Free Touch of the White Tiger by Julie Beard Page A

garden.
    “Angel!” came another muted cry from the house.
    “Lin? Hold on!”
    A second later, Mike ran from the house to the open doors of his shed, every muscle on his fit body strained with danger. “Baker! Come quick. They try to take Lin away.”
    “Who?” I shot to my feet.
    “Government people. Hurry!”
    Instantly, I surmised what had happened. Someone working at the Department of Children and Family Services had seen my mug shot on television and decided it was time to withdraw my foster-parenting rights.
    I raced after Mike, instinctively negotiating the flower-lined footpath while staring up at the second floor porch, where Lin struggled with a DCFS transporter in an orange jumpsuit. I’d expected this to happen, but not so soon.
    Lin escaped his grasp and tried to race down the wooden stairs. She spotted me and cried out, “Angel! Help me!” Distracted, she tripped and tumbled head over heels the rest of the way down the stairs.
    “Lin!” I cried out, my heart in my throat.
    Mike and I both dashed the distance. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lola beating the transporter on the head with a broom on the porch above. Bald and musclebound, he looked like a bar bouncer, but cowered under Lola’s blows.
    “You keep your hands off her, you scum bucket!” Lola roared like a lioness in winter. “Lin stays here, and that’s final!”
    Mike reached Lin at the bottom of the stairs first and gently rolled her over, checking for broken bones. She saw me and flung her arms upward, as agile as ever. “Don’t let them take me, Angel.”
    I pulled her in my arms and stroked her head. Heavy footsteps stomped on the stairs. The transporter bounded toward us, either chasing Lin or running from Lola, I wasn’t sure which. I scooped up Lin and ran out the back to Mike’s shed, where I gently lowered her on the futon.
    “Stay here, Lin. I’ll be back.”
    She looked up with terror shimmering in her coal black eyes, but she nodded, and I knew she trusted me completely. I smiled encouragingly and ran back toward the porch, but slowed when I saw an ominous tableau. Mike and Lola stood over the prone, still figure of the transporter sprawled at the bottom of the stairs. My heart stopped a moment.
    “Oh, my God, he’s not dead, is he?”
    Lola cackled and put her hands on her plump hips. “Don’t you wish?”
    I stopped next to Mike and looked down at the unconscious figure with dread. “What did you do to him?”
    Mike rubbed the knuckles on his right hand, then blew on them as if they were lucky dice. “You do not want to know.”
    “Whatever it was, I should thank you. I think.”
    “Freeze!” The shouted command came from the upstairs porch. In unison, we looked up to find a Chicago police officer with a fazer aimed our way. “Don’t move or I’ll shoot.”
    He carefully walked down the steps, staring at us over his extended arms, two hands clamped on the small but potentially deadly weapon. A second social services transporter followed, dressed in orange like his partner on the ground. When he spotted his colleague, he hurried down the stairs past the cop and knelt by his friend.
    “Joe, you okay?”
    The bald transporter blinked open his eyes, then pointed toward the shed. “The kid’s back there.”
    The second transporter hurried after Lin. I tried to follow, but the officer shouted at me to stop. When the transporter came out with Lin kicking and screaming in his arms like a whirling dervish, I shouted to the police officer, “He has no right to take her, Officer. She’s my foster child. This is kidnapping!”
    “He has a warrant to remove her from the premises,” the cop shouted in reply. “No temporary foster child can stay in the home of a suspected murderer.”
    The transporter had almost reached the garden studio door. From there it would be an easy exit through the lower level and out to the street. Then Lin would be gone, perhaps forever.
    She seemed to realize the same thing. She