there should be stars
She knows she's in trouble when she sees Will across the living room of the Candela's apartment. He's talking to the parents, taking notes on a reporter's cut notebook until he hears his name. Her fingers tighten on the coffee cup Castle had given her not five minutes ago.
"For what it's worth, the missing girl doesn't care about your history, nor do her terrified parents," Montgomery says at her shoulder, just low enough for her to hear. "All they want is to get their baby back alive."
Sorenson excuses himself from the parents, tucking his notebook into his pocket. "Hey, Kate."
She smiles politely, feeling Castle edge closer to her side, his thigh bumping her ass. "Hello, Will."
"You look good," the man says, reaching out to touch the ends of her hair, brushing along her shoulder and catching on the epaulette of her jacket.
Beckett steps back, stuffing her hands into her pockets. "I've been good. Agent Sorenson, this is Richard Castle," she says, nodding her head back toward Castle. Keeping it as professional as possible.
Sorenson holds a hand out, taking Castle's. "Right. Your mystery writer."
She almost bristles at the possessive – she doesn't own Castle any more than he owns her – but Castle's already taking it in stride. "Ah yes. The writer of wrongs."
"Cute," says Sorenson, dry tone implying that he really doesn't care at all for the other man. "So, Captain Montgomery filled me in on your little arrangement. I have no problem with it so long as it doesn't interfere with the investigation."
"Oh, don't worry about me. Quiet as a mouse," Castle responds straight-faced.
Beckett manages not to snort before she takes the framed photo from Sorenson and lets the FBI agent run through the facts of the case. The two year old was taken from the living room after her father went into his art studio to paint. Mother was asleep at the time. Neither of them heard a thing.
"How'd they make the entry if the parents were home?" she asks.
Sorenson paces over to the window, stepping around the dusting of dirt and the crime scene tech taking photos. "The lock was jimmied from the outside."
The father steps closer to the three of them. "When I couldn't find her, I looked everywhere. Then I saw the window and ran outside. I looked for her." He's talking more to the woman at his side, the one who looks like she's going between worried and supremely pissed off at her husband.
"Mr. Candela, you have a ground-floor apartment," Beckett says, turning to the couple. "Windows facing the alley. Most people have security bars."
"We were going to," says the mother, glancing up at her husband. "We just…"
"Never got around to it," finishes the man, squeezing his fingers around the woman's hand.
They delegate. Sorenson and the FBI are working on putting out the AMBER Alert to Port Authority and the Tri-State Area and Beckett says they'll run down any neighborhood sex offenders and look up residential burglaries that fit the same M.O.
"The parents have any enemies they can think of?" asks Beckett, already finding her keys in the pocket of her trench coat.
Sorenson shrugs. "None they could think of. Not that either of them can think straight right now."
"This thing goes south and they'll never think straight again," says Castle, none of the light teasing in his voice. She knows it's because he's thinking of Alexis and what life would be like if his little girl was taken and never returned.
Beckett turns to go back outside but Sorenson grabs the sleeve of her jacket. She manages to aim a quick look at Castle when he starts toward them.
The agent's voice is soft. "This one will end better. Promise."
She shakes his hand off of her arm, touching Castle's wrist to get him to follow her. He tries to lace their fingers on the walk out of the Candela's apartment to the car but she keeps pulling her hands away.
"What was that about?" he asks, sliding into the passenger seat and buckling the belt. When she glances over at him, turning the key in the ignition, he points out the window at Sorenson as he talks to one of his team members. "What'd he mean about this case ending better?"
She tightens her hands on the steering wheel, refusing to meet his eyes. "Don't know what you mean."
"Agent Will Sorenson," he says.
Beckett sighs, letting her head tip back against the seat while sitting at the red light. "Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to, Castle."
"But I do want to know," he whines, kicking at the dashboard once. Not for the first time, she wonders if she fell in love with a nine year old.
She's thankful for the changing light because she can focus on driving, navigating her way back to the precinct rather than watching him. "We met about a year after you went to Boston. A six year old boy was kidnapped."
"How'd it end?"
"We got the guy," she says tersely.
"That was it? Got the guy. End of story?"
She debates quickly, wishes they could do this somewhere that wasn't enclosed, where they weren't inches from one another. "We dated for six months afterward."
His voice is quiet, barely a whisper over the hum of the engine. "Was it serious?"
Her thumbnail catches in one of the cracks on the steering wheel. "Not like you and I were."
The silence presses down on them during the rest of the ride to the precinct. She grabs her bag from the backseat, pockets the keys. He doesn't move from the seat as she closes the door but when she gets to the elevator in the garage, he's caught up, sticking an arm between the elevator doors. She hits the button for the fourth floor.
And then he crowds her against the wall, hands on either side of her head.
"What are you -?"
He cuts her off, a swift kiss stealing the rest of her words as her head hits the side of the elevator. "Not like we are, Beckett."
She blinks, fingers already inching up to push him away. "What?"
"Present tense," he says, still far too close to her as the elevator climbs toward their floor. "I'm serious about you. About us."
The door opens and he steps off. Leaving her shell-shocked in the car, watching as he goes for the break room.
She gathers herself enough to get off before the doors slide shut again. But she avoids looking into the break room as she goes over to her desk, dropping her things on the top of the fairly neat area and getting the white board from the conference room. The boys come up from the stairwell, notebooks in hand.
"You find anything on the parents?" she calls, tapping the capped marker against her thigh and purposefully focusing on Ryan and Esposito and not Castle as he comes out of the break room with the two coffee mugs.
"Theresa and Alfred Candela," starts Ryan, taking the marker from Beckett's hand and writing their names up on the board. "They've been married ten years. One child, Angela."
"Oh, dude," says Castle, holding one of the mugs out to Beckett. She hesitates until she lets her fingers slide along the smooth ceramic. "You need to warn a man when you wear something like that."
She sits on the edge of her desk, mug against her chest and lets the boys tease Ryan. Yeah, his tie is loud; swirls of lavender and pastel green and even a dash of pink. It's only been two weeks for them, Ryan and his girlfriend, but she thinks it's sweet. They're celebrating the small steps, taking things day by day instead of projecting themselves out into the future, a future that may not exist for them. She remembers Castle doing a similar thing, waking her up with trinkets after a week, a month, three months. She still has some of the gifts scattered throughout her apartment; a little grey owl gracing her sidetable, a little white bird on rockers nested on her bureau in her bedroom.
"Hey? Beckett?"
She shakes her head, finding Esposito waving a hand in front of her face. "Uh. Yeah, I'm paying attention."
Ryan doesn't comment on her vacant expression, pushing past the remarks on his tie. "Angela Candela. Age two. Adopted."
"Adopted?" she asks, taking a sip of the coffee, forgetting that she's still kind of mad at Castle and coffee won't suddenly make that better.
"Yeah, two years ago," Ryan says, consulting his notes. "Mom, Theresa, is a fund manager at Keller Stanton. Dad's a small-time artist. Shows at the Greyson Gallery in Chelsea once in a while. Neighbors say he stays home with the kid."
She nods. All information they had gleaned from their time in the apartment that morning. She finds the folded piece of paper in her jacket pocket, handing it to Esposito. "This is a list of employees who had access to the apartment: baby-sitters, cleaning lady, super. Cross-reference them with all the registered sex-offenders, see if anyone in the area had a taste for little girls."
Esposito shudders, unfolding the paper and scanning the names. "You think some creepy-crawly might have scouted from the inside?" he asks, glancing up.
"Father said what he did this morning was part of a routine which means someone either got very lucky or they already knew," she says as she looks over the whiteboard, still sparsely dotted with information, their timeline practically blank. "Castle and I will head to Keller Stanton, talk to the mother's co-workers."
She's in the middle of downing the rest of the coffee when her cell phone rings. She answers, jogging a little to grab Esposito's sleeve. "Might not be a creepy crawler after all." The three men turn to her as she puts her phone back in her pocket, taking her keys out instead. "Candelas just got a ransom call."
The Candelas point them toward Doug Ellers after the ransom call, one of Theresa's old co-workers that she fired a few months back. The same guy who apparently blamed Theresa Candela for his divorce and the resulting loss of custody of their children.
Ellers lawyered up, proclaiming his innocence but refusing to say another word to Beckett or Sorenson.
"Run him down," says Sorenson to Ryan when they get to the desk the others have gathered around. "Where he was all morning and who can vouch."
Castle's perched on the side of Esposito's desk, flipping through apps on his phone. "Pretty clear it wasn't him."
Beckett sits at her desk, pulling the keyboard over and listening in as her two ex-boyfriends – oh god, the two ex-boyfriends she was even remotely serious about are in the same place – bicker over who is right. It's amusing for ten seconds and then it's not. She rolls her eyes, not looking up at the two. "Oh, for godsake, why don't you both just drop your pants and get it over with?"
Both men do a quick double-take but she's already back to her computer, faintly hearing Castle say something like "I'm game."
She narrows her eyes, getting up and gathering her jacket and things as regards the writer and the FBI agent as they size one another up. "Thing is, you're both right. Most likely he's not our guy, but when a child's life is at stake, we need to be sure. Which means you have to question everything you think you know." She turns to Ryan and Esposito, on-lookers who appear mildly amused by the exchanges. "Keep him on ice until we can track every second of his morning. Sorenson and I'll head back to the Candelas' and profile their associates and acquaintances."
Castle pops up, ignoring Sorenson's little smirk. "What about me?"
Beckett touches her fingers to his wrist, out of Sorenson's line of sight. "I need you to go home."
They're partially hidden from the squad, near the mailboxes the detectives use to get reports and updates from the uniforms. Because of that, she doesn't withdraw when he leans down and places a soft kiss on her cheek. "Okay. But if you need me, call. Even if it's just to talk."
He steps away, gathering his jacket up and heading toward the stairs even as Sorenson comes over and taps her elbow. "Ready to go, Kate?"
She falls in behind him. Sending Castle home was the right call. Missing daughter. Artistic father. Mother who isn't home all of the time. It's got to be affecting him. She knows she'd want to give Alexis a hug, reaffirm that she's still there at the loft. The time at home will be good for him.