It was a quiet day for Kate Beckett. The homicide team weren't on a case and Gates had made it clear that this would be an opportune time for them to catch up on their mound of paperwork. Not only was this a long and arduous task but it meant another day without Castle. As they spent longer apart between cases, she is finding it harder to keep herself from telling him how she really feels.
Kate is startled out of her reverie by a ring. Speak of the devil.
"What do you want, Castle?"
Castle is unimpressed. The last thing he wants to do is accompany his mother to her loan meeting, especially as she'd refused to let him give her the money. New Amsterdam was a great bank but he highly doubted his mother would have much luck with her excessive spending habits and questionable credit history. To add to his annoyance it was another day without a murder, and that meant he had no reason to see Beckett. Even as they walked down Lexington Avenue he crossed his fingers and clutched his phone, hoping he might be saved by a phone call.
They're a stone's throw away from the bank and no-one's been murdered. Castle tunes out of his mother's nattering about her plans for the acting studio and spots 4 figures in scrubs heading towards the bank. Doctors needed money too, he guessed, but it seemed strange to go to the bank in a group.
Martha stops at the edge of the sidewalk, rummaging in her bag for her appointment book. Trust his mother to have to triple check the timing of her appointment. He unlocks his phone and his finger hovers over Beckett's number.
As they walk towards the entrance he hears shouts from inside and does a double take. It might be wishful thinking but somehow he is already calling Beckett and he now prays that there hasn't been a murder and she's free to help with whatever this crisis is. At least it would be an excuse to see her face.
"What do you want, Castle?" he hears her ask, vaguely disinterested.
"I think this bank is being robbed" he replies, trying to hide the panic in his voice.
"Castle, I think your writer's imagination is getting away with you" she says with a laugh
He hears shrieks and a muffled shout from inside the bank. "It is not my imagination. It's definitely not my imagination," Castle protests. He starts to back away from the entrance, ignoring his mother's confused demeanour
"Castle, what's happening? Where are you?" Kate asks, panicked now.
"I'm outside the New Amsterdam Bank and Trust on Lex"
Of course Castle would find himself outside the site of a bank robbery. Knowing him she's surprised he's not inside where the action is. But at least that means he's safe.
Even so, they have a duty to the people inside the bank. "Esposito! There's a 10-30 New Amsterdam Bank and Trust on Lex. Call dispatch"
Ryan looks at her quizzically. "10-30? Since when are we handling bank robbery calls?"
"Castle's outside" Kate replies. That two word phrase is enough and Ryan and Esposito scramble for their phones. In that split second Beckett forgets that Castle is still on the line, her initial training kicks in and her main priority is to help the hostages.
Her thoughts return to her partner. "Castle, I need you to listen very carefully. What do you know?" She only hopes that he might have used that writers brain to make stupid assumptions. He had been moaning about this meeting with the bank for days and she knows that he fantasises about murders being committed in the weirdest of situations. That's one of the reasons she…well, she's not quite ready to finish that sentence.
"There were some guys wearing doctors' scrubs. Maybe four. They looked odd." Doctors scrubs? There were numerous hospitals in that area but maybe he was right. Going to the bank straight from surgery didn't seem like a normal occurrence, especially not in a group.
"We'll check them out. Can you see anything?"
"All I know is that they've secured the door. We stayed back" Beckett can hear the faint sound of Martha asking her son what is going on. "Beckett? It's the guys in scrubs. Someone just peered out the door. He looked like he had a gun"
"We're on our way, stay where you are, OK?" Kate ends the call hurriedly and grabs her coat. She turns to Ryan and Esposito. "Let's go" she says, already halfway to the elevator, and the boys dutifully follow before Gates even looks up from her desk.