Close Encounters 16
She woke and it took a second, but she licked her lips and found the words. "Monday. No, wait. Tuesday now."
Castle didn't laugh, just brushed a kiss over her forehead. "Yeah. Four a.m. Go back to sleep."
But she was awake, the pulse of pain in her hip and her ribs making her shift restlessly in the bed. "I gotta get up." She couldn't move; everything had stiffened. "Castle, help. I can't - it hurts too long like this."
He was immediately at her side, leveraging her upright. "Come upstairs and we'll get you some more tylenol, fresh ice."
She murmured agreement and stood with his help, his arms strong as he lifted her right off the mattress. She stumbled when her abs caught and held her upright, but she moved for the door with Castle at her back. Everything hurt.
Castle looked grim.
Four a.m. was officially tomorrow; they were supposed to start talking tomorrow. "We doing this now?" she said. He was hovering a little as she moved up the stairs. She didn't mind because she wasn't sure she could catch herself if she started to fall. She needed more bruises like a hole in the head.
"Doing what now?" he murmured.
"Debrief," she said tightly, trying to control the agony. "I'll tell you what happened and you'll tell me what's happening."
She heard him sigh - felt him - the letting go of carrying a burden alone. This was what they did, who they were. She didn't want to abandon that just because Bracken was dead or because she was pregnant; the real world didn't suddenly become a rosier place just because one chapter had closed and another begun.
"It just never stops with us, does it?" he said.
She waited until they were firmly on the first floor before she looked at him, torquing her body uncomfortably to meet his eyes. But he wasn't sad, just serious.
Their night was over; time to face the day.
"I'm glad it doesn't stop with us," she murmured. She lifted her lips into a smile for him, reached for his hand. His fingers tangled with hers, seeking - she knew - the same comfort and touchstone she took from him as well.
But instead of leaving it at that, she brought his fingers to that space just under her ribs so that his palm stretched the length of her torso. She pressed his hand flat and he gave a little sound in his throat, like disbelief clicking over into wonder.
"We can do this," she told him confidently. She believed it. Whatever happened now, they were more than capable. "We have all we need."
Castle listened as she told her story, asked questions to clarify when it sounded like she was getting lost in the recounting. He took notes on a pad of paper at the coffee table while she sat propped up on the couch. He didn't watch her as she spoke; he just listened, taking in everything, hearing the things she didn't say and the pauses she made when it got particularly distressing.
He didn't offer anything - he didn't want to bias her retelling.
When she'd given him the bare outline of events, Castle read back through his notes and realized how spare she'd been with it. She'd always been like that, he knew, like earlier this month when she'd had to tell him about Deleware and Black. It was how she coped. But if they were going to protect her, he had to know everything.
"All right, one more time," he said quietly, lifting his head to study her. "I'm going to have to ask difficult questions - to get into it."
"I know," she said. "I've been debriefed before."
He sighed and tapped the pen against the pad of paper. "But not by me."
"Debriefs aren't personal, Castle. I know that."
"But they are," he scraped out. "They're personal. That's the problem."
"Just ask. I won't be offended."
"All right," he gave in. "We'll start at the beginning of your day."
"Before Dr Boyd called or after?" she teased.
The smile cracked across his face and he shook his head at her. "Not personal, huh?"
"Couldn't help myself," she smirked at him.
"Okay, let's say before the doctor called you."
"First day of the grand jury testimony. We were building the case in layers. Rachel and I met that morning-"
"Time?"
"One-fifteen," she said firmly. "I was late. Someone wouldn't let me leave lunch on time. Boyd called me after that. And then I - let's just say I was really distracted."
He lifted his eyes to hers this time and she was grinning at him, her knees propped up under a pillow, her back on another one, the cut over her eyebrow vivid in the darkness. She was so damn tough. She blew him away.
"All right. Really distracted, but you knew the time?"
"Of course. I wanted to memorize every second for you. To tell you later."
He grinned back, pushed in on his knees to softly kiss her. She hummed and pressed her fingers to his jaw as if to guide him. He broke away reluctantly and sat back. "What then?"
"We went up and down the street ourselves and cut off every camera so that the members of the grand jury wouldn't be seen. We had to put Secret Service guys on every entrance to the building."
Castle made notes as she went through her day, hour by hour, listening carefully to the details she was dredging up from her memory. She hesitated when she mentioned stepping outside for a break.
"Malone met you," he said, prompting her.
"He was hurrying." Kate's voice faded out to nothing and he glanced up again. She was tough, but she was so alone on the couch, wrapped in blankets and cushioned by pillows. Castle shifted off the floor and onto the couch, tucked an arm under her knees.
"Hurting you?"
She shook her head, watching him position her legs over his thighs. "Mal had the files I'd asked him to bring; he'd put them in a secure case. I didn't - it seemed overkill. They were just print-outs. He'd highlighted some of the relevant sections where the alternate spellings of those night club names had bothered us, and that was all it was."
"The files he brought you were just testimony transcripts?" he murmured.
"Yeah." Her voice had a catch in it and he squeezed her ankle in support. She eased against the back of the couch and took a slow breath. "Saved my life, I think."
She was jumping ahead in the timeline, but he let her. "Saved your life."
"Delayed the inevitable. They wanted me to open it. Bracken - he thought there was some kind of evidence inside. I don't know why - or how he got that information - but he thought it was the one key piece of evidence."
This wasn't what he'd been looking for, but it had pushed something to the forefront of his memory.
"When we were in that hallway with Black," he said slowly, "he turned and said, Deal's off."
Kate shivered, wincing when it pulled against her ribs. "Deal's off. And game's on."
Castle turned his head and stared into space, hardly able to think it, let alone put words to it. But Beckett curled her knees around his thighs and came slowly towards him, laid her cheek to his shoulder.
"You think your father somehow arranged this." She dropped her hand to his and trailed her fingers around his knuckles. They were scabbed over from where he'd accidentally punched a steel beam in frustration. Accidentally.
"Deleware was his, as we know, and I didn't see that coming - how deep undercover that asshole was the whole time. So who else inside the CIA does he have working for him? Leaking information about the grand jury in the guise of being on Bracken's payroll - a double agent."
"We don't know that."
"It makes sense."
"I thought you were supposed to be debriefing me?"
"I'd like to, but I think it'd just make your ribs worse. Not the kind of moaning I'm going for."
Kate groaned and knocked her forehead into his shoulder. "Stop making me laugh. That is just mean; you're being mean. Putting dirty thoughts in my head and making me laugh."
"Sorry, comes out before I can stop it," he murmured. He turned and dropped a kiss to the top of her head.
She went silent, fingers circling around his knuckles again. "What happened here?"
"I punched something."
"Oh, really?"
"Might have been slightly upset."
"Only slightly."
"I was wrong on my first guess."
"Wrong about - oh. Where I was."
"Yes."
"This is starting to hurt."
"No, it doesn't hurt that much. I mean - it aches, yeah, but I've been icing it off and on."
She grunted, pinched the webbing between his thumb and finger. "I mean me. My ribs-"
He gripped her arms and straightened her up, eased her back down to the pillows. "Sorry. I should've realized."
"It hurts to breathe."
"I'd do it for you, but I don't think that works so hot."
She growled and kicked her foot at him; he gave her a little grin and dipped his head to kiss her cheek.
"Promise I'll stop trying to make you laugh. Too bad though. I love when you laugh."
Her hand caught his and gripped his knuckles, tight enough to make them throb in awareness again. "Don't stop trying."
"You tired?" he murmured. He shifted back down the floor to keep from pressing against her sore ribs, but he left his hand in hers, let her play her fingers around his knuckles.
"No. Even if I was, I couldn't fall asleep like this."
"Then let's keep going."
She nodded, but her fingers tightened around his and she carefully brought his hand to her lips, brushed her kiss over the scabs. "Thank you."
"Thank you, Kate."
"Every detail. Has to be every single thing. The more detail you put into your testimony, then the more things they have to check for accuracy, to prove your innocence."
Kate knew it was true; she knew it. Still made it hard to put it all out there, word-vomit all over him. Especially about this part.
"Some things shouldn't be told," she muttered.
"I know. But we'll decide together what details we put out there, and which ones should be hidden. I've been dealing with secrets for a long time, Kate."
That hadn't been what she meant. National secrets were one thing, but explaining to Castle what it had felt like to take a boot in the stomach, the desperate, awful-
She didn't want to share that. Burden him with it? No point in both of them knowing that horror.
"Come on, Kate. We're nearly done."
She shifted slowly on the couch easing onto her hip even though it was the bruised one. There was really no good position, ribs in agony on one side, hip aching on the other. "I woke up in the trunk of a car. There'd been two SUVs up on the sidewalk, so I guessed it was the NYPD cruiser."
Castle was sitting on the floor, writing down the details, but he kept one hand on her thigh, as if to just reassure them both of her presence. "How long do you think you were awake in the trunk?"
"Thirty minutes, maybe? Could have been shorter. You found me in New Jersey, so I'm guessing that's pretty accurate. Out cold for however long because of this-" She lifted her hand and touched the butterfly bandage over her eyebrow.
Castle nodded. "You're probably pretty accurate. Thirty minutes and then what?"
"We went over some rough road - felt like a service road, but lots of sticks, gravel - something not well-traveled. And then the car went off-road. I could tell because the sound of leaves and grass - it's different."
"The car went off-road for how long?"
"Not long. Just thirty seconds. Right there. It stopped, I heard the door open, and then there was a long time."
He must be able to see it on her face, because his hand tightened at her thigh. She studied her feet in the ridiculous wool socks he'd bought her for Christmas, pink and grey, so warm that her toes were sweating.
"I thought about what to do," she told him then. She turned her head and caught his profile, the sharp edge of his jaw. "I came up with a plan. Legs duct taped, arms taped behind me. I'd started working on the tape, to peel it off, and I was going to kick out at him when he opened the trunk. But instead, there were five guys with guns when it lifted."
He squeezed her thigh a little harder, still writing. She wondered why he wasn't doing it on his laptop - it was secure - but maybe it was because this way he could still touch her.
"They dragged me out and dropped me on the ground. There were trees - it was wooded - and there were rocks on the ground. I was half on my side, knees drawn up a little. I wanted to keep curled up as much as possible."
Castle cleared his throat and his head turned towards her, something bleak in his eyes. "You can't say that. When they ask. No mention of it."
She nodded. "I know. Just - you. You have to know I tried-"
Castle came up on his knees, leaning in close to her. "I know. I know, Kate. Don't." He dropped a soft kiss to her eyebrow, just below the bandage, and she felt his hand skate up to her hip, his thumb rubbing softly against her stomach. "I know you. I know how fierce you are."
Shit, why did it matter so much? Maybe because she'd spent the last few weeks trying to convince him that when she went after Black, she really wasn't suicidal - she just wanted the regimen so Castle would live.
At least he knew.
His kiss against her knuckles brought her back the now; she shifted forward and sank into his embrace, a shallow breath as she felt his arms around her. It hurt, but it hurt more not to.
"I need to get off the couch," she murmured. "Can't lie down for long."
"Want to walk around?"
"Yeah, help me up?"
Castle didn't even answer; he just hauled her upright, so strong, and got her on her feet. She felt her spine cracking in all the right places, but she couldn't take in a deep breath to stretch. Sasha came in from the kitchen and nosed into the back of her hand, a lick along her fingers like the wolf was just checking in. Kate leaned to one side, her ribs twinging, stroked the dog's head.
"You sleeping in the kitchen?" she murmured. "Why were you in there, puppy? Your room's upstairs."
"She's just practicing for sharing," Castle said. He came in close and scratched between Sasha's ears. "Aren't you, Sasha? Not just your room any more. You'll have to share with the little wolf."
Kate's heart fluttered; she lifted her eyes to Castle to see if it had hit him the same way. "A little wolf?"
"It just keeps coming out of my mouth," he said. "Wow."
She shook her head, tried to dispel the sense of surreality that had dropped over them. Her ribs were bruised, her hips ached, her whole body was messed up, and she'd nearly been killed by a US Senator.
And they were pregnant.
It just - didn't quite mesh.
"Keep going?" he rasped. "We have a lot of ground to cover."
"Yeah," she said, nodding. "Can we walk? Helps to keep me from stiffening up."
They shaped a cover story while they walked, tossing ideas back and forth, building it together. She was animated at first but began to falter by the time they'd ironed out the biggest wrinkles to their plan.
No CIA would be mentioned - she was insistent that he not blow his Rick Rodgers alias, his most-true name, and he was insistent she not be associated with the CIA to the press.
They talked until the sun came up, filling in the details, getting it right, quizzing each other.
Standing in the hallway just outside the extra bedroom, Kate suddenly leaned hard into him. Castle tried to keep from hurting her, but he knew his grip around her waist had to be painful as he held her up.
"Kate?"
"I'm so tired," she mumbled.
"Yeah, I know, love." He glanced once more to the room they couldn't even talk about without too much hope ruining them, and he reached out to turn off the light. In the dim of the pale morning, it seemed much more feasible. "Let's go back downstairs. We'll sleep for a few hours and then the boys will be here."
She nodded against him and he slowly turned them around, got them started for the stairs once more. It was a process, and by the time they'd gotten to the living room, he could feel her beginning to tremble. The steps had taken it out of her; she was leaning hard against him, hunched over as if to protect her ribs.
"I should've said something sooner," she muttered. "I didn't realize."
He'd pick her up and carry her if he thought it would help. "Piggy-back ride?" he asked.
She snorted and at least there was that, some amusement still. But they were creeping across the living room, through the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of water from the counter and shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans, gripping her again by the elbows to help take some of her weight.
Kate stopped at the door to the basement and her hesitation made him a little desperate.
"I'm carrying you," he said. "My fault we're down here anyway."
"You gotta get that upstairs one finished," she sighed.
Now with the baby, wow. Yeah. He'd have to - there were so many things to do.
Castle opened the basement door and the warm air from below came up towards them. She leaned back into his chest and then finally turned to him.
"Not the scoop carry, but-"
"Yeah, I can do that," he agreed quickly. "Put your arms around my neck."
"Might need your help with that one," Kate said, tilting her head to look at him.
Castle lifted her arms to his neck, trying to go slowly, trying not to make it worse, but the pain seemed constant across her face. She'd just taken a few tylenol, but a couple pain reliever were nothing against the continued strain of her bruised ribs.
"Ready?" he murmured.
"No," she growled, but there was a laugh in it.
He got his arms under her legs and lifted her up; she gasped and he felt it vibrate through her body. "I'll make it fast, sweetheart."
She gripped him with her arms, and he started down the stairs, wishing now more than ever that he'd gotten the second room finished behind that closet. She grunted when he hit the first step, and he tried to take a lighter tread down the stairs, moving as quickly as he dared.
At the bottom, her nails were digging into his neck, her breath fast down his back.
"Lie down with me," she said. "Prop me up."
"Of course," he murmured, kissing her temple as he maneuvered them inside the panic room. He called out for Sasha and the dog came bounding down the steps, slinked inside the room with them. Kate had eased slightly, her body less rigid now that they were still, and Castle shut the door behind him.
It swung closed and sealed, the lights went on and the security panel checked in: green across the board. The satisfaction spilled inside him, made his heartbeat steady, and even Kate relaxed.
Safe. Totally safe. Nothing could get to them.
"I'm so tired," she mumbled against his skin. Castle got a knee down on the mattress, came carefully to lie down, holding Kate against his side. Sasha curled up at her back and actually helped keep Kate propped up, and he reached down to draw the covers over them.
Kate pressed her fingers to his throat. "Are you going to sleep?"
"Do my best," he promised.
But he knew he'd be awake for a long time, running the story over and over again in his mind, looking for cracks.
The story would save her.
