Tiger (23 page)

GREER DROVE WALLY HOME, CROSSING INTO
Manhattan through the Holland Tunnel before taking the Williamsburg Bridge over the East River. The sun was just beginning to rise, striking the tallest buildings but leaving the streets of the city mostly in the shade, the cool of the night lingering as the early-morning commuters made their way to work. Wally realized that she didn't even know what day it was.

“Friday,” Greer told her when she asked. For the entire drive he had been observing Wally out of the corner of his eye, trying not to be obvious. He was doing it again.

“Please stop hovering,” she said. “Don't be a helicopter cop. I'm fine.”

“I can tell you're hurt,” he said.

“Aches and pains.”

“You have a doctor?”

“Yes.”

“You'll go in first thing?”

“Oh my God . . . ”

“Promise, or I'll take you to an ER right now.”

“Fine. I promise.”

“Was that so hard?”

“Whatever, cop.”

Wally took off her jacket and peeked into the bedroom, where Jake and Ella were sound asleep in her bed. The sight of them peaceful and safe filled her with such a powerful sense of gratitude that she could barely stand it. She stripped off her filthy clothes and got into the shower, washing away all the grime and cleaning up the various cuts and scrapes she had accumulated over the previous two days. She pulled on her yoga pants and a T-shirt and climbed into her bed, spooning with them.

“Wally?” Ella said, sleepily. “Welcome home.”

“Go back to sleep,” Wally said.

“'Night.”

Wally slept deeply. When she finally woke, she was alone in the bed. Her cell phone was charging on the night table, and it read two o'clock in the afternoon. She rolled slowly from between the sheets, feeling pain and tightness spread over her entire body. She rose onto her feet and stretched, then shuffled out into the main room. Ella and Jake were on the couch watching reality TV and inhaling a stack of sliced peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches.

“Hey, sleepy,” Ella said brightly.

“How'd it go?” Jake asked, also not moving from the couch.

Wally was confused. “How did
what
go?”

“The new lead,” said Jake, looking at Wally curiously—as if maybe she'd gone mental. “The one from your text?”

Jake tossed Wally his cell phone, and she scrolled through its messages, still clueless. And there it was, a text from her number to Jake and Ella, sent two days earlier:

Had to take off. Got a fresh lead, in Jersey. May be gone for a few days, don't worry. Please stay . . . W
.

The message had come in at nine in the morning the previous Wednesday. By that time Wally—and her cell phone—had already been grabbed up by Archer Divine and his men. He had used a fake text to control Jake and Ella, just as he had used a semi-fake text from Kyle to reel her in two days earlier.

Wally realized the phony text had achieved two purposes for Divine. First, it pretty much eliminated the possibility that Jake and Ella would worry about her disappearance and involve outside authorities, at least for a few days. The second purpose was more insidious: by asking Jake and Ella to stay put in Wally's apartment, Divine would always know where they were. If he had run into problems controlling Wally, he could have used threats against Jake and Ella as leverage over her, just as he had used Wally as leverage over Tiger.

Pretty smart for a dead man.

“So, the new lead?” Ella asked. She switched off the TV, and both she and Jake focused on Wally. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

Good question. Had she? She'd found Tiger, but he was gone again. She'd found Kyle, but he was gone forever. Part of her wanted to tell it all now, to share the dark memory of it with her best friends. But she wasn't ready.

“Can I answer that later?”

“No problem,” Ella said, rising from the couch. “There's something else, anyway. Don't move.”

Ella went to the door of the apartment—still in her pajamas—opened it, and stepped outside. Confused, Wally glanced at Jake for an explanation.

“It'll be fine,” Jake told her with a grin, refusing to say more.

In less than a minute, the sounds of several pairs of feet could be heard approaching from the hallway, and Ella finally entered, bringing January and Bea with her. The two of them looked very nervous—and sad. Wally felt a surge of anger at the sight of them.

“You—” Wally began, taking a step toward them, but Ella stepped in between them.

“Hold it a second,” Ella said, cutting her off. “Hear them out.”

From the expression on Ella's face, it was obvious that she herself—enraged and vengeful just a few days before—had changed her thinking somehow.

“Hear
what
?”

“Wally,” January began, looking and sounding ashamed and full of regret, “we are SO sorry—”

“Tell me why you would do that! You kept track of me for some
stranger!
If you knew what I've been through over the past few days—”

“Wait,” Ella cut in. “Wally, what happened? You said everything was good . . . ”

“I lied.”

“We can see why it looks like we did that,” Bea interjected, “like we were spying on you or something. But it was just a club thing.”

“A club thing? What does that even mean?”

“This guy approached us at a club downtown,” January said, “about a month ago. Big guy, Southern accent. Said his name was Norton.”

“Norton Freud Queely, to be accurate,” Jake added. “Remember him?”

World's most memorable name, thought Wally. Who could forget? It was the man Wally had known as Alabama, RIH (
Rest in Hell
).

“He said his job was club promotions,” Bea said. “He offered us ten dollars a head for every one of our girlfriends we could bring to any club he was repping. You know how we're scraping by, Wally. We don't earn shit at the coffee bar and we have all these bills—”

“
And
an addiction to expensive clothing,” January added, clearly hoping to lighten things up.

“We're trying to save money for school,” Bea said. “So this was a great chance for us. We would have just told you that we were getting paid, but it was kind of embarrassing—like maybe we were using our friends for profit. Which I guess we were.”

“You got ten dollars a head for
any
of your friends?” Wally asked.

“He never mentioned you at all,” January said. “But thinking about it in hindsight, if he'd been watching you or whatever, he'd know that you would be someone we would definitely bring out with us because we'd become such good friends.” January's voice trailed off as she began to tear up. “Which we really are, Wally. You're not like . . . I mean, you're different from our other friends.”

“And you're our neighbor,” Bea added, holding back tears. “Having you upstairs has been really cool. It sounds like we really screwed up, and the idea that we helped this guy hurt you makes us sick. If you can't forgive us, we'll understand, but we hope you will.”

Bea was too emotional to say any more, and Wally suddenly felt the impulse to comfort the two of them instead of the other way around. She looked to Ella and Jake, who had been on the warpath against these girls, and they nodded, obviously convinced. Wally took a deep breath and exhaled, willing herself to let it all go. She had a good example in Ella and Jake, who had forgiven Wally unconditionally for the chaos she had created in their lives just last year.

“I'll get over it,” Wally said.

“Group hug,” Ella said, and the four girls came together, wrapping each other up tight.

Tears were spilling hard now from January and Bea. Wally could feel herself getting choked up too. Jake got up off the couch to join them, a sneaky look crossing his face as he tried to squeeze in between January and Bea.

“Don't even think it,” Ella warned him off.

SUNDAY WAS RECOVERY TIME. WALLY, JAKE, AND ELLA shuffled around the apartment like zombies—they took a series of naps, interspersed with a lot of snacking and some Scrabble, plus Jake and Ella took a few trips outside the apartment to do shopping and run errands. For Wally, the time was mostly spent trying not to think about the fact that her best friends would be leaving the next day for Neversink Farm. After months living alone, she'd grown used to having them around, and she dreaded the inevitable loneliness that would follow.

Two things happened that afternoon to lift her spirits. At around three o'clock a courier knocked on the door and handed over a small rectangular box with her name on it. Inside, she found five hundred professionally made business cards. The Ursula Society insignia was embossed on the top of the cards, with all the important contact information running along the bottom. In the middle, the cards read “Wallis Stoneman—Case Agent.” A note in Lewis Jordan's formal handwriting was attached:
Don't get cocky. You still have a few thousand case files to digitize
.

It made Wally feel good, and helped her realize that what she really needed to do was get back to work at the Ursula Society first thing Monday morning.

The second good surprise came after yet another dinner of delivery pizza, demanded by Jake and Ella as their “last supper.” Wally sat down to check all her online accounts and found an e-mail from someone named Steven Mores. The message read:
It was nice to catch up with you. I'll be in touch, or you can reach me at this email address
.

Who had she recently caught up with? She searched her memory, but couldn't figure it out. She starting writing a response e-mail designed to sniff out the personal information of Steven Mores, but then she saw it: Steven Mores. S. Mores. S'mores.

Tiger was reaching out to her anonymously in case her accounts were being monitored by the authorities, who would still be searching for him. Did his choice of an e-mail handle count as a joke from her stoic brother?
Wow
, Wally thought.
First time for everything
.

Wally wrote back:
It was nice seeing you again, as well, Mr. Mores. It had been far too long. I hope we're able to meet again soon. Be sure to reach me at this address the next time you're in the area. Highest regards, Wallis Stoneman
.

Connection made. The moment filled Wally with a sense of optimism that she hadn't felt in a while. She went back to the couch and snuggled up next to Jake and Ella. At some point, she drifted off to sleep.

Early the next morning, Wally heard Jake and Ella hustling quietly around the apartment and whispering to each other. Still dog-tired, she wrapped herself more tightly in her blanket and continued sleeping. In a half-waking dream, she saw herself asleep on the couch, Jake and Ella leaning carefully over her and each giving her a kiss on the cheek. When she finally woke, her friends were gone. It was no surprise, really—Jake and Ella hated goodbyes as much as she did.

Wally got up and made coffee and a bagel for herself, trying not to think about how much she already missed her friends, or about the empty pit in her stomach that their departure had left her to cope with. It was a bright and sunny morning outside, and she decided to eat on her rooftop deck. She picked up Tevin's terrarium and carried it out with her, figuring the snapper could use some fresh air.

That's when Wally realized something was different on the roof. It took her a moment to figure it out, but she finally noticed that the dozen or so bags of planting soil she had bought were gone. The planter boxes that lined the edge of the roof—empty before—were now full of the soil, and each box now featured colorful paper markers—seed envelopes—fastened to little wooden stakes, identifying the species planted there and giving watering instructions.

Wally thought back to the “errands” that Ella and Jake had run the day before, and along with her frequent naps that would have given her friends time to do their secret gardening. She herself had struggled to choose what sort of seeds to plant in her rooftop garden, so she was interested to see what Ella and Jake had chosen for her. The markers told her that the plants alternated between vegetables and flowers, all the way around the roof. Vegetables and flowers, a measured combination of the practical and the aesthetic. She could live with that. Attached to one of the wooden stakes was a note in Ella's handwriting.

We already miss you, Wally
, the note read.
Take care of these, and we'll be back before long to make a salad. Love, Jake and Ella
.

Wally sat back down with the turtle and placed a few bits of bagel on the little island in the center of his terrarium.

“I guess it's just the two of us now,” she said. The snapper responded by staring up at her blankly.
Maybe I should get a cat or something
, Wally thought. And at that moment came a loud knocking at her apartment door.

Wally left the turtle behind and walked to the door.

“Who is it?” she called, her voice wary.

“Wallis? This is Special Agent Bill Horst. We met some months ago.”

Bill Horst . . . he was Greer's friend in the FBI. Horst was the agent who had “debriefed” Wally after the events at Shelter Island. He had been a nice enough person at that time, but before she opened the door, Wally reminded herself that almost every law enforcement agency in the country had her brother Tiger on their fugitive list, so she would have to be careful about what she said.

When Wally opened the door, she quickly found out that Horst was not alone. He entered the apartment first: a stocky blond man of forty-five in a standard gray G-man suit. He was followed by five other agents of various descriptions, including an intense-looking female agent dressed in a black tactical suit with body armor and carrying a long sniper rifle. As Horst guided Wally away from the open door, the other feds scattered throughout her apartment. One agent sat down at Wally's laptop and began working the keyboard.

“Hey!” Wally objected. “You can't—”

But Horst gently held Wally back and handed her a piece of paper. A quick glance told her that it was a federal search warrant.

“It's a warrant,” he said, “but try to relax, Wallis. We're not here for you.”

Shit
. They were already coming for Tiger? Wally wondered what information they had heard about the violence in New Jersey. She saw that one of the agents was now connecting some devices to her landline phone jack, while the sniper was now just outside on the rooftop deck, standing tall in a rigid shooting position as she scanned the neighboring rooftops through her powerful riflescope.

“Who are you after?” she asked, dreading the answer.

Horst reached into a valise and pulled out a photograph. It was a mug shot of a middle-aged man in an orange prison jumpsuit, unshaven and with the appearance of a caged psychopath—which he was. Though his condition was not good, he stared defiantly into the camera with a monomaniacal intensity that Wally had experienced firsthand.

Ochee chornya
. Dark eyes. Like hers.

“Can you confirm the identity of this man?” Horst asked.

“That's Alexei Klesko, my father.”

“Have you had any contact with this man in the past two weeks?”

Contact with Klesko? Not possible. The man had survived the gunshot wounds he'd sustained on Shelter Island, four months earlier, but the word was that because he had intimate knowledge of the black-market weapons trade in Eastern Europe and other regions, he had been kept in federal custody and moved to a secret detention facility overseas for “questioning.” They called it “Extraordinary Rendition,” and it was generally considered to be a dark abyss from which few prisoners ever returned.

“You're looking for him in the wrong place,” Wally said, trying not to betray the sense of uneasiness she was beginning to feel. “Your spook buddies have him in a hole somewhere.”

“Yeah, well . . . ” Horst hesitated. “Two weeks ago, Klesko was taken out of custody and brought into the field. He was to be our bona fides for a deal in the Sudan, the details of which I can't share.”

Shit
. Wally knew Klesko and had no doubt where this story was headed.

“In the course of the operation,” Horst went on, looking more than a little embarrassed, “Klesko escaped from our custody.”

Of course he did
. Wally's blood began to race.

“The most positive thing we have going for us is good intel about where he's headed,” Horst continued. “We'll be ready—and in full force—when he pokes his head up.”

“And that destination would be?”

“Here. At this point, we're not entirely sure why—”

“What do you mean, here?”

Horst paused and looked Wally straight in the eye.

“I mean here, Wallis. Klesko is coming for you.”