Chapter 4

Albany Medical Center, Albany, NY

It was her.

One side of her face was covered in some sort of medical dressing and the other half of it was a dirty mess of cuts, as though a blood-thirsty cat had scratched her a dozen times. Her hair was darker and shorter than he remembered; her cheekbones more pronounced, and the handful of lines on her face were a little deeper than they used to be, but all that aside, the woman lying on the bed in the lone hospital room was definitely, unmistakeably Kate Beckett.

Javier Esposito had asked her doctor if it was okay if he moved a chair next to her bed and stayed with her for a while.

"Go ahead. Just don't try and wake her. Let her come out of it on her own. Let the drugs and the nutrients do their job to get her vitals back to where they should be."

The doctor told him and Ryan that she'd probably been in the shack for two or three days. Most likely without food and water. They also suggested that she was probably unconscious for a part of that time, thanks to that blow to her head. When she was brought in her vital organs had started to shut down and there was a good chance she wouldn't have survived the night if the old man hadn't found her when he did.

That knowledge sent goosebumps up his arm.

"She's responded to the treatment remarkably well," her doctor had told him. "Her heart rate is steady. Her vitals have stabilized. The head wound was infected and that was one of our biggest immediate concerns, but we've cleaned it out and hope the antibiotics will take it from there. There are multiple contusions and abrasions all over her body, but nothing seems broken. We'll run some more tests tomorrow, but for now I dare say she's incredibly resilient, sergeant. We have no reason to suspect that she won't pull through."

Esposito took her hand in his, careful not tangle up the IVs going into her arm, and careful not to mess with the bandages around her wrists. (Apparently, she'd torn off skin on both wrists trying to get out of the restraints the old man had found her in.)

You kept fighting, long after we gave up.

The guilt gnawed so deeply at him that it sliced through his gut and made him want to throw up.

Six years. He didn't want to imagine what else she's been through in the last six years, but his mind went there anyway, because he there is no way she left her family this long unless she had absolutely no choice in the matter. Unless she was held captive.

"I'm sorry, Captain."

The skin on her hand was rough and cracked. It felt like sandpaper against his own and he cradled it with more care than anything he'd held in a long time.

Still, as gentle as he was, it set off an unexpected reaction and he noticed her head turn towards him, onto the side of her face that wasn't swathed in dressing. Most unexpectedly of all, he caught her eyes opening and focusing on him.

"Jav?" He could barely make out his name, but she definitely mouthed it and with that recognition came another reaction that he hadn't expected, her lips curled upward in the slightest sign of relief.

She was glad to see him.

"Kate-?"

But her heavy eyelids already closed again and she drifted back into oblivion. Esposito desperately wanted to talk to her, but at the same time he was glad that she was in some sort of peaceful state after the horrible condition they'd found her in.

"Hey," Kevin Ryan strode into the room with him noticing. "Didn't the doc say you're not supposed to wake her?"

"I didn't," Esposito shot back. "She woke up on her own."

"She did?" He scratched the stubble on his skin. "'What am I saying? Course she did. It's Beckett."

"Just for a second."

Ryan grabbed the lone chair that was propped against the wall and pushed it next to his partner. "That's gotta be a good sign, right?"

Esposito shrugged. What did he know about these things? But he did know what he saw on her face and if him being here was a good thing for her, then he'd stay the night.

"Where do we go from here?"

"We get her a protective detail, 'cause whoever left her out to die in that cabin is still out there. I'm hoping she can tell us who it is once she wakes up, but if she's not ready for that by morning I still wanna talk to the guy that found her- tell me you don't think it's a little too convenient that the guy just happened to go off trail and end up in that cabin?"

"The cops that interviewed him said they don't think there's anything suspicious. Apparently, he was a mess afterwards. Real shook up."

"Or a good actor."

"You do know we have zero jurisdiction here, right?"

"We're talking about our Captain. There's not a police force in the country that won't give us the courtesy of interviewing the guy who found her after six years."

"All right," Ryan stretched his legs, putting his feet on the railing of her bed, even though a passing nurse in the hallway threw him a look. "We'll go see him first thing in the morning."

"You tell Jenny why you were coming up here tonight?"

Ryan shook his head. "Nah. Didn't feel right. Not before-"

"Before we tell Castle," Esposito finished for him.

"Yeah."

Esposito turned to him and the unease on his partner's face was written all over it, like an open book. "I know we need to call him."

"I talked to the doc and he thinks you've called him already. He thinks that Castle's on his way here. You haven't made the call, have you?"

Javier sighed. He'd take a bullet for his partner without a moment's hesitation but did he have to be so self-righteous all the time? "Not yet."

"What are you waiting for?"

Javier still held on to her hand, in spite of his growing irritation. "Nothing." Maybe he was still pissed at the guy and just refused to admit it. He didn't blame Castle for ending the search for Beckett. He'd basically burned his life savings and almost forgot that he had a kid to look after. He'd also come dangerously close to losing custody of Lily before having to spend time with a court-ordered shrink.

So, no.

He'd never fault the guy for thinking she was dead. For stopping the search. Hell, all of them had tried to get him to stop a couple of years before he actually did.

But did he have to re-marry? What was it with Richard Castle and walking down the aisle? Javier got heart palpitations at the mere thought of committing to one woman. Never mind four.

Ryan was staring at her now. "Can you imagine? Lily was three when Beckett disappeared. She's nine now. Nine! I used to go crazy when Sarah-Grace went away to summer camp for ten days. Can you imagine missing six years of your kid's life?" He ran a hand through his thinning blond hair. "What a mess."

"Then there's her Dad," Esposito added. "You think there's any way she knows?"

Ryan exhaled. "I don't know."

"Do you wanna do it?" Javier asked him.

"Call Castle?"

"Yeah." Esposito knew it should be him, as the higher-ranking officer. But it was about more than that. All of them were a family. He took Lily to Yankees games and Kevin spent one Friday evening a month at the Old Haunt with Rick. "He's different with you." They were closer, Castle and Ryan, than Javier ever had been with him. It was that simple. Same as he'd always been closer to Beckett than Ryan was.

"You're right. I'll do it." Ryan nodded. "I should've offered."

"No, I should be the one."

Ryan loosened his tie. "It's almost 4 a.m."

"Let's wait another two, three hours 'til morning."

"Yeah, maybe. Let's not yank him out of bed in the middle of the night." Ryan had stepped up to the plate and offered to make the call, because that's what cops, partners, did. But now that the enormity of it hit him, he was overwhelmed too.

"Get a couple of hours of sleep."

"What about you?"

"I'm good."

"You're not."

Javier cracked his first smile of the night. "You're right. I'm not. Six years, Kev." He turned back to Beckett, a million questions running through his head. "I feel like shit right now. But I do know I'm not gonna fall asleep. We let her down, big time. But I guarantee you the guy that did this to her, he is not gonna get a chance to finish the job. Not while I'm around."