Tyson hung up the phone, walked to over to Beckett, and untied her gag, carefully lifting the coarse fabric away from her lips.
She was pretty sure what the result would be, but she let out one hoarse yell, then another, then another, hoping for the off chance that someone would hear her. The screaming sent bolts of pain through her head and back, but was a good pain, a focusing pain, a pain that distracted her from the pervading anger that had wrapped itself around her during Tyson's phone call. She quieted when she noticed Tyson smiling at her.
"Not gonna help you, sweetie, but by all means, continue. Nothing I like more than hearing a gorgeous woman scream."
She narrowed her eyes and pressed her lips together in a thin line, sure that she wouldn't be shouting for help again unless she was more certain that someone might hear.
"Sorry you had to hear that conversation," he said in the same casual tone with which he'd spoken to Castle. She blinked slowly. She'd been disturbed by what Tyson had been saying about her, but the worst part had been knowing that it was Castle on the other end of the line. Anyone but him, she'd kept thinking, just pick someone else to mind-fuck.
"Are you?" was all she asked, the words scraping over her larynx.
He grinned. "No, not especially."
"I don't get it," she rasped, not particularly interested in hearing any more about her own future and trying desperately to steer the conversation away from Tyson's talk with Castle. "I don't get why you waited months to start again, and I don't get why Marisa Harington and I don't get why Angela Branson."
Tyson was still grinning as he grabbed a wooden chair from the corner of the room and pulled it close to her. When he sat, his knee brushed against hers. He reached out a hand and laid his palm against the side of her thigh, his fingertips resting lightly just below her hipbone.
She hadn't noticed what she'd been wearing before that moment – she'd had more pressing concerns – but the feeling of his palm flat against her leg made her hyperaware of the thin material of her grey cotton leggings, of the too-revealing, strappy tank top that was the only thing covering her torso.
She sat stone-still, barely breathing, her skin prickling.
"I started again with the blonde at Barnard because I felt bored and unfulfilled and I thought maybe if I could just get one more girl, I wouldn't feel so listless, so disappointed." He trailed into silence.
"But it didn't help," she pressed.
She tensed involuntarily as his thumb rubbed absently over her thigh. "It didn't help at all. I went to Barnard because, well, because I used to know a girl who wound up going there, because I thought maybe taking a trip close to memory lane would be fun, would get me out of my funk. But it was too easy, you know? It just wasn't fun, not even that moment right before she died when I could look into her eyes and see that she accepted it, not even those final jerks of her legs right before she went still."
"So you did something different," Beckett prompted, willing her breathing to be less shallow, her muscles to be less rigid.
"Of course. I thought, long and hard, about what would be more fulfilling, and for some reason my mind just kept drifting back to your writer friend. You understand, don't you? He screws up your life – by shadowing you, by blowing your cover, doesn't matter – and it's a fun prospect to mess with him a little in return, to tease him a little."
"I'm pretty sure there's some kind of line between verbal sparring and killing a kid."
He grinned at her. "If you need to think that, go ahead. Anyway, I had only really been thinking about him, thinking about how maybe it would be more interesting, more fun¸ to do something that would have a greater impact, when I saw Angela that very afternoon, walking out of York Prep, York Prep, of all places, where I'd only been to see if maybe I could spot someone who looked like Castle's kid – I do my homework, Detective – now go ahead and tell me that's not fate. It was so easy to follow her for a while in a stolen van and just scoop her off the sidewalk when nobody was watching. Then I just had to tie her up and wait until I could be sure of my privacy, until I could drag her to the alley just outside his home and kill her."
His hand tightened on her thigh as his story built until her skin and muscles were on fire and she knew she would have vivid bruises (even if she didn't live long enough to see them). At least, she thought, it was a distraction from the pounding in her head, the burning in her back, the ache in her wrist, the thought of Castle's panicked face. "But you didn't like that, either," she said, ignoring the fire searing her leg.
"It was awful," he said, clenching his hand on her thigh even tighter. She bit the inside of her cheek to hold back a gasp. "She was so young, and she just kept crying. And her hair, Christ, I couldn't stop looking at how red it was. Even with Marisa, even when it was a little bit boring, there was always this amazing, incredible feeling of release. After I'd killed the redhead, I cried. I felt so awful, like I'd just killed a little girl."
"You had," Beckett said, voice brittle.
"Don't worry," he said, his fingers still burning into her thigh, as he leaned closer to her and reached up with his other hand to brush her hair behind her ear. She swallowed convulsively as the pads of his fingertips roughed over her temple. "I've made sure that won't happen with you. You'll be perfect."
He got up abruptly, walked over to a corner of the room, and rummaged around in a small, black duffle. When he turned, he was clutching a colorful cardboard box and a syringe.
"Where are we?" Beckett asked, hoping to distract him.
"Oh, I've done plenty of talking, don't you think? I despise people who talk and talk and never get anything done. I'm big on getting things done, Kate."
"I see that," she said coldly.
"Now, you'll have to bear with me. I've never died anyone's hair before," he continued, laying out the contents of the cardboard box on the battered desk.
"You're serious," Beckett said, her hackles raised. The thought of him dying her hair seemed strangely, terrifyingly intimate, even if it would buy her time. "You don't think it's a little pathetic, Tyson? You're not man enough to kill a brunette?"
He whipped around. She knew she'd pressed a button. "What do you know about being man enough?" he snapped.
"You tell me, Tyson. I haven't seen you go after anyone who could fight back. Even me, you had to wait until I was passed out in bed and then you had to drug me. So what is it about murdering defenseless women that turns you on, Jerry?"
"You don't know what you're fucking talking about," he growled, eyes dark.
Stop pushing, a voice (a voice that sounded surprisingly like Castle, and since when had he ever been her voice of reason?) echoed in her head, but she couldn't stop the slideshow of the dead women's faces that danced through her mind, couldn't stop herself from replaying the look in Castle's eyes when they'd first discovered Angela Branson. "You have trouble getting it up when you're not strangling helpless girls, Jerry?"
He took two long steps across the room and slapped her, hard, on the cheek. Her head snapped to the side, and the salty tang of blood filled her mouth. She fought to stay conscious, pushing through the roar in her ears and the spots in her vision. He grabbed her chin between his fingers and forced her eyes up to him. His face swam. "You want to see me get it up, bitch?"
She stayed silent, fighting back the intense nausea from the raucous pain pulsing through her skull.
"I thought so." He released her chin, walked back to the desk, and continued mixing the dye. She bowed her head and concentrated on breathing deeply, willing her stomach to stop roiling, drifting toward unconsciousness and then back again.
She came all the way back to the feeling of his plastic-encased fingers twisting harshly through her hair, her scalp tingling. She jerked away weakly.
He threaded his fingers through her hair and yanked her head back toward him. "Screw you," she murmured, swallowing a groan.
"I cannot believe," he growled, "that I am the first man to want to strangle you."
"Christ, Tyson, are you fucking joking with me right now?" she moaned, jerking her head away again.
"You can't take life too seriously, Kate. I think your lovely writer was just starting to teach you that. Do you think he'll start taking life more seriously after they find your body?" His gloved hands dug into her scalp.
She swallowed convulsively, reminded herself that he was going for a reaction and that jumping every time the man mentioned Castle would only make things worse. "He'll be fine. I'm sure the media frenzy around my death and the posthumous dedication in his next book will spike sales," she said, closing her eyes, stars bursting at the corners of her vision.
"You'll be a gorgeous blonde," he said, ignoring her comment as he stepped away and regarded her. "We have 30 minutes, and then we'll rinse that off you – we wouldn't want to burn your scalp, would we?"
"Chivalrous, Tyson," Beckett mumbled, trying not to think of how he would rinse it off, because thus far she'd been able to beat back the panic fluttering at her chest.
Turning back to the desk, he grabbed the syringe and a vial. "Oh, come on," Beckett said, lifting her chin so that she was staring up into his face.
He smiled over at her. "Do you think I'm stupid, Kate?"
"I think I'm concussed, banged up, tied up, and still drugged from the first go round, and I think you need to grow a pair, Tyson," she spat.
"And I think you're trying to provoke me into doing something that I know is against my best interests." He moved back toward her, the dim light reflecting slightly off a clear liquid in the syringe.
"You must not have a lot of faith in yourself," she growled.
"Stop panicking, Kate," he said with a smile. She narrowed her eyes. "It's only a tiny bit, just enough to take the edge off. You won't even be unconscious."
She grit her teeth as he pulled her leggings off her right hip, efficiently exposing a swathe of skin and jamming the needle into it before she could so much as flinch, then pulling the cotton back up and patting her thigh jovially.
Her world spun, hazed, fragmented. The next chunk of time she remembered only in fractured segments:
Tyson's hands on her ankles, working deftly on the knots of her bonds, pulling the ropes off. Pins and needles bursting through her legs.
His arms wrapped around her ribs, hauling her to her feet. Her knees wobbling, giving out. Him half carrying, half dragging her toward the bathroom.
An icy spray on her face. Gasping for breath through the needles of water slamming into her nose, mouth, eyes. Shivering violently, every motion lancing pain through her head, her back. Tyson's hand roughly dragging through her hair.
Wanting only to wrap herself into a ball, her arms still bound behind her. Slumped on the floor of the shower, world spinning, convulsing with shudders, still choking desperately.
Kate Beckett was not a woman who needed other people. Her father always told her that he'd known how fiercely independent she was ever since she was five and scraped all the skin off her knee in a tumble off a curb and then insisted upon cleaning and bandaging the blood-soaked wound herself. Her mother's death and father's alcoholism and subsequent time as a cop had turned her intractable independence into what many might call (and had called) her primary character trait. But just this once, she thought, only this one time, it would be so nice to have the cavalry burst through the door and give her a hand (it would be so nice to look up and see Castle leaning down, his brow knit with concern but his eyes sparkling, whispering, "Here, it's okay, you're okay, I've got you, Beckett," and making everything else melt away).
X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X
I am sorry, my little Christmas elfies! You are so very nice to me and you come dancing around singing me holiday tunes about how I made you palpitate and want to die with anxiety and it all just makes my heart swell with happiness, and all you ask in return is that I just go ahead and FIX IT for Castle and Beckett, and then this is what I give you. To be fair, it's really not me that's doing it, it's creepy-ass Tyson, who really needs to get a life or a girlfriend or at least eat some chocolate or something.
So I somehow managed to produce this for you not just over Christmas, but over Christmas in Hawaii, listening to Mele Kalikimaka and sipping a mai tai, and I most definitely cannot get over my inherent creepiness (to be fair, it was mostly written during a rain storm when I was sitting in the living room, staring oh-so-very sulkily between the very-wet beach and my pasty-white skin). And my grandmother, who lives in this Tropical Paradise of Love and Happiness (which it is at all times except when it is a Depressing Land of Too Much Rain) and who would never understand the Doom and Gloom that the Endless Winter brings, is, of course, all, "What are you writing, dear?" "Oh," I say, "a memo" (which, well, is what I should have been writing). BUT ANYWAYS, my point is that (nope, didn't really have a great one to begin with) you all with your reviews and their whips from Santa/jugs of maple syrup coffee /hysterical running around/disco dancing/sad, pleading words and eyes have reduced me to LYING TO MY EXTREMELY, EXTREMELY OLD GRANDMOTHER. I hope you are all happy with yourselves.