Iron House

For

Pete Wolverton

and

Matthew Shear

A time came in the writing of this book where I almost walked away from it. It was just one of those things, a prolonged moment of doubt and discouragement. Nothing was working as I hoped; the pages fought me. I might have done it, too—let it fall, started something else—if not for my editor, Pete Wolverton, and my publisher, Matthew Shear, who read the first big piece of the manuscript, saw the potential, and assured me that I could pull it off. Their confidence saw me through a few long months, and I would like to thank them first and above all. Matthew, Pete ... this book would never have happened without you. Thanks for the faith, and for keeping my feet on the trail.

I would also like to thank the other members of my editorial team, Anne Bensson and Katie Gilligan. Your keen insights made the book better every time you looked at it. Thanks for that! And thanks again to you, Pete. Every trip south is worth it.

For the fire being built under
Iron House
, my publishers deserve tremendous appreciation. Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear, Tom Dunne ... I know you oversee a lot of books, but I always felt your eye on this one. Few great things happen without you firmly behind a novel, and I thank you for having faith in what I do.

In the marketing of this book, Matt Baldacci, as always, does a fabulous job, as does his team, Nancy Trypuc, Kim Ludlam, and Laura Clark. My publicists, Stephen Lee and Dori Weintraub, are spectacular. Thank you both for all you’ve done. I truly appreciate it. Thanks as well to Kenneth J. Silver, the production editor, Cathy Turiano, the production manager, and Jonathan Bennett, who did the interior design. You guys make a beautiful book, and I do love a beautiful book! I would also like to thank my copy editor, Steven A. Roman, who tries very hard to keep me from embarrassing myself. Any errors in the book are mine, not his. I also need to thank the many people in the Art Department who worked diligently to create the right jacket. Never an easy job. As always, I’d like to give an especially loud shout-out to the hardworking sales force at St. Martin’s Press and Griffin Books. Mickey Choate deserves my gratitude, as does Esther Newberg. You are both wonderful, wonderful agents.

I also need to thank my great friend Neal Sansovich, whose pure heart and perpetual optimism lifted me from some dark troughs when the days got especially long. Your friendship means a lot to me, Neal. Thanks for deep talks and good soil.

Foreign publishers all over the world have worked hard to make this book a success, but my team in the U.K. deserves special thanks. So, to Roland Philipps, Kate Parkin, and Tim Hely Hutchinson, I offer special thanks, as I do to everyone else at John Murray Publishers, who have gone out of their way to make me feel like part of the Murray family.

I come at last to the most important people of all. Only the family of working writers understands the unique challenge of living with a novelist. The process takes a while; we tend to get distracted and work strange hours. It’s not always pretty, and no one deserves a deeper bow of appreciation than my wife, Katie and my girls, Saylor and Sophie. I’d be nothing without you.

Trees thrashed in the storm, their trunks hard and black and rough as stone, their limbs bent beneath the weight of snow. It was dark out, night. Between the trunks, a boy ran and fell and ran again. Snow melted against the heat of his body, soaked his clothing then froze solid. His world was black and white, except where it was red.

On his hands and under his nails.

Frozen to the blade of a knife no child should own.

For one instant the clouds tore, then darkness came complete and an iron trunk bloodied the boy’s nose as he struck a tree and fell again. He pulled himself up and ran through snow that piled to his knees, his waist. Branches caught his hair, tore skin. Light speared out far behind, and the sound of pursuit welled like breath in the forest’s throat.

Long howls on the bitter wind ...

Dogs beyond the ridge ...

Michael woke reaching for the gun he no longer kept by the bed. His fingers slid over bare wood, and he sat, instantly awake, his skin slick with sweat and the memory of ice. There was no movement in the apartment, no sounds beyond those of the city. The woman beside him rustled in the warm tangle of their sheets, and her hand found the hard curve of his shoulder. “You okay, sweetheart?”

Weak light filtered through the curtains, the open window, and he kept his body turned so she could not see the boy that lingered in his eyes, the stain of hurt so deep she had yet to find it. “Bad dream, baby.” His fingers found the swell of her hip. “Go back to sleep.”

“You sure?” The pillow muffled her voice.

“Of course.”

“I love you,” she said, and was gone.

Michael watched her fade, and then put his feet on the floor. He touched old scars left by frostbite, the dead places on his palms and at the tips of three fingers. He rubbed his hands together, and then tilted them in the light. The palms were broad, the fingers long and tapered.

A pianist’s fingers,
Elena often said.

Thick and scarred.
He would shake his head.

The hands of an artist ...

She liked to say things like that, the talk of an optimist and dreamer. Michael flexed his fingers, and heard the sound of her words in his head, the lilt of her accent, and for that instant he felt ashamed. Many things had come through the use of his hands, but creation was not one of them. He stood and rolled his shoulders as New York solidified around him: Elena’s apartment, the smell of recent rain on hot pavement. He pulled on jeans and glanced at the open window. Night was a dark hand on the city, its skin not yet veined with gray. He looked down on Elena’s face and found it pale in the gloom, soft and creased with sleep. She lay unmoving in the bed they shared, her shoulder warm when he laid two fingers on it. Outside, the city grew as dark and still as it ever got, the quiet pause at the bottom of a breath. He moved hair from her face, and at her temple saw the thread of her life, steady and strong. He wanted to touch that pulse, to assure himself of its strength and endurance. An old man was dying, and when he was dead, they would come for Michael; and they would come for her, to make Michael hurt. Elena knew none of this, neither the things of which he was capable nor the danger he’d brought to her door; but Michael would go to hell to keep her safe.

Go to hell.

Come back burning.

That was truth. That was real.

He studied her face in the dim light, the smooth skin and full, parted lips, the black hair that ran in waves to her shoulder then broke like surf. She shifted in her sleep, and Michael felt a moment’s bleakness stir, a familiar certainty that it would get worse before it got better. Since he was a boy, violence had trailed him like a scent. Now, it had found her, too. For an instant, he thought again that he should leave her, just take his problems and disappear. He’d tried before, of course, not one time but a hundred. Yet, with each failed attempt, the certainty had only grown stronger.

He could not live without her.

He could make it work.

Michael dragged fingers through his hair, and wondered again how it had come to this place. How had things gone so sour so fast?

Moving to the window, he flicked the curtain enough to see down into the alley. The car was still there, black and low in the far shadows. Distant lamplight starred the windshield so that he could not see past the glass, but he knew at least one of the men who sat inside. His presence was a threat, and it angered Michael beyond words. He’d made his bargain with the old man, and expected the deal to be honored. Words still mattered to Michael.

Promises.

Rules of conduct.

He looked a last time at Elena, then eased two silenced forty-fives from the place he kept them hidden. They were cool to the touch, familiar in his hands. He checked the loads and a frown bent his face as he turned from the woman he loved. He was supposed to be beyond this, supposed to be free. He thought once more of the man in the black car.

Eight days ago they’d been brothers.

Michael was at the door and almost out when Elena said his name. He paused for a moment, then lay the guns down and slipped back into the bedroom. She’d shifted onto her back and one arm was half-raised. “Michael…”

The name was a smile on her lips, and he wondered if she was dreaming. She shifted and a warm-bed smell rose in the room. It carried the scent of her skin and of clean hair. It was the smell of home and the future, the promise of a different life. Michael hesitated, then took her hand as she said, “Come back to bed.”

He looked into the kitchen, where he’d left the guns next to a can of yellow paint. Her voice had come as a whisper, and he knew that if he left, she would ride the slope back into sleep and not remember. He could slip outside and do the thing he did well. Killing them would likely escalate matters, and others would certainly take their place; but maybe the message would serve its purpose.

And maybe not.

His gaze traveled from Elena to the window. The night outside was just as black, its skin stretched tight. The car was still there, as it had been the night before and the night before that. They would not move against him until the old man died, but they wanted to rattle him. They wanted to push, and every part of Michael wanted to push back. He took a slow breath and thought of the man he desired to be. Elena was here, beside him, and violence had no place in the world they wished to make. But he was a realist first, so that when her fingers flexed on his, his thoughts were not just of hope, but of retribution and deterrence. An old poem rose in his mind.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood ...

Michael stood at a crossroad, and it all came down to choice. Go back to bed or pick up the guns. Elena or the alley. The future or the past.

Elena squeezed his hand again. “Love me, baby,” she said, and that’s what he chose.

Life over death.

The road less traveled.

The New York dawn came scorching hot. The guns were hidden and Elena still slept. Michael sat with his feet on the windowsill and stared down into the empty alleyway. They’d left at around five, backed from the alley and sounded a single blow of their horn as the sightlines collapsed. If their goal had been to wake or scare him, they’d failed miserably. He’d been out of the bed since three and felt great. Michael studied his fingertips, where flecks of yellow paint stained them.

“What are you smiling at, gorgeous?” Her voice surprised him and he turned. Elena sat up in bed, languorous, and pushed long, black hair from her face. The sheet fell to her waist and Michael put his feet on the floor, embarrassed to be caught in a moment of such open joy.

“Just thinking of something,” he said.

“Of me?”

“Of course.”

“Liar.”

She was smiling, skin still creased. Her back arched as she stretched, her small hands fisted white. “You want coffee?” Michael asked.

She fell back against the pillows, made a contented sound, and said, “You are a magnificent creature.”

“Give me a minute.” In the kitchen, Michael poured warm milk in a mug, then coffee. Half and half, the way she liked it. Café au lait. Very French. When he came back, he found her in one of his shirts, sleeves rolled loosely on her narrow arms. He handed her the coffee. “Good dreams?”

She nodded and a glint sparked in her eyes. “One in particular seemed very real.”

“Did it?”

She sank into the bed and made the same contented noise. “One of these days I’m actually going to wake up before you.”

Michael sat on the edge of the bed and put a hand on the arch of her foot. “Sure you will, baby.” Elena was a late sleeper, and Michael rarely managed more than five hours a night. Her climbing from bed before him was a near impossibility. He watched her sip coffee, and reminded himself to notice the small things about her: the clear polish she preferred on her nails, the length of her legs, the tiny scar on her cheek that was her skin’s only imperfection. She had black eyebrows, eyes that were brown but could look like honey in a certain light. She was lithe and strong, a beautiful woman in every respect, but that’s not what Michael admired most. Elena took joy in the most insignificant things: how it felt to slip between cool sheets or taste new foods, the moment’s anticipation each time she opened the door to step outside. She had faith that each moment would be finer than the last. She believed that people were good, which made her a dash of color in a world blown white.

She sipped again, and Michael saw the exact moment she noticed the paint on his hands. A small crease appeared between her brows. The cup came away from her lips. “Did you paint it already?”

She tried to sound angry but failed, and as he shrugged an answer to the question he could not keep the smile from touching every part of his face. She’d envisioned them painting it together—laughter, spilled paint—but Michael couldn’t help it. “Too excited,” he said, and thought of the fresh yellow paint on the walls of the tiny room down the hall. They called it a second bedroom, but it was not much larger than a walk-in closet. A high, narrow window was paned with rippled glass. Afternoon light would make the yellow glow like gold.