The Wonder: Chapter 11

DISCLAIMER: None of these characters are mine, but they are memorable. Thank you Mr. Marlowe.

Mid-July, Still the Same Day – 11:05 a.m. – Back at the coffee shop, a mile from Federal HQ in D.C.

The chicken pasta plate that sits in front of her is almost wiped clean. Kate Beckett sits, satisfied, staring at the pedestrians that slowly walk past the now filling-up coffee shop. The lunch crowd is making their way out of the Federal buildings in the area and out to the local eating establishments.

It's been almost fifteen minutes since Kate has hung up with Dr. Burke. It had been a good – no, it had been a great conversation with the doctor, and – as always – he has left her with much to think about. He rarely takes the initiative to tell her anything. Instead, he allows her to figure things out. This conversation had been a departure from that method, as he had evidently decided that she needed a push. She is grateful for his decision.

She has been online with her mobile phone since they had finished talking, looking for flights to New York. She finds a flight to LaGuardia for tomorrow morning, and is ready to click to buy when she stops, noticing the happy couple that passes by, holding hands, smiling. It wasn't long ago that she had that happiness. She stares at her mobile screen, the green 'BUY' button beckoning her to push it and complete the transaction

"This is exactly how I always screw things up," she thinks to herself, "jumping in, all fire-aim-ready instead of ready-aim-fire."

She wipes a strand of hair from her face that blows in the July summer breeze, and places her cell phone down on the table next to her plate of diminishing pasta.

"Something happens, and I react without thinking things through," she says, now talking out loud to herself. "It's why I am here - all alone - in a strange city, away from my friends. Away from the man I love."

She smiles to herself, feeling as if a cloud has lifted. When she had spoken to her dad, months ago, before she took this job, she had told him that she was starting to get restless. He had asked her why. He had wondered aloud to her, why she would be 'restless' just weeks after a man she professes to love has refused to leave her while a bomb was counting down. He had warned her that she was falling back into her pattern.

"C'mon, Katie, surely you can see this. Things start getting too good, things start getting too 'normal', and you get restless," he had told her. "You start looking for the exit. Yes, this may be a great job they are offering. But do you give up what is turning out to be a great life for a great job?"

She had – as always – gone into defensive mode, protecting herself, protecting her reality. She had pushed back, and everything had sounded so darn logical as the words were coming out of her mouth.

"Dad, believe me, this is a dream job. The way this has come out of the blue, it's almost too good to be true."

She had hated his response, then, and hates it now even more, only because it has proven to be true.

"Well, you know what they say, Katie. If something looks too good to be true, it probably is."

The job has come to her under false pretenses. It was a way to get her out of New York, to get her away from something important her sworn enemy was planning. And she had fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

Now she has the opportunity to go back, and at least start trying to repair the damage she has done to the one happy, fulfilling relationship that has always avoided her. But does just going there and showing up solve anything? What's she going to say? What's she going to do? What does she really want? And if it is Richard Castle that she really wants, then why in the hell did she leave in the first place?

He had tried to ask her these questions – but it was too late. Her mind had already been made up before he found out. And once he found out, it was too sudden, it was too unexpected. She doesn't do well with sudden and unexpected.

"If I go down there now, what am I going to do?" she asks herself. "Barge in and fall on my sword? I know Castle, and his reaction to this mess so far has been completely opposite from what I would have expected – so I can't predict how he will react. I need a plan."

She turns to flag down her waiter. The coffee shop is starting to fill up, and with it comes the expected noise of the lunch crowd, eager to flex after a morning sitting behind desks. A walk – and a more quiet setting – will do her good.

"I've already made a mess of things, so my next step has to start turning this around," she thinks to herself. She is feeling better. She marvels for a moment the sad irony that although she finds it impossible to see the forest for the trees when she is in the midst of the forest, everything is crystal clear once she has left the forest behind.

"One of these days, I'm going to have to have this clear, clean vision in the midst of the fire," she promises herself.

Three minutes later she is stepping out through the gate from the outdoor eating area, and hailing a passing cab. She slides in quickly, and gives the instructions to the cabbie.

"To the National Mall, please."

She enjoys walking the Mall, with the green park separating her favorite monuments. She will go to the Lincoln Memorial today. She never grows tired of reading the inscription there, in the quiet shaded interior. She sits back, relaxing, and starts to close her eyes as they pass multiple streets, approaching the stop light many blocks away from the coffee shop, when her eyes snap back open. The cab is stopped, they are at the intersection, and the light is red. But that isn't what catches her attention.

They are stopped within yards of the front glass doors of building where she works. The cab in front of her has stopped, and its passenger is disembarking.

"Don't move," she tells her cabbie. "Even if the light changes."

In front of her, one Eric Vaughn is walking away from his cab and heading toward the doors to her building. Sure enough, he goes inside.

She opens the car door, ready to jump out to run after the billionaire philanthropist. Her mind is racing. What is he doing here? And in her building?

After her conversation this morning with Dr. Burke, and the realizations that have come alive because of that conversation, her radar is on high alert. She stops herself, closing the door. Running in – without a plan – is exactly the type of impromptu error she knows she makes time and time again. She has just reminded herself of this back at the coffee shop, yet here she was again ready to jump into the fray without thinking.

She mentally gives herself a pat on the back as she gives the cabbie instructions.

"Sorry – I thought I saw someone I know," she tells him. "Let's go."

"Eric Vaughn?" she whispers to herself. "Am I supposed to believe this is purely chance – purely coincidental?" she thinks to herself, now fully on-guard, questioning everything around her. She knows that this man – and her interaction with this man – had turned out to be a lightning rod for her and Richard Castle. Castle had expressed reservations about the man, and about the time she was spending with the philanthropist just a few months earlier, during a case. And he had kissed her. And she had let him. Kissed back, in fact.

Today, she would swear to you she has no idea why she allowed it. But seeing him is a reminder to herself that she needs to do better, be smarter, with spontaneous situations.

"But what the hell is he doing here?" she wonders again, and then her heart flutters, and her hands quickly ball up into twin fists. Her mind is taken back to a long-ago conversation with Mike Royce. A conversation that occurred years ago, when she was still a police infant, trying to find clues to her mother's murder, and Royce was her first training officer.

"Question every coincidence," the future bounty hunter had told her back then. "Do that and you will find – more often than not – that what appears to be a coincidence is simply part of a plan you are not meant to see," he had told her. It sounded like a pretty pessimistic outlook on life back then to the rookie cop. Time, however, has proven those words to be quite prophetic.

As she rides toward the monuments, his words are sounding off alarms in her head. His words – she will think back months from now – are what place her back on her road to redemption. Whether the road leads back home or not will be determined someday. But for now, she feels stronger with every passing block in the cab, as she realizes that the last 24 hours have pulled the curtain back – giving her a better view, new insight, into what is happening with her life.

"Eric is here, and I'm pretty certain I wasn't supposed to see that," she tells herself. "I got back from North Dakota a day earlier than expected, and the only person who knew this is Deputy Director Freedman."

She frowns, starting to tick off in her mind, the potential implications of this.

"Don't do this, Kate," she warns herself. Don't jump to conclusions."

Nevertheless, she cannot help but consider the possibilities. Vaughn is here, and – according to the Mike Royce view of the world – his departure from that cab was something she wasn't supposed to see. Yet see it she did. So what does she do with this information that – had it occurred ten mere seconds earlier – would have been shielded from her?

Vaughn's time is valuable, and he doesn't mess around with small fry. He is meticulous with his time and his meetings. So she knows he isn't walking into her building for some low-level discussion. He's meeting someone big. And there are only so many 'big fish' in her building.

That means – again, according to the Mike Royce view of the world – there is a meeting going on that she is not supposed to be privy to. Yet, here she sits in this cab, now fully aware of the fact that he is there meeting someone.

Nothing – as it turns out – has proven to be what it appears to be, on face value, over the past couple of months. Not the reason she was recruited, not the relationship she thought she had with her boss, and not the assignments she has been given. If form holds – and the universe has just pulled back the veil and given her a gracious glimpse – then Eric Vaughn's presence here is not what it appears either. But there is a way she can find out. There is a way she can determine how on the level the man really is.

I don't believe in coincidences," she tells herself. "But he's a man who gives money away. His mindset is far more positive than mine."

She pulls his contact information up on her cell phone, thankful that she never deleted it after their case. After all, there are some people you never want to delete from your rolodex. She idly wonders if Richard Castle – even after the distrustful interaction with Vaughn – would delete the contact information of a man Castle himself admitted to be on his bucket list, his Last Supper.

"He will see this as a coincidence," she tells herself, as she places her finger on the SEND button. She stops herself at the last moment.

"Don't assume anything, Kate," she reminds herself. "Don't give away any advantage – and right now, me knowing he is here is my advantage," she tells herself.

She leans her head back against the seat top, closing her eyes, willing her mind to clear. There are simply far too many thoughts racing there now, and she needs a caution flag to slow things down. For the next minute or so, she sits there, eyes closed. The ticking of the cab fare clock is the only consistent sound that makes it way past the mental wall she has invoked, when suddenly it hits her.

"I hate to do this to you," she says to the cabbie suddenly, her eyes opening. "But I need you to turn around and take me back – right now, please," she tells him.

The cab driver gives her a look, but then realizes that a fare is a fare. "It's your money, lady," he tells her gruffly as he makes a quick right turn, and then heads down the street before making a second right turn, headed back to Kate's Federal office.

Ten minutes later, with a bit of extra traffic, she finds herself exiting the cab a block away from her building. Walking this final block allows her to finalize the words necessary to execute her impromptu plan.

"At least it is a plan this time," she tells herself, getting more nervous with each step she takes back toward the Federal building. She realizes now, more than ever, that for the past couple of months, she has been a pawn being moved around on an elaborate chess board. A plane trip here, a train ride there. All a part of a "plan she was not supposed to see."

"Thank you, Mike," she thinks to herself as she walks through the glass doors, and heads straight to the security desk, and Jeff Washington, the security guard. Fortunately, one of the first things Kate did in her new capacity was to befriend the young man who guards the elevators, sitting at the computer terminal behind the security gate.

"Hi Jeff," she offers in greeting as she walks up to the small gate area, taking out her security card to be scanned.

"Hello Agent Beckett," the guard returns her greeting. "How are you on this glorious morning?"

This is one of the reasons she likes the young black man. No matter her mood, or anyone else's mood, it seems he can always be counted on for a smile and a cheerful greeting. She wonders if he realizes what his little gifts do for the people in this building, and the nightmares they routinely navigate through.

"I'm good, Jeff, but I could use your help," she says. She hates lying to the man, but she tells herself the ends justify the means in this case. And either way, he won't be hurt by it.

"I'm trying to surprise someone, and I need to know if she has arrived yet or not," she tells him. "Do you mind if I take a quick peek?" she asks.

"Who is it?" he asks. "I can take a quick look."

"Well . . . it's kind of something I'd like to keep quiet for now, if you get my drift," she tells him with a bit of a wink, drawing a smile from the young man.

He takes a quick glance around, in both directions, then makes up his mind.

"Well, you work here, and you are a federal agent," he decides. "I don't suppose it can be any harm."

He rolls his chair to the side, allowing Kate to walk and stand next to him. She grabs the mouse, and makes a few clicks, pulling up the list of visitors and employees who have passed through the security gates. She scans names, looking for something out of the ordinary. When she was clearing her mind in the cab, she realized the 'assumption' she was making. She assumed Vaughn is here to meet with someone who works in this building. But then she remembers that the building is filled with conference rooms – video conference rooms – that many people from multiple buildings in the area come to use fairly frequently. It's possible that multiple people are coming in for a meeting.

When she asked herself – mentally – why she should even consider such a longshot possibility in lieu of the more obvious choice – that he is meeting with someone who works in this building – she had smiled at the answer. Castle.

"It's a better story," he would say. She can hear him saying it even now, and she cannot suppress a sad smile as she recalls her thoughts from the cab ride back to the building. Suddenly the smile freezes on her face. Evidently she tenses up as well, because the change in her body posture is noticeable to the security guard.

"Everything okay, Agent Beckett?" he asks her, glancing at the computer screen, wondering what has frozen the agent.

Kate Beckett finally exhales a breath, as she stares at the entry, the name of the visitor to the building that arrived at 11:09 this morning.

William Bracken, Senator, U.S. Senate

She straightens up, regaining her composure, forcing a smile to her face for the security guard.

"Everything is good, Jeff," she says pleasantly, her racing heart threatening to give her away. "She hasn't arrived yet," she lies.

She walks toward the glass doors, needing air, needing freedom, needing to see the blue sky, needing to feel the sun. She is nervous, she needs to walk. But she also realizes that she is in charge now. Once again, there are no coincidences. Once again today, she has again seen something that was supposed to stay hidden from her. So if Eric Vaughn knows Senator William Bracken – and there is no proof yet that he does . . . but there are also no coincidences – if Vaughn does know the Senator, then everything she knows about the billionaire must be re-questioned. Including his 'chance' meeting with one Detective Kate Beckett.

"Thank you, Mike," she once again offers upward to her now deceased friend and mentor, as she walks out of the building, her mind starting to move pieces around on her own board now.