Disclaimer: The only part of Castle that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

Kate had anticipated a lot of things, had thought that she was more or less ready for them, but not this. She feels as if each one of her vital organs has moved to the wrong place and she has to regroup internally. As steadily as she can, she puts her toothbrush into the cup on the sink. She'd rather talk to him while looking in the mirror, as if that indirect way of conversing would be easier, but she know that it's cowardly. She turns to face him, takes his right hand in her left and spreads her other across his chest.

"Castle," she says quietly, feeling his heart battering her palm. "You can't kidnap Maureen."

"Why not? I can get every piece of information that those fucking people drilled into her. I will get her to tell me every single thing they did to her and to Alexis, and why. I—"

"Stop, please stop, Castle. This won't work."

"I'm a writer, remember? One of the things that I do best is to get inside people's heads, including psychopaths like Tyson. Regrettably I've gotten to know him pretty well by now, and I can get inside Maureen's head, too. I don't know what her story is, but I'll get it out of her. This is what I excel at it, and this time I'm absolutely balls to the wall."

"Maybe you can do this, but another way, one that's...less."

"Less what?"

"Less dangerous. Less illegal."

"Such as?"

Perhaps it's because they've been thrashing out the case for hours, or because the monster had set up shop in her brain quite a while before that, but she's oddly relaxed as she stands in the bathroom in nothing but a T shirt. Her feet are literally cold, but not metaphorically. She feels brave. She has come up with an alternative plan, on the spot. She'll plant the seed, see if it takes root. There's enough of Castle in it that it just might. "Take her to the Hamptons, tell her it's about her birthday."

He shakes his head in confusion. "What?"

"You've been talking to me about ideas for celebrating Alexis's 21st birthday next month, so what about this? Ask Maureen if she's free this weekend, and if she's not, wheedle her into canceling whatever she was going to do. That's definitely something you excel at, wheedling. Tell her that you have a mind-boggling Father-Daughter Castle Adventure waiting in the Hamptons for the two of you, before she's officially an adult and you're the only kid left in the equation. You can say that I'll join you Sunday afternoon, if you want. I'm sure that you've already got a plan for confronting her, blindsiding her, whatever, but what if you did it in the safe room in the Hamptons? It's soundproof. Even if someone came to the house, they wouldn't hear you talking, and no one knows it's there but the family. Do you think you can break her in 24 hours?"

She can tell that he's considering her suggestion, weighing it, turning it over. He looks down at the floor, not at her, and clenches and unclenches his left fist.

"Okay," he says at last. "Yes."

Before he can say any more, she moves her fingers to his lips. "Castle, listen. Most of me wants to know what you intend to do and how you're going to do it, in fact all of me wants to know, but you mustn't tell me. I need, excuse me for saying this, 'plausible deniability.' If anyone on our team—Espo, Ryan, Gates—asks where you are, I'll just say that you wanted to go to the Hamptons by yourself, to clear your head. They all understand how difficult this situation is for you, and it sounds reasonable. I hate lying to them, but I will if I have to."

"What about my mother? She'll wonder why you're home but I'm not. What can we possibly tell her?"

"She and some of her acting students are going to that three-day workshop in Cambridge, remember? She'll be away and won't even know you're not in the city."

"You're right, I'd forgotten."

"So, it's settled, then? And we can go to bed now?"

He smiles tentatively, nods his head, and leads her out of the bathroom.

Two days later, the bad news is that the Susan Watts investigation has all but stalled, even with detectives double teaming it. The marginally good news, or potentially good news, is that Maureen has agreed to go to the Hamptons with Castle. He managed to arrange everything in a series of texts, rather than phone calls or face-to-face chats, which made it easier for him to keep his emotions under control, and he told her that he'd pick her up outside her dorm.

He has chosen to leave on Friday evening, rather than in the afternoon, on the theory that Maureen will be apt to snooze in the car if they're driving in the dark, and he won't have to keep up a conversation. At eight o'clock he pulls the car to the curb on West 111th Street, where she's waiting for him.

"Wow, Dad, I didn't think you'd be driving this," she says, as she gets in and buckles up.

"Nothing says father-daughter fun like a Ferrari," he says as irrepressibly as he can, steeling himself as he gives her a smile and a quick kiss on the cheek. "You can drive it back on Sunday, and I'll take it easy."

"Right, Dad, like you ever take it easy when I'm at the wheel of your baby."

"You're my baby, Alexis, at least until April 20th, when you will officially be a full-grown woman. Unless you choose to remain a child like me, which I sincerely doubt." He fleetingly wonders if he's laying it on too thick.

They chat aimlessly until they get on the Long Island Expressway. If it were summer, they'd be creeping along on what's known as the world's longest parking lot, but on a bitterly cold winter night the traffic is very light and Castle picks up speed. As he had predicted, Maureen has fallen fast asleep. She stays that way until they reach the house, and he nudges her awake. Once they're inside, he heads for the kitchen.

"I'm making us hot chocolate with extra whipped cream," he calls out, "to warm us and knock us out, I hope." While Maureen is taking her things upstairs, he removes a small Ziploc bag from his pocket and pours its contents—one and a half finely crushed Ambien tablets—into her mug. He's done a test run, and is confident that the chocolate and sugar will disguise the taste of the sleeping pills. By the time she joins him in the kitchen, the hot chocolate is ready and he hands over hers. He ponders the not-insignificant irony of drinking his from the WORLD'S GREATEST DAD mug that Alexis had given him for father's day when she was eight.

"So, Dad, what are we doing tomorrow, other than recovering from sugar shock?"

"Are you kidding? No way I'm telling you. The secrets of our last parent-child bonding weekend will remain a secret until you wake up, and even then will be revealed only incrementally. The better to savor it, as I am this drink." He smacks his lips noisily, the better to cover what he thinks must be his audible heartbeat, and places his mug on the counter. "And I'm done. Time for bed. Must have strength for tomorrow."

"I'm off to bed, too, Dad." She puts her mug in the sink, hugs him briefly and heads for the stairs. "Night."

"Night," he answers after a beat but before rinsing both mugs thoroughly and putting them in the dishwasher. He's surprised at how relatively calm he is, and grateful that he has inherited enough of his mother's acting ability to have successfully concealed his rage.

In the master suite he undresses, brushes his teeth, and sets the alarm on his phone for 2 a.m. He's not sure that he'll be able to sleep at all, given what lies ahead, but he does in fact nap intermittently over the next three hours. At two o'clock he dresses again, picks up a duffel bag that he packed before going to bed, and makes his way to the safe room in the basement, punching in the code and swinging the door open. He double checks that everything he might need is there, including a good supply of bottled water and blankets and an array of batteries, and makes sure that the security cameras and landline are functioning.

Walking as quietly as possible, he goes to Maureen's room. He knows that she keeps her cell in her purse, which she has hung on the back of the chair next to the door. He picks it up and takes it the adjoining guest room, where he removes and pockets the phone's SIM card. After putting the cell back, he returns to Maureen's room, leaves her purse on the chair, and tiptoes to her. Gently pulling away the bedding, he leans over and scoops up the sleeping creature whose days under his roof are, if all goes well, about to end. He thinks that he has never called on God as seriously as he is right now.

Castle carries her downstairs and across most of the ground floor to the basement stairs. They're a little tricky, but he gets down without dropping her, and when he places her on the safe-room sofa, she stirs only slightly. He knows that she'll sleep for some time, but he's far too wary to nap now. Instead, he goes over and over and over exactly what he will say to her.

After what seems an interminable amount of time but is actually only six more hours, he sees Maureen open her eyes. She looks groggy until she registers where she is, and pulls herself up. Her voice is shaky when she speaks to Castle, who is sitting on a chair just a few feet away.

"Dad? Are we in the safe room? What happened?"

His eyes are like flint. He has to call on every molecule of self-control that he possesses not to reach out and slap her across the face, preferably across the room. "What happened? You tell me, Maureen."

TBC

A/N: I promise: no waterboarding! No physical torture at all.