Thank you so much for the wonderful comments on the prologue, please keep them coming! And now, on to Chapter 1!
Disclaimer (see previous chapter)
(a few months later)
Kate Beckett was in trouble.
She knew it, there was no getting around it. The walls were closing in on her, her concentration was slipping at a time when it could ill-afford to, for even the tiniest lapse could prove fatal.
"And as you'll see from the figures on Chart B for traffic citations…"
Kate sighed inwardly. Captain Victoria "Iron" Gates' voice rang out through the conference room at the full-precinct briefing. Beckett wanted nothing more than to roll over and go to sleep, but she knew that if it even seemed like she wasn't paying attention her Captain would have her for breakfast. The meeting had dragged on for two hours with no end in sight. Kate didn't know how much more she could stand. She knew her teammates Javier Esposito and Kevin Ryan well enough to see even through their brave façade that they were feeling similarly suicidal. The only slim advantage (at least she was trying to see it that way, yet still failing miserably) she had was the supremely uncomfortable plastic chair she was seated on making it more difficult to doze off. She didn't even have a date with Castle to look forward to at the end, what with him being off signing books. Even though he was only in the next county over, her shift tomorrow meant she couldn't get home too late tonight, so it was down to a cup of wine and a good (meaning Castle) book.
"Hmm… maybe I'll invite Lanie over Kate thought to herself. We haven't had a girl's night in a while…" Just as the thought formed in her head, her phone blared for attention. Everyone in the room turned to look at her, Captain Gates with a plain look of annoyance on her face. "Detective Beckett, do you mind? We're in the middle of a meeting here."
Feeling her face go red, Kate reached for her phone to turn it off, making a mental note to visit a form-of-punishment-to-be-determined on whoever had called her. But just as the phone came up, the caller ID caught her eye. It wasn't in the phone, but it had the number. "I don't know anyone with that area code except… Alexis's school!"
All thoughts of her embarrassment forgotten, she answered the call. "Beckett", she barked, ignoring the look Captain Gates was giving her.
"Is this Katherine Beckett?" asked a voice from the other end.
"It is", Beckett replied.
"Emergency contact for Alexis Castle?"
Interrupting her Captain's "Detective…" Kate snapped into the phone, "is she alright? Did something happen?"
"Ms. Beckett, my name is…"
"Cut the spiel and tell me about Alexis!", Kate snapped in to the phone. That got the particular attention of Ryan and Esposito, but Beckett wouldn't have noticed if it had gotten the attention of the President right then and there.
"Ms. Beckett, Alexis passed out in class."
Being snared by a bungee chord from an airplane must feel something like this Kate thought as the world spun in a thousand different directions.
"Have you contacted her father? What about her grandmother?"
"We were unable to reach either. Your name is downs as Ms. Castle's next emergency contact."Kate hadn't known about that, but she'd consider that statement and all it meant later. Why hadn't they been able to reach Castle or Martha? Wait, Kate suddenly remembered the embarrassing incident of the fan girl who answered her call a couple of months back and slowed down the line. Ever since then Paula had been confiscating Rick's phone at official events. Making a mental note to visit Paula with a blunt object, Kate wondered about Martha before remembering the play her acting class was putting on today.
Terrific, Kate thought to herself. "Is she alright?" Kate asked the man on the phone, not even concerning herself with anyone's reaction. "The doctors are checking her now. They say they'll know more soon."
"One moment please", Kate shot back, her mind now in full overdrive. "Alexis passed out in class," she called to Ryan and Esposito. As much as they'd been bugging them the whole meeting, at this point it turned out to be a very good thing these seats were plastic, for had anything harder hit gone flying into the wall at the speed of the two detectives' chairs it probably would've gone straight through and rained down on innocent pedestrians below, not that they'd have noticed.
"What do you want us to do?",Espo shot at her.
Kate quickly gave them the locations of Castle and his mother and sent Ryan after Martha and Espo after Rick.
"Man, I'm gonna need a tranq for Castle," Espo said as he and Ryan took to vaulting over chairs and cops alike to reach the door. "Yeah and preferably a bullet for Paula," Kate shot back as she continued getting details from the man on her phone. As one the three cops charged for the emergency stairs thinking the elevator'd be too slow.
On the stairs Kate's phone rang again. "Lanie?", Kate quickly answered as she ran.
"What's going on with Alexis?", the ME answered in an urgently worried tone.
"How'd you know?", Kate replied.
"A little birdie told me."
Glancing at that little birdie pushing Ryan to run faster and marveling for a split second at his speed-texting ability, Kate quickly brought Lanie up to speed with what she knew.
"I'll be ready to go by the time you get here," came her reply.
"Lanie…"Kate began but was quickly interrupted.
"KATHERINE BECKETT IF YOU'RE NOT IN FRONT OF THIS BUILDING IN FIVE MINUTES…."
Beckett tuned out the rest as she put on a burst of speed to get to her car. Fumbling for her keys she cut in to the still-shouting Medical Examiner, "alright, alright, I'm coming, you had me at Katherine Beckett."
"Darn straight, Girl, now get your butt over here."
"I'm on my way", Kate replied as she hung up and turned the key in the ignition, desperately hoping for Alexis to be okay, and sped off faster than even a cop is usually supposed to.
