“Wallis cares very much for these two,” Divine said. “Possibly even more than she cares for you. She certainly knows them better. Once you have done this service for us she’ll be released, with the assurance that if she talks, her two friends will be killed. With pain. You see? There’s no reason for us to hurt your sister. You have my oath on this.”
Tiger didn’t answer. His mind continued to turn, searching for a way out.
“I know,” Divine said. “You’re still not on board. You’re thinking there are other options, maybe even that Wallis is capable of fighting her way off the Ranch . . . especially with the help of the Glock that you stashed in the brick wall? Or the combat knife in the loose grout beneath the windowsill? You thought we wouldn’t shake down the room before we put you both in there?”
Der’mo. Shit.
“We’re almost there,” said Divine, impatient now. “If you want to protect your sister, there are no options. There’s even a chance you could survive it—a slim chance, I admit, but if you’re half the man your father is, you might make it.”
“I’m curious,” Tiger said.
“About what?”
“What makes you so sure I will trade my life for hers?”
His question was sincere. Tiger barely knew Wallis Stoneman. Though they were brother and sister, she had been given every advantage in life, while he had been set adrift. It wasn’t he that owed her loyalty, or a debt. It was the other way around. Thrown together by Divine—a smart strategy on his part—they hadn’t achieved anything close to understanding or peace, much less love or loyalty. How could Divine be so sure when Tiger himself was not?
“Young Klesko,” Divine said with a confident smile. “I make bets like this every day. It’s how I win.”
The sound of the helicopter’s rotor changed slightly, and the aircraft began to dip toward the ground below.
The light of dusk was fading when they reached the hilltop overlooking the arms factory. Tiger followed Rachel, and Divine followed him, the man easily matching their pace despite the thirty-plus years he had on them. The overlook was exactly as Tiger and Rachel had left it days earlier—the factory was empty and dark, the perimeter fence strong and intact.
Divine had sent his other two gunmen to establish watch posts on the opposite hilltop. Tiger looked across the valley but was unable to spot them. Each of the men had taken a sniper rifle with a powerful nightscope, so Tiger knew for certain that he would have crosshairs trained on him every moment he was in the open.
“Settle in,” Divine said. They spread camouflage tarps on the ground and lay down, arranging brush around them for cover. “Now we wait.”
Two vehicles appeared at the mouth of the valley and motored to the factory gate. A security team of eight spilled out of the first vehicle—a cargo van—and Tiger could see that they were much like the team he and Rachel had spotted before. None looked older than fifteen or sixteen. They were various sizes and of different ethnicities, the only common factors being that they were all armed and looked supremely vigilant, scanning the area around the factory with their riflescopes and walking the perimeter fence in teams to be sure the area was secure.
One of the young men unlocked the factory gate to allow the second vehicle inside—an SUV with a trailer attached. The SUV entered the factory grounds and drove around to the other side, out of view. It wasn’t long before Tiger learned what the trailer contained. Just ten minutes after its arrival, the sound of an engine came from somewhere on the grounds and at least two hundred lights—inside and outside the factory—came on. A generator, Tiger realized. The old factory had power again.
Over the next hour, four or five more trucks arrived, each of them backing up to the factory’s loading dock and delivering at least a hundred crates of various sizes. Within another couple of hours, the contents of those crates became clear: the old arms factory—unused in decades—began to pulse with loud music and flashing lights of every color. The factory had become an enormous nightclub of some kind.
The music was something Tiger was only vaguely familiar with, an electronic sound with a tempo faster than his own heartbeat. The volume was insanely high, and if he concentrated he could actually feel the vibration of it thumping through the ground, all the way up at his watch post. The music echoed back and forth in the valley, and Tiger realized the genius of choosing a location like this one for a loud, massive party—the same valley geography that had made an arms factory less of a danger to the surrounding community also provided cover from curious neighbors and local police. Few settings could match this one for privacy.
“It’s a rave,” Rachel said. “I’m sure they have them where you come from.”
“Quiet,” Divine hissed, and they all went completely still.
Soon Tiger could make out the sound of approaching footsteps, and a sentry from the security team below came walking along the ridge, a silenced assault rifle in his hands. From what Tiger could make out, the kid looked Asian, his long hair tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing jeans and a black, long-sleeved shirt. He walked slowly and deliberately, passing within just ten feet of the brush-covered post where Tiger, Divine, and Rachel lay low, waiting for the threat to pass.
Within a minute, the sentry had walked out of range. Tiger and the others, however, stayed very quiet after that, silently observing as the events in the valley reached their next phase. As the night grew late, vehicles of every kind began to roll into the valley—two or three hundred of them, at least—parking haphazardly on the barren ground that surrounded the factory. From each vehicle at least three or four people, in their teens or early twenties, emerged and made their way to the gate of the factory’s perimeter fence.
Through his nightscope, Tiger watched as a four-man security team processed the arrivals, patting them down for weapons and setting their cell phones aside to be returned after. Each “guest” was stamped on the back of the hand. No money was exchanged. The young people were clearly excited, barely able to stand still until they were turned loose onto the factory grounds. A steady stream of them headed straight into the factory, disappearing into the cacophony of lights and music.
“This is one way Sweet keeps good faith with his soldiers,” Divine said, a hint of admiration in his voice. “He does this two, three times a year, a different location each time. Free booze and drugs for all the local kids who show up, and all of his security team have their turn to cut loose. That’s the situation you’ll be walking into. There will be another kind of guest in the mix—dozens of business associates from around the eastern seaboard are in there already, prepared for a meet and greet with Sweet himself.”
“At the top of the tower,” Tiger added. He remembered from the scouting mission he and Rachel had carried out days before—Sweet’s security team had arrived at the site for recon, and had concentrated their sweep on the top floor of the factory’s administrative wing, a tower three or four stories higher than the rest of the factory. On her own visit inside, Rachel had spent most of her time on that top floor, also.
“Yes, Sweet will be on the top floor,” Rachel said. “His own private party room.”
Over the din of the throbbing house music below, another sound intruded upon the valley—the turbine-engine thrum of a sleek, white executive helicopter, swooping in low from the east and setting down quickly in a space that had been cleared inside the factory’s perimeter gate. Through their scopes, Tiger and the others watched as security men swarmed the chopper and surrounded one blond man as he climbed out, maintaining a human cocoon around him as he walked quickly to the factory and disappeared inside.
“The son of a bitch himself,” Divine said.
“He won’t stay for more than an hour, if that,” Rachel said.
“Enough fucking around then,” Tiger said. With that, he stood up and left their post behind, hiking downhill.
“We’ll be watching,” Divine called after him.
“I’ll see you in hell,” Tiger answered.
29.
WALLY PACED THE WAREHOUSE ROOM, UNABLE TO keep still. How much time had passed since Tiger had been taken? Two hours? Three? The day had turned to night, and the warehouse was unnervingly quiet. She knew her sentries were still in place—she could hear the heavy footsteps of one guard patrolling the hallway outside her door, and at least one other was outside her window, moving around on the fire escape landing a floor above.
Wally didn’t know for sure what Divine had planned for Tiger, but he had gone to a lot of trouble to bring her there, and she assumed he had done it to gain leverage over her brother. She understood the strategic reason that Divine had brought them together—a closer bond between her and Tiger would motivate her brother to protect her any way he could, even if that meant risking his own life in some way.
The idea sickened Wally. As far as she was concerned, Tiger had already forfeited his childhood so that she could live the life of an advantaged American teen. The cycle had to end, and the only thing she could think to do for her brother would be to free herself from the warehouse and somehow let Tiger know that she’d broken out.
But how? Wally had been looking for an opening—any sliver of an opportunity for her to make a run for it—but she hadn’t found a chance. When he had whispered in her ear, Tiger had told her to search behind loose bricks on the south wall of the room. She’d done that, but every potential hiding place within the wall had been empty.
Tiger had been gone less than an hour when Wally had smelled something cooking upstairs in the kitchen. Hamburgers, maybe? She thought they might feed her—maybe a fify-fifty chance at best, but it was the only angle she saw. There was no way to get food to her other than by opening the door, and she would be ready.
So she had waited. And waited. No food. She had eventually pounded on the door, yelling that she was hungry. Nothing.
Time was flying by, and the only option Wally saw was for her to make some kind of kamikaze break for the fire escape, but she was certain there were still two guards waiting out there, both heavily armed. What good would it do Tiger for her to die without any real hope of succeeding? She stepped toward the windows to take yet another look and maybe spot a flaw in their security, but she’d done the same thing every five minutes for hours, with no luck.
And then she heard a voice from above.
“Wally?”
It was Kyle. Wally felt a hot rush of rage at the sound of his voice—if he had suddenly appeared in front of her, Wally doubted she would be able to stop herself from going after him. When she’d been caught, Kyle had stood by passively and watched it all happen, wearing a look that could only be described as satisfaction. Reliving the moment made Wally feel stupid and weak. If she hoped for some kind of revenge, she would have to be smart.
She willed herself to remain calm. She couldn’t figure out right away where his voice was coming from, so she stilled herself, listening.
“Kyle?” Her voice was tentative—it was better for him to believe that she was afraid and in a weakened state.
“Hello, Wally.”
Now she could tell that his voice was coming down from the fire escape outside. Looking out the window, she thought she could see his feet on the metal grated staircase—he was sitting where the guard had been, on the landing one floor above. A window near the ceiling was broken, and his voice traveled to her through that open space.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I’m not.”
“Everything’s going to be fine,” he said. “Just try to roll with it.”
The smarmy tone of reassurance in his voice disgusted her. Her own fate was the last thing she cared about at that moment anyway.
“I’m scared, Kyle,” she said, keeping the timid tone in her voice.
“Ha! Don’t bullshit a bullshitter,” he said. “But nice try.”
Playing the girl in distress apparently wasn’t going to work.
“You don’t think I’m capable of fear?”
“Sure. I’ve seen you scared—but you were even more dangerous then.”
Outside Harmony House and up at the lodge, Kyle had had a front-row seat for the Wally show. She couldn’t expect him to underestimate her after all that.
“I am afraid—for my brother,” she said.
“Tiger is a killer,” Kyle said. “I understand you have feelings for him, but the fact is, your brother will die the same way he lived—by the gun. It’s inevitable. My father chose Tiger for this job because of who he’s always been.”
As he spoke, Wally thought she could hear something else: the sound of something rubbing against metal. Had he shifted a step lower on the fire escape?
“The plan to get me here—that was yours?”
“Sure,” he said, sounding proud. “From day one, it was my job to get you out in the open, preferably somewhere quiet so they could take you easily without hurting you. It seemed like a simple job, at first, but it didn’t turn out that way. Your neighborhood was full of cops all the time. It halfway seemed like they were watching out for you especially. So it was my idea to come into the Ursula Society.”
“But the story you told me,” she said. “That was true, right? About how you found out about your birth mother, when your stepmother died?”
Thinking back on Kyle’s “performance”—about the compelling story he’d told to trick her and lure her away—she suspected that it had not been all lies.
“Absolutely! Thank you for getting that!” he said with genuine enthusiasm. “My father and Rachel—my sister, she was here with you before—they had this idea that I should make up a really sympathetic family history, like out of some soap opera or whatever, so I could really get you on the hook. But they were wrong. Nothing is more convincing than the truth.”
“No doubt. And the bruises on your face?”
“We needed to convey a sense of urgency,” Kyle said, his voice sounding a little tight.
“The beating was your father’s idea? I suppose he did that to you himself?”
Kyle didn’t answer, and Wally realized she’d made a mistake.
“Well, your performance at the lodge really kicked my ass,” she said, imbuing her tone with reluctant admiration. It took all of her self-control to pull it off.
“That was the easy part,” he said, sounding more relaxed now. “You got me really hot, Wally. No acting required there.”
The thought of it turned Wally’s stomach now, but she had to keep on task. She had an idea about where to take the discussion next, but she was worried it would be too much.
“What would she think about all this, do you figure?” she asked, targeting Kyle’s weakest point.
“Who are you talking about?”
“Your mother. Your real one, I mean. What was her alias again? Mercy Smith? What would she think about you right now?”
Kyle didn’t bother answering.
“I spent a long time looking for my birth mother,” Wally went on, “and I don’t think a day went by when I didn’t look in the mirror and imagine what she would think of me when we finally met face-to-face. You think about that a lot, right? What would your mother see if she looked at you right now?”
“I’m not looking for her,” Kyle said, sounding annoyed. “That was just—”
“Part of your story?” Wally said, allowing her voice to carry just a hint of smugness, as if completely confident that she possessed inside knowledge. “No, Kyle. I’m sure that’s what you told your father, maybe even your sister. Like you said, don’t bullshit a bullshitter—you think about your real mother all the time. You have to wonder—was she someone your father actually cared about or just one of his playthings? I rememb
er your reaction to the photos of your father’s women—you were devastated. That’s why you took off at that truck stop. You were too weak to handle it—”
“Shut up, Wally,” he said, the tension rising in his voice.
“All this time and your mother hasn’t shown up,” Wally kept the pressure on. “Why do you figure that is? Your father isn’t so hard to find, and neither are you. So, where is she? I’m thinking there are only two real possibilities, and I’m sure you’ve already figured them out. Either your father got rid of her—which we both know he is capable of, don’t we?—or she just doesn’t give a shit about you. Huh. Which is worse, do you think?”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he snarled. “She let me go because my father could do so much for me, more than she could.”
“Wow. Like you said, Kyle, the truth is more convincing than anything, and I’m not hearing it right now. Do you even halfway believe what you’re saying?”
“You think I should listen to anything you say?” Kyle was nearly shouting now. “If you know so much, what happened to your mother? Yeah, I know all about it—about Shelter Island? She died there. I hear it was a bloody mess. And whose fault was that?”
Wally felt another wave of red-hot rage run through her, but she fought it off and kept her mind clear. Kyle’s voice had sounded a little closer then, and Wally could just barely make out the sound of him on the move again, easing down the fire escape a step further. She looked up, and she could see his silhouette more fully now—his body from the waist down, three steps below the top of the window.
It was time.
Near Wally’s feet was the stack of firewood that she and Tiger had used to keep the woodstove burning, and only three of the short logs were left. She grabbed the largest one and wheeled her body around, hurling the log through the window. The glass shattered with explosive force, lethal splinters showering down in every direction.
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