Close Encounters 21


"Give us a second," Castle insisted.

Kate nudged into him, but he was firm on this. His father didn't look happy, glancing over his shoulder towards the open cafe, the sounds of forks on china, the conversations, the movement. It wasn't ideal.

"Beckett and I need to talk," Castle told him, point-blank. "About you. And this shit you're landing in our laps. So - give us a minute."

Black's face flooded with a cold displeasure that Castle had seen a thousand times as a boy, but it had been years since that look did anything at all to his insides.

Kate flicked a hand towards the back of the restaurant in a move that actually made his father flinch. "Bathroom, through the narrow hall." Dismissal, pure and simple.

Black laid his napkin on top of the table and stood - with slight difficulty, though that could be an act - before turning around and presenting his back to them as he walked away.

"Gutsy," Kate murmured.

Castle's breath left him in a rush, mostly choked amusement, and he turned to take a look at his wife.

She wasn't smiling, but that wry twist of the corner of her mouth told him she was trying. She was holding it together, but it was costing her.

"I'm sorry," he found himself saying. He shook his head even as he said, closed his eyes for half a second to keep form looking at her face in response to that. "No. Forget it. Been said-"

"And it's done," she murmured. "Past is past."

Didn't make him feel better, but her hand on his thigh and her fingers scratching at the material of his jeans helped just a little. Made it possible to open his eyes and catch her hand, lace their fingers together.

"He's not telling us everything," Castle warned.

"I'm aware."

"This woman - La Lune - Diane Jolin? I have never in my life heard of her."

"You hadn't heard of the Collective until the Congo - and even then, we didn't have a name for what we were up against."

He sighed, propped his elbow on the table to rub two fingers at his forehead. "I don't trust it, Kate. I don't trust him, and I don't trust Diane Jolin, and I sure as hell don't trust the Collective."

"But," Kate started, "we have a narrow range of solid ground under our feet. We can step out onto that, at least."

"Stop talking in riddles," he muttered.

She actually laughed, and he felt her fingers unwind from his and the cool touch against his cheek. He glanced up and saw her regard - regard - there was no other word for the affection that spilled in her eyes.

She favored him. He was having trouble coming up with English words for that look, there was no good language for it. She moved in his orbit, and he in hers, dual planetary bodies, gravity wells constantly pulling towards the other.

"Didn't mean to confuse you, sweetheart," she murmured.

"What's our solid ground?" he said back. They wouldn't be given long; Black wouldn't want to be out of the loop. "Where do we stand, Kate?"

"Your father wants to protect the program," she said, ticking it off on her finger. "You are the program. But so is James, which puts me somewhat nebulously within that range. I'm not non-essential personnel, and he knows that, so it does mean something, my being here."

Sometimes it curled his guts to hear her talk about herself like that, to hear her talk about them like that. Logical, calculating. But she was just running through motives, avenues, theories. She was - always would be - a cop. She was a detective going down her list of the usual suspects.

He could do that. "Okay. Let me lay it out. He wanted you here because he likes to screw around with us, and, in his heart of hearts, he'd just rather see you dead - but, yes, I admit, not by his own hand. Because that fucks up his life permanently, and he knows that."

"Yes."

Direct answers; he liked that. Much better. "So he doesn't entirely believe you're in danger, but he does believe that he is in danger."

"I've got an acceptable risk," Kate added. "A risk made minimal, especially now, with you here - which he wanted. You saw his face - he wanted you here all along-"

"Yes," he gave back. He'd seen that.

"With you here, I am probably the most well-protected agent in the field. With you here, the danger to me is miniscule."

He felt himself blushing, and he was slightly appalled that she'd made him so pleased and proud, knowing that she felt that way about him. "Thank you," he finally settled on.

Kate laughed. It was a little breathless in the restaurant, and he felt her leaning in close to him, and when he finally looked, she was amused. Very amused. She was holding it back.

"I hate you," he muttered, and she laughed again, not holding it back now. Her hands came up and framed his cheeks and she kissed him softly, the curve of her smile against his lips and tasting like sweetened coffee.

"You love me. Which is why I'm confident nothing will happen to me," she said. "And it's not misplaced, and yes, it's a risk, but Black thinks something bad is going on inside the Collective, something to do with the program, and that's bad for us. That's - Castle - that's bad for our son."

He sucked in a breath and caught her hands, drawing her down from his face so he could get himself together, figure this out without the tangled up, throat-choking knot of his own damn emotions.

"He's not telling us everything," he said finally, his only warning left.

"I know that."

"And he's not in love with her - Diane? You're wrong about that, Kate, because he doesn't know how."

"Okay," she whispered.

"So don't go assigning some kind of romantic-"

"Hardly-"

"Don't give him motives he isn't capable of feeling," he stressed. His heart was pounding, all of the sudden, and he realized belatedly that hers was as well, that he could feel the scattered race of her pulse under his fingers where he still held her by the wrists.

Her hands were clammy too. She said she wasn't afraid, but she must be. How could she not be? Black wanted her dead, most assuredly, and yet here she was, the most courageous woman he had ever known.

"He's not capable," he started again, "of feeling that vulnerable to anyone. He's not. I know you think I'm just a hurt little boy when I say that, but take it from that five year old who had to grow up under him, Kate - he can't. He doesn't have it - whatever it is - and I do, thank God, I do have it, because I have you."

She wasn't laughing any more; her eyes were serious on his. Stone cold sober.

He was too. This was serious. "Think about it, love. How did your name come up?" he husked.

Kate flinched.

"It's important, don't you think? If he talked to Diane and gave her a particular story - if he was putting on the illusion of a relationship to appease her, just as he did to Sophia Turner, to the others - then he talked to her carefully, calculating every revelation."

"He makes mistakes," Kate offered. "He says things in anger. He-" Her face blanched. "Shit. That's what you mean. He brought my name up in anger - which is a bad first impression."

He swallowed. "Yeah. Or worse - he did it purposefully one day, knowing he would be setting this up."

"And now this woman Diane will meet with me for her own agenda and what she knows about me is... that Black wants me dead? Black hates me?"

"Or you're part of this," he rasped. "Fuck. He could have told her any kind of lie at all. He could have told her that you're the experiment, Kate."

She tilted her head. "Not reasonably. He doesn't want the Collective to even know the program succeeded with humans. So no. Not that."

He was only mildly mollified. He felt his guts churning up again and Kate's fingers were still clammy under his, like she was equally terrified but trying to suppress it.

They had a lot more to lose this time. And her father at home with the baby, more people they ruined if this went wrong.

"I don't know that we can figure this out," she said. "Rick, I don't think we have the luxury of figuring it out, every angle. Something has happened, and Black is scared. You saw that, didn't you?"

He let go of her hand to scrape the side of his jaw where the stubble was coming in, too long without a shave. Too long without home. "Yes," he admitted. "He was scared. And not just of me. Or the hold you have over me."

She sighed, a little roll of her eyes to his wording, but he liked seeing the ease she had in her shoulders now. She glanced quickly away and he saw - as she did - that his father was taking his time getting back to their table.

Fuck. They hadn't reached any decision at all.

"I say we pry as much information out of him as we can," Castle said hurriedly. "We withhold our support until he thoroughly answers two questions-"

"Okay, okay. Two questions," she breathed, eyes on Black's journey towards them. "And they are?"

"One, what does Diane do in the Collective - her job, her function, her role, her agenda."

Kate nodded, briefly; Black was at the dessert counter where a waitress had stopped him to ask if he needed anything, or perhaps if he wanted a slice of pie.

"Second, what does Diane know about you."

"And you," Kate insisted, a turn of her head to him, eyes dark and urgent.

"No," he said. "Not important. Already established - Black's not going to give that out, not when it could put me at risk. But you? The pills you were taking? The baby?"

Her eyes lost their fight, and in that second, his father reached the table.

Castle lifted his foot and kicked out the chair. "Sit. You need to talk. Or this doesn't happen."


Black actually talked.

They asked and he answered. It was so forthright that it made Beckett wonder, but maybe the trip to the bathroom had been a mental talking-to.

She wasn't sure, but Black wasn't holding back. He was winding down their conversation with some honest-sounding information.

"Her agenda is hazy," he was telling them. "I can't say for sure. I intended to find out, of course, but I've heard things from other quarters which make me think that she hasn't been telling me everything."

"Why should she?" Kate said, frowning at him. She couldn't imagine that he didn't understand that. "If she's smart at all - and you'd never pick someone who wasn't - she'd keep her mouth shut as much as possible."

Black gave her a look of his eyes that seemed to actually be acknowledgement. A score.

"So, no, she hasn't given out secrets. Here's what I do know - corroborated by other sources. Diane Jolin, doctor of medicine in-"

"Wait," Castle said sharply. "She's a medical doctor. And that's the reason - that's why."

Black didn't seem to listen to his son; he was watching Beckett, and while that was a little uncomfortable - power dynamics-wise - Kate could handle it. She took the lead of the conversation again, wanting to get on with it.

"She's a doctor for the Collective'e program, you mean - their attempts."

"Correct," Black said. "Her speciality was in genetics - research mostly. For at least twenty years before the Collective recruited her. Late recruitment, honestly, which is why I approached her. She hadn't been brainwashed; it was purely for the chance at unlimited funds."

"Approached her?" Kate asked. "It was your idea?"

"Well, she was there, I was there, we started talking. The idea formed."

"You fucked her and then afterward saw her benefit to the cause," Castle interrupted.

Black merely raised an eyebrow, sipped at his coffee.

"She had a speciality in genetics and research and she was furthering their aims. What makes you think it's a good idea to have a meeting?" Castle said. "How can you possibly think it's smart at all for any of us to go near her? Kate's just a much a part of this as I am."

Beckett had to press her knees together under the table to keep from reacting - from shivering. She was cold again, an icy sweat under her armpits, a funny taste in her mouth. The coffee wasn't helping; she should have avoided the stimulant. She should stop letting words and Black's nearness get the better of her.

"Katherine's the only one we have available," Black said. "I can't go - I'm uncertain of my reception after some personal matters. You, Richard-"

"I'll go," he said.

"No."

She and Black both jumped on that, but it was to her that Castle turned his attention. He looked ready to put up a fight, but she would as well, and harder, and for as long as it took.

"No, Castle. Extremely risky." It was her code word, their code word, for when he'd pushed her too far, when she'd pushed him. She'd told him that it was an acceptable risk, that yes, she knew she was pushing him, but it wasn't more than either of them could bear.

In front of his father, they had a united front. Castle going out there was not an acceptable risk.

"Fine," he said, but it meant, later. He turned blazing eyes to Black. "So not you, but my wife?"

"A sign of good faith-"

"You've said that," Kate went on. "But her agenda is hazy and she's a geneticist trying to piece together your program from whatever scraps you gave her over pillow talk. You can bet she was playing you as much as you played her. So what have you given her you shouldn't have?"

"Nothing," he said firmly. And then a very slight hesitation that made Castle bristle, but which made Black confess, "That I know of."

"You ever said anything in the heat of the moment, or in the post-coital haze-"

"Oh, fuck, Kate," Castle hissed, wiping a hand down his face.

She didn't take it as rebuke; she actually had to keep from laughing. "John?"

"Nothing," he insisted. "I've said nothing more than what might gain me-"

"What have you said?" Castle insisted. "Just answer the fucking question."

Black's nostrils flared - one actually, because half his face was nerve-damaged and wouldn't obey his finer twitches. He laid a hand on the table as if to smooth down his own reaction.

"John?" she said quietly.

He sent her a look and the coldness in his gaze wasn't lost on her. It was the reason she used his first name, forced intimacy. Trick of the interrogation room. She ignored Black's disdain of her, staring back at him, and Castle was waiting, though not patiently, and finally Black seemed to find an answer.

"I told her nothing directly. She knows of Katherine only as an agent of the service. This-" Here Black gestured to his own ruined face. "This had to be accounted for."

This. The damage that had been done.

Sweat was drenching her shirt underneath her leather jacket. She felt like she was going to be sick. Beside her, Castle had gone deadly, dangerously still.

"Diane Jolin - Dr. Jolin of the Collective - knows that my wife is a CIA agent?"

"An agent. Of a service. I did not specify she's your-"

"You fucking did just by saying that, you bastard."

Kate couldn't even reach the short distance to catch Castle's hand, her own body paralyzed with a kind of retrograde horror, not sure if it was flashbacks of that day in the alley or if it was the idea that Black's supposed lover thought that Kate had done the damage.

"You cold-blooded bastard."

It jerked Kate forward, catching his arm this time before he could reach across the table, and Castle, because he was just that damn good, roughly got control of himself again. He swallowed back his next words, and he clenched his fist under her hand and he breathed hard, but he was keeping it together.

"I have given Katherine perhaps too much credit for her abilities."

"You said I beat you?" Beckett finally got out. "You told her that was my doing. Your face. Your ruined face."

Black actually flinched, probably at the truth inherent in the wording, but he shifted in his chair and tapped his finger against the coffee cup. She'd seen him do that once before, extremely discomfited, but she didn't quite know what it meant for his thoughts.

"Then how is my presence a sign of good faith?"

"Either you are an ally to her - because she does in fact want me dead. Or she wants to truly pass along some damning information and your meeting her shows that I believe in cooperating for the common good - even with a woman who did this to me."

"What convinced this doctor to join forces with you in the first place? Common good?" Castle said. He was still rigid with anger, but he bit out his words and managed to make a point.

"She had some early failures with human trials," Black said. "She convinced - with my help - the Collective to abandon future endeavors. She diverted their entire project away from human trials with data from my own cost-risk analysis."

"Holy fuck," Castle whispered. Beckett glanced quickly at him and saw the shock had transmitted right across his face. He truly hadn't seen that coming, even though she had tried to prepare for it, tried to tell him that a parallel program wouldn't consider ethics any more than Black had.

Kate pressed her shoulder to Castle and faced Black. "She had human experiments, they failed, so you slipped some all-too-true science to her that would show how dangerous and risky it was. Human subjects."

"Precisely that," Black said, looking pleased with her. She was a quick study. That was it? She could play that game.

"So the science was true and the projections of course were true," Castle growled. "Because you had similar failures. And that worked? They actually said, okay, you're right, it will never work with human beings, moving on?"

"They had no evidence to the contrary. Unlike myself. I knew it worked in humans. They had nothing."

"Because no one had ever taken a boy, a five year old boy," Kate started hotly, suddenly burning with anger, "whose own father had shot himself up with the serum and then turned and did the same to his son-"

But Castle stopped her, a palm pressing hard into the top of her thigh, and all the anger went out of her, just like that, leaving her shaky and sick to her stomach again.

This thing with Black just totally screwed with her. She was close to an emotional wreck, closer than she'd thought. She had expected to need to keep Castle in check, she had been counting on it, on being the stabilizing force he needed. Suddenly she wasn't sure she could do it, now that they were here.

But she had to.

God, she had to.

"No human experiments," Black said. "I'm certain of it. From not only Diane, but a few others as well. I have my sources."

Well, that was one thing.

"And my wife is what - the assurance to Jolin that you're going to be magnanimous about this - willing to ally with your enemies?"

Black nodded into his coffee mug but there was no way that Castle believed it, Kate knew. She didn't believe it, not entirely.

"Something like that," his father said finally.

It wasn't much of a reassurance. Her heart was beginning to miss beats, just at the look on the man's face. Her palms were clammy; she had a son at home, she had a baby and she absolutely had to pull this off. Their son needed not only his parents, but fuck, fuck, he needed the damn regimen. He needed the locked-tight answers that Black had in that damn brain.

"But what choice do you have?" Black said, looking straight at her. "What choice, Katherine? I have stayed away. You have my son, my grandson, and I have answers. More to the point - Diane Jolin has answers. She has advanced the study of the program far beyond my own poorly-funded limitations."

Kate's head was pounding, a sharp ache behind her eyes that traveled down to her very heart. That place at her back where she'd been shot - so damn long ago now - it was an ache as well, like a knife. Her heart was twisting in her chest.

She wanted to go home, but she couldn't.

"You would be wise to make friends of Diane," Black warned them. His voice was low, but not soft, never soft. He pitched it under the murmur of conversation around them but with the scrape and grate of deadly assurance. "She knows things about the regimen, about what it can do, about its fundamental properties. I have had to collaborate with the Collective for forty years. Forty years, Richard."

With Black's eyes finally away from Kate, she took in a ragged breath, appalled at how easily he had unravelled her. She felt abjectly miserable in her emotional defeat, but she was trying to rally, trying to pay attention.

"Forty years of work. They have everything I had, Richard, except for you. There were no records kept on you, no pieces of paper except for those very early experimental studies-"

"When I was five."

"When you were five," Black gave over. "And I was trying to get you healthy again. That's all. You have those records - the only copies were in my research facility in the Congo, a site I had kept hidden from the Collective until you two came in after me, that damn tracking device."

"No one knows," Beckett said roughly. "No one knows about him. About Rick. Not even her. You promise."

"Not even her." Black placed both hands flat to the table, leaned in. "No one knows about Richard. But Diane knows about everything else - all the science - she has it all. The failed attempts in the seventies, the explosion in the eighties, the virulent strains in the nineties. And finally, the Army progress... and its ultimate demise. The - mental illness that broke that squad."

The Army - that band of soldiers who had volunteered to be a part of Black's special group. Super soldiers who had gone AWOL, super soldiers who had come back to the States as deadly killers.

Coonan.

But Black was trying to distract her; she couldn't be distracted.

"Castle's name - he's not recorded in that Army experiment either, right?" she insisted. "No record of Rick Castle or Richard - whatever he was called then-"

"J.R.," Castle said roughly. "J.R. Black."

She hadn't even known. It had never come up. She turned her head and saw the bleak despair in his eyes because he realized it too, and it hurt him, that she didn't know. Kate put her hand to his chest and shook her head; it wasn't important. J.R. Black was gone.

"No records," Black said into that silence. "No records of him at all."

Kate let out a breath and sank back against the seat. "Okay. Okay, then."

"Kate," her husband whispered.

"He's right about this," she explained. "We have no choice."

She had Castle, and she had their son, and Black had the trump card - he knew everything about the regimen that could save them.


Castle fought it. He did. He wanted to be the one meeting this woman, and he didn't want it to be Kate, not at all - his son's mother - but at the end of his protests and his anger and his threats, she turned to him and snagged his hand, pressed it against her chest.

Her heart was pounding. She was trying so hard to remain calm; he could see it in her eyes. It made him want to hide her away, but she shook her head at him, as if dismissing her own feelings.

"Rick," she said intently. He knew his father was watching this, that the man hated how Kate held such sway, but he couldn't care. "Rick, I have to be the one."

"It doesn't matter what he says, we-"

"Rick, it has to be me because you're the better shot."

Castle sucked in a breath, speechless at that.

She squeezed his hand and released him, her eyes holding his for a moment longer. "It's a park we've been to before. There's rooftop access across the street; you keep the bench sighted in your scope."

"God, Kate." His stomach had dropped out.

"I need you to have my back-"

"Of course," he growled. Fuck. "I have your back. No one else better have it."

She smiled for his effort, knew he was trying even though his guts were churning and his palms were damp with the thought of this meeting.

He turned his head to his father. "I'll procure a sniper rifle after we're done here. On my own. We have the time and the place; we don't need you there."

"You do need me there." Black lifted an eyebrow, but he turned to Kate. "We'll wire you, Katherine, put an IFB in your ear so that I can counsel you on what to say. Just in case there's anything that comes up."

"Surprises, you mean," Castle said dryly. He didn't like this. Not one bit.

"Castle," she murmured. She looked back to Black, leaning into the table. "You'll monitor the meet, that's fine. But Castle gets the earpiece too - and he's the one talking in my ear."

"That doesn't-"

"I want to be able to reassure my sniper that things are fine, if they are actually fine. Or if they're not and he needs to take measures."

Shoot the woman, she meant. Castle could do that; he would do that.

Beckett turned and met his glare, her face impassive. Her fingers were cold over his hand. "Not extreme measures, babe. Kneecaps, remember?"

He frowned. "Doesn't put her out of commission if she's looking to hurt you."

"Trust me to be faster than that," she answered.

"I trust - shit, of course I trust you, Kate. It's her I don't trust. It's him."

"I know. But not a headshot, please. Not that. In Luxembourg Garden?"

Where kids would be playing, she meant, thousands of tourists and artists and visitors. And, he knew, because she wanted Diane Jolin alive if they needed a medical doctor who knew something about the regimen. A contact that didn't include the trouble and pitfalls of his own father.

Castle could see all that in her eyes; she was telegraphing the important points quite clearly. They'd developed a shorthand, an unspoken communication over the years, and she was subtly telling him that Jolin could be a marked improvement over Black.

Okay.

Okay, he could do that.

Black interrupted. "I'll monitor the exchange, but what if she asks a personal question that you don't know how to answer?"

"I won't answer," Kate said coldly, glancing back to his father. "I won't say anything about Castle, about the regimen."

"Assurances have to be made, Katherine."

"No, they fucking don't," Castle grumbled. "Back off. It's not up to you. Kate is the best agent we have when it comes to developing an asset - best in the field, best thinking on her feet, best at getting what we need. You should know; she does it often enough to you."

Black sat back, a kind of shock filtering through the ruined half of his face. Castle was glad for scoring that hit, at least, because there was no way in hell he was going to allow Black to be the voice in Beckett's ear on something like this.

"Rent a van," he told Black. "Panel van, dark blue or green - Paris has quite a few service vehicles in those colors. We'll meet you at three o'clock, since Jolin is supposed to be there at dusk - that'd be about 6:40 tonight. We'll gear up, you'll drive around the block and monitor from a secure distance, I'll be her back-up."

Black looked like he had swallowed something distasteful. Castle didn't really fucking care. This was how it was going to be.

"I'll have the earpiece," Kate said. "Castle will advise me if there's trouble, since he's got eyes up top. If you want communication with him, then you can do it by text. You've got a phone."

Black's jaw worked, but it was a strange result, one side of his face not quite managing the displeasure. The cheek drooped when he made an effort of expression like that, and Castle couldn't help remember that he'd done that.

He'd lost it, that day; he didn't specifically remember beating his fists into Black's face, smashing his head into the pavement of that alley. He remembered Kate, mostly, and the near-assassination that had led up to his rage. But mostly it was the crunch of bone shifting under his hands as Kate had pulled him away.

Castle nudged on Kate's hip, nodded towards the aisle. It was their turn to walk away from Black, to put their backs to him and get the fuck out of here. She stood, her fingers trailing across the table top, nearly to Black himself.

"Three o'clock," she said. "The Medici Fountain."

"I shall be there," Black said.

Castle pushed his wife out past the narrow table, dropping a 20 euro bill on the table and leaving his father to cover the rest of it. He put his hand at Kate's back, where her weapon was still holstered, and guided her out of the cafe.

Out on the street, they had one last view of Black sitting as still as a statue at the table, and then they'd moved quickly down the sidewalk.

Kate let out a harsh breath, and he realized she was shaking. She wasn't unaffected by his father; of course not. He sometimes lost sight of just how very much it scared her, how deeply the fear went, when she was so good at putting up an impenetrable facade.

He dropped his hand from her back and took her fingers, brought them up to his lips for a gentle kiss. His tenderness brought breath back to her, and she laced her fingers through his, clinging.

"Kate," he murmured. He didn't know what he was asking. Was she going to be okay? Could she really handle working in close contact with Black?

"I got it. I'm - no, not true - I'm not okay. God, Castle. I'm not okay. But I can do it."

"Sweetheart-"

"No," she said tightly, shaking her head. They still walked, and she wouldn't look at him, but he knew that was part of her internal strength, or at least for keeping it.

"You can do it," he echoed.

She nodded. "I can. And when it's done - when it's over - then I'll probably want to spend a night in the panic room with you."

He laughed. He did. She was amazing; she really was. Her fingers were still clammy in his but she was going to hold it together.

"Talk to me about Diane," she said quickly. "Tell me what you think about this. What Black wasn't saying back there."

He took a deep breath and frowned, marshaling his thoughts, his impressions. She had her own, of course, but she wanted to hear if he'd gleaned anything she hadn't.

What came to his mind foremost was the idea that there was definitely more to the regimen than his father had ever given out - and Jolin might have those answers. Beckett was probably thinking about that too, about what she could get out of the woman, but he had something else he needed her to remember, to know, in case she hadn't figured it out.

"Beckett, you heard what he said in there. That you're practically a peace offering."

"I - yes. I caught that."

He squeezed her hand and tucked it against his side, trying to warm her fingers. "You do realize that Diane thinks you're a little super?"

"What?" she rasped, her head snapping towards him. "Me?"

"Super now, or at least that you were - you'd been on trials of the drug when you went crazy and beat up your handler, Black. Just like all the other experiments."

"My handler," she said weakly.

"That's what he's told her. Why she thinks you were the one who ruined his face but you're also the one he's got meeting her. An asset of his own."

"Oh, damn. A sign of good faith because I'm on the regimen. Or was."

He wasn't feeling quite so great about this, and she looked sick. He wanted her out of here, and they had scant little time to get this set up to his satisfaction. "And you are, Kate. Basically. You are. Because of James."

"I am," she said, looking a little horrified. She shot him an unsteady look. "But she doesn't have to know that. She won't know that. Ever. Not about him, not about you, not about me."

Castle gripped her hand tighter, like that could seal their deal, like holding on to her would keep her here with him no matter what Diane Jolin would do.

"Do you think it's an ambush?" she whispered.

"I just don't know."