Iron House Read online

  Make a good life …

  There had never been more than a small chance that Stevan would let Michael quit the life peacefully, either to honor the wishes of his father or to avoid the kind of grief that Michael could lay at his door. But small as the chance may have been, it was gone, now. Michael had killed his father when he would not, and shot dead six of his men. As long as Michael lived, Stevan would look weak, and that made killing Michael good business. But, it would be personal, too, and personal made things unpredictable.

  Michael moved fast.

  In the security room, he disabled the security cameras, front and back, then removed the zip drives. Stevan would know who’d done this, but Michael’s plans left no room for video proof. He wanted out of the life, and he wanted out clean.

  Checking his appearance, Michael saw red spatter on the legs of his pants, his shirt, the backs of his hands. Normally, he would never risk a public appearance in anything but spotless condition. He would change and bag the clothes, strip the guns, and dispose of the pieces in any number of quick and efficient ways. Storm drains. Dumpsters. The East River. But the circumstances were not normal. There’d been no planning, no intent to kill the old man or wage war. The entire event had taken eighty seconds, and Michael was on autopilot, moving fast. Stevan was out there somewhere. Jimmy remained alive and Elena was on the street, unprotected.

  Outside, Michael fired up the Navigator and blew south. He needed to get out of the city, and Elena had to come, too. Michael felt a moment’s guilt as the lies he would tell spooled out like video, but truth would be the matter of another day.

  This was about living long enough to tell it.

  Halfway to Tribeca, he hit heavy traffic. He called the restaurant from his cell and asked for Elena. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “Paul’s angry.”

  “Am I fired?”

  “Do you care?”

  “I care about you.” Michael tried to make it light, but she did not respond to the silence that followed. She was angry, and Michael understood that. “Listen, I’ll be there soon. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Where would I go?”

  “Just don’t leave the restaurant.”

  Michael hung up the phone and tried to bull through the dense stream of cars. He gunned one narrow gap after another, horns blaring, heavy car rocking. Twice, he rode tires onto the curb, and twice it made no difference. Traffic was a snarl of impatient metal. When he got to Tribeca, more than an hour had passed. Sixty-two minutes since he’d killed the old man. Michael double-parked the big SUV across from the restaurant. He checked parked cars and windows on the narrow street. Pedestrians were thick on the sidewalk. Michael slipped one pistol into the glove compartment and tucked the other under his jacket. He figured two minutes to get Elena someplace quiet, another three to get her away from the restaurant. Michael had money. They would fade into the city, and then he would get her out. Someplace with mountains, he thought. Someplace green. He felt the future like it was already there, but the future could be a tricky bitch. His cell phone rang as he killed the engine. He looked at the screen, and it rang four more times before he answered.

  He knew the number.

  Stevan’s number.

  He opened it feeling unease and regret and pity. For all his faults, Stevan had loved his father. “Hello, brother.”

  For long seconds, Michael heard only breath, and he could picture Stevan on the other end of the line, his manicured nails and lean face, dark eyes that were prideful and hurt. Stevan played strong, but deep down, he needed to see himself reflected in the faces of other men; he drew strength from their fear and envy, defined himself by their perception rather than his own. But his father knew better, and preferred Michael’s company for that reason. They were stripped down, the both of them, free of illusion and false want. Power, for them, was a tool to secure food, shelter, safety. That’s what childhood taught them.

  Appearance means nothing.

  Stevan never grasped the difference, never understood why Michael shined so brightly in his father’s eyes; and when his voice came over the phone, Michael knew that years of jealousy and distrust had finally darkened to something more.

  “He made you family, Michael. You had nothing. You were nobody.”

  “Your father was in pain.”

  “The choice was not yours to make.”

  “I loved him. He begged me.”

  “You think you’re the only one he begged? Where do you get the arrogance? He’d have asked the cleaning lady, a stranger, anybody.”

  “I only did what you should have done a month ago.”

  “He’s burning in hell because of you.”

  “He died as he wished to die.”

  “You took him from me.”

  “It’s not like that…”

  “You’re dead, Michael. So is your girlfriend.”

  “Don’t make me your enemy, brother. We can still walk away from this.”

  “Dead bitch. Dead, motherfucker.”

  There was no going back, Michael saw. No peace to be made. “Good-bye, Stevan.”

  “Do you see the restaurant?”

  The question was so pointed that Michael felt a blade of fear slip into his heart. He scanned the street again. “Where are you, Stevan?”

  “Did you think we wouldn’t plan for this? Did you think you could just walk away? Honestly, brother.”

  He stressed the last word, mocking.

  “Stevan…”

  “This was supposed to be for both of you, but I want you to see it happen.”

  “Don’t—”

  “I hear that she’s pregnant.”

  Michael flung down the phone, and wrenched open the door. His feet touched city pavement and he managed seven steps in a dead run before the restaurant exploded. Flame blew through windows and the force lifted him from his feet, flung him against the Navigator. Black smoke roiled in the aftershock, and for a moment there was no sound. The roof flew apart as a secondary explosion slammed outward, then Michael’s ears opened, and he heard screaming. Flames poured out in towers of heat and smoke. Cars collided on the street, while, on the sidewalk, people were dead or dying. A man ran blindly, clothing aflame, then collapsed as Michael watched. And the flames roared higher. They licked at neighboring buildings, and Michael found himself on his feet.

  Elena …

  He walked closer, eyes blurred and one hand out to test the heat. It scorched his palm from fifty feet out, and a corner of his mind shut down. He could not bear to see her face, to picture it blistered and burnt and ruined. He let the heat roll over him, sensed the crush of movement on the street, the frenzied motion and the quiet, still dead. Glass shattered in a car too close to the flames. A black Escalade glided around the corner and stopped. Michael cataloged people and faces, the shock and fear, the sound of distant sirens. And even with Elena’s death fresh on his mind, he realized what was going down two seconds before it actually happened.

  He turned back to the Escalade as the windows slid down. Stevan sat in the front, his face sharp as glass under brown hair parsed with gray. He made a shooting motion with the finger and thumb of his right hand, and from the backseat, an automatic weapon opened fire. Michael dove and rolled as bullets ripped into a car behind him. People screamed and the crowd panicked. Bodies went down, shot and then trampled underfoot. More bullets slammed metal, but the shots flew wide and scattered. Michael rose from cover, pistol in hand. He fired nine rounds in three seconds. His shots pocked metal on the Escalade, shattered glass, and sudden fear blossomed on Stevan’s face. He banged the dash, shouted something at the driver, and rubber barked as the big vehicle cut hard right and jumped the curb. Michael sprinted behind it, away from the heat, the screams. He clambered over stalled cars, felt hard pavement slam through his shins. He ran in a dead sprint, and stayed close for a full block, then the road cleared and the big engine gunned. Michael pulled up, and put his last rounds through the back windshield. He doubted they
were fatal—too far, too much movement—but he liked the feel of it, the chance he might get lucky.

  Either way, Stevan was dead.

  Now or later.

  Dead.

  Michael watched the car disappear, then realized that he was standing on a city street with a drawn weapon in his hand and blood on his clothes. People were staring. Men in suits. Cabbies. A woman in a black dress.

  Mouth open.

  Staring.

  Michael lowered the gun. “Elena?”

  She stood in a loose jumble, shocked and confused. A paper bag dangled from her right hand. It was white, crumpled at the top. She looked from the gun to Michael’s face. Her skin was pale, fine hair mussed in a sudden breeze. Around her, people began to push back. Several turned and ran. At least one was dialing a cell.

  “Michael?”

  Every part of him wanted to grab her up and never let go. He wanted to shield her from the aftershock of what had just happened. The fallout. The way he knew her life was about to change. But mostly he wanted to hold her, to pour out his feeling of relief and love. Instead, he grabbed her by the wrist, his fingers hard and unforgiving.

  “We have to go,” he said.

  “You were shooting at that car—”

  “We have to go now.”

  He began to pull her down the street, tucking the gun out of view as several bystanders found their courage and began to shout for help. A frail woman on the far sidewalk pointed and said, “Stop him. Stop that man.”

  “Michael, what the hell is going on?”

  “We have to go.”

  “You said that.” Elena pulled back on her arm, but Michael did not let go. He broke into a half-run, dragging her behind him. “You’re hurting me,” she said, but he ignored that, too. Sirens were close. Smoke roiled above the roofline ahead, and the streets teemed with terrified people. “Where are we going? Michael…” She trailed off as they rounded the corner. In front of them, the restaurant burned more fiercely than ever. “Is that…?”

  “It is.”

  People were down and bleeding, cut by shrapnel and flung glass. Burned. Shot. Many stood dumb and unmoving. Others scrambled in the wreckage, trying to help the wounded. Elena began to cry.

  “But Paul—”

  “He’s dead.”

  “The others?”

  “Dead.”

  “Oh, God.” Elena stumbled when she saw the first charred body, its torso smoking where fabric still burned. They passed a woman whose lower leg had been shattered by a bullet. Michael pulled Elena through the rubble. She stumbled again, and went halfway down before Michael caught her.

  “What’s happening?” She was in shock, grasping to make sense of what she saw. “Where did you get that suit?”

  “Almost there.”

  A cop car screeched around the corner two blocks away. A fire truck followed. Michael opened the Navigator’s door and pushed Elena in.

  “Don’t touch me.” Her eyes were open but glazed, so wide the firelight danced. Michael snapped the seat belt across her waist.

  “It’s me,” he said. “You’re okay.”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Michael rounded the vehicle and climbed behind the wheel. He cranked the engine and eased forward, tires crunching on glass and shattered brick. Beside him, Elena stared at the ruined street, the blank eyes and the walking wounded. Michael kept one eye on the approaching cop car. He crawled for half a block, then accelerated when the road finally cleared.

  Chaos was everywhere.

  No one looked at them twice.

  He drove two blocks more and the scene fell away. Buildings obscured the flame and black smoke rose to mist. At Hudson Street, Michael turned south, then cut west on Chambers. Elena said nothing. She looked at everything but Michael. “Elena,” he said.

  “Not yet.” She shook her head.

  He worked the car south, past Ground Zero and the North Cove Yacht Harbor. At Battery Park City, he pulled to the curb and sat for a long moment. He said her name, but she ignored him. Michael checked traffic around them, then removed one gun from the glove compartment, and the other from under his jacket. Wordlessly, he stripped and wiped the guns; then he pulled two zip drives from a pocket and got out of the car. He felt Elena’s eyes on his back as he walked to the water’s edge and flung the pieces far into the river. Back in the car, he said, “Are you okay?”

  “Did you just throw a gun into the river?”

  “Two, actually.”

  “Two guns.”

  “Yes.”

  Elena nodded once, and her fingers crinkled the white paper bag in her lap. It was small, and when she smoothed the wrinkles, Michael saw that it came from a pharmacy two blocks from the restaurant. She lifted the bag, then let it settle. “I was nauseous,” she said, and smoothed the bag again. “Morning sickness.” She used two fingers to dash liquid from her eyes and Michael knew she was in shock. “I would have been inside the restaurant.”

  Trembling fingers brushed the plane of her stomach, and Michael could see her thoughts as if they hung in the air between them.

  If not for the baby …

  Her hands came up, and their emptiness was rich in meaning. The car. The fire. The guns. “What’s happening, Michael?”

  She needed the truth, he knew. For her safety, for so many reasons. But how could he tell her that the child she carried belonged to a liar? That her co-workers died in her place? That she remained a target? How could Michael tell the woman he loved that he’d killed seven people before lunch? She searched his face, frightened, and when he hesitated, her gaze fell to his shirt.

  “Elena…”

  She touched a dark splotch on the white cloth, traced it with a finger. “Is that…”

  “Listen to me—”

  “Is that blood?”

  She looked at him then, really looked. She saw similar stains on his pants, on the backs of his hands. “I’m going to be sick.” She folded at the waist, her skin the color of old bone. Michael reached out a hand, but she shied, one hand unfastening the seat belt, the other groping for the door. It swung open and she spilled out onto the street, the sunburned grass that stretched to the river. She managed a dozen steps, then sank to her knees. When Michael tried to approach, she said, “Stay away.”

  He watched her heave over brown grass, and was so distraught that when his phone rang, he barely heard it. He tore it from his pocket and felt the world slow when he saw the number. He almost didn’t answer, but then he did. He turned his back on Elena, and, using every ounce of self-control he possessed, said, “You’re a dead man, Stevan.”

  “Your brother’s next.”

  Michael felt heat on his neck, smelled the river. He looked at Elena and the moment seemed to freeze. “I don’t have a brother,” he said.

  “Yes, you do.”

  The phone went dead. Michael blinked and an image rose.

  His brother.

  Like a ghost.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NORTH CAROLINA MOUNTAINS

  TWENTY-THREE YEARS AGO

  Cold air filled the abandoned hall. Gray light. Dirt and debris. The boy who ran there was nine years old and thin, a scarecrow in ill-fitting clothes. Tears cut crescents in the grime beneath his eyes, then tracked white to his chin, his neck, the hollow places behind his ears. Windows flashed past as the boy ran, but he ignored the snow outside, the hints of mountain and other children, barely seen. He ran and choked and hated himself for bawling like some girl.

  Just run, Julian …

  Breath like glass in his throat.

  Just run …

  He came to an intersection, and stumbled left down a darker stretch that smelled of rot and mold and frozen earth. Broken glass crunched under his feet, and his lips moved again.

  Sticks and stones …

  He didn’t know that he was talking out loud. He felt the rush of blood, the crack of linoleum, dried out and breaking beneath his feet. He dared a look over his shoulder, and his sh
oe caught on a broken tile, ankle folding like cardboard. He stumbled against a windowsill that tore skin from his arm.

  Sticks …

  Julian sobbed in pain.

  Stones …

  Metal clattered behind him, distant voices. He stopped at the bottom of a rotted-out stairwell. Light spilled from the third floor, a wisp of snow from some broken window. He thought of climbing but was too weak, the injured ankle shooting blades of pain up his leg.

  Make me like Michael, he prayed.

  Footsteps behind him, his eyes rolling white.

  Make me strong.

  Another sob escaped his throat and he fled the sound of their steps, the noises they made as they slammed through doors and banged metal pipes on the hard, concrete walls.

  Please, God …

  Julian burst through a door. The bad ankle crumpled and he went down again, pain a gunpowder flash behind his eyes. He smeared a sleeve across his face because it would be worse if they caught him crying.

  Ten times worse.

  A thousand.

  He dragged himself up and rooms tumbled past: glimpses of naked bed frames and broken chairs, closets spilling old hangers and rotted cloth. He spun into another hall, breath still sharp in his throat, not enough air getting in. Behind him, a wolf-cry rose, and then another. He looked for a place to hide, but a cry skipped down the hall behind him: “There he is!”

  Julian looked back and saw tall windows lit by falling snow, then dirty faces and hands, bodies lost in dark, rough clothes. They stormed out of the shadows, five boys in a dead run. He screamed this time, and they came faster, older boys, big ones, their cruelty proven a hundred times in a hundred terrible ways. Their feet made snapping sounds in the shotgun hall, and Julian cried as he ran, half-blind and sobbing and ashamed.

  They caught him where the building ended. Julian hit a pocket of cold, heavy air, then metal doors and thick chain; when he turned, hands up and open, they slammed him into the door and drove him down. He shook the big chain once before they peeled his fingers loose and flipped him on his back. Then it was laughter and warm spit, the smell of rubber as a shoe crushed his nose and brought the bright, hot blood.