Chapter Eleven

Walking back into the bullpen after getting dressed for the day, Beckett stopped when she saw the momentary flash of panic when Castle walked into the bullpen that morning and noticed that she wasn't at her desk.

He covered it quickly as he apparently noticed her jacket hanging on the back of her chair. She wondered how long until this feeling went away, how long until he was back to just walking in with a smile whether she was in her chair or not. How long before seeing anything other than a smile had her tempted to go right back to where they had been outside her car last night?

She shrugged it off, because with that thought came memories that she would rather not address this early in the morning, or ever for that matter As she approached, she watched him put her coffee on the desk and move to the other side to prop himself on the edge and check over the white board.

He was obviously looking for anything new or trying to see if anything was going to click. She hadn't heard him spout an insane theory in a while and while they waited for Ryan and Esposito to arrive with the wife, she could prod him into it.

She wouldn't admit that it was fascinating to hear him spin a tale, not even to herself at the moment. Of course, it was obvious by his chosen profession and he didn't need the ego boost. Mostly, she craved the familiarity of it, so picking up her coffee she leaned against her desk next to him with a, "Morning."

Castle turned to her with a smile, "How was 'Old Lumpy'?"

She craned her next side to side for effect, "Old and rather lumpy."

His smile dimmed a moment and she was concerned when his eyes softened that he was going to bring up the previous night. "Kate,"

She couldn't take him looking at her like that, calling her Kate in the middle of the bullpen. This was not back to normal; this was a tainted variant of standard. This is an unsettling turn of events that she had to push past because his blue eyes were calling her and she could get lost in them.

She abruptly turned her head back to the board, "Ryan found out that when the victim wasn't losing cases, his defendants were disappearing."

Her peripheral vision was still keyed in on him, despite trying to shift her focus to the whiteboard and she didn't miss the flash of disappointment as she pushed right into the case.

He followed her lead, dropping whatever he had been about to say as he turned back to the board, trying to find the new info, "Where did they disappear to?"

"I haven't gotten confirmation yet, but it's looking likely that they are in witness protection." She could see the blocks falling into place on a theory and relaxed a little. This familiarity is what she had been waiting for through the awkwardness this morning. This was comfortable, familiar, just them doing what they always did, and some small part of her was laughing at the fact that she felt a moment of disappointment herself.

After a moment of galvanizing his thoughts, he turned his focus from the murder board to her, "Maybe it was Harold Mason. Cooper was on a losing streak and when he didn't lose the case, he lost the defendant. Mason couldn't take the chance that his firm would go under because of one lawyer. He's the Senior Partner. He's the one with his name on the office. He's the one with the most to lose if the firm got a bad rep for helping and harboring rats."

"He's a lawyer, Castle. He's not going to risk life in prison when he could just fire the guy." She knew she sounded exasperated; it was a practiced skill she had developed just for these situations.

She saw his pout and had to shift her focus to stare at the coffee cup when the errant thought of why she hadn't noticed before that it was a cute expression on him practically smacked her across the face.

"That doesn't solve Cooper's murder, though." He finally responded.

She could feel his eyes on her, but she fought the urge to blush as her mind ran off in its own direction, taking her off guard for a moment. Tramping it down she was finally able to look back at him, "Neither does supposition. Anything else firing up there?" she didn't mind pushing him for theories just then.

When he's in that frame of mind he's a lot safer than when his playful side is allowed free reign.

"What about Chad Ferguson?" He asked, though he didn't seem too excited on the prospect, "Maybe he thought if he could get Cooper out of the way, he could take his position in the firm, move up and get ahead. Possibly a little excess ego there and he thought he could 'save the day' and save the firm in one fell swoop."

Beckett shrugged, "He would probably just wait it out, so you have the same flaw in your theory as with Mason."

He simply nodded.

"That all you got?" she inquired after a long silence.

He was considering the white board with a serious look on his face, as she watched him for a reaction. She saw the spark in his eyes the moment something clicked, "What if we're looking at the wrong side of this?"

Suddenly his thoughts seemed to click through her own brain as she spun the circumstances around, "Because who would be more pissed about the defendant's disappearing? Not the lawyers."

"Right, this is about the mob or his gang ties."

"I can imagine Anatoly and Montoya wouldn't be happy to have their people turning on them."

"They'd be furious." He agreed. "They would blame the lawyer. Maybe Cooper was actually spoon feeding the Feds witnesses, or maybe they just suspected him."

"Maybe there's a paper trail, these guys have ways of getting information that isn't in the public record." She said thoughtfully.

He seemed to add as a quiet after thought, "Like your address."

It took her a moment to realize they had fallen silent and their eyes were locked in the short distance between them. When she finally recognized exactly how close they had inched towards each other, she snapped her gaze back to the white board. "But we can't prove any of it."

He stops to think, staring at the board and they both turn to each other in the same moment.

"If it was a woman…" he starts.

"Could be the wife." She finishes.

Castle's eyes get that faraway look, the plot line spinning in his head a moment before he starts to speak, "She has given her life to this man, worked two jobs to pay his way through law school and sacrificed ever having children to his blind lust for law and the pursuit of victory. She starts to suspect something is up, but he always has such a good reason for working late or not coming home at all. One night she has finally had enough and follows him to his mistress's house. Afterwards as he walks through the park on his way home she pounces on him. In a blind rage she chokes the life out of him, whispering as he chokes out his last breaths, 'I gave you everything, I made you who you are, and now I am taking it back.'"

She can't stop the sarcastic bark of laughter; it's not his best work. "First of all, who said anything about him having an affair? Secondly, the force that was exuded to crush his windpipe like that had to have a little more power behind it, that woman was a hundred pounds, soaking wet."

"He did have a mistress, we figured that out yesterday. And I thought I was the one too tired to pay attention?" he asked, but his voice had softened and she knew he was alluding to either their physical good night or the one on the phone a short time later.

She bit her lip to fight the smile as she recalled both in vivid detail.

She hoped her house wasn't a crime scene for long, because she needed to get some decent sleep tonight so that her thoughts weren't running away from her. So that she wasn't tempted to reach out and touch him again, decide if she preferred the soft skin on his cheek this morning to the slight stubble from last night. So that she didn't wonder if his lips would be as gentle as his arms had been.

Whoa, hold up.

She made an effort and wiped the thoughts out of her head. There was nothing productive about thinking those thoughts and she had a case to solve.

Just as she got her resolve in place and her mind swimming with thoughts of their victim, eyes scanning the information written and attached to the whiteboard, she felt the weight of his hand covering hers in the space between them. Involuntarily, her fingers curled around the edge of the desk where her hand was holding her up.

"Kate," that same voice, the same expression, she noted when she glanced briefly from the corner of her eyes before shifting back to scanning through the facts and evidence in front of her.

Whatever she had stalled him from starting earlier, he was obviously inclined to continue and she was fresh out of excuses to stop him.

Fortunately, before he could get anything else out, the elevator dinged and she shot to her feet. Ryan and Esposito were walking towards her with Terry Cooper.

The victim's wife was a far cry from the woman they had met the day before. The woman in the high-rise apartment had been immaculately dressed, make-up done perfectly, not a hair on her head out of place.

The woman passing them to go wait in interrogation wore a simple pair of jeans and a comfortable looking t-shirt. Her hair, a short bob, was hanging limply around her face as if she hadn't styled it this morning. Her expression was the same, blank as ever, but her eyes gave her away.

She had obviously spent much of the time since they had last seen her crying and gotten very little sleep. Her eyes looked hauntingly sad in her pale features and dark sunken eyes.

Once Mrs. Cooper was settle in the interrogation room, the two detectives joined her and Castle at the whiteboard.

"She's like a ghost." Castle said from close behind her. He must have moved while she was watching the woman walk through the bullpen. "I can't believe that's even the same woman."

She looked over her shoulder, surprised, but oddly not irritated by his proximity for the first time all morning as she read the sympathy on his features, "Grief can do some crazy things, Castle."

He simple nodded and by unspoken consent, they moved to the room to speak with the wife of their victim.

She didn't realize exactly how hard this would be until she had seen the woman.

Yesterday, Terry Cooper had been so put together, so confident and nearly unflappable. As striking a contrast as it made, her tears as she confirmed that she did know about their victim's affairs were even more of a mystery to Kate.

She could see the woman's emotions, clearly on display for the world. She didn't seem upset that her husband was sleeping around as much as she had been upset that she was not able to provide the sexual affection he needed.

"I have stage four cancer; I probably won't live another six months." She said. "I lost the energy for sex a long time ago, but Charlie never gave up on me. He never stopped loving me and taking care of me."

Kate could see the sincerity on the woman's face as she continued to explain, "I knew he was seeing other women, but it was just sex. He was still mine in heart and soul. I couldn't. . ." she stopped on a sob and dropped her gaze to her hands as if she were ashamed, "I couldn't be there for him in all the ways he deserved and I. . ."

Castle reached across the table and put a hand over her tightly clasped ones, "It's ok. You don't have to explain."

Kate wondered why she wasn't mad for him ending the forward progress of the interview, but his sincerity stopped her from a glare she would normally launch his direction.

After a few moments, Mrs. Cooper had calmed considerably and was looking upon Castle with a weak smile, "Thank you. I know it's not socially acceptable, though now and days who knows what passes as acceptable."

"But he loved you." Castle finished for her and the woman graced the two of them with a genuine tearful smile.

Beckett hated to rain on this moment, but there was still the matter of a murder to solve, "Did your husband discuss the women with you?"

"Never." She said sincerely, sadly, "I was fine with sharing him as long as I didn't have to know the details. Now, I wish I had asked. Maybe then I would be able to help you find who did this."

x.x.x

Castle was watching Beckett move through the bullpen on her way back from walking Mrs. Cooper out. He had done a lot more watching her today. Not that he didn't spend a large portion of his day doing just that, but he felt like he was on uneven ground. He felt like he was having a hard time figuring out what was going on in her head.

A couple of times today he looked at her and thought he saw a flash of something sparking in her eyes. He couldn't place it; it was swept away so quickly that he wasn't certain it had even been there.

With his active imagination, he had a hard time determining whether he was actually seeing it or if he was simply projecting his shifting mindset on her.

He had been fighting a losing battle of saying or doing something stupid all morning. He had tried and succeeded in actually calling her Beckett for most of the day, but for some reason he felt 'Kate' slipping off his tongue with a ready ease that often caught him off guard.

He was slightly unnerved to see it was nearing one o'clock. He was certain with as little as they had to go on that she'd probably suggest they get some lunch, but he didn't know if he could handle being away from the precinct with her right now.

Last night, while a memory that made him smile as he thought of it, was also weighing on him. He had known for a long time that there was something more than his juvenile sexual references between them, but he had started to grow comfortable having a real legitimate friend. He wasn't sure the last time he had a friend that wasn't after him for his money or to advance their own celebrity status.

Then to think he had lost her only to find himself overwhelmed with thoughts of how they should be so much more, had thrown him off all morning. A couple of times he found himself tempted to say something. He didn't know what he would have said and as a writer, being without words had felt like a new level of hell.

Having thoughts of more than friendship now, threw a wrench in everything they had built together and he didn't want to move forward, but he didn't want to move back. He couldn't get the feeling of her against him out of his head, no more than he could shake the sight of her comforting his daughter in a way no one but him had ever been able to do.

He was still lost in thought when his phone rang out Alexis' ringtone 'Dad! Dad! Dad!' and he answered it on instinct, "Shouldn't you be in class." He greeted her cheerfully.

Beckett had watched him from across the room, his expression set and contemplative. Sometimes she wished she could climb in his head and wander around for a while figure out what was going on in there.

As she approached him, she heard the obnoxious ringtone he had given his daughter's number from halfway across the room and felt the involuntary smile tugging at one corner of her mouth.

She watched him answer, still lost in thought, but a playful smile on his face, simple delight shining in his eyes from the knowledge that it was his daughter on the other end of the line.

The change in him was swift.

His face paled almost instantly, and he dropped into his chair as if he could no longer stand on his own. "Ok, ok, I. . ." he started and then seemed to lose words as he searched for her, eyes locking as if begging her to give him strength.

She moved towards him with renewed purpose, but didn't break eye contact and that seemed to help.

"I'll be right there." He finally said and hung up the phone without another word.

"Castle?" she asked tentatively as she stepped up beside his chair. It was a question of what was going on as much as a question of whether he was all right, but he just shook his head.

When he got to his feet, she saw the complete discomfort sweeping him and he squeezed his eyes shut as if regaining his senses and composure.

She couldn't stop her hand from reaching out to rest on his arm, "Rick," she said finally, not sure why she was using his first name until he looked up at her and then it was obvious. Because it would get his attention, "What's going on?"

"It's Alexis." He said, but the tone of his voice told her it was far from a normal teenage issue.

The way his eyes slid to the murder board made her stomach knot.

x.x.x

A/N: OK, so I said don't expect quick updates, but I finished Christmas stuff early for the day, so I had a chance to get this written. I really need to work on my other story, but it's still being difficult. I'll get a new chapter up in 2-3 days.

I know that's mean when I gave you a mostly case chapter and then left it there, but I have plans a brewin' and this is already a thousand words longer than a normal chapter.

Review(s) that made my day:

kewellchick, I'm glad you're enjoying the ride and I appreciate the kind words and encouragement. It brightened my day to hear there was a good balance between the angst and fluff, hope I don't let you down moving forward.

gmay, I guess crossing your fingers worked and my muse has taken note.

Thanks for reading.