going to tip us tonight?” She waved her arms to indicate the empty bar. “No one, that’s who. Because we’re closed. So I don’t see why we have to work if we’re closed.”
Melanie sighed. Shania was her friend, but sometimes, the girl could be a little thick.
“Because John Saint called us in, that’s why.”
“What, they need four waitresses for a dozen guys? Does that make sense to you?”
“No. But John’s a good guy. He’ll take care of us, end of the night. Don’t worry.”
“Yeah.” Her friend snorted. “I heard how John Saint takes care of the waitresses around here.”
They both smiled.
“No, honestly,” Melanie said then. “He’s a big tipper. All his guys are.”
“Even those two?” Shania nodded at the pair patrolling the room. “You think they’re big tippers?”
Melanie studied them, then shook her head. “Nah,” she finally said. “They look like deadbeats.”
One of the men looked up then and grunted really loudly.
For a second, Melanie was afraid he’d overheard them talking. Oh God, she thought. We’re in trouble now.
But the man stayed right where he was, looking completely dumbfounded. Looking, for some reason, down at his chest.
Melanie looked, too.
There was an arrowhead sticking out of it.
Shania screamed, and dropped the scoopful of ice she’d been holding in her hand.
“Tony!” The other man patrolling the room ran to his friend. “Tony! What . . .”
He stopped talking all at once, because, as Melanie saw, there was now an arrow sticking out of his throat, too.
It was her turn to scream then.
A man stepped out from the shadows near the kitchen—a big, scary-looking man, carrying a crossbow at his side and wearing a shirt with a huge skull painted across the chest.
“Go,” he said.
Melanie and the others ran.
The skull. Castle thanked Will again—for the symbol, this time, not the shirt.
Because this time, the skull was painted on his Kevlar vest. A little modification he’d made a few days back, after realizing that practical considerations during the assault— practical, as in he might get shot at—would prevent him from wearing the shirt. And he still wanted to use the symbol to make an impression. Now . . .
And a little later this evening.
One oh-nine. He ran a trip wire across the front door of the club and attached a charge. As he headed for the stairs, the intercom by the dumbwaiter buzzed.
“Hey, Tony!”
Castle stopped in his tracks.
What the heck, he thought, and pressed the talk button.
“Yo.”
“We need more champagne up here.”
Castle turned. The champagne, still packed in buckets, sat on the bar where the waitresses had abandoned it. He considered it and the ordnance remaining in his bag, and then he smiled.
He pressed the talk button again.
“Coming right up,” he said.
Then he set down the weapons bag and got to work.
Cutter. Poor Cutter. John Moroni had just called with the news.
In a way though, Howard Saint was glad. Cutter’s death meant Castle was still here in Tampa. That had been a fear of his, momentarily, that after the Russian, Castle would decide to abandon his vendetta and head for greener pastures. But he hadn’t run—or if he had, he’d come back.
And soon enough, they would finally meet. For the first and last time.
Saint could hardly wait.
He removed a Cuban from the humidor and lit it. Crossed his office, and exited out into the upstairs bar. Lincoln and John were playing pool. Worowski, Bob Graves, and three men whose names he forgot entirely—or maybe he’d never met them, actually; now that he thought about it, they were Quentin’s hires—stood around the bar, drinking champagne. They’d gone through a half-dozen bottles already, and Graves was carrying another over to the table, Saint saw. All of it Dom Perignon. What was that, sixty a bottle?
He made a mental note to dock them the money out of their salaries. Christ, he owed the Toros fifty million, he had to start watching every penny he could.
Graves, who’d just pulled another bottle out of the ice bucket, suddenly froze where he stood and said in a loud yet strangely resigned voice: “Oh, fuck!”
Saint saw something running from the bottle back into the bucket. A wire. What—
Instinct made him dive behind the bar. It was the only thing that saved his life.
A huge explosion sounded—the ceiling caved in. The floor shook. Plaster dust and smoke filled the air.
He peeked over the bar. A lot of his men were dead, he saw that instantly. One of Lincoln’s legs was trapped underneath the pool table; Worowski was trying to help push it off. His son was in the office, shaking his head, trying and for some reason failing to get to his feet.
“John!” Saint shouted. “Are you all right?”
Right then, the elevator doors opened, and a man stepped out into the smoke, weapon raised before him. For an instant, the two of them locked eyes.
Castle, Saint thought. And then he shouted: “Kill him!”
Castle stood his ground as gunfire erupted around him.
Two men emerged from a room that the blast hadn’t touched; he cut them down on the spot. Another peered out from behind a door; Castle blew the door and the man away.
The wall next to him exploded. Castle turned in time to take a shotgun blast right to the chest: the Kevlar shredded, and the rifle flew from his hands.
He reached for the Colt, as the man with the shotgun— the man from Puerto Rico, the man he’d left alive, his mistake, which he’d correct now—stepped forward and fired again. Castle staggered; the Kevlar held. He tried to raise the Colt, but he was too slow; the shotgun went off a third time.
The last of the armor shredded. The Colt flew away.
Castle was defenseless.
He lunged forward and grabbed the barrel, twisting it down just as the man fired again, and screamed.
Blood flowed from the man’s shoe, what there was left of it.
Castle grabbed the shotgun away from him and smacked him across the face with the barrel. The man half lunged, half fell forward, and got his hands around Castle’s neck.
He began to squeeze. Castle tried to force the shotgun up between his arms to break his grip, but he didn’t have the leverage, or the strength, or the oxygen.
The man gritted his teeth and squeezed harder.
Castle dropped the shotgun and, in one fluid motion, drew his knife and stabbed upward, into the man’s hand.
The man screamed and loosened his grip. Castle kept driving the knife upward, driving it through the man’s hand and up against the wall, and then into the wall, pinning his hand there.
Then he drew a second knife from his boot and finished it.
Castle stepped back from the wall, breathing hard, still trying to catch his breath. Where had Saint gone? His eyes scanned the area, searching. . . .
And fell on what appeared to be the remnants of an office, and the man trapped within it.
Big Richie, Howard Saint decided as the elevator descended. He would call Richie, get a few of his men up from Miami, and they would handle this psycho. The skull on his chest—what was that about? Who did the man think he was—some kind of superhero?
The elevator doors opened. Saint looked out, half expecting to see Castle waiting for him. But there was no one there. Only the bodies of the men he’d left to guard the front entrance.
