Close Encounters 2
Mr. Spy Bodyguard nodded towards the door of the hotel room and Beckett sighed, pulled the key card out, and opened it up. She gritted her teeth, casting the agent one last backward glance, but he was resolute. He wasn't going to tell her anything.
Castle was on a mission.
For sixteen hours.
Fine.
Beckett slammed the door on So Very Unhelpful and ripped the ponytail out of her hair, stalked towards the bathroom. The shower came on with force, and she got her fingers under her shirt, pulled it off over her head and swiped at her face with it.
She swallowed hard and toed off her shoes, yanked at her socks until they peeled off. Leggings tangled, but she gave up and sat on the floor, wrestled them down. Her eyes burned with sweat; she was trying not to think.
Sixteen hours and nothing. No call. No message. Just stay put, Beckett.
Kate paused, steam already pouring around her, but she hopped up and ran back for the bedroom, snatched the laptop off the bed.
When she opened it up, fifteen more alerts and messages had popped up on the screen. At the top was Search results returned and so she clicked on it.
An error message warned her that she didn't have network access from a remote location to allow her entry to the query. After that was a complicated string of code that Castle had apparently written and buried inside it were the words Special Forces.
It jumped out at her.
She closed the window, her heart pounding, and then scanned through the rest of the alerts.
There was something here, but first she needed to shower, give herself time to think it through. Be smart. Then she could pour over his laptop, figure out what the hell was going on.
He eased his battered body into his desk chair and took a moment to just sit there, breathe shallowly through ribs that weren't broken, so their doc said. His face throbbed. He wanted to go home.
But she still wasn't safe. He'd taken care of Foley, but there was still the NSA on her. Still her mother's case. He had a terrible feeling that when they knew who had ordered the hit on her mother, the reason for the NSA's presence would be crystal clear.
He opened his eyes - eye - and called up his email program, just to check. It'd been a couple days since he'd run Beckett's search and this was a good opportunity to see what was happening.
The search results were back. Castle opened his portal to the CIA network and input the dates he knew from the murders and the squads his search had yielded.
He hunched into the computer as it returned his result.
One man.
He had a name.
And he knew the damn son of a bitch.
Beckett bounced on her toes as she finger-combed her damp hair into a ponytail. Her own image looked strange, her hair flat, and she took it down again. Her toes curled on the bathroom's linoleum and she scraped her hair half back, liked that better.
She headed into the bedroom and found clean socks, tugged them on as she surveyed the already lived-in looking hotel room. Castle had arranged her index cards out on the coffee table in front of the television; she drifted to it and stood before the couch, wavering.
He wasn't here. Who knew how long?
She saw her own hand reaching for the index cards and she couldn't even stop herself.
The electronic lock whirred and the door banged open.
Kate turned with a grunt of surprise, but Castle was coming into the room, his tie loose around his neck, his jacket missing, a hole ripped into the knee of his dress pants. And his face.
"Castle. What happened?"
He shook his head and winced, dropped down onto the couch. His right lid was puffy and blue, purple fireworked from the edges of his cheek, and a deep black circled his eye.
"Someone punch you?" she said quietly, grabbing the ice bucket and dumping the plastic cups out of it.
"Someone. Yeah."
"Be right back," she muttered, grabbing a key card as she left.
Beckett got to the vending machines and nudged the lip of the bucket against the automatic ice machine, her thoughts churning as the chunks fell slowly. Whatever official business he'd done this morning had been resolved, or so it seemed.
But her mother's case? Had he even-
Kate closed her eyes and took a deep breath, steadied the bucket as it filled. She opened her eyes and moved away, heading back down the hall with the ice propped up on her hip. She passed the key card through the lock, but Castle was already up and opening it.
"Hey," he said, sounding a little dazed.
She pushed to move him back to the couch and set the bucket on the coffee table, deliberately on top of the mess of her mother's case.
"Sit down, Castle."
He obeyed without another word, his own fingers coming up to touch his bruised face. She batted his hand away and went to snag a clean washcloth from the bathroom, came back to find him poking at it again.
"Stop that," she sighed, hooking her fingers in his and drawing him away. "Let me put some ice on it."
He sat patiently for her while she filled the cloth with ice, but the moment she pressed it gently to his cheek, he groaned and leaned back. She went with him, put a knee onto the couch to balance as she held the ice to his face.
His hand came up at the back of her thigh, squeezed.
"What can you tell me?" she murmured.
"Nothing."
"Hm." Kate cradled the uninjured side of his face and leaned in, brushing her lips at the yellowed ridge of his nose. Bruised there too. "What will you tell me?"
"We got him."
She smiled at that, but she knew he'd tell her the story. Tonight, most likely, when she draped herself over him, he'd whisper his secrets into her neck like he was in confession.
"I'm glad," she said quietly.
"You're safe," he sighed, and his eyes closed. "From him at least."
She. . .was safe?
"Castle?"
"I might have something - I don't know what. There was something on my computer when I left. I don't know, Beckett. I can't - I need to sleep."
"You might have a concussion," she said, her voice low as her throat closed up. He'd thought she was asking about her mother's case. And to her shame, hadn't that been exactly what she was thinking about when she'd gone to get ice?
"No concussion. Doc checked me out. I just - I feel like shit."
She put her other knee onto the couch next to his hip, kept her balance by touching his shoulder, propping herself up over him. His hands came to her thighs, squeezing tightly, and she cradled his face with the ice. He didn't need to be doing this for her; she'd fought her own battles for so long now. And look at him. He needed to rest. He needed to not worry about her so much.
"You found something, Castle?" she whispered. "Your computer said-"
He groaned.
Beckett slowly eased down onto his lap, felt his hands clench harder, the lift of his hips almost unconsciously into hers.
"Castle," she murmured. "What did it say?"
"Might have a possible name for you. But later, later, Kate. My ribs are killing me. I can't-"
"No, I know," she said quietly, and slipped her hand down from his shoulder, a trail down his chest to his belt. "Let me take care of you."
And then he'd tell her. She knew he would.
He always told her his secrets.
Castle slept.
He'd nearly passed out afterwards, had made a fumbling attempt to return the favor, but Kate had only gotten him to his feet and tucked him into bed. He'd curled his arms around her waist and put his uninjured cheek to her thigh, and she'd stayed.
He slept.
Kate stroked the edges of his battered face, her body tense with a restless arousal and a need to be doing something. Meeting this thing head on, battling back. She didn't know if this guy who'd punched Castle was related to her mother's case, but she bet it was. He'd specifically said it was to keep her safe.
He knew she needed to do this - he knew how bad it was when she ran up against the wall around her mother's murder, when all she could do was twist on the hook of its terrible unknowns. She needed answers and he-
Well, she shouldn't be doing this to him. Not now. It was her turn to step up, do her job.
She'd heard herself on those recordings, how dark she'd gotten, how broken in her own-
She needed this over, and she needed it done tonight. Not tomorrow, not later, and not with Castle watching her like a hawk for one wrong move.
Which is why, when she was sure he slept, she touched her lips lightly to his bruised face and eased him off of her. Slowly, so slowly, because he was always so ready for battle, at attention. He stirred once and his fingers snagged in her belt loop, but she gently untangled him.
When she was free, she moved to the coffee table where the melting ice was still in the bucket, and below that - his CIA key fob she'd swiped from his pocket. While she was-
He hadn't noticed.
She pushed the little device into her bag and grabbed her jacket, her gun and badge and keys, and because she couldn't help it, the blue note card from the timeline, the one with her mother's name and date of death on it. She shoved it all down into the bag and eased it over her shoulder.
Castle had a name.
Castle woke violently when his phone went off, jerked out of bed instantly aware of the solitude of the room. He snatched it from the coffee table - he didn't remember taking it out of his pants' pocket, but maybe Kate had put it there - the call was from his office.
"This is Castle."
"Agent Castle, this is Agent Deleware."
Of course it was. "Del, what's up?"
"Ah, sir, Agent Black gave me strict instructions not to involve you, but as you broke protocol, I needed-"
"Wait. What?"
Castle sat down hard on the couch, his eyes traveling over the empty room. Her jacket was gone. Her weapon wasn't on the bedside table.
"Agent Black called me twenty minutes before he boarded that plane with the prisoner Foley; he wanted to know why your girlfriend had slipped her handler."
"She did what?"
"She left the hotel and brushed off Jackson like she was a pro. Black had me do a quiet search, but we got nothing-"
"You're talking about Beckett?" he said, rubbing at his jaw.
"Agent Black is now flying to an undisclosed location with Foley and I couldn't inform him, but then, ah, sir. She. . ."
"Who? What are you saying, Del. Spit it out."
"Your girlfriend showed up here. She has your key fob and the access code and I started to get worried that something had happened to you-"
"Nothing's hap-" He closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips into his forehead, his face throbbing with every painful jolt of his heart. "Looks like we're in for blue skies, sunshine in the forecast."
"Aye, sir. Sunshine in the forecast. Thank you. Thank you, sir, I-"
"Is she still there?"
"Oh. Um."
"My - girlfriend," he growled, felt it choking his throat. "She there?"
"Yes, sir. Just now leaving your office."
"Fuck."
"Should I detain-"
"No." He stood up and pushed his hand into his pants' pocket, felt the emptiness. "No, don't. I know where she's going."
Damn it. He wanted to do this with her.
But she'd fucked him and stolen his key fob, much like every other woman he'd love - Colleen, Sophia, and now-
Beckett had finally broken. He'd even seen it coming, but had thought, had hoped, she was stronger, that they were stronger.
But what else explained it? She'd broken and she was going after her mother's assassin.
She was going to kill Dick Coonan.
Her hands were shaking and she couldn't get the image of his battered face out of her mind.
She'd been equally smacked around on their last case together; it wasn't like they both didn't know it came with the territory. But there was something about the sigh of his body into hers, the whispered You're safe as he'd held on to her. . .
She couldn't shake it. She needed a clear head, but her body was jangled with the aftershocks of their last few days. The last month or so, really. He'd reshaped her life seemingly without effort, and she'd adapted so easily; she'd taken him into herself and now she didn't know how to be without.
He'd had only one name on his search results. She knew his passwords, of course she did; he never could hold back once she brought him close. He spilled everything, and not because she asked for it, but because she-
loved him.
The weight of his key fob was heavy against her thigh, her weapon in its holster nearly dragging her down. She swayed as the subway went around a curve in the tunnel, and she tried to clamp down on the roll of her stomach.
It had to be over. She just had to finish this.
Dick Coonan.
She was going to find out what happened the night her mother was murdered. One way or another.
While he waited for Beckett to show up at Coonan's home, Castle left a message with his domineering, controlling father because he didn't know what else to do. He didn't know where she was. Deleware would report to Black, dutifully, and when his father's plane touched down in their remote holding facility somewhere near Dubai, he'd get the unwelcome news that Kate Beckett had waltzed right into the CIA's New York secure location.
With his own son's key fob and access codes. And then had disappeared.
Castle would answer for that later, but right now, he needed to find Kate.
He knew she - he had known for a while now what this case was doing to her. And even when she'd brokenly told him about her promise to her father, likening her obsession to alcoholism, he still thought he could make her better, thought the force of his love could keep here there.
He'd been kidding himself.
She was going to ruin her life over something so. . .Coonan wasn't even the guy in charge, Coonan was a tool. And Castle knew he could get real answers out of Coonan if she would just let him-
But she couldn't see that, could she? Or wouldn't. Her life had been so mangled by her mother's murder that it was no wonder she couldn't let it go, not even for a night.
Not even for him.
He had to get to her before she got to Coonan. He needed to find her first.
Castle put in a call to one of his guys.
She stepped off the subway and onto the platform, the push of people around her helping to clear her head. Beckett shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket, made sure to keep her arm pinned at her side, her gun secure.
She had slipped the CIA security dogs stationed at the hotel, but that didn't mean she was clean. The NSA had bugged her apartment for years; she didn't delude herself into thinking she was off their radar now.
Beckett took the north escalators and ignored the signs for the street above, wandered through the crowd looking for faces she'd seen one too many times or shadows just at the edge of her vision.
She checked the time and went to a kiosk, paid for a new card with cash, swiped it at the terminal, and went back down below.
Beckett jumped onto the first line running out, dashing to make it before the doors closed, and she was about ninety percent certain that the man in the brown leather jacket had been trying to follow.
She sank into a seat near the doors and planned her next move.
"Credit cards are silent," Ramirez said.
Castle reached up to scrub his hand down his face, yelped when he touched his bruised eye.
"You okay there, little buddy?"
"Shut up," he growled over the phone. "Anything else?"
"Naw. But if she's headed for your guy, then she's being careful. That bodes well."
Maybe. Maybe not.
"Thanks, let me know if you hear anything."
He ended the call and paced the sidewalk in front of Coonan's office building. She hadn't made a stupid, mad dash straight for Dick Coonan's expensive home nor his elegant offices, and yeah, he was perversely proud of her for that, for having the wherewithal to plan ahead-
Plan ahead. Esposito. Right? Her team.
He called the 12th.
Beckett pushed open the door to the lobby, slid cautiously inside the building. Her pulse was throbbing in her hands, her thighs; she wanted to run, but she had to be smart about this.
She needed to be smart. She needed to plan. She had to do this right or she'd be-
She had to end this.
Beckett was glad now that she wasn't wearing those heels, glad for the soft tread of her chucks as she opted for the stairs. She had to be careful; she was being watched, but she thought she'd dodged them. Her phone was turned off; she'd popped out the battery to keep them from tracking her using GPS. She hadn't used a single credit card, hadn't gone near her apartment.
This was all that was left.
She had promised her father - her own father - and she hadn't been able to keep that promise. Just because she had Castle, just because she wanted him, loved him, didn't mean she could stop this.
A hired killer meant someone else was behind it - another layer to the mystery, another question she didn't have answers for. It was time to-
A creak above her on the stairs made her freeze, her heart hammering. If someone was there-
She breathed slowly, strained her ears for it. But there was nothing.
Beckett crept slowly up the stairs once more, headed for the top floor.
Castle raced up the stairs, heedless of his own safety, his heart pounding.
Esposito couldn't be right. Could he? Surely not. The detective had said he hadn't heard from his boss, but his reasoning made sense. It made scary, terrible sense. Esposito knew how she operated: she holed up, she went to ground, she gathered her forces and then she struck when no one saw her coming.
But for her to come here. He couldn't fathom-
Only, Esposito was right. Beckett knew Castle had practically an arsenal of unregistered weapons and equipment at his place, and she knew how to get in and out undetected - he'd shown her that himself. She'd want a phone that no one could trace; she probably needed to get on his clean laptop and do recon on Coonan's address.
But she hadn't been at Coonan's home, nor at his offices. He'd expected her to go straight for the man at his heart, deliver the death blow swiftly. But according to Detective Esposito - someone who worked with her - Castle was wrong.
She planned, Esposito had promised him. She planned it out meticulously. She was a control freak. She'd need a safe place to do that.
So when he got to his floor - that mysterious 'neighbor' she'd encountered once nowhere in sight - he almost couldn't believe it.
Kate Beckett was just coming out of his door, battle ready and hard.
But she froze when she saw him, and it gave Castle just enough of an edge to barrel into her, driving her back over the threshold.
His tackle knocked the breath out of her and Beckett struggled to remain standing even as every gasp sucked down nothing. Castle rammed his shoulder to her stomach and lifted her into a fireman's carry; her stunned diaphragm refused to work.
She didn't even have a moment to fight back; her head spun, her chest ached, and Castle was frisking her as he went, wrenching her bag out of her hand. The Glock was carefully placed on the kitchen counter as he passed, and she finally sobbed in a breath.
"Castle-"
"You shut the hell up," he growled.
That did it.
Beckett kneed him in the solar plexus before rolling off his shoulder. Castle came at her immediately, a crushing grip to her elbow that sent her to her knees, and then he was pinching the back of her neck until she saw black.
"No," she gasped, still breathless, but trying to rise. He dug in harder and her legs tingled sharply, but she put a heel to the floor and shoved upwards, her fist aiming for his throat.
Or so she thought. Her punch went wide - of course it did, you love him - and he was trapping her arm under his and bodily slinging her down the hallway. Beckett thudded hard against the doorframe to his bedroom, but got to her unsteady feet and gritted her teeth, braced herself as he came for her again.
She lashed out with a kick to his knee that hit him in the calf instead, wounding but not maiming, and he retaliated with the heel of his hand thrust brutally against her chest. She was stunned by it, breath popping out of her mouth and gone.
"I'm sorry; I'm sorry," he was chanting, and then he wrapped his fingers at her neck and squeezed. "I'm so sorry."
Beckett clawed at his hands but it was no use.
She dropped into darkness.
