just like his aunt Dorothea had told him: You do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Good deeds were always rewarded. Bad ones, always punished. It was the maxim by which Saint lived his life.
They reached a set of double doors. Kuipers pushed them open and preceded him into a small, dimly lit room that smelled strongly of disinfectant. The viewing room. Saint had been in here a half-dozen times before to identify men who had died for him, men who had died on his orders. Those other times he’d been alone.
This time, there was a man waiting for him. Black man, in a black suit. A Fed. Saint glanced at him only briefly, before focusing his attention on the gurney behind him—and the body that lay on it.
He pushed past the man, who uttered something Saint didn’t catch, and pulled the sheet back.
His dead son—his dead, pale-skinned son, the boy whom Saint had sat on his knee, had taken trick-or- treating every Halloween, had helped with his homework, had talked about girls with, had bought cars and clothes and computers and everything he’d wanted, the boy who had somehow slipped away from him and become a young man whom Saint was only just getting to know again—that boy stared up at the ceiling, his face frozen in an expression of surprise, his eyes wide and unseeing.
“Look what they did to my boy,” Saint whispered, his voice barely audible. “Look what they did to my Bobby.”
His son had a massive chest wound, the size of a softball, dark, coagulated blood still sticking to its edges. A chunk of his left leg was missing, like someone had taken a bite out of it.
The Fed stepped forward.
“Mr. Saint, are you identifying this body as your son, Robert Saint?”
Saint managed a nod.
“Yes.”
Kuipers stepped up and put a hand on his arm.
“Mr. Saint. Let’s—”
“He was a special boy,” Howard Saint said, ignoring the gentle tug on his arm. “He deserved better.”
The Fed pulled the sheet back up over Bobby. An orderly had entered at some point—he took hold of the gurney now and wheeled it out of the room.
Saint turned to the Fed.
“I’m sorry for your loss, sir,” the man said.
But the man wasn’t. Those words were rote—some higher-up somewhere had probably told him to be nice to Howard Saint. He didn’t give a damn about Bobby— probably had written him off as a casualty of whatever operation had brought the Feds down to the waterfront in the first place.
Saint was going to see that his son stayed uppermost in this man’s mind, however.
“Someone lied to him,” he said. “Promised my boy one thing, gave him another.”
The Fed blinked. “Sir?”
“Who was Otto Krieg?” Saint said, taking a step closer to the man. “Who did he work with? Who were his friends? Who stood to make money on this deal?”
The Fed was putting on his official face again. “We can’t talk about the case, Mr. Saint. I understand your grief, but—”
“What’s your name?”
“Special Agent James Weeks,” the man replied.
“You in charge here, Mr. Weeks?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then help me. I want to know what happened to my boy, Mr. Weeks. And why.”
Weeks shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t discuss the case, sir. It’s policy.”
“Policy?”
“That’s right.”
“My son is dead,” Saint said, enunciating each word slowly and distinctly. “And you won’t tell me anything?”
“I can’t, Mr. Saint. For your own safety, leave this to the professionals.”
Saint looked into the man’s eyes, and saw that Weeks was indeed not going to tell him a thing. He nodded. “Professionals, right. That’s a good idea. I’ll do that. Thank you.”
He let Kuipers lead him away then, out of the viewing room and back down the hallway.
Weeks was right. Leaving it to the professionals was just what Saint intended to do. Just not the professionals the agent had in mind.
By the time Kuipers and Carillo dropped him at his car, he was already making phone calls.
SEVEN
It was close to noon by the time Frank Castle finally got home.
The Gulfstream had landed hours earlier at Dulles, but Castle had been forced to spend much of that time in debriefing. Assistant Director Sandoval’s chain was being yanked hard about Ares, about what had gone wrong down on the pier, and Castle had to explain all of it. The fact that it was Bobby Saint who’d queered the deal only made things worse; as crooked as Saint’s father was rumored to be, he had friends in high places and was rattling their cages already. They had to keep a tight lid on what had really gone down, or the news would be all over the papers.
Weeks’s ass was on the line as well; Frank could see that his friend was being primed to take a fall, for being the first one to fire a gun, even though he’d been using only blanks, even though that part of the op had been approved by Washington only days before. The only question was how far Weeks was going to get pushed, and when. Castle’d have to call Jimmy tonight, see how he was doing. But right now . . .
The car was stopping in front of his house. Not the driveway; the moving truck was parked there already. It was already half full; the crew sat in the open side doors, having their lunch. So much for his plans to pack the kitchen for Maria.
He opened his door, and climbed out. Marquez and Dillon—his bodyguards for the next week—got out of the car as well.
“You guys stay here, right?” Castle said. “Let me talk to her first.”
“You got it, Frank,” Dillon said. Marquez nodded his acceptance as well, and the two men took up position, one on either side of the car, scanning the surrounding neighborhood.
Castle sighed. Maria was not going to like having these two around. She never did. Frank thought their presence was particularly unnecessary in this case; what was going to happen to him? He supposed there was the off chance that someone in Astrov’s organization would tumble to the fact that Otto Krieg hadn’t been who he said he was, but Otto Krieg was dead. That trail would turn ice cold the second they went down it.
Protection was SOP for undercover operatives in these kinds of circumstances, though, so Marquez and Dillon were their houseguests for the next few days, until they were on the plane to Puerto Rico. Maria would just have to make the best of it.
He walked up to the front door. It was unlocked. He pushed, and it swung gently, silently, open.
Maria was there, in the hallway, her back to him, walking toward the kitchen. A stack of boxes marked FRAGILE— DISHES stood in the hall next to the front door.
She’d done it herself, of course. She was probably planning on carrying those boxes out to the truck herself as well.
He was about to call out her name when she froze in her tracks and then, very slowly, turned around to face him.
She was wearing jeans, and his old Ohio State sweatshirt. Her hair was up, a red bandana holding it in place, off her forehead. She wore no makeup. There was a streak of grime across one side of her face and a reddish stain— paint? jelly?—across the OSU symbol.
And despite all that . . . she looked beautiful.
Without a word, they walked toward each other and embraced. He held her as tight as he dared, till he feared she might break in his arms.
Then he let go, and they kissed.
She stepped back and looked up at him, her eyes piercing, seeing into parts of him that no one else even knew existed.
