John Hart - Iron House

Michael studied the room. “When did you move him?”

“Just this morning.”

“And this started three days ago?”

Abigail walked him through it again: Julian’s absence, how she found him in the garage and how he beat his hands bloody. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”

Michael touched a dark crescent of dried blood, put a palm flat on one of the drawn doors. “Something smaller, maybe. A long time ago.” He pictured Julian in the boiler room at Iron House, the glazed eyes and bloody knuckles. He touched the second door. It, too, was scratched through to plaster. “If things got bad, Julian went deep. Basements, caves. If he couldn’t get deep enough in the world, he went deep in his mind. It happened a lot when we were young. If something bad happened, he checked out. Minutes. A few hours. Never this long.”

“What about the doors?” Abigail gestured at the drawings.

“An old man told him once that there were magic doors hidden in the walls. Doors to better places, a different life. Tap them right and they open up. All Julian had to do was find them.”

“His poor hands,” Elena said.

Michael stopped by the bed. The sheets had been stripped. “Something bad happened three days ago.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” Falls said.

“I’m sure.”

“It’s been twenty-three years. He’s not the boy he was. You don’t know him anymore. You can’t.”

Michael cataloged the distrust in Jessup Falls’s face, the wrinkled skin, and folds of flesh at the corners of his eyes. The man was tense in his bones, and Michael bridled at the doubt. He looked at the blood-smeared walls, and he felt anger spark in the normally frozen place behind his eyes. Julian was his brother, and they’d allowed him to come to this.

Them.

Not Michael.

The old protectiveness rose as if it had never slept. Twenty-three years of suppressed worry, fear and doubt boiled into anger so immediate and hot that part of Michael knew he was off the rails. But he didn’t care. He pushed close to Falls and to Abigail Vane. He ignored the guard in the hall, the blunt, square-faced man who rose up on his toes and slipped one hand under his coat to touch the weapon there. “Do you have any idea what my brother endured as a child? The torment and abuse? The callousness and unconcern of people paid to care for his most basic needs?”

“No, I-”

“That’s right.” His gaze landed on Abigail Vane. “You don’t. None of you. Not how he hurt or how often he broke. You don’t know what it took to pick him up day after day, to put him back on his feet, to hold him together. You weren’t there and you can’t imagine. He was beaten, abused, ignored…”

Michael saw red as a day from childhood flashed into his mind with such clarity it was physical. Julian was eight and had been missing for an hour when Michael finally found him in the same bathroom where Hennessey would later die with a rusted blade in his neck. It was the screaming that led him there. They had Julian naked on the cold, tile floor, one boy on each arm and leg. Julian was still wet from the shower, thrashing, begging. Hennessey had a knife against Julian’s hairless prick, laughing as he threatened to cut it off.

I would like some beanie weenies…

No! Please!

Say it motherfucker.

“Julian doesn’t like to talk about his childhood.” Abigail put herself in front of Michael.

“That’s because nightmares are personal.”

“We can’t possibly understand what you boys went through at that terrible place, but we’ve tried.” Abigail looked down, sad. “This has been so hard.”

“Don’t talk to me about hard , and don’t question me on the past or on my brother. You may think you understand, but you can’t. No one can.”

Michael felt the stillness in the room, the way Elena stared at him. She’d never seen him raise his voice, never seen him angry.

“No one meant any disrespect,” Abigail said. “We understand your connection to Julian. We welcome it. Please, don’t be angry.”

Yet. Michael was. He was angry at the world, and he was angry with himself. Stepping into the hall, he pointed at the guard. “You. What’s your name?”

“Richard Gale.”

“Are you any good with that?” Michael nodded at the weapon on Gale’s belt.

“Michael, what are you doing?”

Abigail came out behind him, worried. She caught his arm, and Michael pulled it free. He studied Richard Gale and liked what he saw. Assurance that bordered on eagerness. An utter lack of fear or doubt as he sized Michael up. “Try me,” he said.

And that moment told Michael everything he needed to know. He took Elena’s hand, and turned. “We’re leaving.” He led her down the long hall and onto the sweeping staircase. Behind them, Abigail followed, Jessup Falls two steps behind the hem of her skirt.

“Michael, please…”

He was resolute, but she caught him at the front door. “Why are you leaving?”

“I came to make sure my brother was safe. He’s safe.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve counted six guards since I got here. There’s probably more, all of them well armed and professional. The property is gated and walled. Video surveillance. Electronic countermeasures.” Michael shook his head. “Julian doesn’t need me.”

“But he does. You can’t just show up and then leave. He needs you. I need you.”

Michael stared out beyond the far gate. Jimmy was out there, coming. Elena’s hand felt warm and small when he squeezed it. “Other people need me, too,” he said.

That thought burned in Michael’s mind, and in Elena’s, too. She squeezed his hand in return, and he felt her relief in the way she molded against him. He’d done what he needed to do. Julian was safe. Now, they could make a life, build a family. “We have to go,” he said.

But Abigail was not finished. “You said he’s safe.”

“He is.”

“From what?”

Their gazes locked, and she was so desperate to know that Michael almost told her the truth. Jimmy. Stevan. The target painted on his back. But what purpose would such disclosure serve? “I have enemies.” He kept it simple. “People I thought might choose to hurt me through Julian.”

“What kind of enemies?” Falls forced himself into the conversation.

“People that don’t want to hurt Julian badly enough to risk security like this.” Michael was confident. Julian was bait, nothing more. “The risk leaves when I do.”

“That’s not good enough,” Falls said. “What risks? What threats? If there’s a danger out there, I need to know what it is. I want specifics: names, timing, all of it.”

But Michael was confident. Stevan had used Julian to flush Michael into the open. “Julian’s in no danger. Not here. Not with this security.”

“How did you even find us?” Falls demanded. “Adoption records are sealed. Julian’s father is a United States senator.”

Michael gave him a second, then said, “I’ve known for a long time how to find my brother.”

“How?”

A shrug. “I have resources.”

“That give you access to private information on a senator and his family? What kind of resources?”

What could Michael say? How could he explain that he knew Julian’s GPA from high school, that he had copies of their tax returns, photographs of the senator with two different prostitutes. Michael remembered his seventeenth birthday. Early in the morning, the sky outside still black. The old man had come to Michael’s room with a thick folder in his hand.

A man should know his family . He’d put the file on Michael’s bed, offered a sad, knowing smile. Happy birthday, Michael .