John Hart - Iron House

“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?”