Chapter 52: You can be the hero

There's been another ransom demand. It's back to the Candela's home: everything they're worth in piles of dollar bills on the table; a very specific type of backpack to put it in. It's all starting to break down: the parents fighting, blaming each other, tempers shortening with every minute their daughter has been missing. Test and counter-test; mistrust and misunderstanding: but the child is still alive. So far. Now to deliver the ransom payment. No cops. No agents. Or the girl dies.

Sorenson's going to take it himself, despite the demands, till the father puts his foot down and refuses. The father's not capable, however, still too fragile, incapable of holding himself together. There's no other option, though. Until Castle volunteers.

"What?" Beckett sounds shocked. Not, however, appalled. Sorenson looks appalled, but Castle suspects that's because he wants to play the hero himself. And sure, that's a small part of what Castle's doing, but the much bigger part of him, the part that he's let develop, or maybe that he's released, since he watched Beckett and her team taking on the bad guys without hesitation: that part tells him he's got a child; he knows how he'd feel if he were this broken, grieving, guilty man; and he's not an agent, not a cop, and gives no-one any excuse to kill the girl. So it has to be him. There is no-one else.

Sorenson is predictably unhappy. It turns into a contest of wills between Sorenson and Beckett. No question who's going to win that one, but Sorenson has still got the same peculiar reaction to Beckett taking charge that he'd displayed earlier. Castle abruptly places it as me-Tarzan-you-Jane and sniggers internally. He'd pay serious money to watch this show, though he wouldn't need to place a bet on the outcome. Disappointingly, at least from Castle's viewpoint, (he'd wanted to watch the flaying he was sure Beckett was going to deliver) Sorenson backs off, again. He'd done that with the birth father, too. He parks that whole interaction and what it tells him about Beckett for later consideration.

Beckett's quietly unhappy about Castle doing this. He's not supposed to get involved in operations, certainly not doing more than shadowing her, but there isn't any other choice. If she'd thought about it, though, she would have known to expect this. He hadn't faltered under the bullets, so why wouldn't he volunteer here? She snarks as normal, while he's being wired up and complaining about the tech's cold hands, to hide any semblance of concern. When the tech goes, though, Castle looks at her and notices her tension, tries to reassure her, loses that in another cloud of snark and orders. But as he exits Beckett manages to slip a swift hand over his, fast reassurance for him in his turn.

The drop is made, but the clever use of crowd art with dozens of similar backpacks (no wonder it was such a specific instruction, thinks Beckett bleakly) means that no-one gets a look at who picks it up. Washout, and the Candelas are $750,000 down. Though at least Castle wasn't mistaken for a cop, or an agent, so there's more chance (though that's slipping away by the minute, if this follows pattern) that the little girl is still alive. And… Castle's done something clever. He's slipped the phone into the backpack and sent Beckett a text (she reads it and struggles not to blush: it simply says It's worth letting me take charge) and thereby ensured they can trace the kidnappers' location. She could kiss him. Not in public, though. She'll save that for later. She looks at Sorenson's face and notes the annoyance there. Still not playing nice: he could at least have said well done, or something similar.

Beckett drifts off into a quiet reverie, comparing Castle's behaviour with Sorenson's, much to Sorenson's detriment. It's odd that Castle, just as alpha and forceful as anyone around, doesn't see the need to emphasise his masculinity by second-guessing her, nor does he interfere in the way she does her job, whilst Sorenson can't seem to get his stupid fat head round the idea that she knows best. She wonders, for the first time, whether she was just unlucky: that it isn't every relationship that has to involve overbearing control, or see her as a weak victim, but were only hers. It's not as if she's got a large sample to draw conclusions from. She wanders over to Castle, who's being de-wired and looking seriously at a photo of the girl, obviously mapping his own feelings, if it were ever to happen to his daughter, on to the parents. Unusually, when he looks at her there's none of the normal flirtatiousness that he displays in public, or the heat that he generates when either no-one's looking or there's no-one else around. This case may have hit her hard, but Castle's hardly been unaffected either. She considers the position, and is just slipping into smooth satisfaction that the Feds will, surely, locate the phone and the kidnapper and the child this afternoon, pick them up: they'll have closed the case. If that's done, then she thinks that a drink with the team followed by an investigation of the more interesting, and dangerous, areas of their interlocking desire might wrap the day up in a way guaranteed to let her forget kidnaps, and Sorenson's attitude, and men she found she couldn't trust.

Silk and steel edge into her mind, and her posture changes very slightly, she unconsciously lets the aura around her include dark, forbidden sexuality, flaring a little hotter. Castle reacts, suddenly distracted from the photo; bigger, harder edged, dangerous. Tension crackles, raw desire starts to build. Anticipation is already scenting the air. Hot glances ricochet between them: Beckett's stance shifts to scream I-dare-you; Castle's conveys you'll surrender, and you'll enjoy it.

And then Sorenson enters: his body language and face showing clearly that there's a problem. The atmosphere changes instantly. The Feds have lost the signal: the phone's been found and switched off, before they were close enough. Beckett slumps, defeated for the moment.

"If they can't find the kidnappers, I need to start again. Everything the Candelas know, maybe there's something they don't know they know" –

"Unknown unknowns, Rumsfeld?" Castle says. That raises a tiny smirk, swiftly falling again.

"C'mon. Let's start talking to them again. Maybe there's more. Maybe I've missed something." But she doesn't sound convinced: a note of frantic searching underpinning her tone; the usual edge of confidence ragged. She'll need to question everything, all over again, trying to elicit any clue, any further scrap of information that might find this child. Every second, every minute that she doesn't find it is another step to tragedy. They're running out of time, and she knows it: over 24 hours now, and the area is too big to search in time, nothing now to narrow it down except her abilities and focus: her obsession with the case and the truth and the answer.

But repeated questioning, every angle, every instant, every word or sound or tremor in the air, extracts nothing new. Castle, listening carefully and watching with hard concentration for any hitch or hesitation or hint that there is something more, detects nothing that Beckett hasn't already covered, that they don't already know. All there is to find is more stress: another marital row appears imminent.

Sorenson's stayed back, away from Beckett's stretched-thin patience; the volcanic frustrated fury just below the surface, tinged with the fear that she won't be in time, won't succeed, will only end up standing over the small body of another dead child; that she'll have failed, again. He's staying back, too, from Castle's fierce intelligence and penetrating looks: recognising, very belatedly, that in this they are working perfectly in harmony; synchronised in a way that means, Sorenson thinks bitterly, that this civilian really is Beckett's partner. Officially or not. He returns to the techs and the electronic data, with the sour taste of knowing that he's lost his chance in the back of his throat, and the even more acidic knowledge that he's consistently underestimated Beckett (and her pet civilian), and that's why he's lost his chance.

But there is nothing more. It doesn't matter how she questions, for how long, how hard or how soft or how empathetic or how intimidating. There is nothing there. But she can't leave. She can't go: needs to stay, to search, to examine the scene, to be doing something, anything, to block out the feeling of failure. Sorenson and the techs leave, having sucked every bit and byte of data out of every phone and piece of electronics that the Candelas possess; taken every sample from their home that can be taken. Beckett's alone in the little girl's bedroom, standing silently, trying to absorb from the stagnant air of an unoccupied room anything that might help. Castle enters, shuts the door quietly and, instead of his initial impulse to wrap her in and provide forgetfulness in the only way she'll accept, waits to be noticed, taking photos of the room while he does. Forgetfulness, however necessary it may become, is clearly not wanted, and any demonstration of desire will not be welcomed. Beckett's obsessions won't turn to him, tonight, and however much he wants and needs her to recognise that they have far more, already, than a work partnership; that their minds and bodies match; simply that she's his, no arguments, no escape, no others – this is not the time. But soon. Very, very soon. Because somewhere in the annealing fire of this case, she's accepted him as her partner. She just doesn't admit that it isn't only for the job. He understands, vaguely, that he's still obsessed with her, her brain and her body and her passions; that he's drowned far deeper than ever before.

He entirely fails to understand what that actually means.


Beckett notices Castle, eventually. There's nothing to be learned in the still air of this room, but maybe if she looks for long enough there'll be a clue. Please God, let there be a clue. She can't face failing again.

"You okay?" It skirts the edge of her rules, dances on the line and doesn't quite fall to the wrong side.

"Yeah." Pause. "Probably." Pause. "I gotta find something. I can't lose this one. We've still got nothing, and time's running out on me." She stops, breathes. "I lost the last one. I didn't find the information soon enough, didn't connect the dots fast enough. When we got there the child was already dead." She sees it in her mind, again, the small, bloodied, bare body abandoned on the cold floor, as if it were trash. "Telling the parents was the worst thing I've ever had to do. I don't wanna be there again." She paces, caged predator, prowl and turn and prowl again, up and down the room; looking for solutions, absolution. Solving this one, to make up for her failure on the last. Solving this one, because she won't allow herself to consider that there is any other outcome. But each tick of the clock in her mind tells her she's losing the race. "I gotta find something," she repeats, her words dying away as her hope is.

On the next turn she crashes into Castle, who's deliberately stepped into her path. She scowls up at him. "I need to think. Don't get in my way." He prevents her moving, hands on her shoulders, speaks before she objects.

"Stop. Just for a moment. You need to do what you need to do. Is there anything I can do? Because if not, I don't think you need me here." He takes a breath. The child counts for so much more than what he wants. "I don't think you want me here. So I'll go home, and see you in the morning."

"Go." She's fast to answer, definite. "I need the space to think." But she leans against him, only for a second, barely long enough to register if he weren't so attuned to her. He doesn't think she hears him leave, returning to pacing as soon as he's out of her path.

Hours later, Beckett's no nearer a breakthrough, sitting in a rocking chair that she's swinging with one foot, unable to settle or be still, chilled in the night air and by her lack of progress. She reviews everything, again and again, but nothing is there. Finally, defeatedly, she closes her eyes for a time, hoping that rest will provide an answer. Yet it doesn't, only unremembered, unrefreshing dreams, brief wakenings with faint memories of horror.


A soft noise wakes her: the sound of someone being very quiet. It's Castle, searching the bed, telling her to go back to sleep. That's too late, she's already awake: needs to do more, find more, work this case harder. Except Castle, from the vantage point of parenthood, has spotted something. She resents, just for a moment, the experience that's led him to the solution: she's the cop, she should be able to solve this – but she's not Sorenson, she's not going to reject an idea just because it wasn't invented here, and she's seen enough of Castle's irritating theories turn out to be right to ignore this one. They pull it around like taffy for a few moments, the minimum possible to ensure they're not overlooking something obvious, and then get Sorenson on the quiet. It's looking horribly as if this was family, or a very close contact: someone who knew about the child's comfort bunny, and took it with the child. Sorenson disgorges the sister's address without a single raised eyebrow, and much to Beckett's surprise doesn't try to second-guess or minimise the idea. She wonders idly what's changed, as they pull out on the way to the sister's house, all three of them in one car and no fighting or tension. Maybe it's just that this isn't going to be the same tragic ending. Ryan and Esposito will be joining them at the scene, just in case of trouble.

There is no trouble with the sister. They arrest her – Sorenson has to take the collar, because it's a Federal case – and Beckett collects the little girl, and the rabbit. Castle and Sorenson share a brief moment of appreciative male fellow feeling, watching Beckett with a toddler and her toy in her arms, petting the little girl and just for once without her hard shell. It's very quickly replaced by considerable, antler-locking tension. Castle identifies the look in Sorenson's eyes without the slightest difficulty as the same possessive instinct that he sees in his own, though there's still a difference that he can't pin down. He walks off to follow Beckett, Sorenson not letting him have even half a step's lead, (nor vice versa. Not that it's a competition. Oh no. Because he's already won.)

Trouble hits shortly after they take the small girl home. Her father's delighted. Her mother, well, not so much. And then, in the course of a lacerating row, bitterness flooding the floor, it all spills out: the mother had staged the whole affair to avoid alimony. All Beckett remembers, as she leaves with Castle and Sorenson flanking her like bodyguards, is the father saying pathetically How could you hate me so much? and the mother replying You made it easy. Better to stay uninvolved, half out the door, than be reduced to that. Better to avoid deep relationships, and endings, and too much care. Just what she's doing, in fact: indulging her darker side, fulfilling her midnight desires, with someone who's perfectly prepared to be as involved as she is: that is, not wholly. Trust, yes, she has to be able to trust him; on the job and in bed, but otherwise it's all controlled, within boundaries. That had been her previous mistake. She'd found he couldn't be trusted and she hadn't set boundaries.


The journey back to the precinct is quiet. Beckett ignores the testosterone levels, rising with every cross-street, and refuses to talk. When they arrive in the bullpen she buries her head in the paperwork and continues to ignore both men.

Castle goes to the break room to make himself a coffee and consider how best to extract the information he wants from Sorenson – and no less, how best to deliver the message that if Sorenson wants another chance at Beckett he, Castle, has every intention of ensuring Sorenson fails. Castle hasn't gone to all this effort to catch and keep Beckett (even if she doesn't admit it yet) to lose her to some square-jawed poster-boy agent who screwed her up in the first place. He doesn't share, or give up, his partner. Beckett, while he isn't stupid enough to think of her as a possession, is quite definitely his. And she's staying his, for as long as she wants to be.

"You must be pretty happy with the day." A bitter voice comes from behind him. Ah. Sorenson's looking for a fight. Castle turns round and smiles sunnily, though there are sharp teeth concealed in it.

"Good result all round, surely? The child was alive, after all." That's none too delicately edged, and Castle follows it up with another sharp stiletto. "We all worked together and it got to the right place." Sorenson winces, inadvertently. And another. "Teamwork, and respecting each other's capabilities." Castle can produce management bull-speak till it comes out his ears. He's heard it all. Sorenson winces again. "And of course, Beckett's a brilliant cop. Best law-enforcement officer I've ever met." And another stab. Emphatically not in the dark. "Funny how so many top investigators are women. Sorta gives the lie to anyone who'd be stupid enough to take view that the NYPD is sexist, doesn't it?" He turns back to the machine.

"What's she told you?"

"Who?"

"Detective Beckett. What did she say about the previous case?"

"Nothing. You told me everything I needed to know." Castle weighs his options for reducing Sorenson to nothing without resorting to physical violence. He thinks he can take him, but it might be messier than he'd like, and he might lose. Though he'd definitely be prepared to give it a go. He suspects that Sorenson's underestimated him, just like Beckett did, once upon a time.

"I told you nothing."

"Wanna bet?" Castle throws out casually. "I bet $10 that I can tell you how it went down."

"Ten? That all you make from your books?"

"We can make it any number you like up to a hundred thousand, but I don't like taking too much from the FBI. You might try for a RICO investigation. Are you a sore loser, Sorenson?"

"No." That's a lie, if ever Castle heard one. "Make it a hundred dollars. Makes it interesting, and I'll put your cash towards taking Beckett out for dinner." Castle conceals his rush of fury. Sorenson is not taking Beckett anywhere. "Go ahead, make my day."

"So you and Beckett were dating." Castle manages not to put any inflection on that, but he's taking up a lot more space than usual. "And you caught a kidnapping case: six year old child. Beckett and the team she was with then did the cop work; you had just become an agent. So you were supposed to lead the team, as the resident Fed. How'm I doing so far?"

"So far, so accurate," Sorenson grits out.

"Beckett was the only woman on the team, and she led the cops. Didn't she?" Sorenson nods, a tiny twist to his mouth telling Castle he's on the right track. "You were trying to prove yourself in the Bureau, show that you'd got what it took to do it. You needed to succeed." He looks Sorenson up and down, contempt flickering in his gaze. "So you thought you could do it alone. You didn't tell Beckett's team what you knew, you just took what they knew. And when Beckett suggested a different course of action you dismissed it." His voice has got harder as he goes. "Because you didn't believe she could know better than you. You couldn't accept that a younger woman cop, who'd herself been a victim, once, could out-think a male Fed. But if you had, you might have found the child in time." His voice drops to a biting coldness. "You were dating her, and you couldn't see how good a cop she was – is – because of her past, and because you were dating. And based on how you've been behaving, you were jealous of any man on her team, too, so you tried to shut them out. So you caught the killer, but lost the child. That same day, I guess she ditched you."

Sorenson is staring at him, acid bitterness splashed across his face. He doesn't say a word. He pulls out his wallet, flicks off five twenties, slaps them on the counter, and walks out. Castle hears his voice at Beckett's desk, but not the words, the sharp tones of a tired, irritated Beckett, and then, a few moments later, the elevator bell.


Thank you to all reviewers. Much appreciated.

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