Tiger Threat (10 page)

Big Frank backhanded me with as much force as a regular person's full punch. It
knocked my head against the seat. Then I slumped forward with only the seatbelt holding me in place. Tears ran down my face at the pain. I could hardly breathe.

I turned my head enough to see Vlad's left foot between the seats. He was moving it back and forth. Big Frank was going to kill us. Once he got the van back on the highway, it would only be minutes until we were away from the lights of the city. There were hundreds of square miles for him to take us and hide our bodies.

Think
, I told myself.
Think!

But the pain was so bad I couldn't concentrate.

Dr. Dempster's words came back to me.
When you try to ignore pain and when you want it to go away, the pain just screams at you. The strange thing is that if you focus on it and try to feel it, it stops being pain. It's just another sensation.

Pain. I was so afraid of it. My head and jaw hurt so badly that I wanted to break down and sob like a baby. And I was afraid of how much it would hurt when the Russian mafia
guy stopped the van and forced us to walk somewhere before killing us.

Dr. Dempster's calm voice seemed to speak to me.
In other words, welcome the pain. Make it your friend. Once you do that, something else happens. You stop being afraid of pain. And then you stop being afraid.

So I started thinking about the pain. I tried to feel it. I tried to be curious about it, and, strangely enough, the pain started to fade. It's not like the sensations disappeared. No, I was still aware that there was something very wrong with my jaw. But the pain stopped overwhelming me.

I was able to think.

I lifted my head. Up ahead were the tall streetlights at the exit ramp that led to the highway. There wasn't much time. What could I do?

I couldn't stay sitting up. I slumped forward again. The seatbelt cut into the skin of my neck.

Seatbelt!

We did have a chance. A very slim chance. But that was better than no chance.

I'd have to warn Vlad, though. I knew that Big Frank would hit me again. That the pain would tear me apart like a hand grenade going off in my skull. But I couldn't allow myself to let the fear of that pain stop me.

I straightened to get a look at the road ahead. I waited until Big Frank began to slow down to turn onto the exit ramp. I drew another breath to speak to Vlad. Spoke with all the energy I had left inside me.

“Vlad, make sure your seatbelt is on. And yell at him to distract him.”

Big Frank yelled at me again and swiped my head with another backhand. Once again it snapped my head back.

I groaned and fell forward. I hoped Big Frank thought that meant I had passed out again.

Vlad began shouting at Big Frank in Russian.

Head hunched down, I reached across for Big Frank's seatbelt lock. My thumb hit it and it unclicked. He didn't seem to notice. Somehow I found enough strength
to raise myself up again and look through the windshield.

There was a light post to our right.

Vlad was yelling at Big Frank, and Big Frank was yelling at him. This was the only chance.

I screamed. Turned. Grabbed the steering wheel. Yanked the top of it toward me with both hands. Held on as Big Frank fought to keep control of the van.

The tires screeched as the van swerved, and he desperately tried to hit the brakes. Still, I held on. I let my full body weight drag the steering wheel to the right.

The van left the road. Whizzed through the air.

I looked up. The light post filled my vision.

BANG!

The van hit the concrete base of the light post and came to an instant stop.

For a split second I thought I had gone through the windshield. But the giant fist that hammered my chest was the air bag. It popped me back against the seat and deflated.

Then silence.

There was a groan beside me. The driver's side air bag had saved Big Frank from going through his windshield. But without a seatbelt he'd been thrown against the driver's door. Blood was running down his face.

He opened the door and fell to the ground.

Safe, I told myself. Safe.

A second later he was leaning back into the van. He had a knife. Big Frank lifted it upward to stab at me.

Then the sound of a car horn.

He stepped back into the glare of headlights.

“Hey, buddy!” came a voice. “You all right?”

Footsteps. The person who had stopped the car came running toward our wrecked van.

“Hey!” said the same voice. “What's with the knife?”

Suddenly someone was thrown into the van beside me.

Big Frank left on the run. Seconds later I heard a car door slam. Then screeching tires again as he gunned it.

The guy thrown into the van found his balance. He jumped out of the van and started running after his car.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Are you crazy? Come back here.”

“Vlad,” I said. The edges of blackness were closing around my vision. “Are you all right?”

“I'm alive,” he said.

“Find the rental papers before the cops get here.” It seemed like someone else was speaking. Even my pain was going away as I began to fade. “Get the guy's name. Call Abe with my cell phone. Make sure Abe knows his name.”

That took too much out of me.

I closed my eyes and didn't fight it anymore. It felt like I was getting swept away by a river. A dark deep river.

It pulled me under and I was gone again.

Two weeks later the Hurricanes were back in the Hat. I'd missed all the games since the night of the crash of the van. It wasn't that I'd been hurt because of the accident; I hadn't been and neither had Vlad. Although the tire iron against my head had not broken my jaw, I had needed a lot of dental surgery to fix things up. It had taken all this time for me to finally be cleared to play.

There'd been plenty of questions following that night, but Vlad and I had said nothing to
the media and very little to the police. Only that some Russian guy we didn't know had gone psycho on us. This was true, of course. We just left out the reasons why. Dr. Dempster and Mr. Jewel had said nothing. Amanda and Abe had done a good job of keeping the events of that night secret too. The attention had finally gone away, and it looked like there wouldn't be any more questions.

Now I was on the ice for a game again. It was great to be in a mental zone where all I had to worry about was hockey.

And to worry about Joe Tidwell. The Hurricane center faced me as the referee was getting ready to drop the puck to start the game.

“Hey, little pussycat,” Tidwell said. “Ready to get mashed again?”

I ignored him. My focus was on the referee's right skate. This guy was a skate wiggler before dropping the puck. I wanted to sweep the puck clean to my defenseman.

“Cat got the chicken's tongue?” Tidwell said to me.

“Enough,” barked the ref.

“He needs you to protect him?” Tidwell asked the ref. “Little chicken like him?”

“Want an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty?” the ref asked in return.

Tidwell was smart enough to clamp his mouth shut. He settled in to try to win the draw against me. The crowd was chanting. I let the atmosphere of the game and the nervousness of needing to play well settle on me. Before, this would have filled me with fear. Now it made my concentration sharper.

The ref's right skate gave a telltale wiggle. I made my move as the puck fell. I picked it clean out of the air, spinning it back to my defenseman. I turned my hip, making sure to block Tidwell's move past center.

He shoved my back with a vicious crosscheck. I stayed in front of him until our defenseman had time to clear the puck. Then I headed up-ice to an open position. Tidwell shadowed me.

The puck went to our left winger. I broke fast. He hit my stick with the puck at the blue line.

I saw an opening between the two Hurricane defenseman. I had full speed and wanted to use it.

I dropped my shoulder as if I was going outside. The safe way. The way I would have always gone before.

But I pushed the puck ahead between them and found one extra gear to go up the dangerous middle. As I squeezed past the defensemen, one of them gave me a stick in the ribs.

Now I was in on the goalie.

Quick fake to my backhand. Puck to the forehand side. Hard wrist shot that caught the upper corner.

Goal! Off the opening face-off!

I lifted my hands to celebrate and began a swooping turn back to the bench.

Tidwell banged me hard, throwing me into the boards. I crashed to my knees.

Before, I would have looked for a place to hide. Not now. The worst had been dealt to me that night in the cargo van, and I'd discovered the fear was nothing I couldn't survive.

Tidwell stood over me. “Come on,” he said. “Let's go.”

Icy rage filled me instead of fear.

I got to my feet. I dropped my gloves. I slowly took off my helmet. Yeah, it would hurt if my teeth got busted up again. But I could deal with that now.

I moved in on Tidwell. He was so surprised, he backed away. Only the net stopped him.

The linesmen gave us room. The crowd was roaring.

I moved real close to Tidwell.

“You get the first punch,” I told him. I left my hands at my side. This was a new feeling. Of control. Of being ready to take any pain. Of anger at all the times I'd been pushed around by hockey players who wanted to intimidate me. “Better make it a good one. Because that's all you're going to get.”

Tidwell had a shocked look on his face. My reaction must have surprised him, because his punch was slow. Or maybe I was in a zone of concentrated anger and was reading Tidwell's body language the way I read referees before they dropped the puck.

His left shoulder dropped, and that gave me plenty of warning. I ducked the punch and bulldozed into Tidwell. His skates hit the bottom of the net and he fell hard on the ice.

Just like that, I was sitting on his chest. His legs were pinned beneath my knees. I had an open shot to begin raining punches into his face.

“Tidwell,” I said, “you're a loser.”

Instead of punching him, I patted his cheek lightly with my right hand and smiled.

“Next time,” I said, “mess with someone else.”

Then I stood and let the referee take me to the penalty box.

Dr. Dempster met me after the hockey game. He'd waited until I was alone to catch up to me in the hallway.

“Dr. Dempster,” I said. “How are you?”

“I've been enjoying your new brand of hockey. Tough, but smart.”

I grinned as well as I could, considering the work that he'd done on my jaw. “It's better to give than to receive.”

“As long as you keep your teeth,” he said. “I'd hate to see all my good work wasted.”

“Nothing hurts,” I said. “If that's what you're asking.”

“Nope.” He had a mysterious smile. “That's not why I came looking for you.”

I lost my smile.

“No worries,” he said. “I've kept the secret.”

Still, I didn't like this.

“But I haven't lost my curiosity,” Dr. Dempster said. “I keep wondering what was so important that the guy would come here all the way from Russia and do what he did.”

I shrugged.

“What I find more curious is that he hasn't been back.”

“His name was all over the papers,” I said. The police had tracked him from the rental car, then backward to the airline flight. “He knows he shouldn't show up here again.”

“No one else has shown up either,” Dr. Dempster said. “Aren't you worried about that? I mean, the Russian mafia doesn't strike me as an organization that would quit just because it failed once. You'd think they'd send someone else.”

“Not worried,” I said.

“I think I know why,” Dr. Dempster said. “You don't have to tell me if I'm right, but at least humor me. You owe me that.”

“More than that,” I said.

“I have friends on the police force,” Dr. Dempster said. “They've let me in on a small piece of information that has been given to them by the Russian police. It probably won't make the papers, so don't tell anyone else.”

“Sure,” I said. I'd been very good about keeping the rest of it secret.

“It seems,” Dr. Dempster said, “that this man—Alekseev Borodin was his name, right?— has turned his back on a life of crime.”

“Really,” I said. “Maybe my face hurt his tire iron so badly it scared him away from attacking other people ever again.”

Dr. Dempster smiled. “Must have been it. It looks like he's not only quit hurting people, but he's begun helping people.”

“Really. What a nice story. Got to go. I have a date with Amanda.”

“Hang on,” Dr. Dempster said.

I waited.

“What the Russian police reported was that Alekseev Borodin made a very public donation of twelve million dollars to an organization that oversees orphanages all over Russia.”

“Look at the time,” I said.

Dr. Dempster's smile grew wider. He knew he had me.

“Do you think that's a coincidence?” Dr. Dempster asked. “If I remember right, wasn't Vlad raised in an orphanage in Russia?”

“Could be.” I was squirming.

“Just thought you should know,” Dr. Dempster said. “Oh, and one other thing. Although the money came in as a donation from the bank account of this Alekseev Borodin, he's never come forward to accept thanks from the organization.”

“Imagine that,” I said. “It's almost like Alekseev Borodin somehow stole twelve million dollars from the Russian mafia, then gave it away, and now they're looking for him instead of Vlad.”

“Yeah,” Dr. Dempster said. “Imagine that.”