Chapter Seven
Complications

"I cannot make Beckett stand down, Castle. I never could.
And the way I figure, the only one who can is you."

Captain Roy Montgomery

Previously

After he had finally divorced that odious harlot Meredith, on his last official day with the LAPD she heard on the news about the violent robbery at Bank of America. That whole morning she'd been on pins and needles, her eyes glued to CNN... It was the scud attack all over again.

Alexis had been only two... but her daycare had been only a half mile from that Bank of America branch. Even now he rarely spoke of that day, but the haunted look in his eyes when he'd gotten off the plane carrying his sleeping daughter a week later had spoken volumes.

She'd seen it then.

Alexis was his only lifeline, the only thing keeping him tied to this world. He was still not whole. Still the broken, wounded, defeated shell of a man who had come home from Iraq. He was still so far from the boy she'd raised, and so radically different from the father Alexis knew that she could not bear to speak to Alexis of the boy and the man he had once been.

One day, Martha Rodgers hoped she would truly get her son back. That he would one day emerge from the shell he had built around his heart after the devastation of losing his first true love and see that he has so much more to live for than chasing death.

On that day, (and not one minute before) she would remove that guidon from her window and truly welcome her son home from Desert Storm.

Kate

"I put it all into the job, Kate. I became the best cop I could be. And then when you walked into the 12th, I felt the hand of God. I knew He was giving me another chance, and I thought if I could protect you the way I should have protected her..." Montgomery said in a harsh whisper, the gun in Kate's hand was limp at her side as she regarded the man before her with the same suspicion she'd had for years since she'd lost her badge.

"Did you kill my mother?" she asked him, hearing the accusatory tone in her own voice and not caring. She needed the truth, and she needed to hear it from him.

"No," Montgomery replied emphatically, "that was years later. But she died because of what we did that night."

Kate digested that for a moment, biting back the tears that tried to form behind her eyes,

"Then who killed her?" she asked.

It was more a demand than a question. She was not asking him anymore, she was interrogating her former captain, who'd let her be forced off the job without so much as a fight... she owed him nothing,. not a shred of kindness considering what he'd set in motion.

"I don't know how," Montgomery continued, as if she'd said nothing, "but somehow he figured out what we had done, and he could have turned us all in. Instead, he demanded the ransom money. He took that money to become what he is. And God forgive me, but that may be my greatest sin."

"Give me a name," Kate demanded again, "you owe me that, Roy."

"No, Kate." He replied, his jaw set with a resolve she hadn't seen in years, "I give you a name - I know you - you'll run straight at him. I might as well shoot you where you stand."

His gun was still pointed down, but hers began to rise imperceptibly.

"That's why you brought me here, isn't it? To kill me?" she asked, not wanting to believe the words tumbling out of her mouth.

She had trusted this man once, he had been like a surrogate father to her for nearly her entire career as a cop, since that day in the records vault, through the worst of her father's alcoholism, Royce's and then later Sorenson's desertion. He had seen her through all of it... until she had learned the truth...about how deeply his betrayal had gone.

"No," he whispered, keeping his gun down, "I brought you here to lure them."

"You baited them?" She asked...suddenly confused, "but...you work for them..," She tried to get a handle on this new information he had given her, the conviction to keep her alive burning in his eyes, even as she heard the squeal of tires in the distance outside the hangar.

"That's what they think, and now they're coming." he said, his eyes shifting first out the open hangar door to the headlights turning their way, then to a spot behind and to the left of her, near the helicopter that occupied the center of the building, "I need you to leave. They're coming to kill you, and I'm not gonna let 'em."

Kate felt hands grabbing her from behind to hoist her from the ground and she screamed...

"I'm sorry Katie...I'm so sorry..."

Kate snapped awake, drenched in sweat, a silent scream on her lips, her wounded heart hammering in her chest.

It wasn't the shooting at least, but the hangar was nearly as bad. She remembered the rest as if it had happened yesterday. It had been her father who had yanked her off her feet. Montgomery had yelled at him to get her out of there. She begged and pleaded with her father to put her down, pleaded with Montgomery not to do this... to give her the name and help her take the "dragon" down... that she forgave him, but her father had dragged her kicking and screaming from the hangar.

Bare moments after her father had thrown her into his truck the gunshots began... She would never see Roy Montgomery alive again.

The letter she received in the mail, addressed to Montgomery, but written in her mother's precise handwriting, written not to her but to him, beseeching Roy to keep her daughter safe if something happened to her and the sight of his body in that coffin at the funeral filled her with guilt and remorse. He had been protecting her all this time... all these years... at her mother's request.

Not just from this unknown man...this "dragon" but from her own worst impulses as well.

When her life had imploded on January 9th 1999, she'd had nothing to pull her out of that dark hole of despair that her life had fallen into. Catching her mother's killer had become her bottle of scotch...her addiction. After her mother's murder case had gone cold and her dad had abandoned her for the bottle, her soul turned to ice and her heart had turned to stone.

It wasn't as if she was sent back to square one after Montgomery died, (the PI and bounty hunter licenses had given her some clout and when her her first book hit the top of the Best Seller list she began to cultivate resources) square fifty just didn't lead her anywhere without access to what Roy Montgomery knew. Which was likely this "Dragon's" reason for killing him all along. Why she had not been finished off in the hospital. They thought her impotent without his knowledge.

She'd looked up the name on the man's I.D. badge and the picture of Dr. Josh Davidson she had found did not match the man who had checked her chart and left those pictures of her dad. The real Dr. Josh Davidson looked like a very nice man... he had a kind face and was certainly easy on the eyes. She might have even considered dating him had things been different, but his name just made her skin crawl now, since she couldn't assign a different one to the man who had been in her room when she'd been too weak to do anything to stop him from killing her. She was only alive because the man had not been sent to take her life.

She had never in her life felt so powerless.

Part of her wished she hadn't made her father go home the night before. That dream had thrown her, and she felt alone and vulnerable...a prisoner in her own home, afraid to go outside, but too freaked out by that dream to be cooped up in her apartment alone. She felt even more nervous when her dad's phone had gone to voice mail. He'd told her he would be in court all day and his phone would be off, but it still stung.

She had gotten these newer, more secure digs after a stalker/serial killer named Scott Dunn had targeted her two years before and blown up her last apartment with her inside. Special Agent Jordan Shaw being in her debt several times over after that had paid dividends. It had started out as simple debt repayment, but she and Shaw had developed a friendship of sorts over the years.

In many ways, this new place had never quite felt like home, even less so now. Not like the family cabin in the Adirondacks. She felt isolated and alone, in spite of the police detail and the increased security presence Black Pawn had insisted upon. Gina would not be denied.

She needed to talk to somebody... someone who understood what she felt. Though she didn't know him well, she could only think of one man who might. Her research had told her he had been wounded twice in combat in Iraq and been treated for PTSD for most of his career as an officer of the LAPD. Especially after the Bank of America robbery. (how Jordan had gotten her hands on that information she didn't want to know)

She was dialing his number before she knew what she was doing.

"Castle," came his terse, businesslike greeting. She realized at that moment that she'd never called him before. She remembered dimly answering the phone much the same way as a detective. It was familiar and strangely comforting to hear somebody talking to her like a cop. Even though he didn't know yet that he was talking to her.

"Lieutenant Castle, it's Kate Beckett.,'she whispered, feeling very small.

"Miss Beckett, are you okay? Is something wrong?" His voice overflowed with concern, worried she might be in danger.

"I...I'm sorry to bother you, Lieutenant... but no, I'm not okay. I... I need to talk to somebody... and my dad... He loves me, don't get me wrong, but he doesn't understand," she rambled, not knowing why she found it so easy to trust him. But the way he had related to his daughter the day they'd come to the cabin, and when she had gone to theirs had given her hope.

"Of course, Miss Beckett" he responded, "it's no bother at all." She could tell he was confused, but willing to reach out to her in a way that warmed her heart and made her feel a little safer.

"Please...call me Kate," she said, before inviting him to her home.

The Office of Senator William Bracken
Washington DC

William Bracken looked down at the file in front of him for former 1st Lt. Richard A. Castle USMC. Her had the man's file from the LAPD and the NYPD as well. The only information not at his fingertips was the heavily redacted section during his tour of duty in Desert Storm. It had taken place during the week after his reportedly being wounded at Kafji but before he was listed as wounded in action during the liberation of Kuwait.

Even as a United States Senator he did not have, nor did he have access to anyone with a high enough security clearance to access the above top secret information to read the blacked out section of his file. It was of little consequence, merely one week of the man's life but it rankled him that he didn't have the power to snap his fingers and get what he wanted.

He had enough, however to talk to the man he had keeping an eye on Katherine Beckett, and looking for the mystery man blackmailing him to protect her.

He took the burner phone out of his desk and sent a text message to Mr. Maddox. He didn't even know the man's real name, just a succession of aliases but he did good work, worth every penny he'd paid him since Roy Montgomery had taken Hal Lockwood down with him.

The detective on your case can't be bought, but he can be persuaded.
He has a daughter if it comes to that. Information at the usual place.

The text he got back two minutes later was to the point.

Understood

Though Bracken never liked to appear as anything but unruffled and in control of everything that came within his sphere of influence, Maddox could not do his job properly without complete information. The mysterious, but apparently dangerous man who had gotten into his Georgetown Brownstone without an appointment last night without alerting any of his security then disappeared like a ghost after making his point had made him cautious. All he had to prove his existence was an image on a single security camera. One the man had likely allowed on purpose, which did little to ease his anxiety. The one contact at the CIA he'd asked about the man told him to burn that photo, wipe the footage from his security feed do whatever that man told him to do and forget he'd ever seen him.

Be careful and discreet,
this Detective is your fighting equal
someone is protecting him.
Somebody higher up the food chain than I am.

**Author's note** My other story in the ficathon, "Ten Weeks of the Ripper" has reached 50K and I'm quite happy about that fact. A big thank you to all of my writer friends for their support. I'm hoping to get this one to 25K by the deadline too, not sure I'll get there but I'll be pouring on the effort. Hopefully I won't drive Cofkett insane with the chapter updates over the next few days. We shall see.