Their fourth morning at the Hamptons house was only a few hours old. Alexis didn't like the look of the clouds and decided to postpone the walk she wanted to take. She sighed and figured it was a sign from the universe that she needed to start her college reading. Alexis had just settled on the couch with one of her Intro to Lit textbooks when her father wandered through.
"Hey, honey." Her father looked awake enough that the coffee in his hand couldn't be his first cup. He caught sight of the thick book. "Doing a little... light reading?"
"I wanted to get a head start on the semester. I found the reading list on the department website and I bought a couple of the most interesting-looking." Alexis didn't bother to look up as she perused the table of contents.
"Alexis! Homework? In the summer? Are we sure you're related to me?" Her father failed to snatch the book away as she slid past him to shelter on the other side of the coffee table. Kate entered from the kitchen just in time to witness the altercation. She leaned against the doorjamb to watch their antics as she hid a smile behind her coffee cup.
"Dad, I'm taking 18 credits. I'm going to be really busy. If I can get any of it done ahead of time, I'm going to."
"You know, Castle," Kate grinned at them both, "If you're really worried about it, I'm sure we could ask Lanie to run a DNA test."
Her father's reply was interrupted by the ringing of Kate's phone. She threw another grin at them over her shoulder as she set down her coffee and stepped out into the hall to answer it. Alexis's father turned his attention back to the book in her hand as Alexis started inching towards the door.
"No, you won't escape that easily, you little fiend. This is the first real week of our vacation and you will slack off and be irresponsible like a proper Castle!"
Alexis squealed with laughter as she darted for the door, her father in hot pursuit.
"Hey Ryan," Kate wished she could plug her other ear as the squealing from the living room made it difficult to hear the phone. "How are things? I haven't heard from you guys in a couple of days."
"Everything's great here." Ryan's voice sounded odd. Kate walked faster away from the noise of Alexis and Castle's roughhousing. "I just wanted to check in with you before you leave on your big camping trip today. Castle said you were going far enough from civilization that you'd be leaving your cell phones behind. I didn't want you to think we'd forgotten about you before you left."
"Camping trip?" Kate shut her bedroom door behind her, brow wrinkling in confusion. "He hasn't said anything about a camping trip."
"Oh, I'm sorry. It must be a surprise. He said he wanted to spend some quality time with Alexis and you and his mother before Alexis left for college. Something about getting his daughter entirely unplugged from her electronics so that she had to socialize with the family. Please don't tell him I ruined the surprise. I'd hate for him to kill off my character in his next book. He'd probably make it something humiliating and pointless like getting kidnapped and killed just before the bad guy gets caught."
"Okay, I won't tell him. How's everything else going?"
"Same old stuff, different day. You know the drill. It's actually been pretty quiet. Not really much to work on this week." Kate's alarm grew as the artificial cheerfulness in Ryan's voice became more pronounced. "But oh, I have to go. Esposito's waving at me. I guess we've got a big case. Castle said you'd be gone for a week. Call me when you get back, we'll swap stories."
Kate stared in shock at the phone in her hand. Ryan had hung up on her. She sat on her bed, mind whirling as she tried to find a story that made Ryan's behavior make sense. Castle said they were going camping? Richard "I'd like to have my smartphone surgically attached to my hand" Castle was planning to do without for a week and he hadn't mentioned it?
Kate went in search of the man who might have some answers.
Castle caught up to his daughter as she pounded across the beach in a futile attempt to keep her illicit reading material away from him. He tackled her, rolling slightly to the side to take most of the impact as they landed.
"It's mine! My precious!" Alexis's struggle to hold the book away from him was severely limited by her inability to stop laughing.
"See? Even you know it's an unhealthy fascination! It's my paternal duty to take it away from you!" Castle finally managed to wrest the book from her hands, standing up to do a proud victory dance with it over his head as his daughter tried to jump high enough to steal it back.
"Castle!" Kate's voice was mostly carried away by the wind. Castle turned to see her making her barefooted way out to them from the house.
"Kate?" Castle started towards her. Alexis padded along behind with a more somber expression as she saw the look on Kate's face. They met some distance from the house and Castle felt his own concern mounting as he noted the tension around Kate's mouth. "What's wrong?"
"Maybe nothing." Kate's eyes belied her statement. "Ryan called. He sounded... weird. He said he didn't really have any reason for calling, he just wanted to catch us before we left on our camping trip."
"You wanted to go camping?" Castle would admit to having had some very entertaining dreams of Kate alone with him in the woods, but she struck him as more of a city girl.
"No. Ryan said you'd told him we were going out into the woods far enough that cell phones wouldn't work. He said we were all leaving today and asked that I call him in a week when we get back."
Castle could see his own feelings reflected in the grim line of Kate's mouth. He turned towards Alexis.
"Go get Gram, please, and bring her out here."
"Okay." Alexis turned immediately to obey, stopping when Kate called out.
"Don't say anything in the house."
Castle thought it was probably the wide eyes that made Alexis look so much younger than her eighteen years as she sped off to find her grandmother.
Alexis knew she was missing large parts of the story as she sprinted for the house. That didn't mean she was too dumb to recognize a simple code when she heard one. Whatever was going on was bad enough for Detective Ryan to suggest they disappear for a week. She couldn't decide which was more disturbing, the fact that he gave the warning in such a cloak and dagger way, or the fact that he specifically wanted them to leave their cell phones behind.
Her legs were beginning to burn as she pounded up onto the patio. She slowed to a walk inside the house, calling out in the most relaxed tone she could manage.
"Gram?"
"In the kitchen, darling."
"Dad's looking for you." Her grandmother's eyes took in Alexis's windblown and slightly breathless appearance, lingering on her tense face. "He said it's important."
Her grandmother promptly set down the paper she was reading and grabbed a shawl. Alexis turned without another word and headed for the door.
"That's the most outrageous thing I've ever heard and I've heard some stupidly outrageous things in my time." Martha glared at Kate. "You are absolutely not going off on your own. You are coming with the rest of us like Detective Ryan told you to."
Alexis and her grandmother had arrived on the beach to interrupt a furiously whispered argument between her father and Kate. The topic had become immediately clear when her dad yelled that Kate was not an acceptable loss and she was damn well going to stay safe with the rest of them. Kate glared at Martha.
"I'm the one they're interested in. You'll be safer if I'm somewhere else. I'm not going to go charging off on some kind of hero's mission, I'm just going to make it obvious that I'm away from the rest of you. We'll both stop at a diner or something and use credit cards to show we're headed in opposite directions at the same time, then I'll drop off the grid and find somewhere to hide. We'll meet up at the end of the week."
"Detective Beckett," Alexis interrupted her father's angry reply. Kate's head snapped around at the use of her title, probably shocked because Alexis had taken to calling her by her first name over the past weeks. "Even if what you're saying is true and there's someone who can track you by your credit cards, why would we need to stay apart? Why couldn't you come find us afterward?"
Alexis held Kate's eyes, trying to convey with the look that she already knew what Kate's answer was and wanted her to say it out loud so that the logic could be refuted. Kate clearly got at least part of the message as she sagged. She opened her mouth twice without speaking and dropped her eyes to the ground for a moment.
"Because it's the right thing to do."
"That's not good enough." Her dad stepped directly in front of Kate. Alexis held her breath. She'd never seen her father look so fierce. She would have sworn it wasn't in his goofy, childlike nature. Apparently, Kate thought the same thing because she shifted half a step backward.
"Castle, please. Let me keep you safe." Kate's voice was getting quieter the longer the argument continued. Alexis hoped they were close to wearing her down.
"Like I kept you safe? I seem to recall you objecting – loudly! – to that when I did it. Why would this be different?"
Kate looked at the three of them as if she were hoping for support or looking for a way out. Alexis met her glance with a hard stare and knew her grandmother was likely to give a matching one. Kate would get no approval for her crazy idea from them.
"Fine." Alexis couldn't tell if Kate sounded scared or angry as she turned on her heel and stalked off towards the house.
"That went better than I expected." Her father's sigh was a relieved whoosh of air.
"Better?" Martha raised an incredulous eyebrow.
"Yes." Her father nodded as he turned to follow Kate. "I thought I might have to carry her again. She probably wouldn't have forgiven me after last time."
Alexis and her grandmother exchanged puzzled glances before they followed him.
There were four duffle bags full of clothes, another full of supplies, one confused teenager, one worried actress, and a furious detective waiting in the car as Castle closed the trunk and slid into the driver's seat. No one spoke. They stopped at a bank so Castle could take out enough cash to cover their likely (and unlikely) expenses, then stopped at a car rental shop. Fifteen minutes later, they were cruising down the highway towards the Adirondacks in a rented SUV. Castle had spent ten of those fifteen minutes convincing the annoying clerk that he really did want a vehicle without GPS-based roadside assistance, no matter how convenient a service it was. They made one more stop at a camping supply store and put a dent in Castle's stock of cash while buying tents, sleeping bags, backpacks, and various other supplies.
Sunset found them in a meadow two hours from the spot they'd hidden the SUV. They were roasting marshmallows around a campfire and talking of deliberately light topics, as if mentioning the reason for their sudden camping trip could call down hostile attention.
Alexis retreated early to her tent. She reminded herself that it wasn't Kate's fault they were out here. It wasn't Kate's fault that they might be in danger. And it wasn't Kate's fault that they were going to be living without modern amenities for a week, no matter how much Alexis was going to miss hot showers and flush toilets, especially if it started to rain.
Alexis was still reminding herself of this when she fell asleep.
AN: One reviewer planted the thought of doing a companion story to this one, but from the perspective of the ones working the case. That's an interesting enough idea that I'm seriously considering it. There's too much plot available for me to be happy wrapping it into this story. I don't know how quickly life will let me get to it, but I do believe I'll try.