it against the beers, and then they all turned to Castle.
He was back with them, Joan saw. He’d been listening, if not to her and Dave, then definitely to Stanley.
He cleared his throat. “Thanks,” he said, getting to his feet. “Thanks for dinner. Now, though . . . I have to be going.”
“Oh, no.” Stanley rose, too. “You can’t go yet. Not before the piece de resistance! Iced Florentine.”
Frank frowned. “Iced Florentine?”
“Dessert. We’ll be right back. Come on, Dave.”
Dave took another hit off his beer.
“Come on, Dave,” Stanley repeated.
Joan watched Stanley drag his friend from the room, and she suddenly realized the two of them were trying to play matchmaker. Oh, God. Had she been that obvious about her interest? How embarrassing.
She looked up at Castle and was surprised to see him smiling.
“Iced Florentine.” He shrugged and sat back down. “Whatever it is, it sounds good.”
“I’m sure it will be. Stanley likes to cook almost as much as he likes to eat.”
“This . . .” Castle shook his head. “This is the best meal I’ve had in a long, long time. Thanks again for inviting me.”
“Not at all. Thank you . . . for getting rid of my . . . problem the other night.” Their eyes met. Joan was suddenly aware she was smiling, too.
“Frank. I—”
She stopped talking. The second she’d said his name, it was as if a curtain had been drawn across his face, obscuring any trace of the man himself. The smile disappeared from his face and his eyes, to be replaced by the same hard glint he’d worn every other time they’d spoken.
“What’s wrong?”
He got to his feet again. “I have to go.”
She saw the gun, then, poking out from his waistband. And all at once, she was angry. Fine that he didn’t want her, but—
“Say you kill them all. Then what?”
He shook his head and went to the window.
She followed.
“Will your memories go away?”
“My memories,” he said, his voice suddenly thick, “will never go away.”
She took a deep breath then, and put a hand on his arm.
“You can create new memories, Frank. Good ones. Good memories can save your life.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he turned and looked down at her hand on his arm. “I’m not what you’re looking for,” he said softly, and pulled away.
A moment later, she heard the door to his apartment open, and then gently swing shut.
Castle set the photo of Maria and Will back down on his desk.
It was animal instinct. Strictly a function of how long he’d gone without sex. Months. That was not natural. The woman was attractive enough, but that was as far as it went. Maria had been his soul mate; this woman had been a junkie. Maria had made him laugh, made him think; this woman’s conversation had foundered after a single dinner. He had nothing in common with her, save the address they shared, and after tonight, they would not have even that. He should not have gotten involved with her and her ex-boyfriend in the first place, and he should never have agreed to the dinner tonight. And he could not afford to waste his time thinking about Joan any longer. He needed to focus.
It was Thursday.
Someone knocked on the door.
Castle rose to his feet, angry, and yanked it open.
“Look,” he began. “I told you—”
A fist the size of a football smacked him in the jaw.
Castle fell back, stunned, as the Russian entered his apartment.
THIRTY-SIX
The Russian. Ivan Vassilovitch Dragovsky. Castle knew him right away, knew of him from the bureau’s files and from reports he’d heard, back in Bosnia, back in his Delta Force days, about a Russian soldier who had narrowly missed achieving on his own what the half-dozen men in Frank’s squad hadn’t even come close to doing, capturing Radovan Karadzic. He’d killed a dozen of Karadzic’s bodyguards in the process, and the only reason Radovan escaped was because he’d had a helicopter and the Russian hadn’t.
Castle dismissed the tale as a crock. His own ego, and a lack of proof, as this “Russian” had supposedly deserted right after the Karadzic incident and gone into a more lucrative line of work.
Castle had all but forgotten about the man when, a half-dozen years later, while he was Otto Krieg, Yuri Astrov had asked him to find this legendary Russian, to look into the possibility of hiring him as a bodyguard. Castle had been certain he’d come up empty and would have to report back to Astrov that this Russian was only a myth.
But the myth turned out to be true.
He’d gotten the word back from one of Astrov’s contacts in South America: There was indeed a Russian who was working for the Escobar cartel in Colombia. A day later, Castle had had the man’s file in his hand.
It contained Dragovsky’s name. His war record. His size— seven feet, five inches, 450 pounds—which Castle had been going to dismiss as an obvious error, until he found the sheaf of pictures attached to the back of the report.
Seven-five seemed like it might be a little shy of the truth. Dragovsky was the biggest man he’d ever seen in his life; one of the photos in the stack was of Ivan and his army unit. The man towered over the other soldiers like an NBA player on a girls’ field hockey team.
He’d been unable to hire him for Astrov, though: Escobar had Ivan on a permanent retainer, and though he would consider renting him out for specific missions, it would cost an arm and a leg to do so.
Howard Saint, clearly, was willing to pay that cost.
Those thoughts all passed through Castle’s mind in a split second.
And then the Russian hit him again.
Wham, with the right hand.
Wham, with the left, just as hard.
Castle staggered.
Ivan was ambidextrous. That had been in the file, too.
The Russian reared back and swung again. This time, Castle had the wherewithal to duck.
The man’s fist went through the wall—and stuck.
Castle grabbed the knife from his boot and, in a single, fluid motion, jabbed the blade into the Russian’s kidney.
Except that somehow, miraculously, the Russian grabbed his wrist with his free hand and stopped Castle’s thrust just as it tore his shirt.
That’s not possible, Castle thought. No one that big can move that fast.
The Russian then pulled his stuck hand free of the wall, wrenched the knife from Castle’s grasp with his other hand, and stabbed Frank straight through the shoulder.
Castle screamed in agony.
The Russian smiled, pulled the knife out, and thrust forward again.
Somehow, Castle was able to dodge. The knife stuck in the wall. Ivan struggled to pull it free.
Castle staggered deeper into the loft.
Joan stood by herself a moment, in the empty apartment, letting a little wave of self-pity wash over her.
Then she went to join her friends.
Stanley’s door was open; she walked in and found him wearing a chef’s hat, stirring something on the stove. Dave was kneeling next to the stereo, flipping through a stack of records.
