Florida Heat

Chapter 10

She sat there, her eyes studying the photo, chewing on her bottom lip, as all three men sat around her, staring.

Kate sighed. "I'm sorry. I mean, it looks familiar but I got nothing."

She let the photo of the back road where she had been found float to the bed beside her and brought her hand back up to run through her hair. She had been so excited when she remembered about Jimmy Young and the worms. She had been dreaming— weird dreams, and then woke up with a start, the memory fresh in her mind. Her feet had carrier her to Castle's door without a second thought. So fast in fact, that she had ended up calling down to the front desk because she had gotten locked out of her room.

Now, sitting with the boys staring at her, trying not to let their disappointment show, it wasn't enough. The small things she was remembering: playing darts in a bar, ice skating with her mother, tickle fights with her father, something about comic books and grunge rockers, was not enough. It was a tease. It was infuriating. Some phrases from Shakespeare's sonnets floated through her mind as she groaned and pushed herself off the bed to pace the room. She was starting to feel antsy. Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. She needed to go out and do something, anything.

"Can we get out of here?"

Kate picked at the hem of her shorts as she sat, once again, in the passenger seat of Castle's rental car. She forced her hand to stay still, balling it up in a fist to rest on top of her leg. She reached out and adjusted the air vent so the cool air was blowing straight on her. She lifted her legs to separate them from the sticky leather seats, a thin layer of sweat forming on them. Her leg started to shake as she forced her hand still, her foot jiggling on the floor: pointing, flexing, bouncing.

"Castle!" She snapped after a minute. "For the love of God, can you just pick a station?"

Castle's finger stilled as it was about to press the seek button one more time and he smiled, letting the radio stay on a the "current hits" station that was playing something about clubs, getting "crunk" and something else she really didn't want to understand. She rubbed a hand over her forehead, making a face as the sweat covered her palm and she rubbed it on her shorts.

The car pulled off on the side of the road and she scratched her fingernails over her stomach, unconsciously, as she stepped onto the sandy turf and looked around. There was nothing around them except for a line of trees, the beaten up two-lane road and a flimsy wire fence.

"Where are we?" She asked as she took a couple of steps away from the car, squinting through her sunglasses.

"See that blue marker?" Castle said, walking around the car to stand beside her. "That's where they found you. I thought it might help to bring you out here. I know, you probably don't want to remember this because it is bad, but you are our only hope of catching these people. They are probably panicking since you got away and are going to move soon if they haven't already. So, just please try to take a look around. If you can't remember we won't be mad, I promise, but we need you to try."

Kate glanced back to where Ryan and Esposito were hanging off of the back doors of the car, watching them. She nodded. She could do this; she could try. Walking towards the marker she took a deep breath. She stared at it for a minute while the guys hung back, staying near the car. She held up a hand and shaded her eyes as she looked around. Her hand dropped down, rubbing her skin, as her arm started to itch again. The irritation from the bites was getting more intense with the hot sun. There was nothing. Nothing looked familiar. There was a big pothole in the road and she walked towards it, staring down into it for a minute. She glanced over at the barbed wire fence running through the tree line and looked back down at her arms. There were scabbed lines running down them, two small groups of lines. She walked towards the fence, examining the barbs. She held out her arm next to it. They matched. She had come through the fence. She walked back towards the road.

Nothing else looked familiar.

Think Kate. What had they told her at the hospital? Bruises— those could come from anywhere. Scrapes and scratches— again, anywhere. Fire ant bites. Fire ants lived in mounds. She looked down at the ground as she turned in a circle next to the marker. There were no mounds. The doctor said that they were all over her body and some of them had been found in her clothing and hair. It was like she had been lying in them. She started walking. This may be where she had ended up, but this was not where she had started.

She heard Castle call out to her as she moved farther and farther away and she held up a hand to wave him off. She was so close. After a few minute she slowed as she found a huge mound of loose sand and dirt on the ground. It looked like it had been disturbed it recently and the little voice in the back of Kate's head told her to stop, that this was important. She had been here. She crouched down next to the pile and poked it with a stick until the ants started to swarm out. She dropped the stick and scrambled back. Yep, this was it.

She dusted off the back of her shorts as she stood back up and walked towards the fence. Something was telling her to run, to her away from here as fast as possible, but she didn't. She kept on walking towards the wire disappearing into the brush. She jumped over a little ditch, her sneaker-clad feet landing easily on the other side. There she peered down at the fence, one hand coming up to hold back her hair as the other extended towards a small scrap of fabric snagged in one of the barbs. Her shirt had been ripped when they found her. A sharp, phantom pain flew down her back. She had come through the fence here.

Kate ran back towards the road, pointing back behind her, as the guys approached.

"There!" She exclaimed, an unbridled smile crossing her face. "I came through the fence right there."

"And that," she continued, pointing to the pile. "Is the fire ant mound I was in."

Castle was staring at her with a mixture of pride and disbelief. "You remembered all of that?"

"No," she shook her head, both disappointment and amazement filling her. "I just put the pieces together. I still don't remember any of it."

Castle was finishing up the conversation with the sheriff as the pulled into the parking lot of the hotel.

"So?" She questioned when he didn't extend the information right away.

Castle sighed, sliding the phone back in his pocket. "They canvassed all the houses in the area again, talking to anyone that answered the door but they didn't find anything. There is a whole neighborhood back behind that tree line. They can't get search warrants for all of the homes without more evidence and many of the people in the area were distrustful of law enforcement, not allowing them voluntarily into their houses."

Kate growled as her fist punched the elevator call button with a little bit more force than necessary. The boys muttered theories and potential strategies behind her. She itched her arm again, digging her nails into the irritated flesh. She just needed to remember a little bit more.

She stayed silent for the elevator ride, biting a nail nervously, her other hand clenching and relaxing as her leg jiggled. She had been fine while they were out. She had been thinking; she had been productive. Here she was just sitting around, waiting for herself to remember. She was wound so tight she almost snapped at Castle when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

She listened with half an ear as he spoke to the person on the other line. "Yeah, she's right here."

Kate looked up, confused, as he extended the phone. Someone wanted to talk to her?

"Your father is on the phone for you."

Kate smiled, despite her sudden nervousness, and she took the phone as the elevator bell dinged and they all stepped into the hall.

"Hello?" Kate said into the phone, pausing outside her door. "Dad? Hi. Yeah, I'm doing okay. I promise."

Castle watched as she spoke quietly into the receiver, listening to the one-sided conversation as the others continued on down the hall to their room. They had said something about adding the new information to their wall when they had been in the lobby.

"Yeah, I'm remembering some stuff, mostly memories from when I was a kid. I remember ice-skating and some dirty guy I dated. Yeah, the rocker guy." She laughed as she leaned against the wall and smiled up at Castle. "No, I don't know what I was thinking either. How are you doing? No, it's okay. You don't have to come down here. I'll be home and good as new in no time. I love you, too, Dad. Hey, before you go, can I talk to Mom?"

Castle's smiling face went blank and she stared up at him as she listened to her father's response on the other end. What the hell?

"No, I understand, Dad. I'll talk to her, later, when she gets home. Tell her I love her, will you? Okay. I gotta go, Dad. Talk to you soon."

Castle was standing silent in the middle of the hall when she held the phone back out to him, still smiling. "Castle? What's wrong?"

He fumbled with the phone for a minute, clicking it on and off again, looking at the screen, not bothering to even unlock it. She felt her smile start to falter.

"Kate…" he began, as he pushed the cell into his pocket, and slid his keycard out. "Why don't you come in and sit down. I need to tell you something."