AN: Happy Castle Day! Thanks for reviewing (both signed and guest).
Am more than sure that this is where my take on the mystery that is Johanna Beckett's murder will depart from what the show writers have in mind for this season, but isn't that part of the fun?
Chapter Seven: Fractures Are More Painful Than Breaks
"Since when do we have family meetings?" Castle asked Alexis sleepily, as he took a seat at the large oak kitchen table. He picked up the assortment of newspapers laying in the centre of the table, checking to see they were all present and accounted for, then he idly flicked through the unusually thick pile of mail that had been delivered shortly before he'd made it down to breakfast. He'd waste a good amount of time reading through it all later.
"Honey?" he asked when she didn't answer him.
Alexis took strength from her grandmother's steadfast smile. "Since I started going out of my mind. Since I realised that I can't stay here forever. Since I realised that fear will rob me of my life if I don't stand up to it." She hadn't meant to blurt it all out like that, but once she started, she couldn't seem to stop.
"There's no way in hell…" Now he was wide-awake. He dropped the stack of letters back onto the table.
"Dad, just listen to me, please", Alexis cut across him, determined to state her case before he closed down the conversation.
"Alexis, there's no way I'm letting you out of my sight. We've been over this. Nothing has changed since you asked me at Christmas." He went to get up, signalling that there was little point rehashing the argument.
"Don't you think I'm scared? Don't you think I haven't worried over and over that I'm making the wrong move?"
"You're not making any move." He sat back down again. His legs feeling weak and unsteady.
"Yes, I am. Dad, I have to." Alexis tried to inject confidence into her words, but her voice was shaking and she couldn't seem to swallow enough air with each breath she took. She dragged her trembling hands back from the tabletop and let them fall, hidden, into her lap. She had to get through this.
"Well I'm not going to let you. I may not play the 'Dad Card' often, but I'm playing it now. You're not going anywhere; do you understand?"
"Dad, I'm eighteen. I'm an adult, and you know…Dad, you know you can't stop me. Not really."
"Have you forgotten what happened? They took you! They snatched you off the street in broad daylight and hid you away from me. You need to…"
"Have I forgotten? It happened to ME! I was the one blindfolded and handcuffed in the back of that car. It was me they took. ME! I thought I was going to die because of you. Can't you see? I'm a prisoner here because of you. I can't live my life because of the person you chose to love."
Her words, her anger, knocked the wind out of him. She had never before spoken to him in this way. For the very first time, he didn't see his child when he looked into her clear blue eyes, he saw a grown woman telling him that he had let her down. And he had. He'd known the dangers, yet he kept on following Beckett, kept on hoping for a happy ending.
"Dad, I know you can't help who you love. I know you tried to protect her, and us, but you couldn't."
He wanted nothing more than to get up from the table and walk away, because this hurt too damn much. Regret and fear stabbed fiery needles into his heart, each striking its target with painful, resolute accuracy.
He couldn't hold onto either of them. He was going to lose them both.
"I know you love me more than anything. I love you back the same way. I do. But I can't stay here forever; you know that. I want to live my life because otherwise I may as well still be in that car."
"I can't let you go." His words spoke of a choice that he simply didn't have.
Then no one said anything. They each sat in miserable, fearful silence. He really did want to get the hell out of there. He knew it was a childish desire - no, a human desire, to want to run away from the thing that was causing you pain, but he owed his daughter this. He looked down. He examined the uniform grain of the wooden table in front of him. He ran his hand over the smooth, planed surface. The moments ticked by. He didn't know what to do, or what to say. Everything just hurt.
He had never been as grateful for the comforting touch of his mother as he was at that moment. She reached across the table and grasped his hand in hers. He felt defeated and so out of control that the room spun around him, leaving his thoughts blurred and incoherent. And his heart fractured. Both familiar and new fault lines inched their way into the beating muscle. He wasn't heartbroken. It was worse than that.
"I'm not going anywhere right now. Not for a few weeks, even." Alexis broke the silence.
"And, then?"
"Europe. Some friends have been planning this trip for months, and I said I'd join them. We're going to meet in London and then go from there to Paris, then onto Vienna…you know I've always wanted to go."
"And after that?"
"Then, back to England. I accepted a place at Oxford."
"You didn't tell me."
"I'm sorry", she said softly. "It's not my first choice…you…New York, was my first choice, but this is going to be good for me. You'll see."
But he couldn't see. His mother's hand closed tighter around his own, and he forced himself to smile, but he couldn't yet look up at his daughter. "You need to live your life. I know that, Alexis. I do."
"So I can go?"
He loved her for asking his permission even though they both knew that this was pretend. He had no choice but to nod in response. Then he looked up. Her eyes were full of tears, and she looked like his baby again. His instinct was to grab her tight in a hug, but he didn't, he couldn't. Not yet. Not until he was that he wouldn't shatter into a million pieces when he did so.
xxx
Something didn't feel right.
The very early morning air, a little stale because it was too cold out to open the windows, swirled around her, and she breathed it in knowing that it felt different than normal. The air sank into her skin, into her mouth, and all the while she felt on edge. Beckett lay there in bed and breathed slowly, carefully. She had to be quiet because she was straining to pick from the commonplace noise of her apartment a sound that didn't belong.
Nothing.
She breathed in and out. Sweat beginning to form blisters of moisture on her forehead.
Nothing.
Then something.
She slid her legs from under the covers and swivelled noiselessly around on the white cotton sheet. Her feet touched the carpeted floor, and she sat up. Every nerve in her body was tingling, signalling a warning that she would not ignore. Her gun was on the nightstand. She could barely make out the shape of it because the room was still mostly blanketed in darkness. She picked it up and disengaged the safety. The mechanical click pierced the silence. She knew she wouldn't have long to ready herself.
Her bedroom door, ripped of its hinges, flew towards her. It clattered onto the floor, the top coming to rest against the side of the bed. She made herself as small as possible and rolled across the floor and flattened herself against the wall, hidden from immediate view by a chest of drawers.
Gunshots pounded into the empty bed. Mattress foam flew into the air before falling in chunks onto the floor next to her. Then the wall behind the bed seemed to explode under the weight of relentless gunfire. Rows of bullets sent plaster into the air, and soon the bedroom was full of smoke and dust, and she could scarcely see.
A tall figure, cloaked in darkness, stood framed in the doorway. They pointed the assault rifle they held firmly, expertly, in their hands left, then right. Then they stepped into the room.
Beckett, careful not to give her hiding place away too soon, edged the nose of her Glock Compact around the corner of the mirrored chest of drawers. She didn't hesitate. She emptied all fifteen rounds in a short, precise burst of fire.
The intruder gasped as two bullets dug into the exposed flesh and muscle of their right upper arm. The force of the double impact sent them crashing backwards and through the empty doorway. Scrambling to their feet, they then quickly braced themselves as their intended victim barrelled towards them, knocking them back down onto the ground.
Beckett planted her knees hard into her attacker's chest, trapping their uninjured arm as she did so. The action elicited a breathy groan of pain, despite the protective vest they were wearing. She saw evidence that she'd managed to pump at least four bullets into the vest. She knew they had to be hurting, winded, underneath their armour.
Then she looked up.
Cole Maddox stared into her eyes and tried to raise the M41A rifle he still held in his other hand. She stared right back at him and then eased back on her haunches before driving her knees harder into his torso. He dropped the gun.
"So…you got me, detective."
She couldn't speak. She was a mess of adrenaline and fear. She just wanted to survive this.
"You gonna let me bleed to death? Look? You got me pretty good. I'm bleeding out. Shit…sh…it burns so bad."
Beckett followed the movement of his eyes as he indicated his right arm, which was bleeding profusely. The streetlights outside her apartment illuminated the hallway where he lay, and she could see the dark red pool of blood growing by the second. She must have hit a blood vessel.
Maddox knew she'd look. It was all about conditioning. She was good, but not as good as him. Using his injured arm, because the bitch was sitting on his good one, he slid his hand down the side of his vest and carefully pulled out the hunting knife he kept tucked into the side pocket. Then, with all his considerable, though beleaguered strength, he thrust it forward and up, striking her forearm. It was hardly effective in terms of inflicting serious injury, but it was the only place he could reach given his limited options of movement. Besides, he only needed to make her pause for a second; that would be enough.
He heard and felt the blade strike bone, and immediately, the pressure on his chest abated. Now running on empty because blood loss was starting to affect his ability to think clearly, he forced her off him and rolled to his right, reaching for his dropped gun. His sticky, bloodied fingers grasped the weapon and he swung back, trigger finger at the ready. But just then, burning heat drove into his thigh, then his knee. He dropped the gun again, dimly aware that he was yelling out in pain.
She was back, hovering over him. He couldn't hear the yelling any more. Then everything went black.
Beckett, still on her knees, watched as colour drained from his face. She hadn't wanted to kill him. She meant only to stop him.
"No!" she pleaded as she wrenched the blade from her forearm, tossed it out of reach and then climbed to her feet. She patted him down in case he was carrying anything else, then she picked up his rifle and ran with it down the hallway. When she reached the kitchen, she threw the weapon into the sink; she stuffed her own gun into the elasticised waistband of her black sweatpants and grabbed her cell phone from the kitchen table.
She hit speed-dial as she raced from the kitchen to the small bathroom. He answered on the third ring. She screamed at him to help her, and then she reached for the pile of guest towels she kept folded in the cabinet beneath the sink.
Maddox was fading fast. Had she hit his femoral artery? She hoped to god that she hadn't. Beckett ran back to the hallway and fell to her knees at his side, still grasping the bundle of sunny yellow towels. She applied firm pressure to the thigh wound, then she reached round and placed her other hand behind his knee, hoping to compress the nearest artery feeding the area. Her arm, despite the flood of numbing adrenalin that was coursing through her entire body, was hurting so bad. Each time she rotated her wrist, searing pain took her breath away.
She looked down at the dying man. "Stay with me, you son of a bitch. I want answers. I WANT answers!"
AN: Thanks for reading. :)
