Chapter One
Beckett knew there was no such thing as a quiet day. A quiet day in her line of work meant a day when there were no cases, and whilst there were no cases there was a lot of paperwork that always seemed to be piling up. Add into that the fact that no current case meant that she had three very bored boys one her hands, trying to distract one another and her, quiet days were in her mind the worst.
They had finished their latest case only the evening before. A spousal argument that had ended in the wife trying to make it look as though her husband had been murdered in a mugging gone bad when she had been the one to stab him. Over an affair. That he had been having with her brother.
Castle had laughed like a mad man after the woman had confessed to that one. Which is why Beckett couldn't really understand why he hadn't shown up that morning to make comments as she'd filed the paperwork. She'd grown increasingly confused when her shadow had failed to put in an appearance the further into the day they got, but she had brushed it aside. He had done this before. For several days in their first year of him shadowing her he had failed to answer his phone or put in even one appearance at the precinct, and she had been close to going to his loft apartment and breaking down the door to find out the problem before he had appeared, looking tired but happy and stating that he had finished Heat Wave only three weeks after the set deadline. And then he had thrown himself into his chair beside her desk and watched her, smirking. She understood why now. She was of the firm belief that in those few days he had written the sex scene in chapter eleven. Evil genius had probably sat there and thought about it the entire time that stupid grin had been on his face.
Still, that did not stop her from glancing at her phone every five minutes to make sure a call hadn't come through without her notice. And Ryan and Esposito stopped trying to distract her from her work by mid-morning when they realised that the lack of her shadow lurking in his chair was doing a better job than the three of them could ever do together.
Beckett sighed, drumming her fingers against the edge of the keyboard as her eyes made the now familiar round they'd be following all day; chair, phone, over her computer – just encase Castle was trying to sneak in now – back to the computer monitor. It was verging on eight pm, so she wasn't sure why she was even still watching out for him, all he'd been able to talk about the night before as they had packed up after the case was how he was going to order Chinese and make sure the house was ready for Alexis. She smiled to herself, remembering the child-like happiness on his face. Alexis had been gone for two weeks now; a school trip in the last week of term and a holiday away with friends, but she was home today; at about five or six if Beckett remembered correctly. If Castle remembered correctly; he'd been so excited yesterday that the time had alternated between the two persistently throughout the conversation, but Beckett was sure that he would double check today. Alexis had probably set a reminder on his phone before she'd left for that matter, she more than anyone knew of her father's child-like mind.
She shook her head, banishing the thoughts, and tried once again to focus on the document open on the computer. She hadn't done nearly as much work as she would have liked, and she wanted to blame Castle, although he wasn't there to blame. But that in itself was the problem. At least when he was around, grinning at her like a school boy and plotting with Ryan and Esposito, she could tell him off and then get back to work. With him not around she kept on looking for him, like it was all some big elaborate joke they were pulling and he'd appear in front of her desk when she least expected it, grinning over the fact that he'd scare the life out of her...
"Detective Beckett?"
The voice actually made her jump, and her head shot up so fast that she almost gave herself whiplash. Looking at her from over the top of her computer monitor was a Castle yes, but not her Castle. Close but no cigar. Her eyes did a quick sweep of the precinct, didn't find Richard Castle, and focussed on Alexis Castle instead. Almost stared her down, like Castle had managed to get his daughter in on the joke he may or may not be playing on her.
"Hey," she said, smiling "How was the holiday?" Holidays technically. Castle had been more than a little miffed that Alexis had gone on two separate holidays, without him, on two consecutive weeks. He'd been a little lost, she felt, especially with Martha out of state filming for some television series. The female influences that Castle couldn't screw were few, each one special to him because of that, without at least one he was as vulnerable as a child.
"It was good," Alexis' voice was never that small, that quiet, and that raised an eyebrow; again her eyes made a lap of the precinct. It was a quiet day all round, the place was silent, getting close to deserted "Ummm... Is my dad here? Only he never picked me up, and it's been two hours, but I figured if you had a case-"
Beckett was up so fast her chair shot back and slammed into the desk behind hers, a cold cup of coffee, previously forgotten on her desk sloshed onto the wood, and now she looked, really looked at Alexis. The red on her cheeks from the cold not just defined but stark because she was pale, not due to her skin colour but from fear, her body shaking because of that and not because she was cold. She'd accounted everything from her previous look at the girl to the cold because it was December, it had snowed the day before; Castle had come in cradling a mug full of snow and it had sat on Beckett's desk even after it had become water just because he had looked like a six year old boy when he had put it there, but Alexis was plain terrified rather than cold, and looking for her father. Her father who Beckett hadn't seen all day.
She was around the desk in seconds, her hands taking the girls shoulders gently, she could feel the shakes better than she could see them, Alexis all but vibrating in her coat, and she noted the case that stood beside Alexis' side before she led her around to sit in the chair her father usually sat in, nodding her head to Ryan and Esposito, both half rising from where they'd been sat at Ryan's desk, heads together in the way Beckett knew as their conspiratory stance. And as she turned her back to them, pushing Alexis gently but firmly into the chair, she could see the pair moving towards them.
"Alexis?" she said softly, watched the girl's eyes rove the room. Gods but she had to be terrified. She knew Alexis, knew her to be smart and independent and head-strong, frightened was not something she wanted to see on the girl, terrified was something that scared her horrifically. "Alexis, what happened? How did you get here?" she entertained the idea of a car accident even as her eyes did a more thorough check of Alexis. She looked unharmed, but if she'd hit her head she could be confused and had wandered off to somewhere she recognised, forgetting she'd left Castle behind in the car...
"I got a taxi," Alexis murmured, she was turning her head now, still looking for Castle even as she spoke "I waited for at the station for ages but dad didn't arrive so I came here. Is he alright?" she was trembling harder now, visibly, and a jacket appeared from seemingly nowhere, going across her shoulders. Beckett glanced up and nodded her thanks to Esposito, noted the tight line of the man's lips as he listened to Alexis.
"Maybe he's got caught up?" Beckett suggested, trying to keep a rational head even as her mind ran through ideas. From the corner of her eye she saw Ryan appear with Captain Montgomery, both of them looking concerned, watching Alexis closely "If he was writing a new Nikki Heat book he could have..."
"No!" Alexis cut in harshly, Beckett had never seen her like that, and swung back slightly as though the girl had physically tried to take a hit at her "I set his alarm to go off this morning and at five, and I rang six times. He didn't pick up and his phone is set to scream when he's writing so he will answer if it's me or gran. Please, he's got to be around." Her eyes were beginning to well up, one tear slowly tracked its way from one eye and down her face, that in itself was the moment of complete panic, and Beckett looked at each of the men in the room, saw Ryan and Esposito head for their phones even as Captain Montgomery headed towards her, face solemn, suggestive that all hell had been handed to them. And Beckett quietly agreed as she watched Alexis try to hold herself together even as a second tear followed the marks of the first. Quiet days were officially the worst.
