Rewound Chapter Twenty-One
"What exactly did you want to see me about, Senator?"
Kate had taken a subtle step forward, aligning herself between Castle and their visitor, notching his heart rate higher.
"In light of recent... developments... it seemed prudent to include you in our conversation. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. Castle?"
Bracken shifted as he spoke, face sunk in shadow, silhouette haloed by the warm morning light through the curtained windows. The glare masked the other man's expression, setting off warning bells in Castle's subconscious. Straightening his spine, he kept his tone neutral despite his urge to finish this once and for all.
"Actually, I have no idea why you would want to involve her. You've been dealing with me all this time."
Castle slid his hands carefully beneath his coat, his right tracking along the familiar path toward his waistband, stopping short of the outline of his weapon through his jeans.
Bracken's profile caught a ray of sun, highlighting the sharpness of his jaw, mouth opening to give his response.
"I have two reasons for wanting both of you involved. First, Beckett, you don't flinch, but I know your tells. I can look you in the eye and get a straight answer, see through a lie." He turned to face Castle as he tipped his head conspiratorially. "Honest people rarely lie convincingly, unlike politicians." Switching back to focus on Beckett, he continued. "That's how I know that despite the fact that you claimed to know a certain bank account number last year, the documents your Captain has assembled are completely fraudulent."
Castle toed the briefcase forward, ignoring the slight tremor in his leg.
"I don't know what you're talking about. We have the contents of Montgomery's file right here."
Bracken's eyes dropped to the leather case, then aimed his words at Beckett again.
"See what I mean? If you had anything concrete against me, you would have used it in the past week, not agreed to turn it over. No, Detective, I'm officially calling your bluff."
Castle's skin prickled at the thinly veiled threat. The senator casually slid his hands in his pants pockets, resting one hip against the curve of the baby grand. Castle advanced on him slightly, centered his weight, taking Kate out of his line of sight with Bracken. She had remained oddly silent through their exchange, so once again, Castle took the bait and asked the question Bracken was waiting for.
"Fine. If you're not here for the documents -" Castle's words trailed off in time for Bracken to square off directly with Kate to give his answer.
"That brings me to my second point. Some messages are best delivered in person, wouldn't you agree, Kate?"
As if in slow motion, Bracken removed his right hand from his pants pocket and slipped it inside his suit jacket.
Castle's fingers seized the grip of his gun, muscle memory taking over.
The click of the safety releasing was deafening to Castle's ears in the silence of the loft.
Castle's hands were sure, his eye steady, and his aim, straight for Bracken's heart.
Beckett was talking off to his left: using calm, forceful tones with words and sentences that held no meaning. All he could hear was the steady thump of his own pulse sounding in his ears.
His vision tunneled on Bracken, standing with both palms in the air in a gesture of surrender, lips upturned.
"Mr. Castle, you would shoot an unarmed man?"
The writer didn't move. His shallow breaths his only measure of time, seconds stretched out until his brain was able to form a response. When they came, his words held steady despite the adrenaline.
"You and I both know your endgame. You tried to kill Kate and went to a lot of trouble to make it look like an accident. And when she survived, you sent an assassin to finish her off. That's the third one, by my count, Senator."
Beckett inched closer in his peripheral vision.
"Back off, Kate."
"Rick, shooting him won't solve anything."
His cheeks burned, blood heating his whole face as his voice rose.
"The hell it won't. Do you want to be dodging bullets, or delivery trucks, or whatever else he has planned for the rest of your life?"
Bracken straightened, then leaned forward as he began to lower his raised hands.
"You seem to misunderstand my intentions, Mr. Castle; I simply came here to have a private conversation."
Castle reset his stance, now aiming his weapon directly at Bracken's head. One slow, controlled breath later, steel replaced fire in his veins, and his voice rang out, clear and true.
"Now who's lying? I think you came here to finish her off.Your hired guns keep missing the mark; if you want something done right, do it yourself."
The other man's brow furrowed as his head tilted to the side, voice rising in pitch and volume.
"That's absurd. Have I ever given any indication that I would be stupid enough to come here with a gun? I have people for that."
The callousness in Bracken's tone turned Castle's stomach. But he swallowed down the bile and fell back on what he did best - research.
"You were the assistant D.A., surely you must be familiar with the Castle Doctrine? I'm within my rights to shoot you for invading my home, gun or no gun."
Bracken's hands sank slightly as he took a half step forward.
"Hey!" With a dip and jerk of the barrel of his gun, Castle motioned for him to put them back where they had been. As the Senator complied, he argued back in his steady, smooth cadence.
"Do you really want my blood on your hands? To sink to the level of the characters you write about? Because whatever story you and Beckett spin for your colleagues at the NYPD, if you pull that trigger now, you'll have to live with the reality: you murdered an unarmed man in cold blood."
Castle's jaw clenched, the tension in his shoulders and arms building to a steady ache. Flexing his neck, he stared down his opponent.
"Considering the man, I don't think I'll lose any sleep over it."
"And you really think the media, the public, a jury," Bracken smirked as he continued, not a quiver in his voice, not a tremor in his hands, "will believe a Senator, a front-runner for the Presidency, broke into your home with intent to do harm?"
Kate sounded off to his left again, her words low, slow, and heavy.
"Castle, this isn't you. You're not a murderer. Give me the gun."
"He tried to kill you, Kate. More than once." He paused, took a tight breath when his voice broke, but then he kept going, quieter, smoother. "He won't stop until you're dead. What part of that are you not understanding?"
Bracken cleared his throat.
"I hate to interrupt this little lovers' quarrel, but I think it's time we got down to business. I came here today to offer you, Detective Beckett, a way to go forward."
The thought of this standoff continuing sank a weight in his gut. He directed his words to Kate, though his focus stayed on his target.
"Don't believe him, Kate. We know better."
"Castle, look at me. Look. At. Me."
He shifted his eyes to her face, just a few feet to his left. Her jaw was set, shoulders squared off to face him, all the angles sharp, the edges defined. But her eyes were a little too wide, the constricted dot of each pupil jumping from his gun back to his face. God, she was treating him like any other armed gunman, trying to talk him down. Detective Beckett. Not a trace of Kate.
"Give me the gun."
But this was about Kate. This was about doing what he had to do to keep her safe, to give her a future. He could do what Detective Beckett never could. He could end this once and for all. Looking to Bracken again, he felt his finger twitch near the trigger as he spoke.
"This needs to be over. Right here. Right now."
Kate's profile neared in his peripheral vision as she tried again, consonants crisp, controlled.
"Not this way. This isn't you. You're not a murderer. If you do this, you're not the man I fell in love with."
Something sank deep in his chest at her last words. But this was the only way. His eyes clamped shut over the tears threatening.
And in that instant of inattention, the gun was wrestled from his hand and Beckett reengaged the safety.
Brain too slow to process what had just happened, hands too weak to do anything but hang limp at his sides, Castle stepped back as his adrenaline plummeted.
"Am I correct in assuming you have your memory back, Detective?"
Bracken's voice had him shifting full focus back to the Senator, who had dropped his own hands, moved closer, as if having a gun pointed at his head left him entirely unfazed.
"Whether I do or not, it's no business of yours."
She might not be aiming the gun, but she certainly hadn't relaxed her grip on the weapon, held against her thigh, barrel pointing toward the floor, nor had she moved her eyes from her opponent.
"If you do, then certain details of our past encounters become more… relevant. But you're right, ultimately, your amnesia is not as important as the other medical condition my associate discovered."
"And what would that be, exactly?"
Smart, making him say it aloud, admit that he knew exactly what the stakes were.
Castle had to give him credit, the bastard might have his mother beat with his acting skills. He delivered his response as if toasting them with mimosas at brunch.
"How rude of me not to start with this in the first place - I believe congratulations are in order."
Kate didn't take the bait.
"Again, why is this any of your business?"
"Because, as you well know, Detective, human beings operate on self interest. Do you know why I decided to remove you from the equation of my campaign?"
Castle edged in her direction, his instinct to protect asserting itself at Bracken's business-like reference to attempted murder. Beckett continued the exchange, still unflinching.
"No idea."
"I believed you lacked adequate motivation to continue our little truce. After all, your job no longer holds your loyalty - you've resigned twice from your precinct, sabotaged your shot at a federal law enforcement position. And you aren't close with your family - see your father maybe once a month. Mr. Castle is a weakness, but his modest fame and the media attention it brings make him more complicated than I care for. In short, you have no pluckable strings."
Bracken inched forward, a small smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. Beckett's eyes narrowed.
"That is, until now. I've heard maternal instinct can be the fiercest of all."
The line of her spine went rigid.
"Are you threatening my baby, Senator?"
Her voice was cold, eerily steady, but her eyes sparked fire. Bracken actually grinned.
"Let's just say this situation introduces new motivation into our little equation."
The click of the safety coming off was their only warning.
Beckett advanced on Bracken, her good arm aiming center mass.
"You will never lay a hand on my child you son of a bitch."
The Senator ducked behind the piano as the first shot rang out, spraying shards of brick and mortar from the wall immediately behind the man's head.
Castle shouted her name, but it was too late.
He was supposed to be pulling that trigger.
He had to stop her.
In the split second before she fired a second shot, Castle launched himself at Kate. His forearm made contact with her biceps, sending the next two rounds wild. Shattered glass rained down, stinging where it peppered his skin.
The gun skittered into a corner, out of reach.
Castle's momentum threw them off balance, his socked feet sliding on the hardwood, as he scrambled to catch her. They went down, his mass a dead weight on top of her, and her left arm, trapped in its cast, useless and pinned under them both.
The crack of Kate's head hitting the floor echoed louder than any gunshot. At that sound, Castle's heart missed one beat, two, his vision narrowing around her face as his body went numb.
He took his fiancé in his arms, rolling to the side to cradle her limp form. Kate's head lolled at an unnatural angle, revealing a thick red smear blooming from the now-yellowed bruise along her left temple. He curled around her, his voice betraying him, the tone weak and broken, as he repeated her name like a prayer. As his vision blurred, fat tears splashed across her unmoving features, and he pressed two fingers hard against her neck, his voice begging for a pulse.
He didn't register the clatter of his door being thrown open. The shouts of Esposito and Ryan as they pinned down the Senator were distant, their recitation of his rights diffused, as uniforms flooded the room.
All his focus was on the thready flutter beneath his fingertips, the slight rise and fall of her chest, and the warm puffs of air against his cheek as he clutched her unconscious form in his arms.
The slick, heavy dread filling his lungs felt sickeningly familiar.
Not again.
# * # * # * #
It was still dark when he startled awake, face pressed to the fold of the starched white sheet. His neck and back complained when he sat up in the chair and wiped a hand over his stubble and across his eyes.
The digital readout on the monitor showed 5:18. Still unsure what had woken him, he rolled his shoulders, his stiff fingers still twined tightly through her limp ones.
The night nurse had said she would be back one more time to check vital signs before shift change at 7, but she was nowhere in sight.
The rise and fall of green lines was steady, so he let his head rest beside her hip once again.
His mind had been too fuzzy with endorphins and fear to absorb the story Esposito and Ryan had relayed as the three of them sat in the waiting room on those all too familiar purple chairs. Kate had been out of his sight for her initial assessment by the ER doctor, who called in the team of specialists most of whose names now occupied Castle's appointment calendar.
As he fidgeted and paced and fidgeted some more, Ryan had explained that Hannah had had a sudden change of heart just after they returned from their failed mission at the ball field early that morning. She had sung like a bird, quoting the terms of the contract on Kate's life, and throwing in details of Bracken's misdeeds dating back to his initial run for City Council, including his order for the hit on Johanna Beckett and her contemporaries.
Apparently, the footage Kate found of young Hannah in the audience at Bracken's campaign rally had been shot just after they first met - she, an idealistic college student fresh off the farm, and he, a charismatic lawyer breaking into the New York political scene. Hannah had been on the inside for years, but her reasons for betraying her boss remained a mystery. She had given all the necessary details to put him away for life, but nothing more.
They had her confession just in time for the call from Kate's cell to Esposito that allowed the boys and Gates to hear their entire exchange with Bracken, and that prompted their timely arrival at the loft with backup and an ambulance already en route.
Despite his yearning for Hannah's story to make sense, mulling over the details in the darkness of another hospital room, the writer knew something was missing. He needed his partner to fit the pieces together, to find the connection.
His partner.
The weariness seeped into his bones. It had been yet another sleepless night waiting, wondering exactly whom would awaken beside him. He should feel something - there should be pain or regret that his actions had caused this, or fear that she might never wake up, despite the doctors' assurances that she certainly would. But there was just... nothing.
Writing, all night spent at his laptop, when the words strung into sentences, then paragraphs and pages, when the plot and the dialogue flowed from his fingers, would sometimes leave him like this, too. His best work happened on nights like this, when his brain was too tired for barriers or assumptions.
His memory fell back into the crucial moment, the climactic scene.
Kate took his gun. She told him he wasn't a murderer, and she protected Bracken. It was exactly what he should have expected her to do.
And then she did what he never thought was possible.
Kate Beckett attempted murder.
Castle had never met that version of Kate before.
Justice? Yes, she believed in justice, but not when it was meted out by one person hell bent on revenge. Then again, at the moment she took that shot, her reasons were about protecting the one life that hadn't yet been affected by the Dragon - their baby's.
Kate was going to be a mother, and maybe that changed everything. Or nothing at all.
The realization washed over him, sending tingles down his spine, to the tips of his fingers and toes.
There were no versions of Kate.
Whether she woke up with every memory intact, or none at all, Kate Beckett would be the same fierce, strong-willed, tender-hearted, brilliant, extraordinary person he had fallen in love with. And whatever path was set before her, she would find her way, on her terms, with him by her side.
The absence of feeling that had disturbed him only moments before suddenly made sense.
Peace.
All the signs said she would wake any time, and as long as he had Kate, Castle was at peace with whatever happened.
And so he slept.
An hour later, when Denise woke him listening to Kate's chest, she looked sheepishly across the bed.
"I'm sorry to wake you, Mr. Castle. Do you need anything?"
"No. No, I'm fine. Is she - ?
"Unchanged. When her neurologist rounds he'll do a full exam again, but for now everything we can measure has been stable all night."
His stomach fell even though he knew he would have woken up with any movement from her, any sign of consciousness surfacing.
"Some cards and flowers have come for her. I can bring them in if you like?"
"Sure. She should have something prettier than a rumpled fiancé to look at when she wakes up."
The buzz of his phone in his pocket made him jump. As he retrieved it, Denise glanced pointedly at the sign near the door banning cell phones, so he relinquished Kate's hand and stepped out into the hall to take the call, nearly bumping into two officers flanking the door to Kate's room.
"Castle."
Esposito's voice was low, the rasp of sleepless nights giving it unnatural depth.
"Where are you?"
"They moved Kate to a private room overnight. 347. Why?"
Castle leaned against the counter running along the nurse's station near a cluster of floral arrangements and cards.
"I'm on my way. Are your uniforms still at the door?"
From the uneven cadence and the echo of footsteps, the detective was on his way down stairs, moving fast.
"Yes. What's the matter? Is it Bracken? Did he get out?"
"I can't give you details over the phone. I'll be there in 15."
His mind jumped through every worst-case scenario – Bracken's lawyers had found a loophole, he was walking the streets again, sending someone for Kate at this very moment. The tremor in his voice was unmistakable when he begged for more information.
"Espo, is she in danger?"
"Unclear. But stay with her until I can say more."
Castle rushed back into Kate's room when the call ended, and found her exactly as he had left her, asleep, machines beeping peacefully. As he stepped into the room to take up his place at her side, his foot slid on something just inside the door.
Bending down, he picked up an envelope the right size for a greeting card, no name on the front. He hadn't seen it on his way out. As he sat down, he untucked the green flap, slid the glittered card out. The design on the front showed a teddy bear, but when he opened the thick cardstock, instead of a "Get Well" message, curling script proclaimed: "Congratulations on your little bundle of joy!" Underneath were scrawled the words: "It was the least I could do."
Frowning, he flipped to the back. Blank. He could only assume someone had left it in the wrong room by mistake. He tucked the card back in the envelope and set it aside to give to Denise when she returned. Wrapping his fingers around Kate's limp hand, he settled in to wait for Esposito.
# * # * # * #
"How - ?"
Esposito's question trailed off as he pointedly avoided looking at the monitors or the woman to whom they were attached.
"No change. The MRI showed no bleeding."
"That's a good sign." He stood just inside the door to her room, hands fisted at his sides, the creases at the corners of his eyes rivaling the ones crisscrossing yesterday's pants.
"There was nothing on the MRI last time."
Castle left the rest of that thought unsaid, trying to stay positive in the face of a still-unconscious fiancé.
"We should step outside." Esposito said, his tone deadly serious as he motioned to the hallway.
Snapping out of the returning mental loop of guilt, anger, and terror, he stood from the chair and followed, ducking into an unoccupied alcove just down the hall from the two officers still standing guard.
"He's dead."
"Who?" Castle prompted, obviously not making the connection Esposito expected.
"Bracken."
The word echoed inside his head, brain still not comprehending.
"Who did he kill now? I thought Kate was the only one left?"
"No, someone killed him. Uniform found him an hour ago in his cell, throat slit."
The white of the walls wavered, Esposito grayed out, Castle's legs went to jelly and he sat heavily on the edge of the desk behind him.
"Are you sure?"
"It's pretty hard to fake that scene - cell was wall to wall red. Preliminary sweep showed no trace evidence. Video feed cut out right before."
Neurons were starting to fire, connections to form.
"But who would - the only person who ever ghosted holding was Tyson."
There was no way. This made no sense. Bracken was untouchable. The Dragon didn't just die.
"Hannah disappeared from her cell," Esposito continued. "She was gone when Bracken's body was found. No trace of her on cameras. Her cell door was still locked."
Hannah. First the confession, and now this?
"You think she did this?"
Esposito shook his head, blinking hard to clear the cobwebs and bringing a hand up to rub at the back of his neck before he answered.
"It's the only thing that makes sense, but without evidence, right now it's just a guess."
"And you're worried because now she may come after Kate."
Something was tickling Castle's subconscious. If Kate were here, she would be able to tease it out with him, but not Esposito. The man was trying to do his job, catch a killer, protect his team. He wouldn't have time for a funny feeling.
"We've got no clue what she'll do next, but we put out a BOLO, Gates is calling in favors. We'll find her if she can be found."
Castle flashed back to the card that had appeared on Kate's floor, congratulating them on their baby.
It was the least I could do.
Could that possibly-
"Code Blue, Code Blue."
The voice over the speaker system was calm, crisp, loud enough to force its way in over his conversation with Esposito.
"Greenberg Pavilion, third floor, room three four seven."
By the time the final digit of Kate's room number was pronounced, Castle had spun back, only to find everyone on the unit running for her door.
His chest contracted in around a pain so sharp he pressed a fist to his ribs to keep himself upright. The voice repeated itself as the hallway telescoped, his feet frozen to the floor.
"Code Blue, Code Blue. Greenberg Pavilion, third floor, room three-forty-seven."
Esposito's vise grip on his shoulder finally propelled him forward, into the throng of nurses, past the portable X-ray machine, like wading through quicksand, with voices telling him to "stop," "wait," "don't go in there," on every side. He wove through two technicians pushing an EKG machine and managed to wedge himself inside her door.
No.
No.
His eyes clamped shut against the image, so much like that day three years before.
Forcing in a breath past the suffocating sensation of emptiness, he looked again, found the neurologist still leaning over Kate's motionless body, hands braced, arms extended, his whole torso pumping over her heart, counting.
"One, two, three, four, five..."
Every green line on the monitor was scrambled, jumping furiously, the machine letting out a screeching wail with each compression.
As the doctor paused, eyes on the now flat green line on the monitor, another woman opened Kate's mouth with a metal tool, delicately threaded a plastic tube into her throat, and attached a bag to push air into her lungs.
"PEA. Is epi in?"
"One epi is in."
"Resuming CPR."
Her whole body jerked with the renewed force of the neurologist's effort to get her heart beating again. One nurse pulled tube after tube of blood from her IV, and someone had a needle to her wrist, each person so focused on her task that she seemed not to notice the others in the room or the violence of the scene.
"Hold compressions."
Everyone went still to watch the monitor, where the green line now skipped in jagged peaks and valleys.
"V-tach. Everyone clear. Clear? Defibrillating."
The jolt shook him from head to toe, his eyes popping open to see the rumpled white sheet.
He sat bolt upright, back in the purple chair, staring at Kate, still resting peacefully against the pillow.
It was-
She was-
Where was-?
A dream.
Her heart was beating.
The little green line blipped in a smooth, even rhythm across the screen above her head.
Castle scanned the room, scrubbing a hand across his eyes as he took in the sunlight still pouring through the blinds, the vases of flowers now populating every horizontal surface.
Espo had finished his story about Bracken's murder and Hannah's disappearing act, then told him not to let Kate out of his sight and left for the 12th.
There had been no code.
But there was an unmarked green envelope sitting on the bedside table.
Hannah.
Hannah had taken out the Dragon and-
A rustle off to his left snapped him back to the present.
Kate's head rolled back and forth on the pillow, eyes scrunched tight. A tiny noise escaped her parted lips, and then-
She opened her eyes.
Squinting against the light, she turned toward him, and the corners of her mouth curved gently upward.
"Hey, Castle."
# * # * # * #
Epilogue to follow.