Richard Castle walks down the busy New York street with a ridiculously sweet concoction people shouldn't call coffee in his hand. He enters his building and takes the stairs up for some extra exercise and reaches for his jacket pocket. The keys jingle a merry tune as he opens the lock to his appartment.
With his headphones in his ears, drowning out the noise of city life, he pushes at the door and throws the keys someplace he won't be able to find later. Castle bounces his elbow on the surface behind him to stop anybody from following him in and hands the not-coffee to his studying daughter.
He can read enough lips to figure out she thanks him and then moves up the stairs to Skype with her latest boyfriend. He likes the young man well enough, but wishes Alexis would consider taking a break from dating after what happened last time.
"Every law enforcement agency we have is still looking for Katherine Beckett," the guy from the news says suddenly after finishing his lecture on global warming. Castle turns the volume on his phone up to listen in on the latest about the world's number one terrorist. "After assassinating Senator Bracken's opponent in the Presidential Election, Miss Beckett fled without a trace. Sources have confirmed that she has not yet left the United States, rumors even speculating that she never Left New York City at all. The homicide detective turned traitor has evaded the full force of the NYPD, FBI, NSA, CIA, and other counter-terrorism associations for two weeks."
The beautiful Katherine Beckett, whose picture is undoubtedly flashing on his phone by now, looks at the citizens of Castle's side of the Atlantic from every screen, and has been for thirteen whole days. The photo they all use is dated back eight years ago, where she still has an ironic smile on her face, accentuating her cheekbones. It was taken the same day she disappeared, and she hasn't been seen since, only DNA evidence left at the crime scene clueing the world in on the murderer's identity. That, and the bullet having been matched to her service weapon.
"The Republican Party's new candidate is behind in the polls by almost seventy-eight percent, unheard of this close to the date our nation changes once again. Four days left until the eight of November, and we impatiently wait for Senator Bracken to complete his rise to power and better our nation."
Impartial, this speaker was not. Castle snorts and stops the live update, removing the buds from his ears and shedding his coat. He makes his way to his office where another four hundred and seventy two James Bond books await his signature. He still can't believe he was asked to write 007 and has gotten this popular. His whole hand is cramping from the last session of writing down his autograph at the West-Coast book tour.
There, in his luxurious chair, is the #1 Most Wanted, sipping coffee from his World's Best Dad mug which Alexis gave him a decade ago. A full meal is spread on his desk, probably the entire contents of his fridge. The writer looks at the intruder and thinks she could use another few dinners like this. Castle doesn't need to be able to see beneath her baggy hoody to notice the bony fingers of the hand around the cup and the unhealthily prominent cheekbones of her face. The fugitive probably hasn't eaten since her target dropped dead.
He doesn't want to know how long this dangerous woman has been here, feet away from his unsuspecting daughter. "Beckett, what do you want?" he asks, refusing to glance over his shoulder to check if the redhead is coming back down.
"You," she states as she rolls her chair away from the desk and fluidly stands up. The answer confuses him, but his focus is on the phone in his hand, two taps away from calling 911 and getting the cops. Beckett has long since spotted his attempt and snatches his wrist just as his thumb hovers above the green button. Digits wrap around his arm as the other gently extracts the smartphone.
"Subtlety is not your strong suit, Castle," she mentions as she circles around him like a huntress stalking her prey. The pager on his belt, which Gina insisted on, gets taken as well. It is only than that the writer notices the woman is limping, her left knee practically giving up on her every other step.
The other noticeable observations are the badge around her neck and the lack of gun where he'd expected one. The badge is a mockery, but easily ignorable, seeing as Castle isn't as passionate about the symbolism of it as the NYPD would be, but the missing weapon makes no sense at all. A writer pays special attention to details, and the murder weapon of a presidential homicide is a very crucial one.
If she calls him blunt, he will be. "Where's your gun?" he questions as he stares straight ahead. He is determined not to show her any fear. If he's going to die, he'll do so with as much dignity as double-oh-seven. After three books on the famous spy, he feels a tiny bit more courageous than he should.
Kate tilts her head to the side, taking in this man whose novels kept her mother hooked for hours on end. The same novels which she has read again and again since the year of her exile from society to keep herself motivated and as close to her mom as possible. This writer, who cannot save her, might be able to tell her mom's story, even though it's already too late to matter.
"I have no idea," she admits honestly, "Bracken will probably plant it in my last hide-out before the cops raid it, and completing the story he wants the people to believe in with it."
"Plant it?" Castle asks incredulously, his voice raising a tiny bit and breaking his composure by searching for her eyes. A terrorist being framed might make for a good book, but confronted with it now that the world is upside down with panic, it just sounds like a sad sob story. "Senator Bracken?" he follows up once he registers the name.
She ignores him, nails skimming over the bindings of his privet Derrick Storm collection. "My mom loved your books," she whispers as the series ends at Storm Fall and her hand drops back to her side..
"Loved? As in not anymore?" Despite the extensive news coverage, Castle knows nothing of her parents. "Dead, both of them," she supplies, "She was murdered. My dad drank himself to death when I had to disappear." Kate twists her hand in her hair, causing the blue hood to fall away from her head, revealing her face fully.
Castle startles at the clearer version of her appearance more than the new information. Her sunken eyes and the blue bags beneath them are black from punches. She has taken a severe beating from someone very recently. Her hair is still as beautiful as it was on the photo he's seen a thousand times already, only now it is about five times as long, reaching to the bottom of her shoulder blades.
"Are you okay, Beckett?" he worries, only belatedly realizing he shouldn't care. Kate looks at him with a frown, trying to figure out his angle. Paranoia hasn't been good for her already shaky trust issues.
"I've been worse," she dismisses his concern, gesturing with her head that he should take a seat at his desk. She prefers being taller than her suspects, and wearing heals is deadly in her precarious situation. Also, she can't put any weight on her knee, hasn't been able too since Maddox fractured the cap with a bullet. That had been worse.
Castle takes a seat, trying to figure out how he can get himself and Alexis out of the house alive. His laptop is gone, and she took his pager and phone. He leafs through his mental catalogue of likewise situations he put his characters through, but finds nothing that can help him until he succeeds in distracting Beckett. She hasn't tied him up yet, so that's good.
Instead of talking, Beckett presses the play button of a device he hadn't even seen yet. A voice emits from the audio tape and turns Castle's view of the world on its axis. Senator Bracken's unmistakable voice admits to murder and coldly speaks of Johanna Beckett's impending death. All the thoughts of escaping are banished from his mind.
"Johanna Beckett is your mother," Castle dumbly states when the tape stops. He's busy trying to process the fact that the man who is about to become president has murdered and blackmailed people in what sounded as cold blood. Suddenly a framing doesn't sound all that improbable anymore.
Kate nods to confirm it and retrieves the tape like her life depends on it. Most likely, it does. "Why didn't you bring this to the cops?" It is the first question he has, no matter how important other subjects might seem. With this evidence, Bracken's career will be over and he will spend the rest of his life in prison. It might even clear Beckett's name by confirming at least a part of her story.
"The cop you hear is Roy Montgomery, he runs the twelfth where I worked homicide. I went higher up, trusted the wrong people, and got this for my trouble." She taps her injured knee, giving Castle a flawless view of her backside.
"I struck a deal with Bracken in exchange for my life and everyone I cared about." Back then, there had been dozens of those; Ryan, Espo, her dad, Roy, Mike Royce. These days, she can't afford to love people, and any feelings she might've had in the past have ebbed away. She's content to know four out of five are still alive, no matter how betrayed she feels by her captain's actions. "It worked for years, but the future Mister President is tying up loose ends, and that means me and this tape." She'd mistakenly found it when she knocked the inconspicuous container from her desk, getting everything she ever dreamed of in a package that lead her straight to hell.
As a mystery writer, it doesn't take all that long to connect the dots. She had been framed to discredit her character and enable Bracken to kill her with extreme prejudice. "But why draw all this attention to you?" Wiping someone of the board is a lot easier when everyone assumes she is still in hiding and has stopped searching.
"He couldn't find me," Kate reports with a slightly prideful tone. "Bracken had to draw me out, and by framing me for his opponent's murder he kills three birds with one stone." This way he guarantees the outcome of the selection, erases Beckett from the game, and promotes himself by solving the greatest murder of the 21st century ruthlessly, efficiently and effectively.
"And he made it look like you weren't after him but the other guy so nobody would connect the two of you," Castle finishes for her. It's really ingenious; he should use it in his new series, the perfect Red Herring.
Kate retrieves a thick manila folder from under her hoodie, making her even thinner than he'd previously guessed. "I am a dead woman walking," she says as he gets handed the file on Johanna Beckett's murder and all the dirt she has on Bracken, including the source of his endless funds; dirty money, drugs, blackmail, murder. Castle pages back and forth as he skims through the hundred plus documents filled with data. "They tried to stage my suicide yesterday, which is how I got these," she says with a gesture at her face wounds. It had been the trigger to convince her to reach out. Her mom deserves justice, and this writer might be able to give her that.
The door to Alexis' bedroom makes a sound, and Kate is out the door with one last request: "I want you to write this story. Think about it."