TWENTY-SIX

Dante settled into his chair behind the long marble security desk in the Saint Tower lobby. He put the coffee and bagel he’d gotten from the street vendor down in front of him and checked the monitors. Everything looked copacetic. The second truck was in the garage, and the elevators were clear. Best of all, the message light on the security line wasn’t blinking, which meant the Cubans hadn’t called to raise a fuss, so he and Spoon probably weren’t even gonna get called on the carpet for bein’ late.

“I’m gonna check the bullpen,” Spoon announced, picking up a phone. The bullpen was where the cash got counted.

“Yeah. Go on,” Dante said, taking a bite of the bagel, then a sip of the coffee. That helped. Finally, that Tabasco taste was going away. When he got hold of that woman tonight, he was gonna—

Somebody screamed.

Dante frowned and looked across the lobby to the court-yard outside the building.

A bunch of people were running around, waving their hands in the air like idiots. As he watched, a man in a suit ran right into a woman and knocked her flat on her ass. Weird.

“There’s no answer up there,” Spoon said.

Dante shrugged, took another bite. “You know those guys. They don’t wanna lose count.”

“I guess.” Spoon set the phone down and frowned. “What’s goin’ on outside?”

Dante shook his head. “Beats me.”

Maybe somebody famous was here, a movie star or something, a lot of them came to the tower to do their shopping. Though now that he looked again, he saw the people outside were paying more attention to the confetti that was swirling through the air than they were to the building. They were trying to catch it, he realized.

A huge crash sounded. A car had just smashed into one of the limos parked out front. The driver didn’t seem to be concerned about that at all; he pulled some of the confetti off his windshield and ran to join the others in front of the building.

It was green confetti, Dante saw that now. All green.

“I’m gonna see what’s goin’ on,” Spoon said, rising from his chair.

“Yeah,” Dante nodded. “I’ll come with you.”

They pushed their way out the door and into the crowd. The green confetti was everywhere.

Only it wasn’t confetti.

It was hundred-dollar bills.

Dante looked up. The bills filled the sky, like rain. They were coming from the tower—pouring out a window about halfway up the building. He counted floors, and his eyes widened.

“Shit,” he said to Spoon. “The bullpen.”

They ran back inside to the elevators. Dante hit the call button and began pacing.

“This is your fault,” Spoon said.

Dante stopped pacing and glared. “How do you figure that?”

“Because you made us late, and somethin’ screwed up while we weren’t here, genius.”

“Don’t call me genius.”

“I ain’t takin’ the blame for this, Dante. No way.”

“Shut up.”

“No. Mr. Saint is gonna kill us, and—”

“Shut up.” Dante hit the call button again, shaking his head.

Spoon shook his head, too.

“We’re dead men,” he said.

The elevator across from them dinged.

Dante turned, started for it—

And stopped in his tracks.

A dead man stepped out, and stared right at them.

Eight thirty-nine. On, in fact, slightly ahead of, schedule, even with the rain delay. The success of his intricately laid-out plan pleased him.

Intellectually.

On a more primal level, Frank Castle was still dissatisfied. Restless. The hunger within him burned.

Maria. Will.

The elevator doors opened.

He looked up and, for the first time since that horrible morning three months earlier, smiled.

How the fuck can he still be alive, was Dante’s first thought.

What is with that shirt, was his second.

Frank Castle, whom Dante had last seen bleeding, burning, and flying through the air, was now standing in front of him. In a badass black leather jacket, wearing a T-shirt with a creepy-looking skull on it.

Almost as creepy-looking as Castle, whose skin was about ten shades paler than it had been the last time he’d seen the man, whose eyes were like little black dots, whose expression told Dante that he ought to be drawing his gun right then and there.

But this was just plain wrong. Nobody lived after taking the kind of punishment Castle had taken that morning. And yet here he was, in living black and white.

“Good business, murder?” Castle asked, in a creepy, gravelly voice; he sounded just like that guy who was always on the talk shows, Harvey something. “Does Saint pay you for each one? Or do you give him a group-rate discount?”

Dante was trying to think of what to say, if he should say anything, when Castle took a step forward.

The movement broke the spell.

Dante went for his gun. Next to him, he saw Spoon going for his, too. This time, he was gonna make sure. This time, Castle was going to—

Something hit him in the chest. Bile rose in his throat. Tasted like . . .

Tabasco sauce?

All of a sudden he was lying on the ground.

Dante blinked once, then closed his eyes.

Castle allowed himself fifteen seconds to soak in the moment.

The decision to wear this shirt had been the correct one. He’d seen Saint’s goons, both of them, stare at it flat-footed, wasting precious seconds that they could have used to run. Few people would be so stupid as these two, but still . . .

He would wear the shirt again.

He’d found it the day he’d returned to the compound with Candelaria, knotted in a clump of seaweed, buried in the sand. He’d almost left it there until he remembered why Will had given it to him. What the skull meant.

That he was a badass. Not to be messed with.

Eight forty-one.

He took in the dead bodies one more time, picked up the Halliburton case full of cash, then exited through a little-used side door, melting away into the crowd.

Howard Saint was in a much better mood.

It was partly the Danish, which Lincoln had gone back to the clubhouse to fetch for him after the ninth hole. Good Danish. They had a Swedish woman working here in the kitchen, did a nice job with all the pastries but with the Danish, in particular.

It was partly the cart, which Lincoln had come back with at the same time. Saint normally liked to walk the course, but as the rain kept coming, his new golf shoes—the ones Livia had picked up for him last week at Gianfreddi’s—kept getting dirtier and dirtier, and he was not happy about that. Why he’d sent Lincoln to the clubhouse in the first place.

But most of all, Saint was in a better mood because John had at last been found. No need to ask where he’d been (what a tomcat his son was; at some point the kid was gonna have to learn to keep it in his pants), but he was on the way. They should be able to hook up on the fourteenth, play a couple holes, have a chance to talk things over before the photo shoot.

All in all, it was shaping up to be a good morning. His shot was now working, too—two over for the course right at this point, and, considering the rain, that wasn’t bad at all. That was very good, in fact.

The cart stopped. Saint got out. The eleventh was the toughest hole on the course as far as he was concerned, you had the dogleg and then this rise up to the green. Too steep for the cart to make it, had to get the shoes dirty again. Couldn’t even see the pin from down where he was right now.

But he’d hit a good shot to the green, he knew that. Even though the flag was missing for some reason—he’d have to talk to the groundskeeper about that, first guy on the course in the morning, it should be perfect for him—he should be able to hole it out in one. Stay on par.

“Ten bucks I get it inside the leather from here,” he said.

Walking alongside him, Cutter smiled.

“Can’t take that bet, Mr. S. Not the way you’re hittin’ ’em this morning.”

“You’re a smart man, Cutter,” Saint said. His phone rang. Lincoln handed it to him.

John again.

“Yes?”

“Pop, you’re not going to believe this.”

Believe what, he was about to ask, thinking this was going to be another lame excuse on his son’s part for not showing up, which was going to require another long talk about the responsibilities of being a Saint, when he reached the top of the hill and saw the eleventh green.

And stopped dead in his tracks.

“Oh, I might,” he said to John.

Because whatever his son had to tell him, it couldn’t be as unbelievable as the sight before him right now.

A headstone, in the middle of the eleventh green. Rammed right into the ground where, he saw, the pin had been set. The flag lay crushed underneath it. His ball lay next to it.

It was Frank Castle’s headstone. It had his name on it. Beloved husband, father, son, all that crap. Date of birth, too.

But the date of death had been chiseled off.

“I know it sounds crazy, Pop,” John was saying, “but that Castle guy—he’s back. And the Wednesday shipment—”

Already, Howard Saint didn’t want to hear it. He handed the phone back to Lincoln.

“Cancel the shoot,” he told Cutter, starting back down the hill. “And have everybody meet me back at the house.”