4
She dreams she's pregnant.
Her stomach taut and almost unbelievably round, and she can feel the baby move inside her belly, pop pop pop, like popcorn in a microwave, and how would she even know that it'd feel like this?
She dreams of a cherub-faced infant, rosebud mouth and sky-blue eyes and chubby, pink cheeks, ten perfect wiggling toes, and tiny fingers that close around her index fingers and hold on tight, so very tight.
She seems to dream a lot.
Of the glowing sun as it dipped below the horizon when she kissed her husband for the first time, the sky limned in vivid pinks and oranges, and had it really been this bright, so surreal? Beautiful, like the story of their love - intense and unbelievable yet just perfect for them.
She hears his words, remembers every line of his vows as if it were yesterday. His voice is so clear- as if he's right there, his breath a warm caress against her cheek when he whispers his promises; her eyes fly open, her heart racing but there's only vast emptiness that greets her, cold steel and the stench of antiseptics - the same cold emptiness into which she's stared for hours now, or it might've been days, she can no longer tell.
Kate squirms, tests the restraints that hold her wrists and ankles hostage to the slim cot but it's to no avail. There's no more room for movement than the last time she tried, and the time before that, and before that; no room to even attempt to free herself. She drops her head back down against the hard cot, lets her eyes sink closed.
Is he out there, looking for her? Does he know she isn't dead?
Tears seep from beneath her closed eyelids, silently roll down her cheeks in twin trails that feel almost shockingly warm against her chilled skin.
She'd thought having to watch as Tyson strangled a woman made to look so exactly like her was the worst thing she'd ever had to witness; the sheer horror in the other woman's eyes, the very lucid realization that this was the end as the life drained from her in too-slow increments. The sick spark of pleasure in Tyson's eyes that made her gag on her own vomit. It was like seeing herself struggle for breath, choke with toneless screams for help that would never come. A staged preview to her own, very near end.
And then she had to watch her husband find her lifeless body, hear the inhumane scream that ripped from his throat when he ran for his wife and found her dead. She'd never heard his voice like that, doesn't think she's ever heard any human sound like that, and her chest hurt with a piercing pain that lanced through her heart; its figurative breaking infinitely more painful than the literal throb of a bullet.
The image on the TV screen they'd made her watch was colorless and grainy, the sounds muffled but she could still make out every brutal, horrid detail.
She watched him lift the body in his arms and carry her away, and all energy seemed to drain from him; everything that had made him him instantly lost in the deep black hole of insurmountable grief.
They'd bound her to a chair and she'd fought with everything she had, arms and legs chafing against the tight ropes as she battled its legs, the seat, the back, her feet pushing off the cement floor, almost toppling her over, screaming his name over and over.
But she couldn't be heard, couldn't be found when she was miles away from the scene taking place before her on the screen.
And her screams went silent; her voice absorbed by the cloth gag stuffed in her mouth.
Fatigue is crawling through her limbs, slowly dragging her under once more. Probably the drugs injected into her system, but she lets herself drift, almost welcomes the relief of her dreams.
Castle.
Tyson wants to destroy him, seems to consider him the yin to his sick, sadistic yang. It's a cat-and-mouse game to bring Rick to the brink of what he can handle and drag him over to the dark side with him, and from what she'd observed Castle having gone through, Tyson may have already won.
And Neiman, in a bizarre and twisted way, wants her.
Kate can't seem to put her finger on the endgame but there's no outcome that doesn't seem grim.
Because no matter how and when it'll happen, they've made her witness to their crimes.
And if she isn't found soon, Kate knows she won't get out of this alive.