Tiger (17 page)

WALLY SLUNG HER MESSENGER BAG OVER HER
shoulder, struggling with a brief internal debate: to go armed or not? The SIG SAUER she had taken away from the lodge upstate was hidden behind the bureau in her room with two loaded clips. She would be happy if she never had to hold that weapon again, but if things got to a place where she needed to defend herself or Kyle, wouldn't she rather have it? The violent clashes she'd experienced over the past several days turned out to be unrelated to Richard Townsend, but the man still loomed in Wally's imagination as someone who was
capable
of violence.

Wally had seen the results of the beating he had given his own son.

Wally found the SIG and the clips in her room and slipped them into a snug inner pocket of her messenger bag. It would give her fast access to the weapon if necessary. She snuck into her bedroom very quietly—careful not to wake Jake and Ella. The couple was blissfully asleep in a spooning embrace with Jake on the outside, his powerful arms delicately cradling Ella. From her closet, Wally grabbed a fresh set of clothes and a black raincoat. She was out the front door less than two minutes later.

Outside, Wally managed to flag down a cab. The sleepy Palestinian driver was happy to grab such a hefty fare in the waning hours of a quiet, rainy night. It was a forty-minute ride at least, and Wally was glad she'd gotten a driver who wasn't feeling chatty. She mentally rehearsed the steps she would take to make Kyle safe that night—provided he was finally willing to follow her direction. She was determined not to argue with him.

The possibility of helping Kyle—
really
helping him, this time—teased Wally. It promised to deliver a feeling of success that had eluded her for the past few days. This time, help would only be offered under her own terms. If Kyle was ready to accept some sort of rescue, then fine. If not, she would turn straight around and head home.

It had to be tough love this time.

Once they'd exited the interstate into the quiet, suburban enclave of Montclair, New Jersey, Wally used the map on her cell phone to give the cabbie an indirect route. They stopped two blocks away from the end of Gates Avenue, the location Kyle named as their meeting place. Arriving on foot—and from an unexpected direction—would allow Wally to approach the spot with some stealth, just in case there were any surprises waiting.

Rain was still coming down hard as Wally climbed out of the cab. Heavy clouds loomed overhead, and the cold predawn air gave Wally a chill. She pulled the hood of her jacket over her head and started walking at a quick pace. Because of the clouds there was no sign of light to the east, but it was now approaching six o'clock and some early-morning commuter activity had begun: expensive cars pulling out of driveways and heading toward the train station or the interstate.

As Wally approached Eagle Rock Reservation, she immediately remembered why the name had sounded familiar, even though she had never actually been there. The most obvious feature of the park was a densely wooded ridge that rose several hundred feet above the surrounding area. At some point up along the ridge—Wally couldn't see it from where she was—a lookout spot gave visitors a clear and dramatic view of lower Manhattan. During the terrorist attacks on September
11
,
2001
, many people had come to the park to watch the horrific events unfold. Photographs from that day still appeared in stories about the tragedy. The meeting site Kyle had chosen would be at the foot of that hill, with the reservation's forest rising up beyond.

A vehicle rounded a corner a block or so behind her, in enough of a hurry that its tires squealed on the turn. Acting purely on instinct, Wally quickstepped off the sidewalk and ducked behind the cover of a hedge that divided two of the large front yards that stretched out toward the street. She could hear the roar of a powerful engine making its way up the street in her direction.

She peered through the hedge in time to see a silver Humvee approaching along the route she had just walked. The massive vehicle moved slowly along the street as if on a search, but its windows were tinted too dark for Wally to see who was inside. Had she been followed there? Or could the occupants of the Humvee be there in search of Kyle?

The Hummer drove on to the base of the hill—Undercliff Road—and turned right, headed for the place where Gates Avenue came to an end. It was moving directly toward her planned meeting place with Kyle. Wally's instincts told her that the spot was no longer safe. Wally pulled out her phone and texted to the number of the burner phone Kyle had used to contact her.

Get away from Gates Ave.
, she typed as fast as she could.

She waited, but there was no response. Was her warning already too late? Wally hurried to the corner of Undercliff Road and looked to the right. She could barely make out the silver Humvee through the rain: it was parked one block up, the exhaust from its idling engine steaming in the cold air. The rain began to fall more heavily now, and Wally hoped that Kyle had sought out a place where he was sheltered from the weather—that action might have taken him far enough from the street that he wouldn't be spotted by whoever was in the Hummer.

Wally crouched low and dashed across Undercliff and into the woods of Eagle Rock Reservation. Once under the cover of the trees, she climbed the hill for thirty or forty yards and then moved north, toward a place where she would hopefully be able to peer down onto the intersection of Gates and Undercliff.

Soon she was above the site and sheltered from view by the trees. The silver Humvee was still parked at the intersection, but Kyle was nowhere in sight. If Kyle had not been snatched up already, he was probably safe for now. Finally his answer came.

I C
, Kyle texted.
Slvr hummer
.

WRU?

Up the hill
,
he answered.

Wally figured he must be higher up the slope than she was—he had probably been hiding out of sight already, waiting for her to appear before he showed himself.

50
yrds up slope
.

Come
2
me
, he typed.

The woods were dark under the cloud cover—Wally wasn't sure how she would find Kyle in the woods without calling out to him, which would be dangerous. She began climbing the hill, scanning the trees along the way for any sign of him. She climbed for over a minute, but instead of spotting him she came across a paved road that wound up the hill in easy switchbacks.

Wally rushed across the road, nearly reaching the woods on the other side when a set of powerful headlights flashed on and shined down on her from just up the way, the beams catching her before she could get into the trees. She hurried into the shelter of the woods, but the car sped down the road to the spot where she had crossed. The vehicle was a shiny black SUV, a Cadillac Escalade. Wally stopped briefly to rest as the vehicle skidded to a stop. Every door except the driver's opened up—three men climbed out and began to advance in her direction.

Wally caught a glimpse of the man in the driver's seat, his face illuminated clearly by the interior lights of the vehicle when the doors swung open. It was Richard Townsend, Kyle's father. Wally recognized him from the single photograph she had found in her initial background search of his son Kyle. He was a broadly built man in his early fifties, his mostly gray hair combed neatly back.

Wally raced on up the hill, her lungs and thighs burning from the effort as she dodged around the trees and undergrowth of the slope. She started to feel desperate, not believing for a moment that she would be able to outrun all of the men. She could hear them crashing through the dense, wet brush behind her, getting closer with every step.

Wally could see the lights of traffic further up the slope—it appeared to be the same paved road on another switchback. She headed straight for it, hoping she could reach that open space and flag down some traffic, but she smelled something familiar wafting through the air: the unmistakable aroma of weed. According to the direction of the wind moving across the slope, the source of the weed had to be to her right. Wally turned in that direction and headed straight for the smell. Her legs immediately felt stronger now that she was no longer running uphill.

She could hear some quiet voices ahead, followed by a high-pitched, giddy peal of laughter. Within forty or fifty yards, Wally burst through a patch of dense growth and startled a group of young, homeless-looking men hanging out around a small fire. All their heads turned in surprise toward Wally. She had stumbled upon some sort of encampment, a tarp strung up for cover over a fire pit with all kinds of garbage—beer cans, Doritos wrappers, and empty whippet dispensers—strewn about.

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.

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.