A/N: Thanks so much for the awesome support and interest this story has gotten! Once again, I've been messing with image editing, so if you want to see the cover art I made for this story, you can find it here on my Tumblr account, scripting-life.

Chapter Three

Sophia Turner cocks the hammer of the gun, and Kate braces herself for the bullet that will take her life.

At least…at least if the gun is aimed for her head, it should be a quick death. Nothing like the pain of a bullet to the chest.

She laughs hysterically in her head. Turner would know all about that, wouldn't she?

This whole situation is insane. Just stupid, crazy, unbelievably insane.

How could Sophia be alive? How is it that she came upon the Dragon? What's their objective?

Kate has so many questions, so many tormenting questions, but then she realizes that the ones she really wants answers to have nothing to do with Sophia Turner or the Dragon or even her current captive state.

Instead, she keeps wondering why it is that the universe just refuses to let her be. How could it be so unfair to give her only one day—not even a full twenty-four hours at that—to soak up the immeasurable happiness and satisfaction of finally being with the man she loved? One night, one morning, and half of an afternoon. It isn't enough, not by a long shot, but that's all the time she was given.

A single day before everything got shot to hell.

(Even at death's door, she hears Castle's voice in her head jump on the unintended pun, and she's glad, so very glad, that he is with her even in this small, small way.)

In an ideal world, she would be with Castle right now. Maybe they'd be having a family dinner, and even if things are still awkward with Martha and Alexis, there would still be some sort of forward motion. Maybe they'd watch a movie after dinner. Maybe they'd go out for ice cream.

Maybe she'd be in his arms as he shows her once again just how deep his affection runs for her. Maybe she'd take control and she would show him how absolutely crazy in love with him she is.

Or maybe they'd lounge together in his bed or on the living room couch, simply holding each other as they talk about everything and nothing.

But this isn't an ideal world, and she knows that—she's known it for years and years since an assassin's blade dug itself into her mother's kidney and stole her life.

No, this is the world that refuses to give her a break.

She hates it. She hates that she'd finally, finally seen that her life is worth more than death and blood and vengeance, but the past has snarled her so fully in its grasp that she can no longer escape it—even though she wants to leave it behind more than anything, she can't.

There is no leaving it behind because even though she can let it go, they won't let her go.

But as much as there has been so much in her life that should have happened and didn't—some due to the fault of external forces beyond her control—the most difficult to swallow are the things that didn't happen because of her own design.

Four years. She could have saved them four years of heartbreak and crossed signals. Four years of pushing him away when all she'd really wanted was him.

As much as she'd convinced herself that there's no way their relationship would have survived if they'd gotten together earlier—that neither of them had grown enough as individuals to make it work—the truth is they could've been working through their issues together rather than separately. Instead, all they had was a single day.

One day.

For second time in as many days, she's facing death without him, and all she can think is why had it taken her so long to see her mother's case as the death trap that it is.

This...this might be worse because she's had a taste of how beautiful, how amazing it would be between them, only to have it snatched away before she could really settle in and savor it.

Her chest constricts, and tears well up uncontrollably behind her eyelids.

God, Castle.

She misses him, needs his presence to steady and anchor her, even as she's torn between being thankful that he's not facing this execution with her and terrified over the wounds that had left him bleeding far too much of that precious essence of life.

No matter whatever may happen to her, the most important thing in her life is that Castle live.

If…if her death means that he'll no longer be entangled in this mess of her life, then maybe…maybe it'll be worth it.

She just wishes so badly that she'd taken the opportunity to tell him in actual words how much she loves him, how much he's become her lodestone, the home she would always find her way back to, her true partner is every sense of the word. She hopes that he knows that regardless of whatever mistakes she's made in her life, choosing him will never be one of them.

She doesn't really believe in a God—a higher power orchestrating the events of the universe—but if there is one, she prays that her death will not destroy him.

Kate tightens her jaw and clenches her fists so tight that her blunt fingernails break skin, but she doesn't care about the pain. She only cares that she won't cry in front of Sophia, won't break down in her last moments. She will not let this woman have that victory.

Kate's muscles tense when she sees Sophia's index finger tighten ever so slightly on the trigger, but just when Kate thinks this is it, the dark maw of the gun's barrel drop from her sight. Sophia pulls the gun away from her head with a dramatic sweep of her arm and fits it back into its holster.

Kate expels the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, her head reeling with a dizzying mix of relief and confusion.

Her relief is short-lived as Sophia sighs theatrically. "Luckily for you, my acquaintance doesn't want you dead yet."

Her dark, molten eyes dance with macabre glee. "Then again, maybe you're not so lucky."

…

Castle stares hard and long at the woman he took great joy in irritating, but had always respected for her dedication to the job and to upholding the values of justice.

Gates knew? All this time, she's known about Montgomery and his deal with the devil. She's known about Raglan and McAlister, about Joe Pulgatti and Bob Armen, about Coonan and Lockwood. She's even known about Maddox and Smith.

She's known everything.

But if she's known…

He can't breathe, the wound that tore up the side of his abdomen screaming in concerted agony.

Castle had refused any additional painkillers until he could speak to Gates, and he wonders if they'd given him some morphine anyway. Maybe this whole thing is some weird dream he's conjuring up in his head.

But no, it's all really happening. This conversation where he'd thought he'd have to beg and plead with Gates to believe that there is a Dragon out there who wants Kate dead. This revelation that threw everything he'd believed completely out of orbit.

"What do you mean you already know?" he chokes out.

Captain no-nonsense Gates, always sure of herself in every move she makes, meets his eyes, and he sees the hint of an apology lurking behind the steel of her gaze. When she speaks, however, it is with her usual aplomb, her authority and self-assurance that she'd done what was needed clearly evident. She might sympathize with him in regards to Beckett's kidnapping, but she is first and foremost captain. She will not be undermined.

"I mean that the man behind Johanna Beckett's murder is not as invisible as you thought he is. There are people in higher places of authority than you and I who have been investigating him and his network of associates."

Castle shakes his head. All this time? All this time they've been running around trying to track down and take down the Dragon, and there have been people with a higher pay grade doing the exact damn thing?

"Why? Why did you not tell us? Tell Beckett? This is her mother we're talking about! Her life!"

Whatever glimmer of compassion Gates might have shown him wipes away in an instant, her words a whipcord of harsh reality cutting deep. "Because, Mr. Castle, this is bigger than just one murder. This is bigger than contract killers and hired snipers. And I'm sorry to say this, but this is bigger than Kate Beckett. Your problem, Castle, is that you think like a writer. You think like the heroes in your books, that if you just put enough effort and heart into solving a case—even a case as big as this one—good will prevail and evil vanquished. But that's not how real life works. You don't take down someone as big as this through sheer willpower. There are no points for effort. This has to be done in the right way. And the method with which you and Beckett were going about it was not the right way."

Her eyes soften at the edges. "It's hard to let other people take control of the justice you think she deserves, but you have to understand that your bumbling investigation only makes it that much more difficult to track this mastermind's footsteps without tipping him off."

He swallows—both the lump in his throat and his pride. It's true that he'd written himself into the hero's role, the one who would bring down the Dragon on Kate's behalf. But it wasn't done out of some half-assed whim, nor was it done out of some misguided hero complex. He just wanted this huge block in Kate's life to finally be resolved.

But the truth is that he'd been completely out of his league from the start. Hell, he'd seen it for himself; that's why he'd tried to convince Kate to let it go. Only death awaited those who dug too deeply into this case.

And yet…

"If you'd known from the start," he begins slowly, his voice hoarse from both raw emotions and the weakness of his body, "why didn't you at least tell Kate that you weren't completely ignoring her shooting? Why didn't you tell her that someone was still investigating and that she will get her mother's murderer if only she has the patience to wait?"

Gates shakes her head. "You know how Beckett is. If she'd known about this, she would have only gotten more obsessed with it, especially with the way she was when she first returned. Don't think I missed how out of control she was initially. I could not afford to have her investigating this on her own, but if I'd told her that, you know as well as I do that she would have disregarded everything and gone after it anyway. We could only protect her if she stayed away from the case."

Castle sighs deeply. It's the same refrain over and over again. Keep her away, protect her life. Yet, no matter that they managed to make her stand down, it was pointless in the end because the case always finds her. "We caught the murder case with Montgomery's house being burglarized. She got caught up in it all over again, and none of us told you about the connections."

Gates nods once, curtly but with no triumph of being in the right, although she deserves it after being so wronged by her own team.

It's tempting to let despair take over, to drown in thoughts of if only they'd stayed away from the case and let the right people do their jobs. But it's useless to think of if onlys now.

Kate is missing, her fate unknown, and he can't let anything happen to her. Not when they've razed the barriers between them, when they've sampled the notion of them and found it almost unbearably beautiful.

He takes a deep breath and focuses his thoughts on the here and now. Find her first. Then they can deal with all the other ramifications of Gates' revelations later. Together.

"What do we do now? How do we find her?"

The ice around Gates melts just enough for him to spy the faintest glimmer of respect stirring in the slight curve of her mouth. There's something else there too, something he's only ever noticed in brief glimpses in the captain. It's a feral thirst that he spots in Beckett when she's on the trail of a hot lead, and he realizes that Gates has that very same predator lurking behind her civilized mask.

"Isn't it obvious, Mr. Castle? We beard the lion in his den."