Close Encounters 29


It sucked not having her hand in his, or her voice in his ear, not having her body pressed for a moment against his side as she directed him. He'd grown used to it, how she touched, and for a man who'd had so little of that kind of contact through his young life - and his adult - he'd gotten scarily needy for it.

He liked touching things. He loved touching her things. But now they kept apart.

She followed his lead as they took a circuitous route through town, acting like the killjoy. Acting responsible, professional, by the book. It was her public face in the Office, the way she handled her team of analysts, and he'd seen it before. Taking care of business.

In other words, kinda boring.

But that was only what they were supposed to be doing, because she was right. Salome would be watching. Salome was testing them out, trying to find their weaknesses, fucking with them.

Didn't mean he was happy with having their date night ruined.

"Romance is kinda dead, isn't it?" she said softly, about eight blocks away from the fire now, heading the wrong direction.

"Kinda," he sighed.

"She definitely killed it for me," Kate muttered.

He lifted his head, glanced at her, but she wasn't looking at him. He was going to have to pay attention, because he could swear she sounded - jealous? No, not that. She had insisted she knew what they were, what they had - how the hell could she not know? - but this was something else.

Oh.

Oh, damn.

Possessive.

Well.

That was interesting. "Uh, romance still kinda going for me," he said. "Interestingly enough."

"What?" Her sharp glance his way, her frown of disapproval.

"Not her, no. Just. You." He offered it lamely, but if he explained he liked her possessive of him, he wasn't sure that would go over very well. And it might ruin the seething tension just under the surface of things that was, actually, doing it for him.

She wanted to claim him. A little violently, if he knew Beckett. He wanted to be claimed.

No one had ever wanted to claim him before, not like Beckett.

No one like his wife. No one.

"Fuck, okay. Now I'm pissed," he huffed. Their night-in at the safehouse was effectively ruined as well, because he was going to spend the pre-dawn hours on guard rather than sleeping curled around her.

Not that he needed sleep; he was stocked up - had been for a while now, all that island living. But no way was it cool with him that image Beckett had planted in his head where Salome came in and held a knife to her neck.

No fucking way. He did not do well with knives at Beckett's neck.

"You're pissed," she growled. "You just said you're still seduced after all that."

He suppressed the urge to laugh, coughed instead as they walked. A foot of space between them. She liked to touch, not hanging all over him, but she liked that touchstone of contact. He knew that. She must be coming out of her skin to have a foot of space between them.

And it wasn't funny, but it kind of was funny?

"Just how strong your seduction is, Becks."

She huffed and Castle smiled in the darkness, wondered if she saw his amusement. She stepped a little faster, walking a pace ahead of him, and he just followed.

"Come up with a plan, Agent Castle," she snapped.

"Yes, ma'am." Wandering was as far as he'd gotten on that plan, even thinking about it for an hour now as they walked towards one of the uptown hotels. He knew Salome wouldn't buy their wandering, but it was important that they not lead her straight to their safe house. They had gone parallel to the location, bisecting the town for a while now, but it was time to disappear.

Salome hadn't pointblank said she'd set the fire. He hadn't seen any victims either. It was so damn hard to know.

"Castle?" Her voice was tentative.

"What?"

"I'm not sure my judgment is - clear."

He ruthlessly suppressed his grin. "If it makes you feel any better, I'm pretty sure mine isn't either."

"That doesn't make me feel better."

"Well." Tough. Life. "She's a tricky bitch."

She grumbled at him, and he tried to revise his language, but it was the most honest and true version of their reality.

"She is," he insisted. "She's always playing mind games. I used to be good at those, had to be with my father, but my head isn't exactly in the game."

"Your heart," she murmured.

No, his heart wasn't in the game. It really wasn't. "I'm not saying we should leave her out to dry," he said quietly. "I'd prefer not to give her the shiny reward we've got in that briefcase, but at the same time, if it will tie up a very big problem here, then fine."

"I'm not sure she set that fire," Kate said suddenly. "I think she was pushing - trying to see how firm our resolve, yours, trying to figure you out after all this time gone."

Could be true. "And so what now?"

"We'll play her game," Kate sighed. "Unfortunately. Let her run off into the night and follow us around town. She won't learn anything about us. But we might learn something about what's happened around her."

"You think it's not of her own making?" he muttered. A dead handler said Lo was in it up to her pretty little neck.

"It is, oh it probably is," Kate growled. "She did this. But. How much of it? And what knowledge does she have that we might need?"

Or need not to get out.

A sudden dark doorway and the side entrance to a skin bar loomed before them, orange neon in the gloaming. And now he had the start of an idea. "Here, in here, Becks."

He darted sideways and was wrapped in complete blackness, the interior door between the club and the street dark as night with the entry bulb blown out. Kate had been on top of him practically before he had finished speaking.

Which meant she'd been prepared, on the lookout for their next move - and definitely ready to get the show on the road. He was glad for that.

She breathed hotly at his neck, her hair brushing his cheek as she turned to look through the glass in the entry door. "I don't see her."

"Wait for it," he murmured.

They waited a long time. But he knew Salome wasn't always patient, never had been, and she'd come closer to investigate. She would have to, because she fucking hated to be beaten. She'd come.

And then she did.

Skulking across the street, her body sheathed in black, defined by the very darkness she used to try and hide. She was in an alley, leaning against the brick wall, and she lit a cigarette, watching the street for signs of them.

She hadn't seen them duck inside the nude lounge, but she'd come looking eventually.

He studied his former asset, musing to himself that he had once called her a contact but never once had they ever really made contact. No connection there, nothing going on behind that woman's eyes. "Lose her for tonight or hang on to her and see who comes to her rescue?"

"Lose her," Kate growled.

He smirked. She wanted him alone, and she didn't like Lo, and he was perfectly fine with that.

"Alright, let's lose her," he whispered. "May I offer you an invitation to a strip club?"

She snorted softly, slapped the back of her hand against his abs, but she slipped ahead of him into the nude bar.


It was loud inside, the beat strident enough for a night club but the energy severely lacking. The bar was at the back, right inside by the door where they'd come in, and it held a thickening mass of male humanity, all watching the dancers behind them in mirrors that hung along the wall.

Kate turned her head to look more closely.

Dancers was an exaggeration. Definitely working for it.

"Should've stocked up on singles," she remarked dryly, lifting an eyebrow at him.

"Oh, you're funny," he told her, his hand on her hip so that his thumb dug into her bone. She could feel his grip like a bruise, and she found that appealing. To be possessed.

"No, I know they use pesos," she answered. Feigning ignorance of his true meaning and drifting closer to the stage. The dance revue was comprised of five basically nude women trussed in complicated harnesses made of strings of neon lights. They reminded her faintly of Christmas trees. "It'd be bills of hundreds of pesos, so they'd hardly call them singles. You know, I don't actually know the slang for-"

"Becks," he growled, dragging her away from the lights, farther into the darkness. "Not important. And you know I don't like this." He was trying to weave through the crowd of tables, the skewed chairs and men in their short-sleeved dress shirts, pits stained, their beers and mustaches and drooping eyes.

"Could be important. Never know." It was a depressing scene, here at the back, but she'd seen the side stage door, and so she resisted Castle's relentless tug and slipped out of his grip. She moved back to where it was fun again, near the stage where the younger guys congregated.

Castle followed because he always followed, because he was hers, and she reached back for his hand when he crowded her. The stage projected out into the middle of the main floor, a long T column with a second bar acting as a kind of moat around the girls. The bartenders here were women, and they wore sparkling eye shadow, had glow sticks slung around their necks, bangles of neon on their wrists, their white skinny tanks printed with the name of the bar: Moulin Rouge.

Ouch.

They served, of course, absinthe and broken dreams, while the dancing girls on the raised stage in the middle of the floor spread their knees and humped the air in nothing at all like the can-can.

"Her skin is beautiful," she told Castle, nodding to the woman about her own age who was doing something lewd with a LED-lighted boa. "Damn. You think she'd teach me that trick?"

"Becks," he growled. "We are not picking up a stripper. Move back to the front where the real bar is. Delivery access-"

"Delivery access is so textbook," she said. "I want backstage. Come on, baby. I wanna see the beautiful costumes."

"I can guarantee you they lose their magic up close and personal," he muttered.

"Oh, you can?" she said, teasing him. But not teasing him. A little flare of possessiveness on her side of things for his up close and personal. "Should I invest in some fishnets and that - uh - is that a corset?"

Castle leaned in at her back, hands on her hips as they watched the girl gyrate to her twinkling lights. His mouth came to Kate's neck, his breath making her skin shiver. "Baby, I hate to break it to you. But you own both of those items, thank God, in more erotic and fuckable versions than her threadbare garments straining at their seams."

"So you were looking at her massive breasts."

He sighed, tugging on her until her back was against his chest, her ass nestled at his hips.

She laid her hands over his, tightened his hold on her. She stroked her fingers on top of his fingers. "No, seriously, though. Those things are monsters. I think they'd break my back, pitch me forward."

His hands roughly came up her ribs and palmed her breasts, squeezing, even as her own hands covered his. She gasped, rocking on her wedge sandals, and then he gripped her hips and turned her around to face him. "Beckett."

She tilted her head into him, closing her eyes. Had she meant to make him furiously aroused? She couldn't tell anymore.

"Kate," he mouthed at her ear. With the porn music so loud it was feeling more than hearing, and she wanted to reach between them, touch him, but she thought that would be a mistake.

Especially with Salome out there somewhere.

"Your breasts are all I want," he said, licking her neck. "Now that you've made me sufficiently crazy for you, you wanna lead us backstage?"

"Mm, sufficiently?"

"Becks, stop killing time. She's not coming in to follow us."

"Damn," she muttered, turning her head to catch his eyes. She had been doing that, hadn't she? She wanted the showdown, one more, on her own damn terms. Come in here and approach me now, bitch.

She wound her arm through his and leaned in, kissing the corner of his mouth for knowing her so well. For calling her out on her stupidity. There was no point in confronting Salome a second time, even if it was on neutral ground.

X-rated neutral ground, sure. But still of Kate's own making.

Castle merely raised an eyebrow as if to say, get on with it.

So Beckett grabbed him by the belt buckle and dragged him after her, heading for the side stage door and whatever was behind it.

An escape.

They should be looking for an escape. Not looking to prove something to his ex who wasn't even really an ex.


The hall was narrow where it scraped behind the nude bar, his shoulder brushing the walls as Kate led him back. That no one at all had stopped them seemed atrocious, but he wasn't going to complain. Not when they needed a covered exit and a way to get back to their safehouse without Salome - or someone more sinister - following them.

Finally the hall opened up onto the main dressing room for all the dancers, a hectic, female-shrieking hellhole that smelled faintly like his mother. He balked, but Kate tugged harder, and he spilled into the room after her, catching himself on a metal locker.

His mother was an actress, not a stripper.

Though, for all he knew, she might have been.

The dressing room was like a combination of a men's locker room and a female harem, and it was revolting. Body odor was thick, glitter eyeshadow stained every surface, and polyester, prosthetics, and unforgiving lights filled the space. Kate turned back to him with wide, wide eyes, as if she'd never expected this.

He could have told her. Then again, maybe knowing up close and personal information about lap dancers and strippers wasn't the ideal opener to a romantic evening with his wife.

He wanted his damn romance back.

"Skirt the edges, find the employee entrance," she said, pressing in against his arm. Making up for lost time.

"Yes, ma'am-" But he didn't get to finish, because the phone in his pocket buzzed sharply, four shorts, the American Morse Code signal for the letter H.

Home.

"Castle?" She had swung back around to him; his face must have registered his shock.

He fumbled in his pocket and grabbed for the phone, pulling it out with two fingers to check the display. Home.

"It's - home," he croaked, lifting his eyes to hers.

"What?" she gasped.

"I need - quiet - a quiet place-" He was already answering the phone even as Kate went into action. "Castle," he said briskly, letting Kate pull him like a kite towards an alcove.

"Rick!"

His lungs released, air escaping as relief trickled through his bloodstream. He shook his head to Kate to let her know. Wasn't her dad. "Doc," he answered, not using the man's name. Boyd had a tendency to forget when they were out of the country, and he would call the switchboard to get in touch with him or Kate.

Switchboard had routed it to his phone, and the Home identifier - every call from their real life came through with that ID - had momentarily panicked him.

"I know it's late, it's late, I'm sorry to bother you. But I have wonderful news."

"You do, huh?" Castle scraped a hand down his face, lost sight of his wife for a moment. "Hang on, Doc."

She popped back into view, grabbed him, and he followed after. He ducked behind a partition to find a group of three vanities sharing one mirror, an open bottle of tequila, three shot glasses with garish red lipstick stains, but no dancers.

He sank into a make-up chair, widening his legs so Kate could step between his knees, her hands on his thighs as she stared intently at him. "Doc, you know it's - uh - vacation time over here."

"Oh. Is it?"

He smirked at Kate and she rolled her eyes - at both of them, most likely - so he cradled the phone against his ear with his shoulder and laid his hands on top of hers at his thighs. "Yeah, it is. I gave you guys our itinerary before we left, Doc."

"Oh. Oh, yes, there was an email. I didn't read it."

"Of course not," he said smoothly, smiling again. There was a shriek from behind the partition, something about hombre and he really hoped they hadn't suddenly decided to take offense to him and Kate being back here. He jerked his chin towards the partition and Kate cocked her head, listening.

"Look, Richard, we've found something - made a breakthrough."

"Breakthrough?" he said dumbly, watching Kate as she shook her head and mouthed not us; grabby hands.

"A breakthrough in our research. I know you're - on vacation," Boyd said. "I'll be quick. Just the highlights. First-"

"Wait, Doc, are you at the lab at this hour?" he said, frowning to Kate. She pulled a face for that, and he shrugged. "We don't want you guys killing yourselves for-"

"Richard. Focus. We have a breakthrough in our blood research."

"Okay," he said. Not that he didn't care; he did. But Boyd called them every six months with a breakthrough and so far all it had led to were a handful of super foods they'd added to their diet and a better blood test for Kate.

"University of New South Wales in Australia has been studying genome editing-"

"You've lost me, Doc." Kate raised an eyebrow at him and he shook his head. "What's that?"

"Cutting and repairing genes. DNA, Richard. Repairing DNA. But here's the interesting part - the UNSW has proof of concept - done in the lab - which suggests that it is possible to turn on dormant genes, alleviating certain kinds of blood disorders. Threkeld brought this to me; you can't imagine his excitement."

"I literally cannot imagine Threk's excitement," Castle deadpanned. Kate laughed and he grinned at her, but he wanted to wrap up this conversation, get the hell out of here. They were moderately protected from Salome or whomever else might come looking, but he wanted the safehouse. "Alright, Doc, so this place has a new study. That's - good. That's a step in the right direction, right?"

"This is beyond a step. This is proof of what your father was doing all along. This is what he did to you, to your genomes, Richard, and it's what happened to Kate when she was pregnant. Echo's proteins did this-"

"Wait. Wait, hang on. What? What proteins?"

"You know how we've discovered that proteins are such a crucial factor in-"

"Yes," he said tersely. This was more than an interesting blood study. "Echo's proteins did what."

"Let me back up. I think I'm not explaining well."

You think?

"First. UNSW did a study in which they used genome-editing proteins which we call TALENs to cut these specific genes that have to do with the production of fetal hemoglobins. The genes are cut at a specific place, a place where we want this good DNA to be inserted - DNA the researchers happened to leave nearby. A cell will naturally try to heal a cut genome by patching it with spare DNA - this same DNA left lying around."

"DNA left lying around," Castle muttered.

"Well. Inserted portions of DNA which are usually dormant - the human genome has more than we know, portions of DNA that have been discarded by evolution but never by our grand mapmaker. It's still there. This study just showed us that it's possible to turn on and off genomes that will allow red blood cells to produce more hemoglobin."

"Which is - me," he said. "And Echo."

"Yes. Your genomes are already on. Turned on indefinitely. Your hemoglobin isn't the same as normal adult hemoglobin, it looks more like the fetal version, but it's a third type, unknown type. This study says - look how easy this is to do in real life. Drop donor DNA into a red blood cell, use the TALENs to cut these genes where you want the donor DNA to go, and voila, third type hemoglobin."

He realized, suddenly, that Kate looked absolutely furious. She wanted to know. This was her baby - not James, no - the regimen. This was her thing, and he'd come to knowledge late, thinking it was just another way his father had fucked with him.

But how damn important it had become. How vital in their lives.

"Doc, I'm gonna put you on speaker," he said quickly. "Tell me this again, and for Becks too. No names, Doc. Understand?"

"Right, right-" Castle heard and then he had the man on speaker, his voice carrying over the noises that came from being in the middle of a production (and strangely made Castle miss his mother).

"Doc," Kate called. "Thanks for calling to let us know. What's going on?"

"A new study, K- ah. Yes. A new study. First, let me preface this by saying that Chinese scientists have already edited human embryonic DNA - a complete controversy, of course, but it's been done. Just as it was evidently done to your - um - man there." Castle got a flash of her smile for that, her man. Boyd kept going, oblivious. "This study, at a university in Australia, has proved in the lab that it's possible to edit the DNA inside human red blood cells. Using our body's own processes to do it."

"Alright," Kate answered, giving Castle a look. "So it's - natural."

"Yes, yes," Boyd almost shouted. "Exactly. That is it exactly. It's a natural process. It means the regimen was all about altering DNA, yes, but your own body did it to you. Insert the DNA you want to patch into the red blood cells, and there you go, it's done. As for reverse engineering these stabilizers, this puts us lightyears ahead."

"Because now you have his method," Kate said, her eyes going thoughtful. "The stabilizers work to do what, then?"

Yeah, Castle didn't know that answer either - they all just knew the stabilizers worked.

"Were you not listening?" Boyd said grumpily. "TALENs."

"Ta-what?" Kate laughed, glancing at him.

"Doc, connect the dots for us here, my man. And you told me about the TALENs, not her."

"Oh. Right, right. Okay, a TALEN is what you might call a combination tool - a designable protein. Transcription activator-like effector nucleases. They're artificial. We make them by combining TALEs, which are like binding agents for DNA, with a DNA cleavage domain, which is the thing that cuts DNA strands. Call it a robot that catches DNA and cuts out the bad parts. So basically the stabilizers are a kind of TALEN we haven't seen before, didn't recognize because they were just shaped so very differently. We even thought they were bad for you - they were causing damage in the brain, right? But the regimen is just engineering TALENs. Artificially combining two kinds of tools to affect the DNA in red blood cells."

"Oh," Kate gasped. "Oh, my God. You're - you know what it is."

"Fuck, seriously?" Castle croaked, getting it now. "You couldn't have led with that information? You know what the stabilizers are made of."

"Huh," Boyd said, as if coming awake. "Well. Yes. We know what the stabilizers are now. We know how they work. And more importantly, we can develop our own techniques to repair damage done to or by the regimen. Safely. Even you, my dear."

Even Kate. They could fix the damage done to Kate. "What damage?" he said harshly. "What damage was done-"

"Castle," she whispered, shaking her head.

"What damage?" he growled. He was supposed to be in on this. He was supposed to know this shit.

"It's minimal, really," Boyd said, sounding stuffy. He had spilled secrets, and now he was going all professor on Castle to not feel ashamed.

Well, he should. "Minimal damage is still damage. Why the fuck-"

Kate glared at him, snagging his wrist even as he moved to bring the phone up to his ear - and cut her out of the conversation again. "Do not curse at our hard-working doctor who just put the puzzle pieces together on a very difficult problem. Doc? Thank you. Sincerely. Thank you."

Castle breathed hard and brought his temper back under his control. "Yes. Thank you. Now what fucking damage?" Somewhat under control.

"To her red blood cells," Boyd said with a sigh. "Minimal. We don't actually know what it's done, this damage, but it's possible it's a side effect of Echo's donation."

The blood transfusion from James. A side effect. Damage.

Damage to his wife's blood.

"Baby," she said softly, touching the side of his face. He blinked and tried to come out of it, but she took the phone from him and turned off the speaker. She put it to her ear, her eyes on him. "Doc? Thank you. We'll talk at home. Yes. I'll let you know. Really. Thank you."

She hung up, her free hand still cradling his face, and she pushed between his legs to get closer to him in the make-up chair. He stared at her, information colliding in his brain.

"They told me it was like - the scratches around the lock when its been inexpertly picked. Do you understand, sweetheart? The regimen tried to alter my red blood cells - tried - but it didn't work, because I'm not you, not like you. Sounds like I don't have the right genome sequence, maybe, according to this study." Her eyes unfocused, thinking, and she chewed on her bottom lip. "Actually, it sounds like the binding agent worked, the cutting agent too, but there was no handy DNA introduced to patch it with-"

"Beckett," he growled.

She came back, focused on him again. "Scratches on my DNA, certain sequences, inside my red blood cells. It was very minimal. And Threkeld was on top of it; he was testing me for blood disorders, but nothing ever came of it, sweetheart. It was nothing. But if we want, it sounds like they can go in and repair it. If we want."

Fix it. Repair it. Go in. Do some kind of experimental shit to her blood? Oh, God, no. No. No more fucking experiments. No-

"Come on, baby," she murmured, brushing her lips against his mouth. "I know what will make you feel better. Let me pick up a couple of strippers for us and we can take them for a ride."

Violent possessiveness tore through him; he gripped both her wrists and hooked a leg around the back of her knee, pulled him hard into her. "Like fucking hell I'm sharing you."

She smiled slowly against his lips. "Who said anything about sharing? We'll use a few girls as a decoy. Four or five coming out of a club isn't two."

"True," he sighed, gentling his hold. Back to work.

He had to focus on the problem at hand. They had to retreat, regroup, figure out what they were going to do with Salome. About. About Salome.

He had to stop thinking about Kate's damaged blood.