Author's Note: Ugh, sorry about how long this chapter took, guys. I'm, like, knee-deep in all sorts of stuff at the moment. But I haven't forgotten about y'all, and I hope you enjoy this latest chapter! Reviews are love.
Three weeks later…
It was a really stupid idea.
Even when she came up with it, Ricki Castle knew it was a stupid idea, and she fully expected Detective Beckett to reject it. Honestly, she got more resistance from Michael Connelly than she did from her fiancée. Then again, they were stuck in solving John Allen's murder, so at this point, having Ricki go undercover at a high-stakes poker game in Chinatown that may or may not involve the Russian mob seemed as good an idea as any.
But it was still stupid.
"You sure this is the place?" Kate asked, peering out the fogged-up rear window of their surveillance van. The rear was barely big enough for two people, and yet Kate and Ricki were wedged in along with Detective Ryan. Detective Esposito, upon hearing of the plan, bowed out – though that was likely because of whatever rift had developed between him and Ricki.
Just as well; the last thing Kate wanted was for the two of them to start squabbling while they were trying to go undercover.
"Cannell's never steered me wrong," Ricki answered, adjusting the mic hidden underneath her purple button-down and re-doing her ponytail. If nothing else, this gave Ricki an excuse to dress up a bit.
Never mind the fact that the launch party for Heat Rises was in two weeks.
"Button cam's in place," Ryan announced, squinting at a series of tiny monitors. "Good for picture and sound. The mic's just a back-up, in case the camera fails."
"So remember," Kate began, tugging on the collar of Ricki's shirt, "we can hear you, but you can't hear us. Once you leave this van, you're on your own, okay?" When Ricki nodded, Kate released a ragged breath. "Alright, tell me the plan again."
Ricki shrugged. "I go in, find the tattooed Russian, get a clear picture of him, then get the hell out."
Kate nodded. "And you don't stay any longer than necessary."
"I'll be fine." Ricki cupped Kate's face in her hands and drew her in for a kiss. "Besides, it's Chinatown. How many Russian poker players can there be?"
Kate chewed on her lower lip as she watched Ricki leave the van, the taste of the writer still on her lips. Kate stared at the ring on her left hand, shaking her head before taking the empty chair beside Detective Ryan and grabbing a headset. "I got a bad feeling about this."
Ryan tweaked one of the dials. "You and me both, Beckett."
Inside…
The place was far busier than Ricki had anticipated, practically filled to the brim with poker players and scantily-clad women bustling from table to table, filling the players' every whim. Cigarette girls patrolled the perimeter – who knew cigarette girls were still a thing? Ricki paused in the doorway, tugging on her sleeves as her eyes scanned the room.
"This place is great," she whispered. "Very noir. Might have to include it in the next Nikki Heat novel."
Movement out of the corner of her eye caught Ricki's attention, and she turned her whole body in that direction to make sure the camera got the view. "Tattooed Russian," she said before frowning… because as soon as she saw the first man, another one came into her field of vision going the other way. "Uh, another one."
Ricki's eyes scanned to the right, and her heart sank. Yeah, this plan was definitely not one of her brightest moments. "There's a whole table of tattooed Russians. Lot more in Chinatown than I thought."
She began weaving her way through the crowd, almost barreling into a woman carrying a tray of shot glasses. The woman gave Ricki a flirty smile, and though Ricki's eyes instantly went to her considerable cleavage, the writer distracted herself by grabbing one of the glasses and immediately downing it.
The burn of the alcohol slithering down her throat distracted Ricki far more than she had hoped, and she broke into a mini coughing fit. The woman with the tray touched her arm, and Ricki flashed a smile that looked more like a grimace before grabbing another glass and downing it.
"So the Russians are regulars here," she theorized, though it was a lot less fun when she was the only one doing it. "But only a handful of them play at the table, which was where John Allen would have gone. Guy said they're card bullies, raising the pots and forcing their opponents to bet more just to stay in the game."
Surveillance van…
Kate couldn't help but smile; Ricki was making like she was a modern-day Bond, definitely playing everything up. Dangerous as it was, her fiancée was still finding a way to have fun with it, and where that would've annoyed the hell out of Kate when they first met, now it was sort of endearing.
Ryan cocked a sideways glance. "You think she'll go through with it?"
Kate frowned. "What?"
"Ricki." Ryan pointed at the monitor. "You really think she'll sue cause of what Espo did?"
"I dunno," Kate admitted. "Sometimes I think she's serious, sometimes I think she's just yanking Espo around a bit, see how much she can make him twist in the wind."
"Just between you and me," Ryan shook his head, "I think it's fucked up what Javi did. I mean, I'm his partner and love him like a brother, but… he didn't have to do Castle like that."
Kate peered closer into the monitor. "Preaching to the choir here."
"…see what kind of trouble I can stir up. I'll go sit at the table, see if I can find anything out."
Kate and Ryan both sat up a little straighter, staring at each other with wide eyes.
"What did she say?"
Ryan shook his head. "She just said—"
"That's not the plan!"
Inside…
Ricki flashed the biggest smile she could as she took the empty seat at one of the tables in the back, even though the other five men at the table were certainly not the sort she would ever have thought to bring home to Martha. Three of them sneered at her in something resembling anger, while the other two were looking at her like she was a slab of meat.
The chill running down Ricki's spine made it clear that she had never gotten used to being ogled like that, even with all of the fame she had achieved.
"How's it going?" she asked.
A bald Russian wearing a black leather vest shook his head. "This is no-limits table."
"Perfect," Ricki shrugged. "I'm a no-limits kinda girl. Change for twenty grand."
As the cards were dealt, Ricki studied each of the men surrounding her, making sure the camera was on them long enough for Kate and Ryan back in the van to get a good look. She noticed the man across from her wearing a track suit, tattoos running up the side of his neck and covering his fingers – even the knuckles.
Boy, that must've hurt…
"Nice tattoos," she remarked. "What do they mean?"
The man in the track suit snarled. "They mean 'mind your own business and play cards'."
"Alright, don't mean to pry," Ricki shrugged. "Just a writer, doing a little research."
The man seated directly across from her, wearing a gray tank top and a bushy goatee, arched a brow. "Writer. Anything we might know?"
Ricki shrugged again, a sideways grin creeping onto her face. "Storm Fall, Storm's Last Stand, Gathering Storm…"
"Holy shit!" Track Suit Guy blurted out, smacking an open palm on the table. "Derrick Storm? I loved that guy! Why the fuck you kill him off?!"
"Long story," Ricki waved, leaning in. "But now I'm working on this other thing, underground poker, very hush-hush. Just came by to get a feel for the world, that's all."
Goatee Man glared at Ricki for several quiet moments before setting down his cards. "See, that's funny. Because I hear? You have new series. Detective. Smart, sexy. Heat, I think name is?"
A bead of sweat ran down the side of Ricki's face. "Yeah." Crap. "Nikki Heat."
"I like Nikki Heat," Goatee Man announced as he rose from his chair and wandered along the circumference of the table. By the time he was behind Ricki, she felt the barrel of a gun poking into her upper back. "But she no Derrick Storm."
"Look, I get you're upset I killed off Storm," Ricki laughed from nervousness as much as anything else, "but don't you think you're overreacting a little?"
"You work with cops," Goatee Man snarled. "How do we know you're not undercover?"
Shit…
Surveillance van…
"Shit!"
Kate tossed the headset aside and bolted from her chair, immediately running her fingers roughly through her hair before grabbing her purse off the floor. Rooting around in her bag, Kate pulled out a pair of black high heels and something resembling a black dress before stripping off her black button-down shirt and shedding off her blue jeans.
Detective Ryan sat slack-jawed, watching everything unfold before him, unable to believe his squad leader was stripping down to her red bra and matching underwear right in front of him. Before Ryan could react, though, Kate slipped the dress over her head, smoothing it out over herself before stepping into her heels.
Grabbing a self-check mirror from her bag, Kate ruffled up her hair some more before applying a darker shade of lipstick.
"Um… Beckett?"
Standing upright again, Kate placed a hand on her hip and rattled off something in Russian. She smirked at Ryan's quirked brow and shook her head. "Semester in Kiev," she explained, reaching for the door handle.
"Beckett, what are you doing?"
With a foot on pavement, Kate glanced over her shoulder and grinned. "Going to save fiancée," she answered with a thick Russian accent.
Outside…
The pavement was far too damp for such high heels, but Kate Beckett had enough years of practice that she could still stride with purpose. Sirens in the distance were little more than a nuisance, and as she stalked through the alley, Kate could feel a pair of eyes peering at her.
She ignored it as best she could, glancing down just in time to see some of the red poking out the top of her black dress. She left it as it was, though, rounding the corner in time to see two burly men dressed head to toe in black standing in front of a concrete staircase.
Her steps slowed, and Kate added more sway to her hips.
"Ah, gentlemen," she cooed in her fake accent. "I was hoping there would be game tonight."
"All full tonight, ma'am," the guard on the right said. "We're gonna have to ask you to turn around."
"Oh, come on," Kate scoffed. "My girlfriend is in there. She's player. You don't let me in, she lose. I am lucky charm. She lose vacation money to Cabo, I will be very cross!"
The two men glanced at each other with arched brows. Kate held her breath.
The guard on the right reached for his pistol. Kate was on him before the weapon left its holster, her right elbow slamming into his nose. The guard on the left swung at Kate and she ducked. She then grabbed him by his shoulders and stuffed her knee into his considerable gut.
Both men were crumpled on the pavement, moaning and writhing in pain. That was disappointingly easy.
"You call yourselves security," she kept the accent.
Kate wandered up the stairs and slipped into the heavy rusted door, her eyes taking a few moments to adjust to the light. Pressing her back against the now-closed door, Kate checked to make sure her gun was right where it should be.
In seconds, she heard a thick Russian voice.
"The story, the dead man, the roof," the voice said. "Who told you? Who knew?"
"His family knows," she heard Ricki say. "His children know."
The sound of a gun cocking made Kate's blood run cold. "If he paid what he owed, he would be home now. But he crossed me and now you have crossed me."
Kate crept as quietly as she could through the labyrinth that was apparently the place's kitchen, stopping in her tracks when she saw the burly Russian man pointing a gun at Ricki. She momentarily considered bum-rushing the man, but she was too far away. He had a chance to pull the trigger before she got to him.
"You might not be cop," the man said, "but you are good as one."
"Ricki, my darling!" Kate came out of hiding, laying on the accent thick once more as both the writer and the man with a gun turned to stare at her with confused glares. The detective jogged in her heels until she scooped Ricki into her arms and planted a soft kiss to her lips. "I have been looking all over for you!"
Ricki quirked a brow. "Beckett?"
The Russian man snarled. "Who are you?"
Whirling around, Kate leveled as menacing a glare as she could. "I am lover! You dare point gun at my woman?!"
Anger replaced confusion on the bald man's rough and scarred face, and he clenched his jaw as he tightened his grip on the gun. "Maybe your woman should learn when to mind own business."
As soon as Kate saw the man lift his arm again, she sprung at him, trapping the arm against the side of her body before pivoting and using her momentum to hoist the burly man over her shoulder. He grunted in pain when he slammed back-first onto the concrete floor, losing his grip on the gun before Kate jabbed her knee into his gut and she pulled her own weapon out from under her dress.
Wide-eyed, Ricki still had her hands up. "Is it just my imagination, or did you change?"
"Castle," Kate's voice returned to its normal cadence, "some back-up, please?"
The Twelfth…
As Kate walked out of Interrogation, notepad tucked under her arm, Detective Ryan and one of the uniforms walked in to arrest the suspect and process the charges. By the time she got to her desk, she smiled at the sight of Ricki in the guest chair to the side, two steaming mugs of coffee sitting on the desk.
"So how is she?" Ricki asked once Kate was seated.
"It's hard," she answered, "when everything you thought you knew turns out to be a lie."
"Not everything," Ricki countered. "Her husband's love was real. Sometimes… sometimes people do the wrong things for the right reasons."
"And far too often, the innocent are the ones who suffer."
"Listen," Ricki scooted a little in her seat, grabbing her mug and taking a sip, "sorry for going rogue like that earlier."
Kate shrugged. "Honestly, I'd have been surprised if you didn't."
"But hey," Ricki flashed a cheeky grin, "we still solved the case. Just proves, once again, that we make a pretty good team. Like Starsky and Hutch. Tango and Cash. Turner and Hooch."
Kate arched a brow. "You do remind me a little of Hooch."
Ricki narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, fighting back the mirth. Just because they were madly in love and engaged to be married, that didn't mean Kate was above getting in the occasional shot. She took another sip before setting the mug aside and resting her left elbow on the surface of the desk.
"So," Ricki's brows arched, "Russian Beckett, huh?"
"You like that?" Kate flashed a mischievous smile as she wrapped up the last of the paperwork for the night.
"You have no idea. Maybe I should write Nikki undercover with the Russian mob in my next book."
"Maybe." Kate capped her pen and stuffed the paper she had been writing on in a manila folder before standing and grabbing her leather coat. "Or maybe… we could go back to the loft and I can be your own personal Bond girl."
Ricki stood when Kate did, and when the detective's finger trailed teasingly over Ricki's jaw, she swallowed hard and bit her lower lip to keep herself from moaning in anticipation and frustration. Kate brushed past her on the way to the elevator, and Ricki turned immediately to follow… only to crash right into the chair she just vacated.
Both writer and chair careened to the floor, drawing the attention of the rest of the bullpen. Ricki sprung back to her feet, clearing her throat and waving at the snickering audience. "I'm okay," she protested with a smile that looked more like a cringe.
Kate was waiting for Ricki at the elevator, biting back a smirk of her own. "You sure about that, Castle?"
As the doors to the elevator slipped shut, Ricki grabbed Kate's face with both hands and devoured her in a kiss she had been wanting to plant on the detective since she first heard that Russian drawl. Kate moaned softly when Ricki's tongue slipped into her mouth, and the detective lost her grip on her coat.
Ricki broke the kiss with a devilish grin. "You tell me."
