Close Encounters 27: Sea Fire
All my heartfelt gratitude to cartographical, who continues to inspire me with her rabid love for the spies. She truly deserves the credit for evolving the storyline and keeping straight all the details of their world.
Previously on CE 26:
When Kate spoke, her voice was ragged. "Diane Jolin is exhuming Dick Coonan's body."
"Don't worry. Body's not there."
Kate lifted her head, stared up at her husband. "What."
"Body's not there. We didn't bury Coonan."
"But I've been there-" Kate cut herself off, realizing in some alternate scheme of things that had sounded a little more obsessive and desperate and sad than she really was. "You didn't bury Coonan."
"Nope. Empty box," he grinned. He offered her a hand. "So get up from the floor, sweetheart. Not so bad as all that."
She took his hand, her other arm wrapped around James, and he brought them both up. Castle was looking so smug and self-righteous.
She really could throttle her husband. "You buried a box," she said slowly. "My mother's murderer. Gone. And you never saw fit to tell me?"
"That was ages ago," he scoffed, reaching for James. He kissed the boy's forehead and then put him back down on his feet on the floor.
Kate could see the broad expanse of her husband's shoulders as he bent over, the vulnerable line of his neck. Smooth skin, never marred for long.
She wanted to do some marring.
"Ages ago," she repeated. "And what... we got married and you never said, Hey, Kate, I've absconded with a murderer."
"Absconded," he murmured, lifting back up to look at her. Heat and lust rose in his eyes, and she was entirely not in the mood. "Good word, babe."
She knocked his hand away. "I'm not your babe. What did you do with Coonan?"
"We burned him."
Her heart lurched.
Castle went very still, hand frozen halfway towards her, as if only now had he seen what this was doing to her. "Oh. Kate. I - we just - he stabbed me and you shot him and I only - wanted to protect you, in case - fuck, it was all his idea. I didn't think."
"What?" she rasped. They had burned Dick Coonan. That murdering psychopath had gone to the flames without her.
"It was Black's idea to get rid of the body, because of his connection to the program, and I just - went along with it. Like I always did when it came to him. Damn it. I'm sorry. It never occurred to me - shit, Kate. Shit. Why did it never occur to me that it would matter to you?"
She really couldn't handle her own breakdown and his at the same time. One of them needed to keep it together. "Castle," she said faintly.
He snagged her by the elbows, hauled her into his chest. She stumbled over James, felt the boy clinging to her jeans. "Never mind," Castle gruffed. "Never mind, Kate. It's done. What's important is that there is no body for Jolin to find. It won't lead back to you."
"She already knows me," Kate got out, her face buried at his shirt. They were in the kitchen, the warm, galley kitchen with its weathered painted cabinets and its little touches, their kitchen, where Castle had made James's baby food from scratch and where she had later wiped that same baby food off the ceiling and chair rail and everywhere.
How could this be happening here?
Castle put his lips against her temple. "She can't know about-"
"She'd have to know," Kate cut in. "She'd have to know where to look. Coonan. Why Coonan? Of all the test subjects that went bad-"
"Because he was the only one to live," Castle rasped. "Kate, remember? Black told us - the advanced chelation treatment that he modified to use on those soldiers - Coonan was the only one to survive."
"I thought a handful survived."
"A handful survived the first treatments, the first shots. Half the group didn't make it past the first round, Kate. And then the squad went out and did missions for months, at least two years, and I... went with them."
"I didn't know that," she startled, tripping over James again as she reared back to look at her husband. It was his serious face, jaw locked, stubborn. She tightened her grip on his arms. "You never said that. Why did you not-"
"I didn't - I thought you knew. I thought that's what he was telling you when - the look on your face made me think you knew. That day in the airport. And maybe I just didn't want you to know what I'd done."
"But that group, they went AWOL. Right? You didn't, but they did."
"Yeah."
"And after that, your father rounded them all up and treated them for - for total psychological breakdown-" She bit it off, swallowed to get control over herself. "Black treated them - that was all before '99, before my mother was killed. He tried to rehab them."
"Yes. That was in '98, and then Black pulled the military program. Leaving Coonan at loose ends, where he became a gun for hire-"
"But that wasn't Black. He didn't set that up, did he?"
"I don't - I don't think so." His face soured and he shook his head. "I don't have any damn idea. For all I know, Black was the one hiring Coonan out. I never - that never occurred to me before. Fuck."
She didn't have it in her to comfort him. She felt sick - this was everything she'd never quite gotten closure on. And because there'd been no closure, because Bracken had died a martyr, she hadn't wanted to think about it. Now she wished she had. "Regardless - whoever was hiring him out, he was hired. Coonan was a hired gun, and Bracken used him to murder my mother. Because he was - on the program. Diane Joline had to know that, Castle, in order to go looking for him."
"How?"
"Black told us himself that Jolin - that they discussed things."
"Pillow talk," he muttered. "The psychotic breaks - he told her about those. They were so violent that it kept Jolin and the Collective from pursuing their own human experiments. Black was doing that on purpose. While he looked for a way to halt the rapid deterioration of higher functioning in real people, Jolin worked on rats. Soldiers who can't shoot or make decisions are no good to anyone. But if the Collective thought they'd been wasting decades on rats while a live human experiment was walking around-"
"Fuck," she whispered.
"Yeah. But Black did the advanced chelation on the guys in that squad, and Coonan was the only one to survive that experimental treatment - until you. And Jolin - she warned you about it, remember? At the park. She told you that it had side effects. It's you I'm worried about. How the hell did she make that connection to Coonan, to the human experiments?"
She shivered and drew herself back against him, wrapping her arms at his waist. James was sitting on one of her feet, still and quiet.
All good questions, but she couldn't let go of the fact that the grave would be empty. "But Coonan - Castle he killed my mom-"
"His body couldn't go in the ground," Castle whispered. "CIA op; the program. He had to disappear."
Kate glanced down and saw her son looking up at them. She released Castle and bent down, got James in her arms and stood once more. Her son's cheek came to her shoulder and he snuggled in at her chest, comforting, comforted.
"I know how she made the connection. Jolin knows it was me - thinks I'm the experiment," she said finally. She couldn't look at Castle; she set her chin on the top of James's head. "And it will seem like too big a coincidence that I'm on record as having fatally shot Coonan. NYPD database. You didn't change that, did you?"
"We... didn't change that," Castle husked. "Shit."
"I think this just got really bad."
He was on the phone with Mitchell, trying to confirm Jolin's presence in New York, and Beckett was dealing with Hunt - having the man go through his story piece by piece, though Castle wasn't sure he trusted it. Esposito had texted him a few hundred times, no less, giving him updates on the attempted exhumation, which was being protested by the next of kin, apparently a dead brother's girlfriend with some suspicious ties to the Westies.
Everything circled back to Bracken these days. It had to be taking a toll on Kate.
Castle scooped James off of Sasha's back - again - and put the kid on his feet once more. "Stay down, James Beckett."
"I've noticed you call him by my name when he's in trouble," Kate said from the other room. She had her eyebrow raised, but she was on the phone too. Must be trying to confirm Hunt's story with outside sources.
"Fits, doesn't it?"
James shrieked something that drowned out her answer, and the boy was off and running.
Running.
Literally running. No dog as crutch, completely unaided, running like he'd done it for years.
"Wow," Kate gaped. "James, baby, aren't you so fast?" She got on her knees before the couch and held her arms out to him, but James laughed and abruptly shifted course, disappeared into the kitchen.
Oh, hell. They did not need a quiet, curious boy able to run from them right now.
Pots and pans clattered.
"Shit," Kate grunted, getting off her knees. But she had that distracted look on her face that meant she was listening to the voice on the phone.
"I got him," he said. He was on duty anyway; he was the one who'd plucked the kid off Sasha's back even though James had an excellent death grip on her fur and Sasha seemed content to stand there and take it. "I got him; sit down, Kate. I'm on hold with Mitch."
He headed into the kitchen and found their unsteady boy on his feet, hanging onto the open cabinet. The baby lock was strewn in pieces across the floor.
"Wolf, your lock-picking skills are remarkable. But Mom is gonna freak. So let's keep this between me and you and put it all back, okay? We'll reassemble the lock and Daddy will just make sure we don't put rat poison down here."
"Dada."
"Exactly. I got it covered. Here, play with this." He tossed a pot lid at the kid's feet and it clattered, spun past the boy. James clapped his hands and wobbled, fell to his bottom and rocked forward to crawl after the lid.
Castle reassembled the baby lock, put the pots and pans back inside the cabinet. He checked it out, made sure the cabinet didn't hold any surprises for later, and winced when James slammed the lid into the floor.
"Okay, okay, my mistake, James Beckett. Here, hand it over." He reached out his hand and curled his fingers in their combat signal for give that to me, and James tilted his head.
But he didn't protest when Castle slid it out from under his hand, though he tried to come after it. James crawled right up to Castle and hung on his knee where Castle was squatting down, then tried to take the phone from him.
"Castle?" said the voice on the line.
"Mitch, hey, what've you got?" he asked, talking around James's little fingers. "You're getting annoying, Beckett. Settle down. Let's find you something to play with that isn't so noisy, huh?"
"I don't think that's something I need to hear. Bedroom stays in the bedroom-"
"Talking to Echo," he snorted. "What did you find out for me?" Castle scooped James into his arms and stood, heading out of the kitchen through the dining room, out to the foyer, and up the stairs to avoid his son's spotting Kate. James kept diving out of his arms for her, not very happy to have Hunt close to her either.
"It's confirmed. Diane Jolin checked out of American Hospital against medical advice, but get this-"
"Yeah?" He twisted his head to avoid James's fingers.
"This field trip of hers is unsanctioned. She's gone rogue."
"How can you possibly know that?"
"Walker."
"Walker?" Castle repeated. "How did he get that information?"
"He had some connections - resources from when he was in Black's technological circle. He called on them, surreptitiously. Mined their data. I don't know - technical shit. He's shaking his head at me. Firing this guy was a huge mistake, Castle."
"Rub my fucking nose in it. You know I had to. Firing you was a huge mistake too. Define unsanctioned."
"A few guys Walker knows say that Jolin shook off the medical team that got dispatched to her bedside - most likely they were Collective agents, though that's not confirmed, but one of them I could ID, Castle."
"You ID'd him?"
"One of Saber's lackeys. Your doc. You remember how he had that damn team for you?"
Castle blinked, absorbing that information. "One of Dr Saber's proteges was sent to American Hospital in Paris to Diane Jolin's bedside."
"Exactly."
"Well, shit."
"Don't curse in front of Echo."
"Fuck off."
"Uck!"
"I heard that, man. You are fucked if Beckett hears that."
"She does it more than I do," he muttered, stepping into James's room with the kid and letting him slide down his leg to the floor. "Jay, go find your elephant. Help me out here."
James scooted off, though whether or not he knew what Castle was asking for was doubtful. On the phone, Mitchell was chuckling, saying something off the line to Walker, most likely.
"Mitch. What's this lackey's name?"
"Andre Silberg. Sellberg. We're not sure - I couldn't remember the spelling, and we don't have records on him. Which proves my point - he's Collective because he's been wiped so completely clean. My guess is that Saber's team got poached when Black kicked Saber to the curb."
"All right, so walk me through this." Castle sank down to the floor and watched his son pulling books off the low bookshelf. The kid was spreading them around the rug, making piles. He didn't act much like a nine month old, now that Castle was paying attention. Those old man eyes of his didn't help, of course, but he had such control of his movements. Three months ago he had looked like a baby, now he was a toddler. Running in the house.
"So Silberg, whatever his name - let's call him Andre. His team goes in to American Hospital, the on-call attending is told politely, no thanks, she's got specialized care for her condition, and all French medical reports cease. We've got no idea if she's receiving PT for those knees, but those gunshot wounds were bad shit, Castle. You really fucked her up."
"Thanks," he said grimly. He wasn't pleased. He had made a near-fatal error that day on the roof in the pouring rain, thinking Jolin had done something to Kate. He had created this.
"Point is, Castle, she walked out of American."
Walked? "No."
"She did. Confirmed. That is a confirmation from two independent sources of mine - Walker had one guy, I had the other, a nurse, no cross-contamination possible."
"No. There is no fucking way that woman was walking anywhere."
"Exactly." Mitch grunted. "This is some fucked up shit, Castle. This does not make sense."
"I gotta see her for myself," he said, a cold horror washing over him. Realization, understanding - he thought he knew, he was afraid he knew what had happened. "I need eyes on her, Mitchell. Get me a location in the city."
"I'm working on it."
He had to see for himself. If she was walking-
Shit.
And here came his mobile, fast little boy, running for him from across the room.
If Jolin was walking like his kid was running-
James collided with him, giggling, clinging to his neck, slapping a board book into Castle's chest. "Uck!"
"Book," he said idly. "But yeah. Fuck."
Castle didn't look good when he came down the stairs; he had that intensity to his eyes that meant he had an idea and he didn't like it.
"You okay?" he asked her. She was hunched on the bottom step, waiting for him, now that Hunt had sunk into a kind of defensive unconsciousness on the couch. He might be playing possum, but she bet the wound really did hurt.
"I'm okay."
Castle sank down to the step beside her, wrapped an arm around her neck. She let herself fall into him, taking a deep breath of her husband's warm skin.
She loved that smell. "Sometimes, he looks just like you."
"James?"
"Colin Hunt," she sighed. "I'm sorry. I don't know how to - do this."
"Then don't. Kick him out."
She lifted her head. "Don't make me the bad guy."
"How does that make you the bad guy? I'll kick him out. Let me get him-"
"No. You know we can't," she hissed, nudging hard into his chest. "I mean stop acting wounded. I thought you got this out of your system when you bruised my neck in bed."
He immediately closed down, that fast, gone from her. Kate felt a moment's slick panic, snaked her arm through his to press close.
"You know I love it when you hold me down," she murmured against his shoulder. "You know I love you-"
"I know. It's not in question."
If it wasn't in question, then why the hell did he have to keep mooning around her, moping one moment and posturing the next, bluffing with that threatening macho shit every time he confronted Hunt? "You're - acting like your mother, you know," she finally said.
"Do what?"
"The melodrama. Making a production."
"Melodrama."
"If it bothers you that he kissed me, then that's one thing. But swaggering around the house after you did your claiming in bed-"
"It - bothers me that he kissed you, but not because of you, Kate. Him. He's an asshole."
"Right, I know you think that. But can we agree that he's an asshole we need right now?"
"I've already agreed to that."
"Then will you stop making me miserable?" she muttered. "I am really good at guilt and halfway towards self-loathing, Rick, and I'm getting turned around on this, with you being so considerate and loving one moment and then pissed off and blustery the next. Are you trying to punish me?"
His jaw worked for a moment, his eyes staring straight ahead. "No."
She had a vague notion that James was awfully quiet upstairs, but surely Castle had made sure the boy couldn't escape his room.
He gave a short growl. "Can I not be pissed off that he kissed you?"
"You - can," she hesitated. Her heart twisted at the look on his face. "You can be angry about it. I froze. I'm sorry; I feel like shit. I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to him. No one but you has ever - wanted me quite so bluntly before. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with you. But he doesn't even pretend. I don't know what to do with that."
"You could've punched him. Kicked him in the balls. I'd have enjoyed that."
"I can't do that," she whispered. Because he - he was - what? Not just attractive, though that was there. "I feel badly for him. For what he can't have."
"He can't have," Castle growled, an echo with such satisfaction in it.
"Castle, I'm going to be honest here because I think this might come up in therapy anyway, but he reminds me of you. Just - as Black does. There's this sense that - that you all have. It's very compelling."
"Are you fucking kidding me." He said it completely dispassionatly. Hollow. Like it had gutted him out.
She chewed on the inside of her cheek and rubbed her thumb against her wrist, rubbed hard until she felt the burn of pain and realized what she was doing. "You have the same hands," she admitted. "And I have trouble - um - you and I are such physical people with each other. There's a kind of sense memory attached for me. I don't know if you do that too, but I have - a lot of my emotions are tied up in your body, my body."
"Don't I know it," he scraped out. "Hell."
She wasn't sure what that meant, exactly, but he had a tone of voice when he cursed that made her guts knot up in the really good way. This was the really good way.
"I don't know how to handle Hunt's - it doesn't seem credible to me at all," she said finally. "You are the only thing that feels credible. When you love me, I believe it."
"You say that like - like you're in awe."
She glanced at him. Shrugged. "I am. You love me. I - am in awe. I don't think I'll ever entirely get used to it."
His fists relaxed. And then he was reaching for her, embracing her tightly. She let out a breath, and his fingers lightly cradled her jaw, stroking. He dipped his mouth to hers, kissing her with these light, sensual brushes of his lips. Delicate with her. Not punishing.
She held on to him just as lightly, afraid to break something, afraid it would stop.
He angled her away and pulled back, a hand combing her hair behind her ear. "Believe me."
"So long as you believe me."
"You, Kate Rodgers, have never been in doubt."
She was creating a database on the laptop for him, everything she'd learned from her 'conversations' with Hunt. Castle watched her for a moment more and then got up from his perch on the coffee table and moved back to the kitchen doorway.
James was playing happily with Sasha doing guard duty from the floor in front of the basement door. His son was creating piles from various items found around the house - he seemed to be intent on stacking diaper cloths onto tupperware containers in a specific way - and thankfully it was keeping him busy.
Castle came back to sit on the coffee table, recognizing he was doing guard duty as well, and he watched Kate as she worked and Hunt slept.
They were still waiting on a few updates from Mitchell and Esposito - both men calling on their own resources to get a location on Diane Jolin. But Castle had a gut feeling their answer could come quite easily from the asshole asleep on their couch.
He did not trust Colin Hunt. Even less so now that Castle knew the man was his half-brother. The John Black genetics didn't allow much room for things like loyalty or love or conscience. Castle should know - he'd been lacking all three until he'd met Beckett.
Loved Beckett.
Though he did have to grudgingly admit that Kate Beckett engendered a definite and intense response from those genetics. No one of their ilk seemed able to deny the power she had over them, as if being enthralled. What had she said about his own genetics? Compelled. Well it was equal in response.
In John Black, it had produced a dizzying and terrifying rage, his whole control unmade. In Colin Hunt - whatever it was that had driven him to Kate for protection, bleeding and secretive, it was keeping the man here even now. The wound wasn't so bad that Colin couldn't survive out there alone if he truly wanted to be gone.
So. Hunt didn't want to be gone. He had put himself at Castle's mercy and it wasn't only to spy on them for John Black.
There was more to this, and fortunately or unfortunately, Kate could get it out of him. And whatever her response to Colin Hunt, whatever vague echo of Castle's DNA she saw and felt in Hunt, Castle had no doubt of her. Those feelings were the difference between life itself and the ghost of a life, between full love and the shadow where the sun couldn't touch. Just because Kate looked into the shadows and saw the faint reflections of the truth there didn't mean that Castle had any reason to worry.
But it still pissed him off that she was forced - by Hunt, by this whole damn situation, by the regimen, by his own history - into this situation. He had barely begun to feel whole again after Paris, to feel like life was their own once more, and whatever anger he had for how it had played out, there was still too much damn gratefulness that she was alive to at all direct his frustration her way.
So he took it out on Colin Hunt.
Colin Hunt who had some master plan he was working here. Castle knew that his wife could get it out of him, eventually. She was brilliant at interrogation, and she had a perfect way in - Hunt's own feelings. He didn't doubt she could do it.
She would have to. This was their life together in the balance; she was going to have to step into those shadows.
And Castle would have to allow it.
Because if Castle was willing to do all of this just for love of Kate Beckett, if John Black had ruined his whole career and alienated his son just to get rid of Kate Beckett, if all of this, all of this had happened in response to her, then what was Colin Hunt willing to do? What was Colin Hunt planning?
Castle felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and pulled it out to check the display. He gave Beckett a grim look, held up his phone as he indicated its alert, and then he answered, walking off.
He stopped in the kitchen and gathered up his son, pressing the phone to his ear.
"What've you found, Mitch?"
"I found Jolin."
