Iron House by John Hart Read Free Book Online

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