Tiger

by William Richter

  The young men looked scrawny and twitchy and burned-out, career dopers. None of them seemed to take any notice of the rain that was now coming down. One guy—probably no more than twenty but with the ghostlike aura of a meth addict—gave Wally a once-over with his creepy, sunken eyes.

  “What the fuck do you want?” he said.

  Wally saw an opportunity to confuse her pursuers. “Cops!” she shouted, and the dopers began to scatter in every direction, the meth-head included. A couple of them headed up the hill, but the rest scattered downhill, to the east, charging loudly through the woods in panic. Wally did the opposite—the crude fire pit was constructed with stones from a broken-down fieldstone wall, and Wally vaulted over what was left of the wall, slinking down on its opposite side and pulling several branches up against her to complete the hiding spot. She waited there, motionless and barely breathing.

  Within seconds, she heard the sound of Townsend’s men approaching, crashing through the trees and following the sounds of the partiers, whose scattered footsteps could still be heard in the trees.

  “I can’t tell which is her!” one of the pursuers hollered. “You two . . . head down the slope!”

  Wally heard them split up and race off after the partiers. They’d run in so many directions that there was no way her pursuers would be able to tell which to follow. After less than a minute, she quietly poked her head up from behind the stone wall. The party spot was empty. Before her pursuers could double back, Wally turned uphill again, jogging away from any direction taken by Townsend’s men. As she moved, Wally texted Kyle again.

  Your father is here. Stay away from the road.

  A few seconds passed before Kyle responded: Can u c radio tower?

  Wally looked up the slope. In the fading light of dusk, she could see a blinking red light up above the ridge, probably a hundred and fifty feet high. Beneath the red light she could just make out the structural lines of a tall radio tower with cell-phone-antenna panels attached at over a dozen points.

  Yes.

  Meet thr, came his response.

  K, she typed, and started uphill in the direction of the tower. She couldn’t hear anyone behind her, and figured the dope-smoking teens had thrown them off her scent. Eventually she came upon a narrow service road that led to the radio-tower facility. Rain continued to fall as Wally hustled up the road and found Kyle standing outside the cyclone perimeter fence that contained the radio tower and its maintenance building. He had a green military surplus poncho over him to fend off the rain, the hood pulled forward.

  “We don’t have much time,” Wally started, breathless from her rush up the hill. “We have to go.”

  But even as she said it, something felt wrong. The shoulders beneath the poncho were much too narrow to be Kyle’s—the wet nylon draped loosely, almost to the ground. When the figure turned to face Wally she saw that it wasn’t Kyle at all, but a young woman with short-cropped hair and a chilling smile.

  “What—” Wally began to speak but never had the chance to finish.

  To her left, a man stepped from the shadow of the trees and raised his right hand toward her. Wally heard a distinct click! and felt an intense pain surge through her, every muscle in her body going rigid. She’d been hit by a Taser. Her motor controls abandoned her and Wally fell to the ground, aware of what was happening despite the pain and physical disorientation. She felt herself shouting but heard no actual sound. As she lay on her back facing upward, she could make out individual drops of rain as they fell out of the sky toward her, illuminated by the perimeter light of the radio tower.

  Wally was completely immobilized. She begged her body to rise up and run, but there was no response. She heard the sound of vehicles approaching, then a set of tires screeched to a halt. Soon Richard Townsend was standing above her. The silver Humvee pulled up next, and Alabama—the man she had burned at the lodge—stepped out to join him.

  Alabama? But he was after her, not Kyle . . . right? Wally couldn’t think straight. What was happening? Alabama and Richard Townsend were standing side by side, looking down at her. Townsend wore an expression as cold as she had ever seen, as if she were an object unworthy of empathy. Another man stepped forward with a syringe in his hand and stuck Wally in the neck.

  As she faded from consciousness, Wally’s head slumped to the side. It was only then that she finally saw Kyle standing ten feet away. If he was feeling any regret or shame, Wally didn’t see it. If anything, he looked satisfied.

  “Kyle,” she felt herself struggling to say his name.

  Within a few seconds, Wally felt everything slipping away.

  25.

  TIGER FINISHED HIS WORKOUT WITH TWENTY

  minutes of wind sprints on the treadmill. His lungs felt near to bursting as he fought through the final stretch: a four-minute sprint at ten miles per hour. By the time he climbed off the machine, he was dripping sweat even though the air in the second-

  floor gym was cold. He went to the watercooler and refilled his workout bottle, chugging half of it in two or three swallows.

  Rachel was working out on the weight bench near the far wall, finishing off a set of presses at a hundred and seventy pounds—impressive for someone her size. As soon as she finished she sat up, breathless and flushed, and her eyes went immediately to Tiger. Rachel was monitoring his movements, and she’d been doing it all morning, hanging near him upstairs in the lounge and now down in the gym, trying to act casual as if the intersection of their daily schedules was just coincidence. Tiger couldn’t figure out what was going on, but something was in the works and it made him uneasy.

  He wondered what would happen if he actively tried to ditch her. As he finished his water and started doing some stretches, Rachel’s cell phone rang. She took the call, turning away from him in order to have a private conversation. Tiger seized the opportunity and turned toward the door of the gym, walking calmly out onto the stairwell. His first intention was to head up to his room, but he decided at the last moment to go downstairs instead—there was a steady rain coming down outside, and he liked the idea of cooling down in the open air of the parking lot, the storm pouring down on him.

  He was just about to step outside when two of the Ranch’s vehicles—a black Cadillac Escalade and a silver Humvee—pulled through the front gate and came to a stop in the center of the lot. Tiger stopped in the shadow of the doorway and watched as Archer Divine and five of his men poured out of the vehicles, into the rain. One of the men was the guy everyone called Pete, an experienced mercenary who spoke with an accent from one of the states in the American south. Pete had been away from the Ranch for several weeks, only returning a few days ago with some significant burns on his face and upper torso. As expected, he offered no explanation for his injuries.

  Tiger heard Rachel in the stairwell behind him, calling his name from the second-floor landing. “Joe?” There was urgency in her voice. Soon Tiger could hear her descending toward him, but his attention was focused on the activity in the lot. She arrived beside him and took firm hold of his arm.

  “We’re going back inside,” she told him, but her insistent pull on his arm made Tiger even more determined to stay where he was, and Rachel wasn’t strong enough to move him on her own. Then Archer Divine noticed Tiger for the first time. A strange, playful look came over him, as if some sort of depraved entertainment was about to begin. Tiger now registered that one of the men exiting the black Escalade was Divine’s own son, Kyle, who had also been absent from the compound for several weeks.

  Divine nodded toward his son. Kyle leaned into the backseat of the black SUV and, with a small grunt of effort, emerged with a limp body in his arms—that of a young woman. There was no way to tell if she was dead or alive. As Kyle turned in Tiger’s direction, the overhead light in the lot revealed the girl in more detail: she was petite, wearing a hooded black jacket over dark
clothes. The hood shifted slightly to reveal short blond hair, and her head lolled back, revealing her face.

  Wally.

  “Easy, Joe . . . ” Rachel said, gripping his arm with two firm hands now, but Tiger shrugged her off and rushed toward his sister, his protective instincts in full control of his actions. There was shouting—commands for him to stop—but Tiger barely even processed the words. He made it to within a few steps of Wally before several of Divine’s men reached him, one of them raising a rifle up high and swinging the weapon down toward Tiger’s head. He felt his legs crumple beneath him.

  26.

  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.