he knew Ronnie Saints very well. It took a few minutes.
“Ronnie Saints?” She turned away. “Oh, God.”
Michael watched her. She was in shock. “You know the name?”
“Give me a minute.” She took several deep breaths, then nodded, eyes closed. “Julian knew him.”
Michael nodded, too. “Knew him. Feared him. Hated him.”
“Saints was one of the boys that harassed him.” Her face was still turned toward the side window. It was not a question.
“Tortured him,” Michael said. “Let’s call it what it is.”
The word fell from her lips, and Michael felt his hands tighten on the steering wheel. “After Hennessey, Ronnie Saints was the worst, big and strong and sadistic, a juvenile delinquent from the mountains of north Georgia. He broke Julian’s index finger three times. Same one. Every time it healed. The one time Julian tried to defend himself, Ronnie Saints tore his ear so badly part of it had to be stitched back on.”
“Were there no adults?”
“Too few and too uncaring. As long as no one died, we were left to ourselves. The place was tribal.”
“But Julian could have told-”
“No one rats at Iron House.”
Abigail finally turned his way. She drew herself up and said, “I’m glad he’s dead.”
Michael felt the same way. But there were problems Abigail had not yet considered. “They spent a year together on Iron Mountain, Julian and Ronnie Saints. The cops will figure that out, eventually. It will give them motive, and after the dead girl eighteen years ago, that’s all they’ll need to go after Julian with everything they have.”
“But Christina died so long ago. Julian was just a boy.”
“Nobody holds a grudge like a cop. They’re already thinking about Julian. I guarantee it.”
Abigail pinched the bridge of her nose. Gravel crunched beneath the tires. It was hot inside the vehicle. “Let’s back this up. How do the police even know about the body? Who could have called them?”
“Whoever saw me sink it.”
“Why aren’t you in custody?”
“Maybe it was darker than it felt. Maybe there’s some other reason.”
Abigail drooped, still shaken. “Do you think Julian killed him?”
“If he did, he had a reason.”
“And that makes a difference?”
“Reasons always make a difference.”
She kept her eyes on his face. “Have you killed people, Michael? I mean other than the Hennessey boy?”
She said it scared, and Michael did not need to see her face to know what it took to force the words out. She had ideas about him, the kind of theories that make most people squeamish; he understood that. He’d let her see more than he would normally do, but they had this thing they shared, this bond that came close to blood. So, Michael had a choice to make. He could ignore the question or he could tell the same lies he’d told for most of his life. Today, he did something new. “I’ve killed people,” he said.
“And were the reasons good?”
“Some good.” He shrugged. “Some maybe not so great.”
“But nothing you can’t live with?”
“That’s right.”
She stared out the window, and her voice came faintly. “That must be nice.”
They circled the south end of the lake and cut back through the woods toward the guest house. Even before Michael stopped the car, they saw that the door stood wide open.
Michael killed the engine before they got too close.
“Is your girlfriend back?”
Michael didn’t answer right away. He studied the open door, the windows, then checked the woods around them, the tree line on both sides of the house. Elena was strong-willed and had good reason to be upset. No way would she be back yet, not after what she’d seen in the boathouse. “Her car’s not here.”
“But the door’s open.”
“That’s not the kind of thing she would do.”
“Wind, maybe?”
“I don’t think so.”
Michael studied the windows, saw something flicker inside. “Movement,” he said.
Abigail looked back at the house, and when Michael shifted in the seat, she saw that he had a gun in his hand. She had no idea where it had come from. One instant his hand was empty; the next, the gun was simply there. She thought of his talk of reasons, then of bodies on the streets of New York. She thought of blood and death and Otto Kaitlin’s forty-year reign of violence.
“Stay here,” Michael said.
He exited the car, gun low against his leg as he crossed a patch of grass and dirt, then found the bottom step with his foot. Through the door, he saw shadows and light but no other sign of movement. A look back showed Abigail out of the car, one hand on the open door; then he heard movement deep in the house. He eased onto the porch and felt vibration through the floor.
Abigail appeared beside him.
Inside, something hammered on wood, a dull thump repeated twice.
“Right side. In the back.” Michael risked a glance inside, and then spread five fingers, making sure Abigail knew to stay behind him. She nodded, and the hammer moved under Michael’s thumb as he slipped inside and shadow swallowed him up. Two feet in, he heard a voice from the back bedroom.
“Damn it…”
Michael felt Abigail tense behind him, felt her hesitate. A hallway ran to the back of the house, two bedrooms at the end of it. Michael cleared the kitchen, then heard glass shatter, the sound loud in the small house. Whatever the source, it was a lot of glass. Halfway down the hall he realized what was happening, and rounded into the room in time to see a figure drop through the window and disappear.
Rushing forward, he tried to identify the intruder, but forest pushed close against the back of the house, and all he caught was a glimpse of skin and movement as a body pushed through leaves and disappeared.
Without a thought, Michael followed. He landed on the balls of his feet and took off at a run, stretching hard to clear a wooden stool that lay half-hidden in the moss and ferns. He guessed it had been thrown through the window by the person he was chasing, and that person was fast, cutting hard between trees, staying far ahead as the forest thickened around them. In the distance, he heard Abigail calling his name. He ignored her, pushed harder, ran faster; when a trail opened in the woods, he gained enough to see clearly for the first time.
It was a woman. Long legs under short cutoffs. A narrow waist and a gymnast’s build. Small muscles flexed under skin burned brown, and she moved as if she could run forever. Michael pushed harder, closed; as if sensing the change, the woman dodged right, off the trail. For long seconds, Michael lost sight of her, but as smooth as she was, as agile in the woods, she couldn’t run in silence. So, he followed the sound of her, and when the trees parted in a shallow clearing, he caught up with her, flicked out a foot and knocked one ankle into another so she came down in a tangle.
“Take it easy,” he said.
But she scrambled up on all fours, ready to sprint. Michael put a hand on her back and kept her down as he engaged the safety on the gun and pushed into his belt. “I just want to talk to you.” She fought, strong, and Michael said, “Come on, now.”
