"Where are we on processing the warehouse?" Kate asks, sliding her coat off her arms and draping it over her chair.

Ryan came in while they were out at the prison; he has a rasp to his voice she doesn't like, but he seems okay, and Jenny let him leave, so he must be fine.

"Slow," he reports. "We've got ballistics guys in there, and the hair and fibers look good. Lanie has the bodies, and then there are two guys still in critical condition. We might get something from them, maybe, but I'm betting on the forensics."

"We have anything more about the team Lockwood hired?" She sinks down into her chair and glances at Karpowski. The woman has been at the 12th all day, working at the money trail by herself; she looks frazzled.

"It's a mess. Really. I've hit a wall with the bank accounts. Same place that Rathborne's payments came from, but I can't get any further."

"Well, that's a tenuous link, but better than nothing." She rubs at her forehead. "We need to let the forensic accountants go over it. Which means we won't get the results for. . .months."

"We got the time," Eposito says with a shrug. "It's not like they'll close this case prematurely. Not with two detectives involved."

As victims, he means. Beckett nods. "Okay then. Karpowski, put it in the queue for the forensic accountant. Then we'll take the team apart one by one. Start with those still living. Pull the files for me and put them in the conference room?"

Karpowski nods, starts getting busy. Kate turns back to her boys and lets her eyes linger on Kevin's still freezer-burned face, knows that Espo has been calling him Rudolph. "Okay, guys, I've got show and tell in an hour."

Esposito snorts and she shoots him a dirty look. "Be you in three years, big man."

Ryan slaps Esposito in the chest. "You go. It's just drudge work right now."

"Still-"

"Go, Beckett." Esposito is giving her a forgiving look, like he finally realizes it actually might be him in a few years.

She nods. "Right. Send me pdfs of whatever and I can do some of this on the tablet-"

"Detective Beckett," comes a voice.

She turns slowly and faces her Captain. "Yes, sir."

"In my office."

Ryan snickers; Esposito punches her arm as she passes.

"Thanks guys. Your solidarity is overwhelming."

She opens Gates's door and steps inside, shuts it after herself. She stands there for a moment, watching as Gates shuffles through some paperwork on her desk, still standing as well.

"Detective," she starts, and gestures to a chair.

"Sir. I have to be somewhere-"

"You can sit."

She comes forward, sits. Gates is still standing, and Kate absolutely hates these kinds of power plays. She's tempted to stand up again, but that would mean she cared. So she stays where she is and waits out her new boss.

"Update me."

"He hired the team internationally. Paid through offshore accounts that trace back to a bank in Afghanistan which is most often used by the US military. It's also the same bank that Dick Coonan used - the assassin who murdered my mother."

"I'm aware of that connection," Gates says, her eyes not once faltering on Kate's. "And the hired goons here?"

"Karpowski is setting that up for us right now. We'll just be going back through their service records. So far, they're all ex-military."

"And Lockwood?" Gates finally sits, for the first time giving Beckett an even playing field. She doesn't know what it means.

"Lockwood isn't speaking. But."

"But."

She doesn't elaborate and Gates waves a hand. "I'm assuming this is stuff I don't want to know?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then tell me."

"Sir?"

"I don't go in for plausible deniability, Detective Beckett. You're in my house. You do wrong, you reflect poorly on me."

"I might have made a visit with Sokolov, a Russian-"

"Mafia boss. He kidnapped you back in April."

Beckett grits her teeth. "Yes, sir. I'd shot and killed his son."

"Ruled justifiable. Still. You pushed his buttons, now he's what? - looking to take out Lockwood?"

"Something like that."

"He'll get his guys to do that," Gates muses. "Means we see who's under his control in there. Lockwood will be fine, guy like that."

Beckett stays silent; she's surprised Gates reasoned that out on her own, but maybe she shouldn't be.

"All right. Here's my deal, Detective. I don't like how you work - too independent, too rogue for me. You bring your husband in where no civilian should go. But you and your team get results. I'm willing to let that work for as long as it's beneficial. But I say when you go, when you stop - I'm in control. You report in to me when you're going solo, you report in to me when he's with you-"

"Sir," she interrupts.

"Don't sir me, Detective. I am not through."

She clamps her mouth shut, feeling scolded like a child.

"You go anywhere with Castle - it's like going alone. Which means you better radio in and let me know. New rule."

"Yes, sir."

"Second. You and your team are off this case for the next twelve hours. I don't want to see you here again until tomorrow morning."

"You can't-"

"Weren't you just about to leave? Some place to be, Detective?"

Damn. "Yes, sir," she grinds out, not looking away. She hates the smug satisfaction in Gates's eyes, but she can't help but admit she needs. . .something.

"You do whatever you need to do - that's our deal, remember? Because it seems to work. But you let me know, you keep me in the loop, and I get to say when and where you work this case. I can't have my best detectives working out of a bias, working emotionally compromised."

It grates on Beckett, it goes against everything in her to relinquish control of her mother's case, but at the same time, she remembers how it felt too-early this morning, trembling on her stairs and unable to get control of herself. She remembers the dark hole of her obsession all too well.

"We clear, Detective?"

"Yes, sir."

"Go to show and tell, then."

Kate glances up in shock, but Gates is only smirking at her, dismissing her with a wave of her hand.

"I hear things. Go. Tell Ryan and Esposito to come in here please. They're next."

Kate goes.


After the boys get their talking-to, she snags Ryan and Espo for a private conversation in the break room, a headache beginning to form behind her eyes.

"Did you both get the order to knock off?" she asks.

Ryan nods. "I just got here but she still wouldn't let me stay. Sorry, boss."

"It's okay. We could probably stand the time off."

"She took over the Raglan shooting," Esposito says softly, his jaw hard with tension.

Kate crosses her arms over her chest. "And there are things she can't know."

Ryan shifts; he doesn't look comfortable. She won't call him the weakest link, but if anyone might spill Montgomery's secret, it's Ryan. He'll do it for all the right reasons too.

"This stays in the family," she says quietly. "No matter what comes to light - Montgomery has nothing to do with it."

"Because he has nothing to do with it," Esposito snarls. "An old police buddy got shot. Got nothing to do with him, or whatever happened twenty years ago."

She nods, but Ryan tucks himself into a tight and uncompromising line. "I don't think this is the way to go about it. I think Gates-"

"Ryan," she says insistently. "We agreed. Raglan is a separate issue. Whoever hired Lockwood-"

"Is cleaning house, Beckett. You know that, I know that. Everyone connected to that case is under the gun. He'll go after Montgomery next-"

"We have Lockwood in custody-" she starts.

"One hired killer? So what? He'll hire another. What's to stop this guy?"

"Us," Esposito says fiercely. "We will stop this guy. But we don't ruin his family's name; we don't drag him before IAB and let every single case he's solved get tossed."

Ryan hesitates; Kate can see that actually gets through to him.

"He's got so many arrests, Ryan. So many people he's put away, so much good he's done since that time. We can't-"

"I know," he says loudly, too loudly, and they all freeze. And then Ryan swivels his head around, checking for listening ears, and says, "I know. Don't think I don't understand that. But this is bigger than us."

Kate meets Esposito's eyes, a silent command for him to talk to his partner, make him understand. Then she gathers her stuff from the break room table.

"I've got to go. I'll see you guys tomorrow morning. Be ready to sift through military records of Lockwood's team. We'll talk about this. . .later."

"Yeah, boss," Ryan answers, but she can see he still doesn't like it. Doesn't sit right with him.

Well, it doesn't sit right with her either. But they can't afford to have too many people knowing about Montgomery's involvement. This is just how they have to play the hand they've been dealt.


She calls him first thing, unbuttoning her coat as she steps out onto the sidewalk, feeling that instinctive need for both his voice and also to have her weapon clear should she require it.

Raglan's shooter is behind bars, but she doesn't think it ends there. Ryan's right - what's to stop this guy from hiring another assassin, assembling a new team of covert ops guys?

"Hey," he finally answers.

"Hey, baby," she murmurs back, checking the sidewalk. "Look, I've been kicked out of the 12th for the rest of the day. Want-"

"Kate, love, I'm swamped. I have no time."

"Oh," she sighs, staring at the pedestrian crossing light. "Darn."

"You're headed to preschool?" he prompts.

"I've got to go get the lizard from home first. But yeah." She walks with the crowd but keeps a safe distance between herself and the others. She's being paranoid, but she can't seem to stop it, tamp it down.

"Good. Text me when you get there. I've got to go."

"Everything okay?"

"Not really. I need to find money in the budget to hire three more people or else let the company go under. Bye, babe."

And then he actually hangs up on her.

The company go under?

She presses the phone to her chest, astonished and a little worried, but there's nothing she can do to help. She knows zero about the publishing business - other than what Castle has told her and what she's picked up at book parties - and she's got to head over to the kids' preschool.

Maybe she'll stop by his office for lunch. If show and tell goes quickly. Does show and tell go quickly?


Even though she doesn't have much time, Kate sheds her work clothes and slides into jeans, a sweater, then has to take Rex out really quickly. She ignores the guilt over how much Rex is cooped up all day, stands outside in the freezing wind as the dog does his business.

She collects it, deposits the plastic bag in their building's dumpster, and then goes back up to their apartment. Rex is nudging her happily with his head, so she bends down and rubs him, over and over, before unleashing him in the entry.

He doesn't leave her though; he looks up at her with those old eyes, tail swishing slowly.

"Okay, buddy. Just have to go get the lizard, but I'll be back later. I'll take you out somewhere. Promise."

She gets a lick across her fingers for it, which reminds her to go wash her hands before she heads upstairs.

Ellery's room is a wreck - the tent still up but listing to one side, bedcovers all over the floor, clothes pulled out of her bottom drawer, a swimsuit dangling from the closet door, books tumbling off the shelves, one of her mother's shoes. Kate sighs and rubs her forehead, kicks a few items out from under her feet, and heads for the terrarium near the window.

When she peers in, the bearded dragon is peering back. Kate smiles at it, the strange little thing, the triangle head, the spikes that feel like roughened and weathered skin. Honestly, when Ella said she wanted a dragon, and then found this online (must've had Dashiell's help, surely - a three year old?), Kate was taken with the thing.

There's something exotic and wonderful and. . .magical about a lizard like this. Things might happen if he's your friend. Rex is that kind of dog, too, and the moment Dash fell to his knees and embraced the big black beast, Kate knew he had to have him.

So both her kids have their own - unique - pets, and now she's got to get Castle okay with it. Eventually.

"You'll win him over. Right, Abe?"

The lizard is tapping his head against the glass like he wants out. Kate reaches inside and curls her hand around it's belly, a finger coming up along it's neck, the tail along her wrist and forearm. The eyes close, as if in pleasure, and Kate gives in and strokes the top of the creature's head.

She carries him downstairs with her, cradled against her chest, and runs her fingers over the dog's head as he comes to investigate.

"Hey, Rex. Good dog. You're good with Abe Lincoln, aren't you?" Rex noses into her hand, then lifts his head and snuffles at her side, under her arm, making her laugh. "Okay, okay. Yeah. You gotta stop that."

She tugs him away by the collar, stroking his ears in regret, and heads for the bedroom.

She needs a shoebox for show and tell.