and swung them open. Inside, Wally raised the windows, letting the fresh air in to chase away the thick, musty atmosphere of the old lodge.

“It gets pretty rank in here over the long winter,” Kyle said. Wally actually liked the smell. It was like breathing in history.

The center portion of the house was a “great room,” a big open space two stories high with solid log beams across the ceiling. White linens were draped over large, masculine leather pieces of furniture; plush sofas and high-backed chairs huddled like a gathering of ghosts before a massive stone fireplace. There were trophy fish mounted all over the walls but no other game. A big picture window faced the shore, and with the shutters now open the orange glow of the setting sun filled the room, spotlighting the myriad particles of dust in the air that had been unsettled by Wally and Kyle's arrival.

“The power is out,” Kyle said. He left the room for a few minutes and then returned, carrying four brass oil lamps. “It happens every winter. I guess they haven't had a crew out here to fix the lines yet. I like the lamps better anyway—it's more like camping out, you know? The stove and the water heater are propane, though, so I have those going. In an hour or two there'll be hot water.”

Kyle lit all four of the lamps and placed them at various spots around the large room, spreading a mellow yellow light. There was a large pile of split wood and kindling next to the stone fireplace, and Wally sat nearby watching as Kyle built a fire, arranging the various tiers of wood so expertly that once he lit the pile with a single match it grew fast, burning large and hot within minutes. He did all of this easily and naturally, as if he was born doing it. Kyle was taking care of her, and it felt good to be taken care of. It was a feeling Wally wasn't altogether used to.

The two of them teamed up to pull the linens off the furniture and fold them into a neat pile, until finally the great room was finished and all the dust had settled. They sat cross-legged in front of the fire, watching the flames grow larger, their shoulders occasionally touching.

“Hmm,” Kyle murmured.

“What?”

“I was just thinking—did we stop for groceries on the way up?”

“Uh . . . do you
remember
stopping for groceries?”

“Come to think of it, no,” he said. “That was bad planning. I'm starving now.”

“Those five double-sized energy drinks you tossed down didn't provide lasting sustenance? Are you sure?”

He winced a little at the memory. “Don't remind me! I'll hurl.”

“A big place like this must have something in the pantry.”

“Yeah,” he said, “there's usually something.”

Kyle jumped up and headed for the kitchen, Wally right behind him. They found a large walk-in pantry to one side, fully stocked with the kind of staples—canned goods, rice, and a whole lot of freeze-dried things—that would survive long periods of time without going bad. There was nothing even remotely fresh, of course, but it was enough to feed a dozen people for weeks.

“Whoa, this is a lot,” Wally said. “Is your dad some kind of survivalist nut?”

Kyle shrugged. “He's definitely got a paranoid side. What kind of things can you make?”

“I'm excellent at reheating pizza. How about you?”

“I can cook fresh trout over an open fire.”

“You're officially worthless, then,” Wally said, but she spotted a box that read
PANCAKE MIX
and pointed it out to him. “There's something. With a little teamwork we can put together some respectable flapjacks. How hard can it be?”

Harder than they thought, as it turned out. They had the mix, but the instructions on the carton required eggs and milk to complete the recipe. They went back to the pantry and found freeze-dried eggs and cans of something called “condensed milk,” which they opened to find a gooey substance that looked and felt like shampoo. For half an hour they each experimented with proportions of the ingredients, coming up with their own versions of the batter. Kyle's came up way too thick and Wally's much too runny.

“Mine looks like the foamy stuff that floats on the East River,” Wally said. “Totally pathetic.”

“Speak for yourself,” Kyle said. “I think mine is pretty close.”

“Are you kidding me?” Wally said. “Look at what you've made there. Were you one of those kids in elementary school who used to eat paste?”

Kyle dipped his index finger into his “batter” and came up with a gob of the stuff . . . which he immediately flicked at Wally. It hit her on the cheek and stuck there, cold and disgusting on her skin. She felt a sudden fight-or-flight rush of adrenaline.

“
Ooooh
 . . . big mistake,” Wally said mock-threateningly. “Now you'll suffer my wrath!”

Wally scooped up a handful of the watery slime she'd made and hurled it at Kyle, splashing it all over the front of his shirt. He looked down at the stain in exaggerated horror.

“You will pay dearly for this,” he shouted, grabbing a spatula and scooping a mega-sized gob of batter out of his mixing bowl.

Before he could get a clean shot, Wally grabbed her own bowl and ducked out of the kitchen, letting out a high-pitched squeal—
where the hell did that alien sound come from?
she wondered—as she raced across the great room and hid behind one of the couches.

“That was the girliest scream I've ever heard,” Kyle said, coming after her and throwing more mix. She dodged the projectile and answered with another handful of her slime, which struck him in the face.

“How girly was that?” Wally taunted him.

Kyle kept coming after her, and they traded a barrage of shots as they chased each other around the furniture. An unexpected rush of delight ran through Wally as she bobbed and weaved to avoid getting hit, answering every attack from Kyle with one of her own. Wally had years of martial-arts training, but it turned out that none of those hand-to-hand tactics were very useful against high-velocity clumps of pancake mix. As she raced past the fireplace Kyle managed to land a massive glop of the crud on her chest.

“Wait, hold on!” she said, standing up in full view and spreading her hands wide in a universal gesture of peace. “Truce, okay?”

“Now that I've got you on the run . . . ”

“No, I mean it,” Wally pleaded, apparently sincere. “Aren't we better than this, Kyle?”

“Are we?”

Wally responded by laughing as she heaved everything that was left in her bowl at Kyle. A big splash of the slime struck him across his face as she ran away, letting out another squeal—
seriously
,
where the hell did that sound come from?
—and hid in a bathroom in the nearest hallway, locking the door behind her. Within seconds, she could hear Kyle arrive outside the door, breathing hard.

“The window in that bathroom is stuck and can't open more than a few inches,” he said through the barricade, “so if you want out, you're going through me.”

“Okay, then,” Wally said, catching her breath. “Truce for real this time.”

“Easy for you to say—you got the last good strike.”

“Okay, fine. I come out, and you take your best shot. Then we're done.”

“Cool,” he said. “Let's do it.”

Wally opened the bathroom door slowly and stepped out, shutting her eyes and bracing herself for the impact of the expected glob. When a few seconds went by and nothing happened, she cautiously opened her eyes and saw that Kyle had fashioned his remaining mix into a round white ball of glop, stuck harmlessly to his nose and accompanied by a blank expression on his face.

Wally laughed out loud and doubled over, accidentally wiping her crusty, batter-covered hands on the thighs of her pants.

They retreated to the kitchen and—refusing to be defeated—teamed up to mix a batter that finally looked right. Within fifteen minutes, they each had a big stack of syrupy pancakes on their plates, which they took out to the main room to eat. Calm now after their battle, they sat across from each other on opposite couches, eating quietly in front of the fire as the light outside faded from dusk into darkness.

“Can I show a girl a good time or what?” Kyle asked with a wink.

“Don't quit your day job,” Wally said.

As they ate, Wally sensed that Kyle's mood was changing—he was quiet and clearly thinking about something serious. She guessed that he'd remembered the real reason they'd come to the lodge in the first place. She waited for him to speak again, and it turned out that her instincts were right.

“So . . . the door over there?” He nodded toward a closed door at the far side of the great room, opposite the kitchen. “That's my father's den. If there's anything here that has to do with my birth mother, it's probably in there.”

“Okay.” Wally could sense his hesitancy.

“But I was thinking . . . we don't have to do that right away, do we? I mean, tomorrow is soon enough, right?”

“Sure,” Wally agreed, and he visibly relaxed. “The past few days have been pretty intense.”

“Yeah. It's nice just to hang for a little. If there's more drama on the way, I'd just as soon not deal right now. What you were saying before, about me needing to be ready for this thing with my mother to work? I think I'm starting to understand what you were talking about. It's kind of scary, to tell you the truth. Almost anything could happen next.”

It felt good that Kyle was willing to be so honest with her. She could feel herself drawn to him, her chest tightening a little as she watched him, the light of the fire flickering across his handsome but troubled features, his hair falling gently over his eyes the way it had while he had fallen asleep during the cab ride.

“Tomorrow is soon enough,” she said.

It was fairly early when Wally found her eyelids drooping. Kyle retrieved some blankets and pillows, arranging them on the two main leather sofas in the room. They crawled under their covers and Wally closed her eyes, listening to the crackle of flames in the fireplace and the insistent chirp of crickets outside the lodge.

“Thanks for coming with me, Wally,” Kyle said, his voice soft.

“Good night, Kyle,” Wally said, snuggling deep into the soft cushions of the couch. She felt warm and happy as she drifted into sleep.

 

TIGER POWERED THROUGH HIS EARLY-MORNING
workout, breathing hard and dripping sweat. The roof of the warehouse was the perfect place for him—he didn't need any special equipment, and he preferred the cool, open air to the stuffy gym downstairs. Wearing only cargo shorts and a black tank top, he pushed through his fifth set of crab-walks, push-ups, lunges, crunches, planks, and dips and finished with twenty chin-ups on a pipe he had repurposed from the building's rusted old plumbing.

Muscles burning with lactic acid, Tiger paused and mopped his face with a towel. He then chugged half a liter of springwater. He would finish his workout down in the gym on the second floor, where there was a treadmill he could use to run his sprint intervals. Some of the other men—most at least eight or ten years older than he was—would probably be down there now, using the full set of free weights that the ex-military types seemed to prefer, going for pure bulk instead of the lean, quick-twitch flexibility that Tiger sought.

He paused for a moment before heading down, reluctant to leave his outdoor sanctuary on such a perfect morning. The air was so breezy and clear that the Statue of Liberty looked close enough to reach out and touch. When he finally turned toward the door to the stairway, Rachel was standing there silently.
How long had she been watching him?

“We're ready,” she said.

Tiger toweled himself off quickly and followed her down the stairs in silence. The time had come for him to explain his actions during the bank job—his failure to take out the cheerleader when he had the chance. Tiger knew that Archer Divine's verdicts could be harsh and swift. In the days since the failed heist, he had considered fleeing the Ranch, but he already had four months of hard and dangerous work invested there and very few options awaiting him in the outside world. If he stayed with Divine, he would have enough savings within a year to pay for what he needed: a new identity. A fresh start.

Tiger had chosen to risk Divine's judgment.

He and Rachel emerged onto the parking lot and, to his surprise, walked out the main gate onto the quiet street outside. Tiger had never left the Ranch on foot, and it felt liberating. They followed the road south, just past the warehouse to an empty lot, the razed remains of an ancient brick warehouse scattered about. They stopped and waited, and soon Tiger heard it: a helicopter approached from the east, flying low and fast over the bay. Within seconds it reached the lot and touched down, and Tiger and Rachel shielded their faces against the debris sent flying by its massive, deafening rotors.

The passenger door of the chopper slid open and Divine was there, waving him in. Tiger climbed inside and took a seat, noticing that Rachel did not climb in after him. As the helicopter rose into the air, Rachel held her ground in the swirling wind and watched as he went, wearing a strange little smirk on her face that made Tiger uneasy. Tiger reached to shut the side door, and at the last moment Rachel raised her hand and gave him the slightest wave goodbye, the weirdly satisfied look still on her face. Tiger cautioned himself to be on alert from that point onward.

The helicopter flew south, staying low and fast over the water. It was just the three of them—the pilot and Archer Divine seated in front, Tiger in the back. He had no idea where they were headed.

The pilot wore a dark aviator jumpsuit—and an HK
45
automatic on his hip—but Divine was dressed in jeans and a spotless khaki cargo vest over a dark flannel shirt—an outfit fit for a casual stroll on the beach. The civilized veneer could not disguise the animalistic bulk of the man, however. Barrel-chested and powerful at the shoulders, Divine had large hands worn from physical labor. His fingernails had been manicured and polished to a subtle gloss. His head of thick gray hair was windblown. Both Divine and the pilot had large aviation headphones on.

Divine turned slightly in his seat and pulled off his polarized sunglasses, fixing an unwavering gaze on Tiger. The man didn't look angry, as far as Tiger could tell, but there was nothing particularly human in his eyes, either—only curiosity, as if Tiger were a puzzle he needed to solve. Divine pointed to the set of aviation headphones that hung beside Tiger—he slid them on, and they nearly silenced the deafening thrum of the helicopter rotors.

“Is there something about our arrangement that you didn't understand?” Divine asked Tiger, his voice over the headset scratchy and filtered.

“No,” Tiger answered. In the outside world, Tiger was a wanted man with few options. Under Divine's protection here at the compound, he could stay hidden from law enforcement and earn enough resources to make a clean start in life. This was the bargain he and the other tenants had struck.

“Your hesitation on the bank floor was an embarrassment, and it cost us.”

Tiger didn't answer. What was the point? In that blink of an eye, consciously or not, he had made a choice. He would live or die with it,
bes sozheleniya
—with no regrets.

“I expected better results from the son of Alexei Klesko.”

Tiger was taken aback. Divine had never mentioned his father, and he had no reason to think he or his team at the Ranch had made the connection. Tiger had one contact in America, the phone number of a friend of a friend that he could use in case of trouble. When he had escaped from Shelter Island five months earlier, Tiger had called that number and was referred to Divine.
Of course
, Tiger realized—his contact would never have passed him off to Divine without first knowing his entire background.

“You know Klesko?” Tiger asked.

“I know
of
him. And, of course, we do deep background on everyone before they are invited to come to the Ranch. Yours was easy enough to uncover.”

“I have nothing to do with my father,” Tiger said, feeling a flicker of resentment rising up inside of him. He hated that even in his absence his father was still an unshakeable influence in his life.

Divine continued studying Tiger for a moment before turning back around in his seat and facing forward. As the helicopter raced south, the terrain below changed to barren marshland. Within a few minutes, Divine pointed to a location ahead and the pilot nodded, setting down on a dirt road that ran through the marsh. It was dense and overgrown with tall, vine-covered trees that ran right up to the side of the road.

Once on the ground, the pilot powered down the chopper and soon everything was silent again. Divine and Tiger climbed out of the machine. Divine pulled a small duffel bag from the footwell of his seat and took out two guns, an MP-
5
machine gun and an HK
45
like the pilot's. Divine took the MP-
5
and handed Tiger the .
45
automatic. It felt heavy—fully loaded—but to be sure, Tiger popped the mag and checked the load: one in the chamber and thirteen in the mag.

Divine began walking down the narrow dirt road and motioned for Tiger to go with him.

“I have a theory,” Divine said. “Where you come from you're royalty—prince of the streets, son of a legend. You didn't have to earn anything. You don't actually have the inner resources for this kind of work.”

“
Da poshel ty
.” Fuck you. Tiger knew it could be dangerous to stand up to Divine, but being perceived as weak carried risks as well. His experience with his father had taught him that.

Divine took no offense at Tiger's defiance—he just smiled to himself a little. After just a few minutes of walking, a clearing appeared ahead. A small, half-rotted cottage stood in the middle of it. As the two of them approached the cottage directly, there came the sound of breaking glass and then automatic gunfire—someone inside the cottage was shooting at them.

Tiger was surprised, but both he and Divine remained calm, taking cover behind a tree at the edge of the property. Tiger noted that the gunfire was scattered and undisciplined, none of the shots passing closer than four or five feet away from them. The shooter was a panicked amateur.

“The target in your failed bank job was an unauthorized copy of some account ledgers,” said Divine. “Our organization is mentioned in those documents, putting us at risk. Inside this cabin is the accountant who assembled the ledgers and kept the extra copy for himself. If he isn't available to testify about the work he did, his deception will be harmless.”

And now Tiger understood. It was an opportunity to make things right.

There was another barrage of automatic gunfire from the cottage—erratic, again—and then the sound of rapid footsteps. Tiger looked in time to see a lone man sprinting away from the back of the cottage, across the clearing and into the surrounding trees.

“Go,” said Divine.

Tiger took off running, crossing the clearing in a matter of seconds and plowing into the trees. He ducked and dodged his way through the woods, but branches and vines still tore and pulled at him, lacerating his face and neck and his lower legs, which were bare below his cutoff fatigues. It was no matter—Tiger could handle the minor punishment, and he was sure that the woods would take an even greater toll on his desperate prey.

As he raced on, Tiger considered the ways in which this encounter might play out, knowing it was possible that Divine's intention was to leave both the accountant
and
Tiger dead in the woods to rot. If the situation evolved that way, he would be ready.

There were a few more gunfire bursts in Tiger's general direction, but none of them came close to finding their mark. When the gunfire went quiet, Tiger stopped in his tracks and remained absolutely still, listening. The woods were silent now. He waited. A single birdcall sounded from far away. A mosquito buzzed around Tiger's left ear. There came a sound of whistling wings from fifty yards away as two or three birds flit away from their perch, followed by the sound of something snapping under the weight of a footstep—a fallen branch, maybe—and then the sound of footsteps again, running somewhere through the trees ahead.

The woods were too dense for Tiger to see the man. He held his ground and closed his eyes, taking a single deep breath and releasing it halfway. He raised his gun up in his right hand and stabilized it on the open palm of his left, bending his knees slightly into a shooter's posture. With his eyes still shut, Tiger concentrated and listened, slowly turning his body to the right as he followed the sound of running footsteps with the muzzle of his HK.

Tiger fired three quick shots into the trees. A cry of pain came from up ahead, and the sound of a body crashing down onto the forest floor. Tiger began walking, soon hearing a whimpering cry just ahead, and a dragging sound. A hundred yards along Tiger found the man, clawing his way over the forest floor in agony. His face and arms were slashed and scraped from the sharp forest brush, and his left thigh was bleeding from a bullet wound.

“
Oh God
 . . . ” the man pled through gritted teeth. “Tell me . . . just tell me what you want. . . . ”

“Stop moving,” Tiger said, and the man became still. His weeping continued, quieter now.

He was small and wiry, wearing a pair of pleated office pants and a short-sleeved dress shirt. He hadn't shaved in a while, and his eyes looked hollow and dark, as if he hadn't slept in days. A mark on either side of his nose revealed that the man wore glasses, but they were nowhere to be seen. He squinted in Tiger's direction, trying but failing to make out the face of his tormentor.

“Who are you?” the man begged.

Soon the sound of footsteps came up behind them and Divine appeared beside Tiger, looking down at the man on the ground with no more interest or concern than he would show for a rat caught in a trap. The fallen man looked up and squinted hard, finally able to recognize Divine.

“
Oh God
 . . . ”
the man groaned in dread
.
“It was a mistake!”

Desperate and fumbling, the man pulled his wallet from his pants pocket and flashed it open, revealing photos inside of twin girls, bright-eyed with curly dark hair, no more than seven years old. “I have a family! Tell me what to do! Anything, I swear!”

Divine set his boot on the man's leg wound and pressed down. The man screamed.

“
Oh God
 . . . ”

“Few are granted such an opportunity at redemption,” said Divine to Tiger.

Tiger looked down at the accountant, wounded and sniveling on the forest floor. He had no feelings for this man, who had made his own choices in life and would have to pay for them like anyone else. Tiger's only regret was that his target had no fight left in him—there was no honor in killing a defenseless man.

“So?” said Divine.

It sickened Tiger to do the man's bidding in this way, but the accountant would die, regardless, and Divine's way would almost certainly be slower and more painful. Tiger raised his gun and fired three shots into the wounded man, two to the chest and one between his eyes, sparing him a slow torturous death.