Author's note: Wow-the closing paragraph of the previous chapter struck a nerve! I am humbled that I was able to throw out a snippet that caught readers by surprise - Thank You! Meanwhile more of Castle's doomsday provisions...

Chapter 11 Hunker Down in the Bunker

Castle flopped on the other stool, winded and staring, after a thorough search for Kate. He expected to find Beckett in the office nook of the house, and he did, but it was the paternal one settling in to the new surroundings. The men gave a single nod to each other and Castle continued his journey. Next he climbed down the stairs to the moon base. The lighting was off in both directions so she hadn't been by in the last 15 minutes. He tried to guess which section she would claim as her own. Castle replayed a scene from the first night at the bunker…

"Um, there are 3 small bedrooms up here in the house, but a dozen sleeping units down below," Alexis hesitantly announced. She looked around at the adults unsure in her role as hostess. "I'll sleep in a pod down in Tranquility and I know Gram wants a room upstairs."

"No, Alexis," Jim quickly cut in. He saw enough in the back seat on the trip - heated looks and longing glances, a secret caress and holding hands to know a significant shift had taken place in his Katie's heart. "I think you should stay upstairs with your grandmother in case someone comes to the door. They know you and it would be unusual if you weren't here right away. The rest of us can try out the facilities below ground."

"Why don't girls sleep upstairs and boys sleep downstairs?" Martha unwittingly countered.

"Yes, I think Kate needs to sleep upstairs." Castle agreed.

"And why is that, Rick?" Kate asked with a raised eyebrow, knowing full well that his over active imagination was strangling his libido.

"Um, because, you'll sleep better." He was trying very hard not to say having her underground was too close to having her 'six feet under' or any other euphemism about being dead and buried. He picked up on her tension about the place and figured she needed to keep her head up.

"I'll sleep just fine as long as you're beside me." She tried to ignore the surprised gasped from Rick (and his family) at her bold assertion. She openly tucked herself into his side and his arm automatically pulled her close. "I refuse to hide in a closet and pretend our relationship hasn't changed."

Martha squealed and gave a dramatic flourish, "About damn time! Jim, you better sleep upstairs - we'll all benefit from the sound-proofing."

"GRAM! That is so gross!"

"No darling, that's realistic. Gross would be suggesting they don't need to find the storage container with extra clothes in it because they won't be dressed anytime during the next week. I however do need to find the provisions made for sleep attire. If I recall consideration was made for fashion and not just generic garments." The flamboyant woman spun her granddaughter around and headed her towards the stairs. "Let's go. Jim, accompany us?"

"We'll all go together. Goodness knows you'll need someone to act as your bag boy," Rick was bursting at his lover's words and he needed an outlet.

The writer monkey chattered as they trooped down the stairs and around the bunker. "The numbers, 1 through 12, let you know where you are - like hands on a clock." The sounds echoed through the bland concrete corridors. The base commander pointed at a brightly painted steel shipping container, a vibrant break from the grayscale, and continued the orientation, "The colors are loosely connected to the purpose of the section. Red houses emergency medical unit. Yellow is for wellbeing - games and exercise equipment. Green is below the greenhouse and has food supplies. Blue has the guns and security monitors. Purple has the clothing and incidentals. We've got sweat pants, khakis in every size. Shirts, socks, shoes and other, um, undergarments. Alexis and mother had quite a bit of fun shopping, but they did try to buy sizes and styles that were appropriate for the guests that might be here."

"You skipped the color orange." the detail-oriented lawyer pointed out.

"Oh, well. This is a place for worst case scenarios. So orange for hazards - bio, chem or nuke." Castle looked embarrassed.

Kate remembered all too well setting in an isolation tent waiting for the decontamination process. She didn't begrudge her partner and teased her father, "Orange you glad you asked?"

Everyone groaned. Kate got a hip bump from her man child as they continued to journey to deeper hues of the color wheel.

The clothing section was near the tactical supplies in the blue corrugated steel. Castle nudged Kate as they went by. "You should feel right at home in there. It has a battered old desk and an uncomfortable chair beside it."

"Nope. I gave up NYPD blue and I am trying for Mary Sunshine, though you would have me be Kathy Black. Let's settle on Kate- not detective Beckett, just Kate."

So Castle went to the nautilus equipment in the yellow wedge and found it deserted. Just to be thorough he crossed over to blue command center and found it equally still. He made a methodically search of the moon base. No luck. His next guess for the woman he knew so well was to pop up to a barn converted to a workshop where the Hummer was parked. Maybe she went into town for newspapers or to get the lay of the land. Maybe she bolted now that everyone else was safe...

The vehicle was indeed missing but a note was tacked to the empty key hook: "Gram and I went into town for groceries and to another farm for fresh cheese. Yes, I'll go by the sweet shop..."

But now that avenue was exhausted (and his legs close to it) and there was still no sign of Beckett. The process of elimination left only one location.

Castle flopped on the other stool, winded and staring. He tried to puzzle out why she choose the greenhouse. He watched her pouring over the Montgomery files, filling a yellow tablet with notes, cross-checking data. She ignored Castle and his unspoken questions. (Goodness knows she had plenty of practice with that and some things didn't need to change.) She was thrumming with tension? impatience? Repressed energy waiting to spring into action?

He'd given her everything he had. All he had left was unflinching devotion. He wondered if it was enough.

Katherine Beckett wasn't afraid of foreign lands or exotic foods. She was comfortable with high society and homosexuals. She was sexually confident and beautiful. She wasn't afraid of much. There was something that unsettled and worried this exceptional woman. It wasn't falling down the rabbit hole of her mother's murder investigation. Yeah, she struggled with it but she also had given it up twice before. Of course it was connected to her mother, wasn't everything in her adult life about her mother? Her deepest fear was failing in the one thing she vowed to the cold granite headstone on a bleak day. It was a simple utterance, born of frustration because of an alcoholic father and no desire to continue to law school. If she couldn't be the first female Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, and now she quit being a detective, how was she going to make good on her promise to make her mother proud?

Kate Beckett wasn't afraid of much. She shrugged off the perps who wanted to do vile things to her body. She actually loved the rush from facing down the guns and knives. The sting from the tattoo needle or the burn in her muscles during a workout made her feel alive. You'd think matching wits with killers and psychopaths would give her nightmares but they were manageable. What scared her wasn't her father's alcoholism or even the publicity that went along with being Nikki Heat. What scared this former cop was loosing the love of her life. Her fears whispered she could lose him from a damned bullet (did he really have to publish it in Heat Rises?) Fear also whispered maybe she wasn't enough for him - anymore. He shrugged off a former muse in a much sexier job. He brought back Derrick Storm. (What does that mean for Nikki?) Now that she wasn't a cop - how did she keep Richard Castle interested?

Katie Beckett wasn't scared of the dark (despite what her daddy thought). She just wanted to avoid the temptation to creep out of bed and use the feeble light to read late into the night. Monsters in the dark were easy compared to her mom's disapproval in the light of day. Katie wasn't afraid of the playground bully - even back then she knew how to handle herself and others. She wasn't afraid of anything in big city known as the big apple. Get her out in the country and there was one thing she would avoid at all costs. And she was surrounded by them. Lots of them. All around her were those damn river rocks.

She hated those smooth stones that were ready to tumble off their precarious stacks and bury a person alive. Give her sharp stones for rock climbing that tore your fingers and cramped your feet trying to find purchase on a vertical surface. Not those slippery smooth spheres waiting to pummel you under an avalanche. Those were the kind of stones that in the old days lined a water well and looked deceptively too cute to board up. Just because a kid might drop a toy down its depth, the lack of water at the bottom didn't mean the child might not get trapped in its dank and dark depths. An athletic child might be able to shimmy part way down after the yellow Frisbee before loosing her footing on the moss covered stones and tumbling to the bottom. The youth tried to climb out of the old well except the rocks came loose and knocked her on the head and bruised her arms. The young girl stayed trapped until her playmate finally wandered by to see what was taking so long. The dumb boy may have teased her too long before lowering the rope and giving her a means to escape. So Katie Beckett was scared of river rocks.

Castle's castle was a fortress made of stone and rock. But unemployed detectives marked for death and hiding in a glass nursery shouldn't throw stones - even metaphysical ones. She couldn't tell him. She wouldn't disparage the safe haven the father/daughter team built. Kate adapted. She spent as much time as possible out of the stone house. She was also vaguely unsettled by Castle's secret moon base. So her destination of choice was the greenhouse. The bright light, lush smells, and oxygen laden air was soothing. She settled her bruised body on the stool around what was supposed to be a repotting table and claimed her space. She spread out the unaltered Montgomery files. She needed to study these pieces of paper that held the power for her life and so many deaths.

Castle studied her aloof posture a moment longer. When she reached over and gave his hand a squeeze he relaxed. She had followed him to the unknown and she was here for now. She needed some familiar routines so he followed her lead. He wanted to build theory, but instead sat quietly and let his mind contemplate what Bracken might be up to.

Jim Beckett's unwitting assignments the day he opened the Smith box stayed intact. Kate poured over the NYPD folders, Rick focused on the background information gathered by Smith on the Senator's stunning rise to power and the wide reach of his influence. Jim followed the wealth- followed the money and all things financial. Johanna's file stayed closed. It was a symbolic gesture to keep the spirit of her commitment to Rick unbroken. Actually it was still in Rick's procession. It was an uneasy détente between lovers, between past and present, between promises and reality. Détente between the dead and the living.