Tiger (3 page)

Or was never there at all
. Wally stopped dancing, but her heart kept beating fast. Her sweat-soaked T-shirt felt tight and sticky, clinging to her and restricting her range of motion like a straightjacket. The bodies that pressed up against her didn't feel good anymore, and she wiped her arms with the bottom of her shirt, trying to shed the sweat that strangers had rubbed off onto her.

The spell was broken. January and Bea wrapped her up in hugs again as if they could pull her back into the music. Wally felt bad that she was about to disappoint them, but then she remembered that they were completely high and by the next morning would have only a vague sense memory of it all.

Which was one of the reasons Wally hated dope.

“I'm gonna bounce,” she yelled over the music.

“NO!” the girls objected. But Wally gave them each a reassuring kiss on the cheek and bolted from the dance floor. Once she was clear of the crowd, she took one last look around to see if there really had been someone watching her, but all she saw was a sea of enchanted, anesthetized faces, lost in the music.

WALLY GRABBED THE SUBWAY HOME—OTHER YOUNG women might feel intimidated by a late-night subway ride into Brooklyn, but Wally carried herself with such an air of physical confidence that she rarely felt threatened in situations like that. She felt an aching sense of loneliness, though, as she sat by herself in the nearly empty train.
It's too much to carry by yourself
, Greer had said, and he was right. Of the people she loved, who was left? Claire was gone. Her best friend, Tevin, was gone. Jake and Ella were living far upstate at the Neversink Farm, earning a fresh start for themselves. Wally's adoptive father, Jason, had made repeated attempts to be part of her life again, but she wasn't ready yet to make peace with him after he had abandoned her and her mom to start a new family.

That left only Tiger—the sole, undeniable connection between her past and present—but Wally had no idea where Tiger was, or even if he was still alive.

When she got home, Wally opened her laptop and logged into the Ursula Society site. Since working at the Society, Wally had been using every possible resource to find her brother, but so far she'd come up empty. The first thing she checked was a running database labeled TIGER TRAP—a set of self-running searches she'd set up that ran twenty-four hours a day. The program continuously scanned dozens of resources, including law-enforcement systems all over the country, using a logarithm to sniff out Internet activity with a combination of keywords, including
Klesko
,
Tigr
, Wally's own name, plus references to the thirty or so ongoing criminal cases—in the United States and abroad—in which Tiger and her Russian father were named.

Some mentions came up, of course, but they were all several months old and useless by now.

Wally had become used to the disappointment. In nearly four months, the scan had come up with only one interesting lead: eight weeks earlier, there had been a series of untraceable searches using the terms
Wally Stoneman
and
Shelter Island
—even though Wally's name had never appeared in media stories about the shoot-out because she was a minor. Wally had hoped the searches were an attempt by Tiger to contact her, but the lead had gone nowhere.

Wally took a quick shower—it felt good to rinse off the sweat and body glitter that other dancers at the club had rubbed off on her, the glitter forming sparkling rainbow patterns on the white tile before swirling down the drain. She changed into the oversized pajama bottoms and tank top that she wore to bed and had begun towel drying her hair in front of the bathroom mirror when she heard a short, high-pitched
beep
from the main room.

She headed out and first checked her cell phone—assuming that the
beep
was an app—but when she swiped the activity bar on the screen it showed that no new messages had come in. The
beep
sounded once more and Wally realized that it had come from her open laptop.

Wally sat down in front of the computer and found that the screen was on now, awakened from its sleep mode. The TIGER TRAP window had popped up and now listed one item in the “new activity” box. It described a current “visitor”—using an anonymous host—to the page Wally had set up on Facebook. This was a surprising event for several reasons, mainly because she had set up the page using her Russian birth name, Valentina Mayakova (her mother's Russian surname—Wally would never use her father's), which only a handful of people in the world were aware of.

Wally herself wasn't really into social media, but she had set up the page as a way of doing research on Society clients. For that reason, she hadn't entered any information on her profile—personal details, friends, schools, tagged pictures, hobbies—that would bring casual visitors to the page. This anonymous visitor had either landed on the site at random or had come there on purpose, running a search using the name Valentina Mayakova.

The only real content on Wally's page was a series of photos she had uploaded to the site from her cell phone. The images were of memorable places from her past—a sheltered spot under a midtown overpass, the line outside a soup kitchen near Morningside Park, a skate park just off Riverside Drive—particular spots that reminded her of the months she spent living on the street with Tevin, Jake, Ella, and, of course, Sophie. Those times had been difficult in lots of ways—and dangerous—but Wally had never felt as strong and confident as she had while roughing it on the streets of Manhattan with her crew.

Now the TRAP program was cloning the movements of the anonymous visitor, showing that he—or she—was scanning Wally's street photographs. She felt a twinge of annoyance, like her privacy was being violated, and then realized how ridiculous it was to expect any level of privacy online, especially on a site that she had left public.

Something popped up on the left sidebar, and Wally saw that the Facebook software now listed the visitor—labeled “Anonymous”—as a temporary contact. Beside the listing was a drop-down menu of options. One of them was an icon of a video camera. Without hesitating, Wally clicked the icon and watched as a small window popped up on her screen. An animated clock icon appeared, its hands spinning around as the video signals engaged.

Within seconds, the link was established and a video image appeared on her screen: a young man, handsome, with prominent features, fair skin, and long black hair. His eyes—like Wally's—were a dark gray. The sight of him took Wally's breath away.

Tiger.

He wore a look of complete surprise, as if he'd been ambushed. The two of them stared mutely at each other for what seemed like a very long time. Beyond his obvious shock, Wally picked up traces of other emotions in Tiger's expression: embarrassment, maybe even some resentment.
Why?

Wally broke the silence.

“Tiger . . . ”

The sound of his name snapped Tiger into action. Tiger glanced over his shoulder with a look of concern, as if to make sure that Wally's voice hadn't been heard by anyone else. When he finally turned back to the camera, his eyes met Wally's for only a moment before his hand shot forward, reaching for a mouse or touchpad.

The video image on Wally's screen suddenly went black.

“No!” Wally tried desperately to reestablish the video feed, but now all signs of her “Anonymous” contact were gone, as if they had never been there at all.

Shit
.

Wally jumped onto her feet and paced around the loft, trying to settle herself down. She was mad and frustrated, and she couldn't help directing some of those feelings at Tiger himself. He'd cut off the feed on purpose, obviously, even though he had made the effort to search her out in the first place.

Four months of searching and this was what she got for it?
Bullshit.

She continued pacing—and breathing—and after a few minutes Wally's thinking became calm enough to consider two positive things: First of all, Tiger was alive. Second, he had made an effort to reach out to her, even if it had been indirect and secretive.

And then there was the bad news: when Wally had spoken his name out loud, Tiger had immediately gone on the alert, checking over his shoulder for . . . what? Or whom? She hadn't seen actual fear on his face—for Tiger to show any kind of vulnerability was unimaginable to her—but he probably had reason to watch his own back. From everything Wally knew about her brother, he had gone from one doomed, perilous situation to another all his life.

What kind of danger was Tiger in now?

WORN-OUT AND DRAINED DOWN TO HER BONES,
Wally finally drifted off to sleep . . . until her cell phone rang, breaking the late-night silence of her loft. The caller ID read “Harmony House,” the resource center for homeless youths in midtown Manhattan. During her time on the street, Wally had been a frequent visitor at the facility and had established a few relationships there.

“Hello?”

“Wally? It's Candace Chen, over at Harmony House. I'm sorry to bother you so late.  . . . ”

Wally checked her phone—it read
2
:
40
A.M
.

“That's okay, Candace. What's going on?”

“We had someone show up at our night desk. He's been beaten up pretty badly, and I think he might have been using tonight. He's very agitated. We tried to get him to agree to go to an ER or to call the police, but he was fiercely against it and we have to respect that—you know our policy. If these kids can't trust us, we might as well shut our doors.”

“I understand. But why are you calling?” Wally rubbed her eyes, confused.

“So I did a little snooping. He had an address written on a piece of notepaper in his jacket pocket. It was for the Ursula Society. That's where you work, right?”

Wally sat up in bed now, the fog of sleep clearing just enough for her to realize where this was going.

“Is his name Kyle, by any chance?”

“Yep,” Candace said. “His ID says Kyle Townsend, seventeen. Address on the Upper East Side. I would have waited and called you in the morning, but he's insisting on leaving now, and he's obviously in some kind of trouble. I thought that if you knew him you might be able to help figure out a plan that would keep him safe.”

The smart thing for Wally to do was nothing. In the morning she could call Lewis and figure out if the Society could help Kyle, who seemed to be spiraling out of control. But that would be a cop-out.

“Keep him there if you can, Candace,” Wally said. “I'll get a cab and be there in twenty.”

Wally stepped out of the taxi at the corner of
41
^st
Street and Dyer, finding the entrance to Harmony House mostly dark. The front door was locked, but through the all-glass doors she could see a security guard sitting at a desk inside the lobby—a middle-aged Hispanic man with the arms and chest of a power lifter, his muscles bulging underneath his black polo shirt. The man must have been expecting her because he buzzed Wally in before she even had a chance to ring the bell.

Before pushing through the door, Wally hesitated—she had the strange feeling that she was being watched. Quickly scanning the street, she clocked a large sedan parked across the intersection at Tenth Avenue, a streetlamp throwing just enough light down to reveal two men sitting in the front seat. The car was similar to an NYPD detective unit, but her time on the street had left Wally with pretty good instincts; the two men didn't vibe like cops. So who were they and why were they staking out Harmony House at three in the morning?

With these questions still nagging her, Wally entered the lobby to find Candace Chen waiting for her there.

“Good to see you, Wally,” Candace said with her usual buoyant smile, which now seemed kind of macabre given the circumstances.

Really?
Wally thought to herself.
She's perky even now?
It was the middle of the night, and Candace had been sitting up for hours with a drugged-out assault victim. What did it take to bum this woman out?

“Good to see you too, Candace. He's still here?”

Candace nodded. “He's in with our nurse.”

They walked down the main hall and into the infirmary, where Kyle was stretched out on the exam table. He had an IV drip attached to the back of his left hand and an empty plastic barf tray resting on his chest. Wally leaned over him to find that his face was severely swollen and bruised, with a couple of open gashes that the nurse had closed with butterfly bandages.

“Hi, Kyle.”

At the sight of her he turned his head away, looking pained.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” His voice was a little slurred. Whatever drugs were in his system hadn't yet been cleared. “Go away.  . . . ”

“What did you take?” she asked him.

“I didn't take anything,” he practically spat the words at her. “I bought some weed from these guys near the Port Authority and we smoked it together.”

Wally looked to the nurse for confirmation and she shook her head “no.”

“Maybe you got more in the weed than you bargained for,” Wally said. “It was the dealers who put this beating on you?”

“No! They weren't dealers; they were just guys. And then I started feeling sick and they brought me here.”

“Then who hit you?”

“The cuts and bruises are at least twelve hours old, I'd say,” the nurse said.

Kyle kept his face turned away, neither confirming nor denying what the nurse had said. Wally turned to Candace.

“Could I have a minute with Kyle?”

“Take your time,” Candace said. She and the nurse exited the room, leaving Wally and Kyle alone.

“You went home to your father?” Wally asked. “That's how this happened?”

Again, no answer.

“Okay.” She needed to try a different tack, and the memory of the two security types in the car outside Harmony House returned to her. “What you said before—when you first came to see us. That you knew things about your father. Things he'd done?”

Kyle looked Wally in the eyes now.

“Then tell me this: your father—you never told me his name . . . ?” Kyle remained silent, still turned away from her, refusing to answer. “Whatever. If he thought he couldn't trust you, how far would he go to prevent you from blowing up his secrets?”

The fear in Kyle's eyes answered her question.

“There are a couple of guys in a car outside—”

“Who?” Kyle sat up on the table now, grimacing in pain at the effort.

“I'd guess private security.”

Kyle looked unnerved, but not completely unsurprised that there were men out looking for him.

“I told you I know someone in the NYPD—”

“No! No cops! That would be worse than anything . . . ” Kyle couldn't bring himself to finish the thought.

Shit
.

Wally couldn't get past the idea that she was at least partially responsible for Kyle's condition. If she had handled him better during his visit, would he have ended up back home, getting the shit kicked out of him again by his father? Wally was determined to keep Kyle safe this time. If Lewis could hear what she was about to suggest, though, he'd go postal.

“They can't keep you here,” she said, “so you should come home with me. Just for now, until we can work something out.”

“I don't need your help,” Kyle said.

“Clearly.”

“Screw you.” He shifted on the table, then reeled a little from the sudden change of position.

“After our interview yesterday,” she said, “maybe you're feeling like you can't trust me, but I really just want to help.”

Ignoring her, Kyle sat straight up on the exam table and took a moment to get his balance before carefully stepping down onto the floor.

“Where's my jacket?” he asked, but then he spotted it hanging by the door and grabbed it.

Now Wally was alarmed—no one could force Kyle to stay at Harmony House, and he was in no condition to head off on his own. She reached out to him and held his arm, but he shook her off with surprising strength and headed for the hallway.

“I have a safe place to take you,” she said, certain her idea was a bad one as soon as she blurted out the words. “I know you don't want to go home, and I'll bet you those men are still waiting out front.”

Kyle hesitated for a moment, and Wally saw her opening.

“A private place where you can come and go,” she said. “Just for tonight, if that's what you want. Just for a few hours. I live in Greenpoint. There's room for you to crash with me.”

Kyle took a long moment to think about this. Underneath his drug-addled defiance, Wally could see that he was scared and uncertain.

“Please, Kyle,” Wally said. “We'd be doing each other a favor. This way I won't spend the rest of the night wondering where you are and what part of all this was my fault.”

He didn't respond for a moment, but Wally could see him processing the idea. He finally nodded. She saw a look of relief pass across his face when the decision was made.

When they told Candace about the plan she gave Wally a dubious look but eventually agreed. Remembering the men in the car out front, Wally asked to be let out through the emergency exit at the rear of the building, which opened on an alley. At the exit, Wally peered south toward
40
^th
Street, seeing that there was little traffic and nothing suspicious in that direction.

“Let's go,” she said, leading Kyle down the alley and remaining watchful as they went. He wasn't completely steady yet, but he managed to keep up with her. They rounded the corner at
40
^th
and headed east as Wally kept her eyes open for a cab. Tenth Avenue was nearly empty at that hour and there were no cabs in sight, so they headed south toward
39
^th
Street, where they could see more traffic flowing.

“Are you doing okay?” Wally asked, seeing that Kyle was looking a little dazed. “We'll be out of here soon.”

“I'm good,” he said, sounding distant and unfocused.

They were halfway down the block when a black man in a dark-blue suit stepped out of a recessed doorway and onto the sidewalk, blocking their path. He wasn't tall or especially big, but he carried his lean, wiry physique with a sense of confidence. Wally tensed—she didn't think this was one of the guys from the sedan outside Harmony House. How many men did Kyle's father have out here?

The man held up his hand for them to stop. The man even smiled a little, attempting to put them at ease.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “There's no reason to make this hard. . . . ”

Tires squealed behind them as the large sedan that had been parked out in front of Harmony House wheeled around onto Tenth Avenue, headed straight for them.

Shit
.

“Forget it,” Wally said to the man. “He's not going with you.”

With blinding quickness, the man's right hand shot out and grabbed Wally by the shoulder, his fingers digging deep into her muscle. His grip was powerful—like a vice clamping down on her nerves—and she felt a searing pain up and down her arm as he pulled her toward him. Wally spun to the right and brought her left arm down hard, breaking the man's grip on her.

She stepped back and saw the look of surprise and embarrassment on his face, which turned almost immediately to anger. He lunged at her again, but his rage had unbalanced him—Wally spun out of his path and crouched down, aiming a side kick straight at his knee. The heel of her foot landed hard on the man's knee joint and it buckled to the side. The man fell to the sidewalk, howling in pain and holding his dislocated knee.

“Oh my God . . . ” Kyle said, a look of shock on his face as he stared at the writhing security man.

Wally jumped back to her feet and grabbed Kyle. The sedan kept coming and raced after them. Wally and Kyle caught a break when a delivery truck turned onto the street, blocking the sedan's way. Though they didn't turn to look, they heard the car skid to a stop and the driver's door fly open. The footsteps of the second man echoed down the street as he raced past the cursing truck driver and came after them.

Wally could hear that the man's footfalls were heavy—he was bigger than the first man—but his pace was fast and athletic, his size now slowing him down.

When they reached
39
^th
Street and rounded the corner, Wally stopped short against the stone wall and pulled Kyle close. She listened as the second security man's footsteps grew nearer and crouched, waiting. Just as he rounded the corner, Wally twisted her body hard and struck out with a high, straight arm, striking the man in the throat.

He flopped down onto the ground, wheezing and struggling for breath, but then rose up onto his feet again, unsteady. Wally had been right about his athleticism—the guy looked like an NFL tight end, at least six foot five and well over
250
pounds with a farm-boy buzz cut and a bleached-blond goatee. His eyes burned with fury as he came at Wally, spittle dribbling out of his mouth and catching at the hairs on his chin.

He pivoted to his left side and launched a sweeping kick at her, but the size difference between them actually worked to Wally's advantage—she dropped nimbly to the ground, avoiding what would have been a devastating strike. From her prone position on the cold, filthy pavement, Wally kicked upward and launched a strike of her own, driving her boot up into the man's solar plexus. He grunted in pain and dropped, curling his massive body up in a fetal position as his body went into a kind of seizure.

“Let's go,” Wally commanded, and Kyle obeyed, picking up his pace as they hustled west on
39
^th
. A block and a half later they reached Ninth Avenue and found a taxi idling outside a Greek diner. They slid into the backseat of the cab and within seconds were headed away from the scene, the cabbie glancing suspiciously at them in his rearview mirror.

“Holy shit,” Kyle said again, still trying to catch up to what had happened in front of his eyes.

“Do you have a cell phone on you?” Wally asked. She wasn't about to relax until she had taken every necessary measure.

Kyle nodded and pulled an expensive smartphone out of his jacket pocket. Wally grabbed the phone and quickly snapped its back panel open. She slid both the SIM card and the battery out and tossed all of the components out of the taxi window.