Chapter 20

Much to her incredulity, Kyra's wedding became one of her most cherished memories. The moment Greg stopped acting like an ass towards Castle, the evening flowed easily and when the writer walked her home from the hotel, she even felt like hugging him, before he left her at the front door with a goodnight and a sweet dreams. And a kiss on the cheek that, ten days later, still burned on her skin and made her blush, sometimes in the most improper moments she could think of.

Like on the way to the newest crime scene. She had to fight with herself to get a grip, as she walked upstairs to the apartment of the deceased. From what she had been told, when she had answered her phone, a man had been stabbed in his living room and the house painters, working after hours in the apartment beneath, noticed a sticky red liquid dripping from the ceiling and called the police. The blood had seeped through and was dripping on the otherwise immaculate ceiling they had just painted.

When she set foot in the apartment, she found it bustling with activity. There was the CSU working on prints, blood stains and other stuff, while Lanie did her preliminary exam on the body. She was kneeling beside the corpse of a tall man, roughly as tall as Castle and just the same size. Speaking of which, the writer was talking to Esposito about the man lying on the floor, a pool of now coagulated blood beneath him. The coppery stench permeated air and it was so thick she found it very hard to concentrate on the task at hand and by the strained note in Castle's voice, she was quite sure he was trying to maintain control, given his own adversity to blood.

"So? What do we have here?" she asked, making herself known by her colleagues.

And there they were, looking for the murderer of a known mob enforcer, stabbed to death in his own home when he had a 12 gauge pump action shotgun at hand and enough cartridges to keep the NYPD outside of his house for a good half an hour. What the hell had happened?

Also, there was something in the body, something familiar. Not in his face, though even that looked like she had already seen him and given his rap sheet, it wouldn't be too strange that she had encountered him somewhere down the line, it was something else, something fainter, more evanescent, something she couldn't identify. And except one of those weird things promising easy money on late night infomercial, they didn't find much, except the body and a lot of blood.

Knowing the victim's association with the notorious Irish mob gang named Westies, responsible according to Ryan for many of the disorders on Saint Patrick's Day, they went straight to the source: the pub where the operations were conducted, to find informations about Jack Coonan.

Late at night, the pub was already nearly deserted, only a few patrons remained. Some were playing pool, others were drinking beer alone or on small groups. At the bar, one one end there was a man slumped on the sticky wooden surface, passed out from too much drinking, and an elderly man hunched over a pint of dark beer. Behind the dirty counter, a guy in a poorly washed plaid shirt was drying a pint glass, with a filthy rag that probably had last seen the inside of a washing machine in the previous century. The whole place smelled of dank sweat, stale beer, spilled spirits, regret and grief. The place wasn't exactly the best New York could offer too.

Despite the scarcity of people around, there was enough action going on. Downstairs someone was arguing, and the discussion was escalating to quite violent tones from what she could hear beneath the normal noise of the pub around her. And speaking of enhanced senses, her sense of smell was nearly overwhelmed with a thousand different things all at once, but a particular whiff made her turn her nose towards a dark corner of the establishment, where a faint but unusually persistent scent of cologne lingered. For a moment, her memory bombarded her with still images of her mother's lifeless body on the steel coroner's table, the bright white light making her bloodless skin appear translucent and paper-thin, the strong mix of cologne and stout beer pervading the otherwise odorless room still stuck in her nostrils after all those years. And there it was, in that corner, the very same mix that had fuelled her nightmares ever since. Did her killer frequent that pub? Did he have ties with the Westies?

"Is everything alright?"

Castle's rather subdued voice startled her, pulled her from her frantic train of thoughts. Still a bit distraught, she gave him a curt nod. "Yes," she said, her voice sharp as a blade fresh from the grindstone. "Everything alright. Let's go look for the boss."

Finn Rourke, notorious leader of the Westies, was sitting on a stool at the bar, seemingly pondering over the dark pint in front of him. On the other side of the bar, Beckett felt the lecherous gaze of the barman behind the counter, but he dropped it in favour of a more somber look, when Castle growled at him.

"Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD," she said then to Rourke. "We're here to ask you some questions about Jack Coonan."

Questions that got them nowhere, but forced them to drag a battered member of a rival gang to the precinct. During the questioning, the man nicknamed Troucho kept denying his involvement and Lanie confirmed, given his short stature, that he couldn't be the killer. The wounds gave them an approximate height and their perpetrator was likely the same height as Castle, and Troucho was barely tall enough to reach his shoulder, while standing on his toes.

But it was also Lanie who gave them the first break in the case. A break that shattered Kate's heart in a thousand tiny pieces. They were at the precinct, for a quick lunch and a recap together with Ryan and Esposito, when she came to the bullpen, along with a man she had never seen. But the man knew Castle, and that didn't bide well for them.

They sat at the table in the break room and the man, a certain Doctor Murray, a retired Medical Examiner that in the past had acted as a consultant for Castle and his books. He had a file with him, and a small bag. He started with explaining them the wounds on Jack Coonan's body, the way only one wound was fatal and the rest of the stabs were there to mask the precise motion that had taken his life with one single cut.

It felt like a déjà vu. Suddenly, she was back at that night in January, the overwhelming reek of blood old and new mixed with antiseptic and other bodily fluids. She felt her head swoon and her heart skipped more than a few beats, when Doctor Murray pulled a diagram with her mother's name on it from his folder. Her hands shook and she almost couldn't take it when the retired ME pulled a three dimensional reconstruction of the knife.

Not knowing what to do, and completely distraught by the sudden barrage of painful information, she excused herself and bolted from the break room. She blindly moved through the bullpen until she reached the storage room, where they kept all the evidence they gathered in their cases and shut the door behind her.

"Why now?" she whispered, fighting back the tears. "Why now?"

To add insult to injury, she suddenly felt the sharp, stinging pain in her stomach that usually announced an escalation of her symptoms. The sudden emotional stress was already fucking her up, right in the middle of a high profile case that involved not only one of the most dangerous gangs in town, but also her mother's killer.

One of the last things she had heard while in the break room was Castle asking Doctor Murray if he thought the man was a veteran or involved in the military, but both Murray and Lanie thought he was a contract killer, more than a simple soldier.

Why would anyone hire a contract killer to… Murder her mother? What the fuck had happened?

"Kate?"

Castle's voice startled her as it came from the other side of the door. He was barely whispering, because he knew she would hear him even through the door. "Kate, can I come in?"

Wiping the tears from her face, she moved from the door. "Yeah…" she muttered, not convinced at all.

He walked in and softly closed the door. "Hey," he raised his arm and lightly touched her shoulder with the back of his hand. "Hey, need some help?"

Without realizing it, Kate walked closer to him and wrapped herself in his arms. "Can you turn back time and save my mother?"

She felt him smile, briefly, as the muscles of his cheek twitched against her forehead. "Hell, if I had a time machine I would do it in this very moment. But now, the best thing I can do is making you some coffee and help you solve this case."

God he smells so good… The intrusive thought sent a strange jolt through her body. "It's not much, but it's something. For now, we have to notify Coonan's brother. Let's see where we go from there."

"Wherever you want to go," he murmured. "Better, why don't I take you out of town for a while? I know it's still cold, but the Hamptons in this seasons are great and there are some great restaurants that serve the freshest fish you can imagine. Come on, the house is big, you can have the best room I can offer." He pulled back and gave her the brightest smile he could pull off in the nearly dark room. "There's a heated Jacuzzi too, if you want to skinny dip in the middle of the night."

He made her laugh. Despite the desperation that gripped her guts, he had made her laugh. "We'll see after we have closed this. If we close this."

"Come on, it's us we're talking about! And Espo and Ryan but… I doubt they will ever be as great as we are, at solving crimes."

Kate pressed her forehead against his chest. "Don't underestimate them. They're great detectives."

"Then if we work all together I'm sure we can crack this case way before the weekend. Let's get down to business then!"

"Let's go defeat the Huns."

They were on their way out when they were crossed by a young woman that looked like a bird always kept in a cage that had suddenly been set free. With shaking hands, she grabbed Kate by her arm and stopped them. "I…" Her voice was broken by fear. "I need to speak to the detectives in charge of Jack Coonan's murder."

"There, those two detectives looking at the white board," explained Castle. "They're part of the team working on it."

She went her way and he pushed the button to call the elevator. "What do you think she wanted?" he asked as they entered.

"No idea. Maybe she has information about the case? She could be related to Coonan in some way. Let the boys deal with it, we have to deal with his brother."

"Do we know anything about him?"

The door opened and they quickly walked out of the building. "Not much, he's a war vet and now he's the CEO of a non profit organization that helps rebuilding schools and houses in warzones. That's what we know."

Roughly twenty minutes later, they were in the lobby of Richard Coonan's office, while his secretary showed them in.

And that sense of déjà vu hit her again, just as at the crime scene and at the pub, but this time it was stronger. Not something faint, barely there, something that she couldn't understand completely. It was real and there, it wasn't a figment of her imagination, no matter how taxed her mind was in that moment. That mixture of scents, that peculiar trace that was branded in her memory with the fire of pain and grief, it was there, so strong it made her head swoon and she faltered for a moment, as the man welcomed them in the wide office.

Clenching her fist as she tried to keep calm long enough to go through with the interrogation, she sat on the plush armchair in front of Coonan's desk, and then went on a roll from there. She bit her lip a couple of time, pinched the sensitive skin of her inner wrist so hard she drew blood, which made Castle twitch in his own seat but she held on and brought the meeting to its natural end, they exchanged their pleasantries and as soon as they could, she and Castle walked out of the office and onto the landing outside the front door.

"Beckett, are you alright?" he questioned, gently touching her arm.

"He's my mother's killer!"

Her words, seething with hate and wrath, echoed on the walls of the staircase.

"What?" he looked back at the door. "You mean… Coonan is your mother's killer? How…" Then it dawned on him, she read it on his face. "You recognized the scent?"

"It was on Jack Coonan's body, it lingered in the pub and it was so strong in there that I barely managed to not to snap and bite his neck. And bleed him dry. I swear I've never felt the urge to kill someone like other vampires have, but today… Yes, I wanted to kill him so bad! And the smell of heroin, did you pick that up? He's up in drug trafficking to his elbows, I tell you!"

"Beckett, calm down!" he urged her. "Let's go back to the precinct and…"

"And do what, Castle?" She was so angry she could barely think, so she just stormed down the stairs with the writer following her. And damn her stomach was hurting again. "He killed my mother, he killed his own brother and probably dozens of other people. Who knows what he's going to do now!"

She was about to walk in broad daylight outside but Castle grabbed her arm and pulled her inside the door, to keep her safe from the sun. It was still February, but he was incredibly protective of her and he wouldn't let her hurt herself in the heat of the moment, no matter what.

"He's probably going to play the part of the grieving brother, don't worry about him, he never thought you had identified him with other means. I didn't hear his heartbeat change or his… You know the acrid smell of fear?" She nodded. "That, I didn't smell it. He wasn't scared, he didn't see us as threats, we're safe. We can go on investigating as we please, as long as we don't ring his bells."

She took a deep breath and tried to calm down. "Alright. Where do you think we should start?"

"First and foremost, you need to calm down and clear your mind. Second, we see what Ryan and Esposito learned from that girl at the precinct. Third… Third, we catch that murderer. Simple as that."

To calm down, she decided to take a moment for herself during lunch break. She left Castle at the precinct after they had spent the whole car ride there discussing theories about how Coonan had killede his own brother, then made a phonecall. Ten minutes later, she was entering a diner where her father was waiting for her. The place was close to his office and they ate there quite often, and from the look on his face, she knew he was was well aware this wasn't exactly a pleasant meeting.

"Hey Katie, what's going on?"

"Dad…" She held her breath for a moment. "I found him."

From curious, his face turned into a perplexed grin. "Who?"

"The man that killed mom."

"Oh…"

The diner suddenly became cold as a fridge, to her. She never expected such a non reaction from her father. She had always expected a more visible display of emotions, but he just looked resigned.

"How?" he asked, after a long, silent moment.

"He killed someone else, the case was handed to me. We're looking for hard evidence to get him."

He gave her a curt nod. "So you've found him, but you still lack the hard evidence. Do you think it will be hard to find them?"

"I don't know, Dad. He's very well organized, has put up a small empire on heroin traffic, with solid ties to Afghanistan to ensure a steady flow of the substance. Thing is, we have no idea how he smuggles it, but I have a hunch that finding out how he brings it to the US is the key to find those evidence we need."

"You know Katie," he said, skimming the top of his finger on the brim of his cup of coffee. "Your mother used to say that life never puts up against something we cannot overcome, and I have come to trust your hunches over the years. Those little devilish genes you have hidden made you one of the most perspective people I've ever met, if you say you're going to find a way to arrest him, I believe you."

She smiled, suddenly shy. "You know, it's not too different from what Castle said a while ago."

It was her father's turn to smile. "Speaking of him, how's the writer doing? Still overbearing and terribly inconvenient at times?"

"No Dad, he's… He's fine. And useful. Yes, he's useful. And he's a good friend." And maybe something more.

"Told you - you had underestimated him. But I'm glad you have someone close to help, and maybe think outside the box. Come on now though, let's order before both our lunch breaks are over and we forget to eat."

"Any progress?" she asked as she stomped inside the bullpen.

"This," said Esposito holding up a key for some kind of deposit box. "And the tiny little detail that Jack Coonan was one of the Westies' best men, and Rourke had asked him to look into a sudden invasion of their turf, regarding heroin trafficking."

"And before you ask, yes, Castle filled us in with your findings," added Ryan.

"Did he also tell you about our theory on Coonan's drug traffic from Afghanistan and how following the drug trail will probably give us what we need to apprehend them?"

Three heads bowed in unison. "That he did and we agree with you. It was most probably the drugs that made him kill Jack," he went on. "I bet Dick sells through a rival gang, but someone made the bad mistake of trespassing on Westies' territory and Rourke sent Jack to investigate. He found out it was his own brother, planned to deal with him someway, but Dick arrived earlier. With Jack dead, Dick had enough time and resources to regroup and fix whatever damage to his network had been done."

"But how did Jack's girlfriend come in possession of that key?" she inquired.

"Jack gave it to her. Said it was very important, even more important than his own life."

"Could it be the key to Dick's stash?" added Castle.

"Could be, let's find out."

That key cracked the case wide open. Not only they found the heroin stash in a deposit box in one of the many bus stations of New York, but the stash was hidden inside the Johnny Vong DVDs. The late night infomercial king, whose words both Castle and Esposito could recite by heart, was part of Coonan's drug dealings, and there was more than enough material to apprehend him. Much to her barely hidden amusement, Vong wasn't a poor and nearly illiterate immigrant from Laos that offered to share his become-rich-or-get-reimbursed method through pricy DVDs, books and questionable seminars, but a pretty smart asian-american MIT laureate that had come up with the perfect way to con insomniacs looking for easy money.

Only by doing so, he had asked money to the wrong person, namely Dick Coonan, who had forced him to become his courier, no matter what he wanted. The drug moved from Afghanistan to a place where it was hidden in the boxes, and said boxes were then moved to Hong Kong, from where they were shipped to the United States. A plan nearly perfect, if not for a nosy brother tasked to find the competition.

Problem was, Vong didn't want to out Coonan. He feared him and his closeness to a contract killer, a certain Rathborne. But they knew that Rathborne was an alias Coonan used for his other side dealings, those that left more people dead on the streets and not because they had shot some busted heroin.

They convinced him to talk only when they threatened to release him because of a quibble in the procedure. He didn't want to get out of prison, fearing Coonan would think he had talked and outed him to the police, he preferred ten years in jail for drug trafficking than dying under Rathborne's knife. Only then, he talked, in exchange for protection.

With everything he said, in front of a lawyer and the ADA, they had more than enough material to bring Coonan in, at least for a not so quick questioning. Esposito and Ryan took the assignment, and they left her and Castle at her desk, to prepare the interrogation.

"This situation looks a lot like a John Woo movie. Seriously, Hard Boiled had a less convoluted mess of gangs, wannabe gangsters and trafficking involved," he said at some point.

"I haven't seen that movie in ages…" she commented, not really listening to him.

"Then why don't we go to the loft after we settle this?" he proposed. "Homemade popcorn, a glass of wine and a double feature. Let's say… Hard Boiled and The Killer!"

Sighing, she shook her head. "As much as I would love to join you and your sinfully comfortable couch, I think I'll just go home and try to forget this day."

"Too bad it would probably take all the alcohol in every single bar, pub and liquor store of New York to get you slightly tipsy. Have you ever wished we could get drunk?"

"So many times, Castle. So many times…"

The elevator doors opened and the boys strode in the bullpen, each holding one of Coonan's arms as they led him to the interrogation room. "Come on Castle, let's see if we can break him, one way or another."

During her career, Kate Beckett had dealt with tough people. Gang members, crooked cops, enraged wives that had rationalized their murders and thought they were in the right, she had met them all. Not one had managed to walk out an interrogation unscathed, if only it meant their pride was bruised, not when she had been in the same room with them. Even renowned lawyers sometimes flinched when they saw her. And in court? She knew clerks called her The Ice Queen, and ADAs were overjoyed when they learned they would work on a case she had been in charge of.

But Coonan, that man didn't budge. If she was the Ice Queen, he was a full blown Yeti. Two hours, she pressed, and not a single time he even batted an eye.

They had to let him go, and it was only then that he made a misstep. He literally panicked when she ranted about never catching her mother's killer only because her enhanced sense of smell would never hold up in court, not realizing Coonan was right behind them as he signed all the documentation that would make his release from custody official.

He must have guessed she was an immortal, probably feared retaliation in not so lawful way, he must have gone straight in survival mode.

And now they were in the middle of the bullpen, stuck in a Mexican Standoff with Coonan holding a gun at Castle's back and at least two dozens firearms trained at Coonan's head.

"Now… You all put down your guns or your scribbler here dies a horrible, painful death," he said, eyes shooting in every direction as he formulated an escape plan.

"Kate, shoot him!" yelled Castle. Her trigger finger itched on the pin of her Glock, sights aimed right at the killer's right temple.

"Hey, we've got some balls beneath those fancy clothes, uh?" Coonan seemed genuinely surprised. "You really want her to shoot me? Do you know what happens when a bullet goes through your liver?"

"Yeah," grunted Castle. "If you shoot mine, you'll probably get some tasty foie gras."

"Ah, brave and also sarcastic… Tell me Detective, where did you find this pen pusher?"

"Dick, you're still in time. Let him go and maybe you'll avoid a life sentence," she tried, but she knew very well her voice was faltering with emotion.

"Really, Detective? The moment I let this gun go, you're going to arrest me and raid my office, my home, everything. And with the nerd's witnessing? There's a warm bunk ready for me at Rykers! Oh no my dear." Pushing Castle, he moved towards the elevator. "I prefer a comfortable first class seat on the first flight out of JFK straight to Caracas."

"Kate!" Castle called her, his eyes already turning that dark shade of purple. He was going to shift. "Shoot him. Come on, I can take it!"

"No Castle I won't…"

"Kate!" His voice was already changing pitch, becoming more and more like a growl with each moment. "Do it, now!"

She did as he asked then, only she aimed high above Coonan's head. He flinched at the loud bang, and he pulled the trigger as he had promised.

She barely had the time to see the bullet cartwheeling out of Castle's front, followed by a spray of blood and bits of flesh, that his clothes ripped to shreds as his muscles and bones shifted beneath his skin. His face was twisted in a pain-stricken grin as his guts were torn by both the bullet and the lycanthropic shift, but as it turned into a canine snout, the pain was replaced by a wrathful snarl. Talons grew from his nails, his teeth turned in fangs as sharp as a surgical scalpel, and his skin was quickly covered in the softest, blackest fur Kate ever had the chance to see and run her fingers through. All in the span of a couple of seconds, as the shift had become considerably quicker and less painful in the past few months, with practice.

The whole precinct was baffled at the show they were beholding, Coonan too was mesmerized and too engrossed in his own disbelief to do anything but staring as Castle turned into a huge, hulking werewolf only a step ahead of him. He hadn't seen it coming, but most of all, he never expected to be roughly grabbed by the hem of his jacket by two taloned hands, raised from the floor until his feet dangled helplessly and to see straight down Castle's wolfish mouth and throat as he roared right in front of his face.

With more strength than necessary, Castle threw him towards a small group of officers close to where Esposito and Ryan were standing, then caught the gun as it flew from Coonan's hand. As he grasped it like it was a baseball at the Yankees stadium, his fingers crushed the metal and polymer into a useless hunk of steel and plastic.

As no one was expecting this outcome, except of course for the four people that were aware of Castle's lycanthropy, no one moved or dared to breathe, as Espo and Ryan officially arrested Coonan, for attempted murder at the moment. Everyone was looking at Castle, the beastly version of Castle they had never supposed to see, as he breathed heavily in the middle of the crowd.

Then she holstered her gun and moved towards him, to check on the wound. She heard loud gasp rise from the crowd of cops as she scrambled towards the writer and ran her fingers through her soggy fur to check the wound. She found nothing but a patch of bloody dark hair, the hole caused by the nine millimeter piece of lead had already closed, both in the back and on the front. He didn't even flinch. He was alright, just fine, not even scared.

"Everything okay?" she asked and he nodded.

Not caring about the now dissipating crowd and what the hell they could say, she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him, tight. "Thanks Castle," she murmured in his ear. "For everything."

He wailed happily, and she felt a strong vibration against her chest coming from his own as he reverted the shift and returned to his normal form.

"Always, Kate."

The aftermath of the arrest was a gruelling task to undertake. Between the sudden distrust that everyone seemed to harbor towards Castle and the sudden weariness that had befallen on her, Kate felt like the stack of paperwork that had appeared on her desk was endless.

It was only very late in the evening that Montgomery forced her to go home. He appeared in front of her desk, just behind Castle's chair and ordered to get out of the precinct and don't show up for a couple of days. To decompress, he said, then walked towards the elevator himself.

She took a quick look at Castle, who stoically sat in his chair with a bag of ice pushed against his mouth to alleviate the pain in his gums, and he nodded. The Captain was right, it was time to go home.

But did she want to be alone that night? No, not really. Not after a day like that. Not after she had watched her mother's murderer being dragged down to the Holding cells with an account of attempted murder, but she was sure they would find more to add to his files, once they would get a warrant to search his office and his residence. But that was a matter for another day, they were all exhausted and they needed to rest and decompress, as Montgomery had said.

"You still up for that double feature?" she asked him.

He gave her a quick shrug. "Mi casa es tu casa."

"I was thinking about my place, if you don't mind. Not that I wouldn't love Alexis and Martha's company but… I'm not really in the mood for more company than yours."

As she drove them home, she was hoping for a quiet night in the company of the man that had turned from a nuisance to her best friend, some Chinese takeout and two great movies. She couldn't even fathom the madness that would overtake her the moment she closed the door behind them and she pounced on him like a predator with its prey, she had no idea they would scramble for her bedroom while divesting each other between frenzied kisses, or that she'd have the best sex of her life.

But most of all, she never expected that, given they had no reason to hold back, being both immortals, they would break the bed.

Guess what, I'm back with this story. You know what happened? I got writer's block because didn't know if it was better to follow the canon of the show and have them hook up in Season 4, thus retelling the whole story with the fantasy twist, or if just follow the characters as they were going on their own road and have them hook up here. Seems like I reached a definitive decision, right?