Chapter Thirty Seven
Breakdown

"Beckett! My office, right now!" Captain Montgomery shouted across the bullpen.

Kate was halfway across the room to his office door before he had even gotten all the words out. Rick moved to follow her but the door slammed shut behind them before he could get halfway there. He was about to reach for the handle anyway, when Esposito put a hand gently on his arm and stopped him with a glance, not of reproach, because he shared his impulse to stand with her, but of brotherly concern for him. This outcome was not going to be pretty, and Espo knew it.

"I'm gonna have to kick that son of a bitch loose now, you realize that?" Montgomery said angrily.

"Sir, you heard him! He as much as confessed to the murder!"

"Come on...he's playing you!" Montgomery shot back, "And you let him get under your skin acting like a damn rookie!"

Kate was still seething, Roy could see it. She wasn't hearing him, wasn't listening to a damn thing he said. He could tell she was no longer thinking like the cop he had taught her to be, but like the dangerous wounded creature he had met in the property room so many years ago after her career had almost imploded from the last time she went down this self destructive path.

A path he had helped set her on nearly twenty years ago. He had taken it upon himself to try to help her as an act of contrition for what he had done, and what he had allowed to happen as a result. He had done his best to shield her from this case, sent her down more than one blind alley and wild goose chase until she had finally seen the futility of it and had backed off on her own. Now it was beginning again.

"We have nothing to tie him to Raglan's murder, or your mother's. You're off this case."

They were the only words she had been unprepared for and her shock at his statement was readily apparent on her face. Kate had to work her lips before she could choke the words out, her reply barely above a whisper.

"No, sir...you can't do that...not now..." she pleaded.

"I just did," he said, interrupting her attempt to coerce him to change his mind.

"No!" Kate said more forcefully.

"I just did!" Montgomery shouted authoritatively, "I gave you a chance to run this case and you blew it. Now go home!"

The look he shot her stopped any further argument on her part. The wounded, betrayed expression on her face spoke volumes before she stalked out the door grabbed her coat off the back of her chair and headed for the stairs, her emotions too raw, too close to the surface to wait for the elevator.

"Beckett..." Rick shouted after her, "Kate!" but she gave no indication she had heard him.

"You too, Rodgers, clear out!" Montgomery said

"What did I do?" Rodgers replied, he would have been the natural choice to pick up this case. Or so he thought.

"You were shot, remember? You're on disability leave effective immediately."

Montgomery then rounded on Ryan and Esposito. "As of this moment, you two are now running point on Raglan's homicide."

They tried to defer, out of respect for Kate, both looking sheepishly at Rick for a moment, but Rick shook his head, agreeing with the Captain at least in this, as Montgomery put them in their place.

"You want to help her? Find that shooter! Solve the damn case!"

When Montgomery turned around and found Rick still standing there he told him.

"What the hell are you still doing here? I said clear out...now!" then as he passed him on his way back to his office he said in a low whisper, "I know Beckett, she won't let this go...just try to keep her from doing anything really stupid."

….

When Richard Rodgers stepped out of the elevator into the precinct parking garage, he didn't have the foggiest idea of where to begin looking for Kate. She had walked to Lanie's after their fight, then taken a taxi to get back to the loft. They had gone to meet Raglan and then driven back to the precinct in his FBI issue Suburban. She could have gone anywhere in a haze of anger and betrayal over having the case taken away from her and grief over her mother, possibly even to the remains of her old apartment building, which was still in the process of being restored to being habitable.

When he got to his parking space he was shocked to find her in the passenger seat of his Suburban with a totally lost expression on her face and tears streaming down her cheeks. He had, of course programmed the keyless entry to accept her fingerprints to unlock the door, he was just surprised that the parking garage was as far as she'd gotten.

As he opened the driver's side door and climbed inside, Kate reached over and brushed her fingertips over the wound on his shoulder, careful not to apply any pressure so she wouldn't hurt him, Captain Montgomery's words from earlier today about her partner having "already bled for this" ringing in her ears.

"It wasn't until I got all the way down here that I realized I had nowhere to go." Kate said quietly, barely choking back a sob.

….

When they got back to the loft, Kate walked to his bedroom to use his en suite bathroom to take a shower as most of her clothes had migrated to his bedroom closet from her bedroom upstairs since they came back from L.A.. She had been running flat out for the last twenty four hours taking only brief catnaps on the break room couch or at her desk, though the fact that she was completely exhausted was likely the least of her problems. Letting her take point on this investigation had been a mistake from the get-go, but he knew that Montgomery had to at least let her try. This is the most emotionally beaten down he had seen her since Reginald Jacob's arraignment, and it practically killed him to see her doing this to herself.

He was interrupted from his reverie by a knock on the door. When he opened it his mother stepped inside, wrapping him up almost immediately in a crushing hug.

"I thought you were going out for a spa day, Mother?" Rick asked, surprised to see her at his door.

"I heard about the shooting on the news." Martha replied, "It could have been you, it very nearly was, you know that don't you?"

"Yeah, but I'm fine, it wasn't me." Rick said woodenly, the stitches in his shoulder beginning to itch.

"You were really lucky yesterday." she countered in a hoarse whisper.

"It's a part of the job mother, you're over-reacting." he tried to put a soothing tone in his voice, "where is this coming from?"

Martha's first response was to slap him in the face.

"How the hell can you ask me something like that?" Martha shouted at him, her voice breaking, her eyes glistening with tears, "You ran off after Alexis died, threw yourself headlong into a world where your life was in near constant danger without a backward glance or a second thought about what losing you would do to the people who care about you, just like your father did!"

Before he could respond or even get in a word edgewise, she continued,

"Think about how much you loved Alexis, and that is how much I love you, and don't you DARE ask me where this is COMING FROM!"

With that, Martha turned on her heel and stalked out of the loft in tears before Rick could move to stop her, still trying to digest what she had said. In his entire life she had never mentioned his father, not even once. He had no idea who the man was, not even his name. His own eyes were beginning to mist over when he turned around and saw that there had been an audience for this awkwardly painful family moment.

Kate stood framed in the doorway to his office dressed in yoga pants and a loose fitting floral top, her eyes wide, her hair still damp from the shower. Guilt and fear were written all over her face. She had walked out on him the other day after a stupid fight she had started over nothing, dragged him into her meeting with Raglan which had nearly gotten him killed. Just when things can't possibly get worse, his mother hits him with a really low blow. Her own tears were back in full force as she ran to him and he swallowed her up into his embrace as the past three days events finally caught up with her.

"I'm so sorry, Rick...I'm so sorry...I'm so sorry."

He held Kate for several minutes until she cried herself out. He knew he was not going to let her sleep upstairs tonight, and she wasn't even seriously considering it either. He led her over to the couch and motioned for her to sit down, which she did, curling her long legs under her as she got comfortable while Rick went into the kitchen to make them some macaroni and cheese. He knew they were both too hungry to wait long, so he simply heated cooked the pasta and served it as rue.

He remembered from his own youth how his mother would make it this way for him on occasion when he needed some warm comfort food whenever the teasing he received at school about his parentage got to be too much. Or later when he would get sent home for getting into fights when boys at school called his mother a whore for having a child out of wedlock.

He needed that warm comfort now, and so did Kate.

….

Martha was still fuming when she found herself in the office of her acting school, dragging open her desk drawer and finding the burner phone Webb had sent her. She powered it up and sent a single text message.

Don't you dare let anything happen to him,
because he's all I have left.

Less than a minute later she received a reply.

Not while I live, you have my word.
Anyone who tries will find out why
I am called "Nemesis"

She sent a reply back before shutting the burner phone off,

Thank you, Richard.

….

Rick and Kate were sitting in "their" booth at Remy's eating breakfast and eying each other over their plates. It was a beautiful summer's day and the two of them only had eyes for each other. Whispered "I love you's" gave way to footsie under the table. Suddenly a shot rang out in the warm morning air and Rick dropped from the booth onto the cold floor, whispering "I love you" with his dying breath as she watched the light go out of his blue eyes and they darkened to gray.

Suddenly her mother was standing over her, blood dripping from her abdomen and said in a chilling voice, "Let me go, Katie, before they come for you like they came for me..."

Kate sat up bolt upright in bed screaming his name, tears running down her face, Her sudden movement and piercing scream had awakened Rick, who pulled her shaking body to his, whispering soothing nonsense words and running his hands up and down her back like he had done so many times in the past. Too many times for his liking, in spite of the fact that he loved having her in his arms.

She didn't tell him about this dream, she didn't have to. There were only two possibilities, either it was about him being killed, brought on by his near miss the other day or it was about her mother brought on by his mother's outburst last night which she had overheard. Little did he realize it had been both. Nor did it matter to him, his reaction would be the same regardless. He would hold her until she stilled enough to go back to sleep and do his best to keep her safe while she slept, and make sure he was here when she woke.

It was the only thing he could do.