Settled at the scuffed table with coffee and his brand new iPad, Castle scrolled through the email Ryan had sent containing a shot of the letter and all the latest details on the contents of Whitney's newly found luggage.
It all comes down to the mistranslation of a Yavapai word, aha gah hel'lah. I can hardly believe that one little old word is the secret to the Peacock Boys. As soon as I find it I'm coming on home to you.
Those lines tug at something in his brain that Rick knows he should be able to identify immediately, a predicament that he blames on a lack of coffee. The remedy for the problem is easy enough; another strong cup of the stuff poured into his tin cup, which he drinks with his chair balanced precariously on its two back legs.
At least until the bathroom door pops open and his partner strides out in head to toe black. All Rick can see is the impossibly tiny curve of her waist, and the impressive display of cleavage that spills over the edge of the corset. The glimpse of her creamy skin against the inky black material of her shirt just might kill him, and if that doesn't do it, he's definitely not going to survive the tight pants, the knee high boots, and the way her leather holster accentuates her hips and ass.
He isn't even surprised when he loses his balance, toppling onto the floor for the second time that afternoon, but this time he scrambles back to his feet, eyes wide and mouth open while he drinks in the sight of Kate Beckett in undoubtedly the sexiest get up he's ever seen.
"Eyes back in your sockets, Cowboy," she purrs at him, her voice falling just short of that stern Detective Beckett tone that she's shooting for. It draws out a smile, one that has Kate spinning on her heel to avoid returning the gesture.
That only has him grinning wider as he follows her out the door, the link between the letter and his familiarity with the Peacock Boys finally pinging into recognition once Rick crosses the threshold from their room to the bunk house hallway.
"Cornelius and Percy Peacock," Rick crows in delight, brandishing the flyer pulled from a post near the general store with enough dramatic flare that Kate has to reach up and adjust her hat as his gestures knock it sideways, "Wanted dead or alive, with a thousand dollar reward for their capture. The local sheriff, or at least the guy posing as him, showed me one of these yesterday, told me to keep an eye out. I just assumed it was part of the lore; two actors dressed up to ride in and add some extra drama to the place."
He says the last part with a negative tilt towards himself; the same sort of voice Castle gets in the city when they miss an obvious lead. It's so rarely their fault jointly in his mind, but always Castle putting the additional pressure on himself to be the guy that connects the clues and makes it all work.
Kate also suspects that he's measuring his worth to the team in the number of times he cracks something open for them. In some way, he's keeping score and, if she knows him at all, spends considerable time worrying when he's in a slump. As if ineffectiveness would get him kicked from the squad.
"Castle, ease up," she comments, one quick squeeze at his hand, "I'd have thought the same thing if the 'sheriff'," she even makes the air quotes as a method of supplication, pleased to see how his eyes spark with amusement at the gesture, "had shown me that flyer. This is an Old West resort that makes its money on its authenticity, you couldn't have known they based this flyer on something that actually happened."
At lunchtime the saloon is crowded with guests and workers alike, all of them eating their fill or sipping at drinks. The tables are full, the noise level high, but the barkeep they've come to speak to stands alone at one end, wiping the bar and people watching.
"Hello there," Kate begins with a friendly smile, stepping up to the bar in tandem with Castle. He wastes no time dropping the flyer onto the bar top, one finger punching at the space between the photos of the infamous Peacock Boys, "We were wondering what you could tell us about these two?"
Their bartender wheezes out a long laugh at the question, tossing his towel to the back of the bar even as he produces another from below and begins a methodical cleaning of shot glasses, "Looking for trouble are you, Missy?" he asks with a grin, giving a chin nod to the flyer, "Them's the Peacock Boys. Train robbers that held up the Southern Pacific back in 1893."
At the corner of her eye Kate can see how Castle's face has twisted with excitement, that little boy spark bleeding back into a body that's still tired and bruised from their long night. He's just short of bouncing in place with his eagerness, so like a puppy with his wagging tail and need for action. Reaching over for his hand is an instinct, her natural reaction to attempt to rein him in before they have all their answers.
She doesn't expect him to thread their fingers together and rest them against his thigh, or for her arm to tingle with the pleasant pressure of their linked hands. She definitely doesn't bank on having to fight a smile, or the dopey eyed look that he shoots her over his shoulder.
"What did they steal?" Castle addresses the man, voice colored with an interest that Kate knows is genuine. Not that she can really think when his thumb is circling across the paper thin patch of skin between her thumb and forefinger. It's probably meant to be soothing, possibly even sweet, but all she can think is that it's making her mouth go dry and stirring up a dozen different scenarios where he puts that finger to better use.
She's going to murder him.
"Lots of things, but the Southern Pacific robbery was their biggest heist of all. They made off with fifty bars of U.S. Treasury Gold. Outrun a whole squad of soldiers by traversing Deadman's Gorge, but two days later they were gunned down outside of Phoenix. Only thing was that the gold was gone," the man drawls it out with the sort of nuance that proves he's told this story hundreds of times to other tourists who come looking for information on urban legends like the Peacock Boys.
"And no one knows what happened to it?" Kate's proud that she's found her voice again, as off balance and breathy as it sounds. She just refuses to look at Castle, sort of the same way that her body refuses to untangle their fingers.
"There have been rumors, of course. Back in 1947 a missionary started writing down the stories of the Yavapai people. One of those was about a kid named Black Fox who had been abducted by the Peacock boys who forced him to be their guide. During the trip they stopped and tied Black Fox to a tree just south of the river and then they rode off with a wagon weighed down with those gold bars. They came back after a while, but the wagon was empty." He finishes the story with a long look to them both, elbow propped against the bar as if they are sharing some great secret.
A secret that Castle seems to have bought into.
"They stashed the gold!" He yells over the din of the bar, which grows marginally quieter for a handful of seconds before the patrons all return to their own conversations.
To his credit, the bar keep doesn't react to the outburst bar a slow shrug, "It would seem that way, but ever since that story surfaced this place has been full of people looking to unearth the secret of the Peacock boys and their buried treasure. No one has found it which is why this is just another secret of the Old West."
"Duke! I need a whiskey!" Four stools down from them a heavy set man with red suspenders and a black cowboy hat is banging on the bar with his glass, growling his order in the general direction of their conversation.
"See you folks later," Duke says with a tip of his bowler hat that leave Kate with the urge to laugh. And she does when the bartender shuffles a couple steps forward, "Shut yer trap, Dusty, you ain't gonna fall over because ya waited a minute for a shot."
"Kate, Whitney was after the gold!" Castle is hissing in her ear before she turns to face him, surprised when she does by their close proximity. In his excitement, Rick has taken the one step that kept them from standing right on top of one another, and now she's being treated to the royal blue flush of his eyes and the way they burn bright when he's onto something.
Between those eyes and the way that he's caressing her hand, it's a miracle she even understands all the words he's hurling out towards her about Black Fox, missionaries and incorrect translations of the Yavapai word for river. But she does understand because this type of thing, this theorizing foreplay that they do, is what she's wired for. Kate follows every excited syllable of Castle's latest theory with ease even as the swoop of need takes up residence low in her gut and her eyes get locked on the full pillow of her lips as they press together with the words of his speech.
"What if they didn't stash the gold near a river?" Rick asks her, the excitement of his voice dulling to something lower and far more intimate once he realizes where her eyes are. When she chances a glance up to his own, they're more navy than royal blue, that same lusty look from this morning that makes her a little weak at the knees, "What if they stashed it near a stream?" He finishes on a mumble, tongue darting out to wet his lips in the space before he lowers his head towards her own.
The thrill that shoots across her spine is no accident, born both of the memory of the last time they did this and the recent acceptance that it'd undoubtedly happen again. She's ready for it, tilting her head up to meet Castle's, mouth already open and waiting for that moment when his mouth claims her own and –
"YER NOTHING BUT A CHEATER, COLE JACOBS," the raspy rage of their previous interrupter is loud enough to silence the entire bar, though that only lasts as long as it takes the man to flip over a chair and jerk a far younger man up from his by the lapels of his vest.
It's also enough to spring them apart to a respectable distance, each of them blushing furiously with the realization that they'd surely be involved in a different activity altogether if not for Dusty and his issue with this other ranch hand.
"Castle," It takes Kate three tries and one frustrated shake of her head to voice his name, "Whitney had maps in her personal belongings, maps of this area and the Yavapai reservation. If you are right and the translation is wrong, everyone could have been looking for a river when the whole time it should have been a stream."
"They were looking for it in the wrong place!" They both say it at the same time, oblivious to the herd of ranch hands now trying to pull the two men apart on the other side of the saloon.
"So Whitney had the dynamite because she found the gold and needed it to blow up the hide out to retrieve it," Castle starts all over with his theory, tugging her towards the far corner of the bar by their joined hands, "But when you discover 50 bars of gold you can't exactly take it home in your carry on. So she left it where she found it and went back to New York for help!" They end up wedged in the corner, Kate's back against the wall while Castle towers over her, the hand not linking them propped beside her head in a way that's so territorial that she can't decide whether to kick him or kiss him, "But the killer found out and poisoned her to silence her and keep the gold for himself."
"She was upset when she left," Kate counters, so drawn in by the story and its possibilities that the grunts and shouts of a fully staged bar fight escape her notice. "That doesn't sound like someone who just found gold."
"Okay, you've got me there," he concedes, nose crinkled up with thought as the distant sound of cracking wood and a low groan rises through the few fighting it out next to the bar, "But if Whitney was searching for the gold and the killer just tracked her there then there could be clues!"
At that she does roll her eyes, a full blown grin playing at her lips even as her head begins to shake with dissent, "Castle, you're assuming that the gold is even still out there to be found." And it's adorable, she's not too proud to admit that to herself. Her partner is like a dog without a bone, scratching and sniffing in his desperation to find the crown jewel. "Clyde and this Dutch guy from the letter were looking for it, who is to say they didn't find it?"
"They couldn't! Not without the maps that Whitney had!" His voice has gone higher pitched now, that whine of protest that he adopts at the precinct when she and the boys usually put the kibosh on his more outlandish theories.
All she can think right now is that she'd just really like to kiss him, make him think about something besides gold for a little while, "You just want to go after the gold," Kate tells him, matter of fact with the truth of the thing.
"Of course I do!" Rick replies immediately, bouncing on his heels, "It's gold!"
This time she does laugh, a light wisp of a thing that sucks out some of the urgency Castle's tossing at her in his need for a treasure hunt. Instead, he goes for the offensive side, stepping back towards her body and the wall with a measured, slow move to plant one hand at the curve of her waist, "Look, Beckett," he begins, voice pitched low with a pop of the two t's at the end of her name, "If we use Whitney's research, we might just find her killer, too."
It's a logical assessment and the biggest lead that they have to go on, but Kate doesn't let herself give in that easily. She stays silent, puts her focus into keeping her breath measured and unaffected as he dips his head. The soft slide of his nose against her cheekbone is one thing, but it pales in comparison to the hot press of his lips across her jawbone and the sharp nip of his teeth against her ear.
She groans at that, pressing her eyes shut against the dizzying sensation of Richard Castle trying to seduce her into going on a treasure hunt, "Come on, Kate," he husks it against the shell of her ear, dark and tinged with something that's far more enticing that gold bars, "What do you say?"
Kate employs her silence again, her own mouth a little busy returning the favor of dropping two kisses against his neck to be bothered with words. And she doesn't hold back once she has a good angle on his lips, capturing the lower one with her teeth for the second before he meets her halfway, sealing their mouths together in a kiss that burns hot and fast. Somehow his tongue is sweeping across the roof of her mouth and she's knocked his hat onto the floor. She definitely isn't sure how one of Castle's legs ends up between her thighs but the last bit does make for an embarrassing moment when a hesitant clearing of a throat has them springing apart.
James Grady looks both amused and uncomfortable as he stands with his hands wrapped around his suspenders. Behind him, several people are uprighting tables and chairs and one of the ranch hands is carefully sweeping up broken glass.
Apparently in their conversation they've missed quite a lot.
"You might want to go back to your room for that bit," Grady says with a smile, though it doesn't quite reach his eyes, "We aren't that type of place."
