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.

“That was a hard one,” she said softly.

He nodded. “That was the last one.”

She looked over his shoulder, and her face changed.

“Those are bodyguards, Frank.”

“Protocol, honey. You know that.”

She frowned.

“Look, some guys get a gold watch. I get Jake and Elmo.”

“Jake and Elmo?”

“Marquez and Dillon. They’re good guys. They know the drill. They’ll stay out of the way.”

“Hmmmphhh.” She didn’t look convinced. “Looks like you got the gold watch, too.” She pointed to his wrist.

“Yeah. Jimmy gave it to me.” He held it up so she could get a closer look. “Poor guy.”

“Why ‘poor guy’?”

Frank took a deep breath, then told her everything. How carefully the op had been set up, how disastrously it had gone wrong. How Weeks was on the hot seat because of it.

She was frowning when he finished.

“So this isn’t over,” she said. “That’s why those two—”

“No.” Castle shook his head firmly. “You know I wouldn’t be anywhere near here if it wasn’t safe. I’m retired. It’s over.”

“Okay. I believe you. Only . . .”

“What?”

“You’ll have to tell that to your son. He’s not buying it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he doesn’t believe me. He thinks this is just one more move. Not the last one by a long shot.”

Frank sighed. He knew that Will was having a hard time leaving Virginia, which was not a surprise. His son hadn’t liked moving the last two times, either, though he had been barely three when they’d left the D.C. area for the first time, probably just picking up on his mother’s sadness at having to leave her family and friends and move out west. And as much as he hadn’t wanted to leave Sacramento a few years after that, he’d still been relatively young then—first grade, not a lot of close friends—so as upset as Will had been, Frank had known the boy would get over it soon enough.

But this time . . .

Will was old enough to have real buddies. To have formed attachments to his teachers and this area. And he was smart enough to realize that the move to London meant leaving all those things behind for good. His son had been alternately despondent and furious about the move last time Frank was home, and, according to Maria, he hadn’t gotten any fonder of the idea in the months since.

“I’ll go talk to him,” Frank said. “Where is he?”

“You know.”

Frank nodded. He knew. His eyes went, unconsciously, to the end of the hall and the door that led out to the backyard.

“Be gentle with him, Frank.”

Castle smiled. “I’m a teddy bear, honey. You know that.”

“Yeah.” She gestured toward the boxes in the hall. “Hurry up and talk to him, Mr. Bear, all right? Then help me move those before the movers come back from lunch.”

He made a show of bowing. “Your wish is my command.”

“That’s just the way I like it.”

They shared a smile, followed by a kiss. Maria went to finish packing up the kitchen, and Frank Castle went off in search of his son.

One thing he was going to miss about this house, Castle thought. The backyard. It was one of the things that had attracted them to the property in the first place—a quarter acre of flat, treeless lawn that was going to be perfect for pickup football games, or for staking out a ball field. Frank remembered putting Will to sleep one winter night after they’d first moved in, looking out the window at the snow-covered lawn with his son, and making a promise.

“Soon as the snow melts,” he’d said to Will, who must have been all of six years old, “we’re setting up a baseball field. Complete with a pitching mound.”

“A pitching mound?” Will had smiled. “Cool.”

But Castle had gone away a week later and not come back until the following winter. And he’d never, ever built that pitching mound for his son.

Shaking his head in disgust, Frank bent down and picked a ball up from the immaculately trimmed lawn. They had a yard service that came in twice a month and cut his grass, trimmed the shrubs, raked the lawn in the fall. He’d never done any of that, either.

In the very middle of the lawn stood a Pitchback. Next to it was a small doghouse with BUCK stenciled over the door. Castle paused a moment and listened. He heard the sounds of something scrabbling around in the doghouse.

Then he gripped the ball in his right hand, reared back, and threw. The ball struck outside the yellow stripe by a good yard, and bounced back to him.

Ball one.

Castle had a sudden urge to wheel and throw the ball high up in the air, throw it as far across the lawn as he could. Buck would come bounding out of the doghouse then, streaking across the lawn in a flash, tongue wagging, and, like as not, pluck the ball right out of the air.

Except that Buck had died last summer, in the middle of July, while Castle had been busy courting Micky Duka down in Florida. His dog—but it was his wife and son who’d had to take him to the vet and put him down.

Castle blinked away tears of self-pity and focused.

This wasn’t about him right now, or even about his dog. It was about Will.

“What I miss most about Buck?” he said out loud, rearing back and throwing the ball again. Ball two, even farther outside. “He could catch a ball. No matter how hard you threw it—snap—he was right there.”

No response. Castle held the ball in his hand, studied his grip a second, positioned his hand across the seams. Then he reared back and threw once more.

Ball three. The ball bounced back to him.

“God, I miss that dog. He sure would have loved chasing those big brown rabbits they’ve got over in England.”

“I thought you said we weren’t going to have a yard.”

The voice—hesitant, barely audible—belonged to his son, Will. It seemed different than the last time he’d heard it, though, a few weeks back. Was that possible? That Will’s voice was changing?

No. It had to be his imagination.

“We don’t,” he replied. “Not really. But there’s a park nearby we get to use. They’ll have rabbits there.”

“No baseball fields, though. Right? They play that stupid cricket game there. Don’t they?”

“Will. I know you’re upset about this. I understand, believe me. When I was your age—”

“Don’t they?”

Castle sighed. “Yes. They play cricket there. But—”

“Why are we always moving?”

The voice from the doghouse was louder now. Angrier. Thick with tears, perhaps? Frank wondered how long his son had been out here, brooding.

“It’s because of my job, Will. Or it was. This is the last time—I promise.”

“You said that the last time.”

“I did?” Frank frowned. He couldn’t recall ever having spoken those words before, but he supposed it was possible. When he’d originally signed on for the FBI Undercover Task Force, one of the reasons had been that no matter where his undercover roles took him, his family could remain here and build a home. Maybe he had said that—or something like it—to Will back then.

His son crawled out of the doghouse, dragging his baseball glove with him. He stood up, hands on hips, and glared at his father.

“That’s what you said. You said we’re leaving California, and we’re going to live in Virginia, and you’re going to work in Washington, and we’re never going to move again.”

“I guess I’ve said a lot of things, huh?”

“Yeah. You have.”

Frank nodded, took the opportunity to study his son.

He’d grown again. Another inch, Castle guessed. Hadn’t put on any more weight, but that would come. Frank himself had been a beanpole in school till ninth grade, when he’d suddenly filled out.

“So why London?” his son asked.

“London is a safe place where we can all be together.”

“All of us? You included?”

“That’s right. Me included. No more moving around, I promise.”

His son looked skeptical.

“Will. When you get a little older, I’ll tell you why we had to move so much. Why I couldn’t be home with you more.”

His son looked down at the ground.

“I already know.”

“You do?”

“You always say, Will, keep your eyes open. I keep my eyes open.”

Castle couldn’t help but wonder if he was talking about Buccaneer Bay.

It had been almost a year since that awful day when the two of them (Frank on a rare vacation from his Otto Krieg identity) had been caught up in the middle of a terrorist incident. Buccaneer Bay was an Orlando tourist attraction that featured the José Gasparilla—the world’s only remaining fully rigged pirate sailing ship. Six members of Sato X, a Japanese terrorist organization, had somehow snuck weapons onto the boat, which they then used to take sixty-five innocent tourists hostage.

The group they captured, however, included a sixty-sixth person, Frank Castle, who escaped during the terrorists’ assault. He’d then donned a pirate’s outfit, complete with skull mask (courtesy of one of the animatronic attractions on the ride) and set about rescuing the hostages. Within an hour, the terrorists were all dead, the tourists safe and sound, and their anonymous rescuer had mysteriously vanished.

Afterward, Will had asked him a lot of questions. If he’d been involved in killing the terrorists. If he knew who the man in the skull mask was. Frank had dodged his questions for the most part—he and Maria agreed that the less the boy knew specifically about what kind of work his father did, the better. Now Frank wondered if it wasn’t time to take Will into his confidence.

Another decision he and Maria would have to make together, Castle realized.

“I’m not going to be doing the same thing anymore,” was what he told his son. “I’ll be working in an office. Every day.”

“For the government still?”

Which was about the extent of Will’s knowledge of his job right now. “Yes. Still for the government.”

Will nodded, his curiosity seemingly sated for the moment.

“Okay,” he said, taking hold of the Pitchback and starting to drag it back toward the house.

“Whoa. Where are you going with that?”

“The truck. Mom said to bring whatever I wanted from the yard to the truck.”

“Not that.” Castle took the Pitchback gently from his son and threw it back into the yard. “You don’t need that anymore.”

“Dad.” Will frowned. “You’re not going to make me play cricket, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“So why—” his son gestured toward the Pitchback. “I wanna bring it.”

“No. You don’t need that anymore. From now on, you’re playing with me.”

“Really?”

“That’s right.” Castle put an arm around his son’s shoulder. Will smiled up at him.

There was a sudden crash from inside the house.

Frank looked up and, through the still-open back door, saw Maria yelling at one of the movers. Next to the man, one of the kitchen boxes lay tipped on its side.

“What’s mom yelling for?” Will asked.

Castle sighed. “I think she hates moving even more than you do.”