Apperception
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one-hundred and twenty days ago
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Kate knew he was still not happy with her when she got home that evening and discovered Maddy was already in bed. He had fed and bathed their daughter without her, and then put her in the crib upstairs. Kate liked it better when they kept the baby at the side of the bed, in the sweet cradle that her precinct family had bought for them. But, apparently, not tonight.
Apparently, tonight, he was going to hammer it home once more how wrong she was, how damaged her thinking, how twisted up her way of loving him.
She wasn't sure she could do it tonight, have this fight - this castigation - all over again. She was already so damn close to spiraling, the panic gnawing at her every hour of her work day. If he started in on her again, she might lose it.
Kate could see him through the open bookshelves, sitting in his office and sipping a tumbler of scotch. His arms were flat on the armrests, like he was bracing himself. The back of his head, his shoulders, they were all she could see from here.
He must be furious. He hadn't even turned to say hello. Hadn't come to kiss her either. Or hold her.
She could really use a hug.
Kate slipped out of her shoes and left them by the door, lowered her bag to the floor. She had her weapon on her, as she had for a week now, but she kept it holstered, trying to talk herself into putting it in the safe and not keeping it in her bedside drawer again tonight.
It wasn't that late, but it was late enough, and she felt the tension in every bone of her body, a perpetual, sharp awareness that things were falling apart on them.
When she stalked through the living room and entered the office, she realized the television was on, the news a confusing jangle of images of sounds. He had the remote on his thigh and the tumbler clenched in his hand.
"I know you're upset."
A grunt and he lifted his hand, rubbed his eyes. "Sit," he said. "You need to-"
"I already told you I wouldn't," she went on. She didn't want to sit. She needed to be on her feet for this. "I only thought she should talk about it. We have no support if she goes, no-"
"Beckett," he snapped. "Not the issue-"
"It is an issue. Clearly. Because you're still upset."
"I'm upset," he got out. It sounded like a hollow echo, like the words were foreign. His eyes were fixed on the television, but she barely spared it a glance.
"I have kept my promise. You know everything I know, Castle. Shouting at me for two hours last night isn't how I wanted to have that conversation."
His head swiveled to her, a tight darkness on his face that gutted her. But he reached out and snagged her by the belt loop of her dress pants, yanked her to the chair. "Would you just listen?" he growled. His arm tightened around her, pulled her onto the arm of the chair. "Beckett. The news. Breaking news. How have you not heard about this?"
"What?" The tight circle of her thoughts was broken by the tone of his voice, and she turned her head to the television.
The tv screen showed blue lights, broken glass, a crumpled car. Bystanders gawking. An ambulance. An accident? Castle was clutching her hard, her hip pressed into the side of his head. She dropped her hand to the top of his head, fingers through his hair.
"Castle, what am I looking at-"
"Caleb Brown is dead. They're saying he jumped."
"What?" she hissed, jerking forward to stare at the television. "No way. There is no way."
"Fell on a parked car. A mess, it's - he jumped. They're saying he jumped."
"He didn't jump," she gasped. "He couldn't possible have-"
"LockSat got to him," Castle said grimly. "He found out we had the goods on Caleb Brown and he got to him before we could close in."
"But how?" she choked out. Her heart was thundering. "How could he have known? We only got that info yesterday. How-"
"Vikram, you, and me," Castle said, rubbing a hand down his face. "The only ones who knew."
"The only ones who - Vikram," she croaked, jumping to her feet. "Oh, God. Vikram."
"What about-?" Castle asked, but she could see it on his face, the dawning horror. "Kate. No. Wait."
She turned away, moving for the living room. "I have to go. I have to check."
"When did he last call in?" he said quickly, rising to his feet and following her. "Kate, hang on. Wait."
"He checked in with me this morning."
"Call him right now," Castle said tightly, moving around her to put his back to the front door, blocking her. "Who cares about cell towers and burner phones. LockSat already knows. So call-"
"You know I can't do that." She stepped into her shoes once more, checked her gun. "Not now, not after we've lost all our protection. I have to go there and see."
"Kate," he groaned.
"Castle." She reached out and caught his face in her hands, kissed him hard. His beautiful face. "I'll be okay. I'll call you when I get there, when I know."
"In an hour," he said, his throat working. "Call me in an hour. Even if-"
"I will. I'll call. Doesn't give me a whole lot of time, but I will." She kissed him again, but he buried his face in her shoulder. She embraced him tightly, fingers smoothing at his nape. "I have to go."
He straightened up, moved out of her way.
She touched his chest with a hand as she opened the front door, tried to infuse her smile with confidence. She moved through the doorway-
"Kate."
When she turned, his face was like a stone, trying so hard to mask the roiling emotions under the surface.
She leaned back and caught the back of his neck, pulled her into him for another kiss. "I love you. I will not let this happen. Nothing will happen."
His fingers touched her cheek even as she pulled away.
"You better come back to me," he said, even as she was jogging down the hall.
X
When she walked into the strip club, the scene had already been set.
Everything had already played out.
Kate stopped dead, her heart jumping into her throat.
Blood was splashed violently across the grimy floor, the computers smashed in, the whole place a wreck. Neon signs glared on the walls, the stage was littered with trash from take-out and convenience store runs, but it smelled of death.
She pulled her service weapon and carefully crept forward, her palms clammy. She threaded her way through the tables, skirting fallen chairs, following the blood. Carefully. So carefully. The floor was sticky; she kept her boots out of the trail. It was hard to breathe. She had to fight to keep her vision from tunneling.
She knew what was coming. She knew. She didn't want to know, but she already did.
Vikram was in his chair behind the stage.
He'd been shot. Clothes drenched in his own blood, gut wound, messy.
Painful.
He'd bled for so long that his shoes were soaked in it.
"Oh, God," she whispered, reaching in. Her fingers touched his neck and his skin was clammy, stiff. "Oh, Vik."
She withdrew her hand, slowly scanned the rest of the large room. It was obvious he'd been confronted at the door, incapacitated somehow, and dragged to the chair for the lethal shot.
There were glossy photographs flung across the floor, right behind the chair, as if tossed at Vikram. She stepped forward carefully and nudged her toe against one of them, moved it out from under the rest.
It was her. And Vikram. One of their meetings. She was gripping his elbow and smiling. The rest of the photographs were more of the same. They looked - damning.
That was when pieces began clicking into place. When the evidence laid out before her actually registered and she saw the whole drama.
The smashed computers. The blood trail. The incriminating photos. The violence of those wounds. The hideout only she and Castle knew about.
The gut shot.
Her extra piece. She hadn't unlocked her bottom drawer in weeks, hadn't looked, hadn't thought about it.
But to get a bug in her office meant access to her office, to that desk drawer.
Time of death would have been while she was at work, while Castle was home alone with Maddy, no alibi. No alibi at all.
It was all so clear. Laid out so perfectly. It wasn't her LockSat was trying to frame. The smashed computers, the semblance of rage, the damning photographs, the painful manner of death.
LockSat had framed Castle. The jealous husband confronting a lover.
Castle was going to be arrested, her extra piece would be found - somewhere, a dumpster, a sewer grate - with his fingerprints on it. Because the last time she'd had it out was when they'd gone to the gun range, paranoid but determined to be prepared, and he had used that gun, it was his fingerprints all over it, it would be him they came for-
Oh, God.
There was no way out of this. No way to contain the damage. They would take him, it would happen all over again, and this time she wouldn't be able to save him. She hadn't saved him last time. He had saved himself, broken himself out of prison, but it wouldn't be like that now.
LockSat would get to him before he ever had a chance.
Her hands were shaking as she pulled out her phone.
They would - the police would subpoena the call logs, they would see her number on the cell towers as being exactly right here. It would place her on the scene. Her on the scene, and not him.
"Kate," he breathed over the phone. "It's been over an hour. God, I thought you were-"
"Castle," she cut in, tears thickening in her throat. "I'm so sorry."
"What."
"There's no other way."
"Beckett."
"I'm sorry," she choked out. "I'm so sorry. I love you. I love Maddy - you'll tell her how much I love her-"
"Kate, don't do this. Just tell me what's going on. Where's Vikram? What's happened-"
"I love you." She ended the call, bowed her head over the phone.
And then she walked out of the strip club dialing a new number.
It had to look like she was on the run.
She was on the run. As of now.
"Yeah, I need to see about getting my curtains cleaned."
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