Castle was going to kill them all, Saint realized. At which point, he remembered John, in the office upstairs. The two of them were all who were left—he couldn’t leave his son to die.
Maybe they’d taken care of him, Saint thought then. Lincoln, and whoever else was left. Maybe they killed him. Maybe.
He wasn’t going to stick around to find out.
He started heading for the front door.
Worowski burst out of the stairwell just ahead of him. The man saw him and began to babble.
“It’s a slaughter up there, Mr. Saint. A goddamn slaughter. You can keep the fifty large; I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it. I’m out of here!”
Good riddance, Saint was about to say.
And then he saw the tripwire.
“STOP!” Saint yelled.
Worowski’s hand, though, was already on the door.
It was Saint’s son. Bobby’s twin.
One of the men who’d executed his entire family.
John Saint was caught behind a collapsed girder, pinned in place against it, his arm extended as far as it could go, trying desperately to grab hold of his gun, which lay just out of his reach.
He looked up at Castle and snarled.
“You sonuvabitch.”
Castle moved closer.
“Nice biceps,” he said, squeezing one of John’s arms. “You must work out.”
“Fuck you.”
“Ever try isometrics?” Castle reached into his weapons bag then and pulled out a soapdish charge.
“This antipersonnel mine weighs eight pounds. Not much, I know, but hold it with your arm stretched out like that . . . helluva workout.”
He slapped it into John Saint’s open palm, then closed the man’s fingers around it. Then he tied the trip wire to the girder.
Saint’s eyes widened in horror as he realized what Castle was doing. “You sick bastard.” Saint struggled a moment, trying to free his legs, then fell back, helpless.
Castle shook his head. “I’d save your strength.” He pointed at the charge. “You let your fingers relax on that, even an inch, and—boom. Know what I mean?”
“Castle,” Saint pleaded. “Please. Don’t leave me like this.”
The man’s hand was quivering already, Frank saw. He doubted Saint would be able to hold the charge more than another minute, two at the outside.
He smiled at the man.
“Boom,” he said, and headed for the stairwell.
Somehow, he was still alive.
The club behind him was a burning husk, a ruin, but he’d made it out into the street, and here was the Bentley, parked right there in front of him, on the entrance ramp, almost as if it had all been planned.
He would go home, Saint decided. Not home as in the mansion, but home as in Alachua. He was a realist, Howard Saint was. The governor’s mansion was not possible for him, not right now. Too much had happened these last few days, these last few hours. The press would eat him alive. The Toros were another problem. Fifty million: he’d have to give them everything he owned and then some.
No, Alachua was definitely the answer. A place to chill for a couple weeks, maybe even longer. Let Castle try to follow him into the swamps: he’d have the man for breakfast. Feed him to the gators, lose his body in the swamps . . . no one would ever find him.
“Howard Saint!”
The voice stopped him in his tracks.
“Howard Saint.”
There was no escaping that voice, he realized. No escaping the man who went along with it.
He turned around and locked eyes with Frank Castle.
“You took everything from me,” Castle said. “Everything.”
Saint met his anger and matched it. “You killed my son.”
At that instant, a scream came from the club behind him. That was John, Saint realized, and, just as he thought that, another explosion shook the ground.
“Both of them, now,” Castle said. “Both your sons.”
It took Saint an instant to understand his meaning.
And only an instant longer to draw the gun from his holster and squeeze the trigger.
But he wasn’t fast enough.
Castle’s bullet caught him square in the chest, and he went to his knees. He tried to raise the gun again, but he managed to get his arm only halfway up before it fell, and he toppled onto his side.
A shadow fell over him. Castle.
“Gloat all you want, asshole,” Saint managed. “I still win. I still killed your family.”
Castle reached into his pocket then, and dropped papers on him. No, not papers. Photographs. What . . .
“I win,” Castle said. “I made you kill your best friend.”
For a second, Saint didn’t understand. Then his eyes fell on a picture of Quentin in bed with a woman, no, a girl, she was barely developed at all, tiny breasts, and—
Oh, God.
“I made you kill your wife,” Castle said, dropping something else to the ground, something that sparkled as it fell. A piece of jewelry.
Livia’s other earring.
Saint squeezed his eyes shut, begging the voices in his head to be quiet, the voices that were suddenly screaming at him, Quentin’s voice, Livia’s voice, telling him what a fool he’d been, what a gullible, murdering fool . . .
“And now I’ve killed you.”
Castle knelt down then, and was tying something around Saint’s ankle. Rope? No, something thicker. A belt. Saint looked up and saw the man tying the other end of it to the limo. What . . . ?
Castle opened the door of the limo and disappeared inside the car a second. Then he stepped out, looked down at Saint again, and gave the Bentley a gentle push.
It began rolling down the club’s entrance ramp, heading straight for the parking lot of Saint Motors, dragging him right along with it.
“No!” Howard Saint screamed. “Castle!”
One thirty-eight. He reached into his weapons bag and took out the detonator. He pressed it—once, twice, a dozen times. With each touch of the button, another car on the Saint Motors lot behind him exploded.
Castle turned to survey his work.
Of course, it was hard to get the full impact from street level. But it was an impressive display, nonetheless. Probably even more so for Howard Saint, who had been dragged clear across the road behind the limo, into the center of the Saint Motors lot. Where he lay now, screaming as he watched his life go up in flames around him.
Time now, Castle thought, for Howard Saint to go up in flames too.
One thirty-nine. He took the second detonator from the bag and ran his thumb over the button. Once, twice, and then a third time, for luck, even though—as he’d told Jimmy Weeks—Frank Castle was not a betting man.
Then he flicked it down.
The Bentley exploded. Howard Saint’s screams stopped.
One-forty. The pattern was complete. The mission was finished.
Only one thing left to do and then he, at last, could rest as well.
FORTY-FOUR
Chief Edwin Morris did not appreciate being woken at two in the morning. He especially did not appreciate
