Friday Night.

It was late around eleven, when the front door sounded. Who would disturb them so late? All his regular friends knew not to wake his family up after hours. Slightly irritated, Castle hurried to the door to prevent an encore.

Looking quickly through the peep-hole, he saw Sandy ballooned by the fish-eye. It brought her geography to a dizzy proximity. So absorbed was he, the bell sounded again.

"Shit," he exclaimed as he swiftly let her in.
"Hey lover!" She said coyly, resting on the door-frame. "Asked the nice man downstairs to let me surprise you."
Castle made a mental note to bang some heads, but looking at Sandy he could not imagine resisting her either. He put his fingers to his lips and made the shh sound. They paused as he listened for signs from upstairs, then he dragged her indoors.
"My family is asleep."
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize."
"You don't have to apologize for anything. Well, perhaps for being intoxicating without a licence. Is that a thing? It should be."
"Oh, it's a thing."
Her lips caught his.

The impromptu passion moved swiftly to Castle's office. So heady was her scent that Castle was simply not available to the world of reason.
As they kissed their way into his chair, a remote part of his mind was screeching alarm, a killjoy siren of attention. He was forgetting something. With reluctance he parted from her lips and pulled her into a hug.
Fogged by the animal, it took him a while to realize he was looking at his big screen. It was glowing, casting sibilant colours onto her low-cut dress. He traced a finger down her spine, following a tattoo that he couldn't quite see.
In the last shreds of sanity, the screen — again. Attention. Rather than figure it out, he switched it off. And then things just blissed-out.

"Where have you been all my life?" He asked her a while later, meaning it.
She smiled, "You say corny things that I can't fault."
"Well, from where I'm recovering, you sure took a long time to get here."
Her answer was another long kiss.

"What am I gonna do with you?" He asked, looking at her face.
"Pretty much whatever you can imagine, writer."
"Oh that's a given, but I meant tonight?"
"Your room? Or is it, let me guess!" She turned from seductress into imp, quixotic and perky. "It has a mirror on the ceiling. A disco-ball."
"A thick white rug." He supplied.
"Barry White on-tap."
"Naturally."
"Video camera, on a tripod."
"VHS, only the best."
She laughed, a tinkling wind.
"So that's your thing!"

What was love? He really wondered. Could it be this simple connection between people. This easy sense of a lifetime of knowing supplied by illusion?
How did this moment compare to what he had felt for Kate? He knew there were depths there, he could predict the intensity of something like this with her, but magnified by their actual history, their actual companionship.
However, that would take more than he could spend right now, as Sandy switched back to sultry and returned for seconds.

A lot later, they found the need for nibbles and milk. She didn't bother to cover-up and looked even better under the intricate lighting in the main loft area. Her gait was lithe like a predator's softened by the glow of intimacy. He admired her from behind. The tattoo actually pulled her shape into ever more exotic ideas. It shifted as her vertebrae shifted, it moved with her muscles.
He poured her a glass of milk; she drank like a hungry animal.
"Yum." She flickered her tongue. "Kitty like milk."
She was in full light, from above and down her back. Castle's eyes travelled along the tattoo and down her cleft. There, just before it reached the curves of her bum it turned to drape the image of a cross across her left cheek.
And surmounted upon it was a little gun.
Like a light going out his ardour fled.

He touched her back, "I'm tired you lethal thing."
"Awwww." She pouted. "Kitty want more."
"Kitty has to go." He gave a moue, "Me old man."
"Ugh?" She played along.
"Ugh." He agreed, fingers under armpits.
"Sigh."

He saw her down to the parking and into her car. As she drove off he felt his heart implode for the second time in two months. How much would it take, he wondered, to just drop him dead right there?

Saturday.

Another night of almost no sleep. He had more than survived the last one, but this time something extra had drained him. Betrayal. Conspiracy. He felt a fool for thinking a dream like Sandy could be real. He had been played like a young stallion barely out of the paddock.
Another part of his mind kept insisting that he was imagining the worst. It had to be innocent. The tattoo had to have an explanation.
Yet another part of him — and how many parts make a whole? — was telling him that he had betrayed his Kate, his one and done.
He wanted to call rot on all of them. The most attractive option was to satisfy himself that the tattoo was not the harbinger of all evil that he supposed.

Frustrating was four hours of scouring the web and not finding anything useful. He barely talked to his mother and daughter when they trundled down for breakfast. They quickly learned to leave him be. Morning Grumpy.
It only served to rediscover the same details as before. Sandy's tattoo was definitely on the harbinger side. I need more expertise, he realized. Time to pay a call to Alice.

Alice.

On the road, the wind blew a lot of his worries out the window. He buzzed along at a good clip to a little shop from his past called Ink and Lace. He had befriended Alice while doing research for one of his early novels.
The door made the customary ka-chinggg as he entered. It was dark and crowded within. The walls lined with designs, posters, older models of tattoo needles and the dross that any subculture collects over time.
"Richard Castle, as I live and bleed."
"Merry meet Alice."
He could not help but smile at her cryptic appearance. If she stood naked in a room with paisley wallpaper she would be invisible. Her tattoos covered every cell of her body. She'd probably do her eyes if she could figure it out.
"You look complex." He said.
"Ha. You look empty, Castle. Dull."
She approached and gave him a little hug. "What blows you to my door after so many years?"
After catching-up some and explaining he was working with the cops now, he came around to his purpose.
"Ally, I need confidential information about a tattoo. It's the kind of question that can get one killed. I want you to think very carefully about how, and if you will answer me."
This struck her; she took a little step back. "You're serious aren't you?"
"Never more so."
"Right, so let me get this. You want to ask me about a design. You want me to hear you and then decide whether to answer or not."
"Yes."
"And seeing this design can get me killed?"
"Yes, well asking about it, being overheard."
"And if you describe it to me, won't that be past the point of too late?"
"Err— I guess. I mean, you might know it and be bound to kill me on sight. I think I can risk that — if you're also in this conspiracy then I have no chance with my baker!"
Alice gave a throaty laugh. "Same old Rick. Okay, lay it on me."
"Thanks Ally. Here it is." He took out his burner-phone and flipped to the images.
"Burner, Castle? It does look serious. You hiding?"
"Will be. Hiding my steps before the other hiding starts."
"By ink and skin I swear not to rumble your game Castle."
"Okay, this one Ally, think on it." He showed her the image from the web.
She whistled through her front teeth, "That's hardcore man."
"Do you know it?"
Alice avoided his eyes. She wandered into the back of her store. He followed. She crouched and started digging through a scabrous pile of Ink magazines.
"Got. Something. In. One. Of. These. Some place. Ah!"
She produced an ancient copy of a tattoo fan-magazine. It was obviously hand-made on an old Xerox machine and stapled. The date on the cover was 1965.
"Darn Ally, this thing must be a collector's item by now."
"Meh." She said, sagely.
He opened the zine, but Ally slapped his hand closed. "You were right. This is scary stuff. Go home. Don't flash this around."

He took a moment to hold her. She had always been on-edge and prone to the arcane and the bizarre. This made her nervous. Or was it the other way around?
He had sailed-in and upset her but, like a trooper, she had helped him yet again.
"Name a favour Ally, let me give back."
"Maybe Castle, when I can think again."
He left her his email address and, "Merry part."

On his way home, the zine tucked in his pocket, he pondered upon all the twists and turns that had brought him, them, to this point.
It was in no small measure his fault; for ignoring Kate; for opening graves. He didn't really see an honest way he could not have done it. She was trapped in a coffin of her past. She was a songbird in an ugly cage and he had instinctively sought the key. Somewhere during his search he had fallen for her — for a time, in a way.
Truly had he called her a mystery he would never solve. But he never expected to still be digging around the base of the mystery. He had imagined a swifter assault on her keep. Some tangible progress.
Frustrating is Kate Beckett.

Back in the loft, he found a note on the fridge. Somehow Martha had talked Alexis into going to the new school. Will wonders never cease?
Within moments, he was at his desk with the tatty old zine in front of him.
It flipped open and stayed that way, so it was easy to browse flat. He was glad because the state of the paper was not enticing. Besides the years and the rot, there was the matter of human fluids across decades.
His writer's imagination supplied gushing arteries, misused tattoo needles, the little magazine lying there open on a design, its face being showered in— He shook his head.

The design reminded him of those old Crumb comics. The whole thing was hand-illustrated with only a few photographs, for the complex tattoos. Paging through it was a strange distraction, an acid-trip into his mother's youth, but so far it was all normal, for variable values of normal.
When he got to the centrefold, he saw the tattoo that graced Sandy's back.

After digesting the article, he made some scans and opened his murder-board. Something about the placement stopped him. He was sure he had been re-visiting the Coonan layouts last night, before that erotic hijack.
He thought back to the morning. He had hit the web, but that was in a browser. It ran its own window and would not have touched the board. The board was now showing data about Roy. He knew he had not been looking at that.
With a cold feeling of sobriety he felt the last butterflies of hope leave. Sandy had been at this board last night. They had not been together all the time, there were toilet breaks, kitchen runs. She had rifled-through his board and — who knows — taken a copy via USB? Anything was possible.

He was suddenly glad that he had not included any data about Sipho or Esposito's other connections. Nor had he included anything about their own plans. It was a murder-board, and it focussed on the evidence, nothing else.
Okay, not much has been given away. And we have learned something in return. We have a lead. We have Sandy. She is involved somehow. She may still be external to the Dragon; may be an agent opposing him, but it was something.

The basic invasion of his privacy and the hurtful manipulation of his trust led him to think about how he could protect his family, the whole family, cops and all.
If this was the fatal leak, the tip-off that would start the killings he needed to work fast.

And then Castle had an idea. It was such a light-bulb, his face lit-up.

The Old Haunt.

"Morning Boss," greeted him as he sauntered through his bar. He tipped his hat to Hemingway, sly old dog. At the end of the bar he found the hidden catch and released his trapdoor.
The thing could have been installed by Hemingway, but it was all down to prohibition and a certain Mayor Walker. The place was not empty, but the few patrons were in the front, so Castle cracked it enough to slip downstairs.

Down in his domain, which he visited too infrequently, he sat on the couch and took to studying the little room. He looked up the staircase and pondered how gas grenades would make this area very uncomfortable. We'll need a solid metal door.
He kind of wished the whole room was on a lazy-susan that could rotate around to present a solid wall where the doorway had been. Ah well.
He got up and slid the shelf across. He recalled how he and Kate had struggled to move it. The gap was visible and a coolish breeze blew in from the tunnels beyond. The ancient door beyond was tough, but age made it redundant. He passed-through, shuddered at the shotgun that had blasted Donny.

The ambience was everything he recalled. Eau de Rodent. He grabbed a torch and pushed-on. A two-way tunnel presented itself. He knew left went to the old Mayor's stash, but he had never turned right. Right it was.
After a short tunnel he came to a larger open area. Here there were five other tunnels that led away likes spokes from a hub.
This will do, he thought. Couple a hundred grand and it'll be Fort Knox. He jogged back to the office, closed the shelf and consigned himself to the fantasies of a little boy building a secret fort.

The Dragon.

"Is he still digging?"
The Dragon's voice was not deep or any kind of cliché, but it wasn't a comfortable sound. Sandy tapped her fingers on the laptop. She had a secure audio connection to her boss.
"It's hard to be sure. What I saw may have been from the previous investigation; he may be using it for his novel."
"Did you make copies?"
"Yes, on a stick. But—"
"I don't like buts, Lieutenant."
"His drive is heavily encrypted, I did not have time to study the layout. What I have is useless."
"Frank and efficient as usual, I forgive you."
She sat in silence, awaiting orders. Sounds of the cigar puffing and paper rustling.
"Very well. Continue your mission."
"Sir." This was the only response she was allowed to a direct order.
"I will deploy a small Fiat team to your area. They will be watching you as well as the primaries."
He was saying she would be punished if she did not perform.
"Yes Sir, acknowledged." The Dragon cut the connection.

Sandy sat back on the wooden chair. She was a soldier in the Fiat Fidelis. A member of a team so secretive she had only met one other operative. Lockwood had been her idol, a man capable of anything. Her training, five years in Southern Arabia, had been at his hand with Al-teneen guiding it.
She did not know how large their organization was, but she knew it spanned the globe with tendrils into militaries and governments.
She had been saved by Al-teneen from a life of sexual-slavery on the streets of London. He had seen potential and formed it. He had given her purpose and pride, and she thanked him by becoming one of his best soldiers.
So, why do I feel like what I am doing to Rick is so wrong?
She could not answer.