P/N: Hey all. I'm sorry that it has taken me so long to post this but I was afraid I'd lost it when my laptop fried a couple of months ago. Luckily, I discovered a thumb drive in the back of a desk drawer and this was on it. I changed the font size and style because it varied, without reason, throughout the story. Tom was having time with his server at the time and ended up sending me the chapter in the form of a letter and I think he deliberately changed things up, just to 'f' with me…he even hinted that he had. I haven't heard from the crotchety old coot in a while and I'm really hoping he's just gone back to Mexico and chosen to enjoy his time doing whatever made him happy. If anyone has any news, please let me know. Hope you enjoy this and I really hope it's not the last we hear from OLDESTMAN. JT
Chapter 10ann
DFW Airport
Dallas/FT Worth, TX
Alex was beat. The book tour had been a success, yes, but the constant nagging and scheduling and pandering by Gina, his editor/publisher, had broken something in him. He needed to go home and just wrap Kate up in his arms and hold her until whatever was broken healed itself.
He loved her, was in love with her, even though he knew that he was nothing more than a 'quick read', like a summer book for the beach or vacation while she waited for something more interesting to come along.
Unfortunately for her, the guy she was waiting for had moved on, tired of being held at an emotional arm's length while she dawdled through Alex didn't know how many relationships.
Castle. It was always Castle that he felt himself being compared to and it was Castle that he repeatedly failed to measure up to. She never said so but he knew. Their relationship was all one-sided and no matter how hard he tried, it would never be anything else but that.
She sometimes slipped and called him 'Castle' and the most hurtful time was when they were making love. He was making love. She was having sex – with an imaginary Castle.
KB – arriving LaGuardia on American 1300 at 7:30. Pick me up and we'll have dinner – AC
Beckett heard the buzz for an incoming text, read it and frowned. 'I don't need this now. We're closing in on the shooters and this is one case I have to solve. I want Castle to have the justice that was denied me. I want to give him that. I want to leverage it into something more.'
AC – Sorry, Alex, caught an important case and we could use your help. We can grab something at Remy's while we kick around the leads. – KB
She didn't need his help. He was still muddling around, his thought process still 'inside the box' even after all this time. 'Castle used to say that it was okay to color outside the lines to better see the whole picture. Alex is still having problems holding his crayon.'
Kate frowned at the thought. It wasn't really fair to compare the two of them but if she was going to develop Alex into the partner she'd lost, such comparisons, metrics as Gates would call them, were required.
"Esposito, what do we have on the Trauma Center's internal security cameras?"
Martha Rodgers had cancelled a series of dinner theatre 'guest appearances' when she got the news about Ann's death. She rushed home from Florida as soon as she could catch a flight. Her son needed her and she vowed to be with him.
"Alexis, Erik, your father is trying to find some reason to live and I suggest the three of us start providing those reasons. I know that you're living off campus, Erik, but could you possibly move in here with us temporarily? The guest bedroom is empty. I'll be sleeping at my place but spending my waking hours here. You shouldn't be alone, darling, at such a time, either."
Even though Ann had been his stepmother, she was more of a mother than his own had been. Her death was just as devastating and he knew that Rick, despite the brevity of their relationship, had truly loved his mother as no other man had.
"Yeah, I'll move in. I think it's a good idea for us to…we all need…shit, Grams, I miss her so much…" Martha hugged him and rubbed his back while Alexis stood silently watching, her own eyes glistening with unshed tears.
"The first thing we need to do is get all the liquor under lock and key."
Castle sat at his desk, his feet propped up on the ledge of the window. If anyone were to casually glance into the office, it would appear as if the author was wool gathering or perhaps developing a plot. If that same person had happened to catch his reflection in the window glass, they would come to an entirely different conclusion. His face was streaked with tears and hands were covering his mouth as he tried to muffle the sobs. He was almost unable to form a coherent thought, so lost was he in his memory.
All he could see was her lifeless body covered by a white sheet on Lanie's autopsy table when he went to identify the body and make arrangements for the funeral director to claim the body.
She looked like she was asleep. Her tan gave her a healthy look and he couldn't stop himself. He reached out and touched a fingertip to her lips – cold – as cold as death.
He felt as if he were having a heart attack. He couldn't seem to hold the air in his lungs and the familiar lab seemed suddenly cold. Lanie recognized the onset of the panic attack and she and one of the morgue attendants had helped him out to the waiting area.
Lanie had pressed a cup of hot coffee into his hand. Castle remembered that Lanie had laughed at the expression on his face when he first tried it back when he worked with Beckett. She had laughed and claimed 'it can raise the dead'.
'Oh, if only that were true,' he thought, stepping back into the fugue state that was his memory.
"Rick, I'm going to call someone at the 12th to take you home, okay? I can't conceive of how you must feel but I do know that you're in no shape to navigate the city in your current state. Do you have a doctor I can call?"
He didn't need a doctor. He needed a gun. A pistol, something small and easily concealed, maybe like that 5-shot hammerless colt that Javi carried in an ankle holster. Yeah, that would be perfect, but how to get it past the metal detectors?
His grief was replaced with resolve. He was going to square things up. Make the world a safer place. Tilt the Scales of Justice in the right direction for a change.
There would be no plea bargain, no stay at a coddling state institution, no triumphant return from prison in 5 or 10 years to an organization that would embrace him as a true hero.
No, there would be none of that.
He turned to his laptop and started outlining his plan. He ignored the tumbler full of liquor that shimmered from the force of his fingers striking the keys of his laptop. The alcoholic haze burned away as his mind focused on the problems at hand and the plan to overcome them.
Alexis stood outside her father's office and heard the muffled sobs and then the sound of her father's chair swiveling around and the laptop opening but it was the sound of the 'clatter of the keys' as her father once described it, that signified that he was writing.
If he was writing then he was slowly coming back to them. She eased the door closed and turned to her Grams and Erik and gave them a watery smile.
"He's writing. He's going to be okay, maybe not right this minute, but he's finding himself and making adjustments to cope. He just needs time. You'll see. Ann's memory and his love for her will save him. You'll see. You'll all see. You just wait."
It sounded like wishful thinking, even to her, who knew him best.
A/N: Hey all, the above are the words(and below) as I got them from Tom. JT
sorry but now you'll be a true editor jaytoyz