Chapter 3

A week later, by accepted invitation, Kate arrived in D.C. for a 48-hour stay.

From the airport, she headed directly into the city and to Jordan Shaw's office for a first day that was to include a one-on-one interview, a tour of the facility, and an opportunity to observe some members of Jordan's team in action, in order to help provide Kate a taste of what her future days might look like.

The anticipation of it was at once thrilling and daunting, and she hadn't even been offered a position, let alone agreed to accept one.

Unaccompanied in the gathering of chairs outside Jordan's closed office door, Kate's tensed muscles flinched when her phone vibrated in her pocket.

"Where you at?" the text message from Javi read. "Gates told us it was none of our damn business. For real?"

She had to chuckle. She could so clearly envision the scowl that took over his face as he typed it.

"Yeah? And?" she sent back in good fun. Without Rick's buttons to press, her accumulated sarcasm had to find elsewhere to land.

She watched as the three dots of his impending reply tumbled, disappeared, and returned.

"I see how it is. For that, I'm gonna let Castle keep sitting in your chair until you're back. I assume you are coming back."

"Go ask Gates," she answered with a smile he couldn't see. "And get Castle the hell out of my chair, ass."

"Kate Beckett, we meet again." The voice cutting the silence made her flinch for the second time in embarrassingly few minutes, and caught her even further off guard because the office door was still closed. She mistakenly thought its occupant was behind it. "Welcome to our fair city, Detective," Jordan said and extended a hand.

Kate stood, took it, and the two joined in greeting. "Thanks for having me. It's nice to see you again."

"Likewise. Let's chat. Coffee?" Jordan asked from behind her desk. Kate declined, leaving out the three cups she'd already had since leaving New York as the reason. "Relax your shoulders, Kate. This won't hurt."

The cheeky thread that laced her words Kate remembered well, and appreciated, even if at her expense.

"Sorry. I haven't done this in a while."

Jordan reclined against the high back of her leather chair. It was burgundy in color, as smooth and elegant as the finest wine, and competing to be as impressive as she, set off against the plethora of framed accolades that adorned the wall behind it. "Catch me up. You had a difficult year last year. I'm glad to see you don't appear any worse for wear."

Appearing and being were two vastly different things.

"I'm working through it," Kate admitted honestly. "I have the job. It's been…a life raft, I guess you could say. It always has been."

"One of the ways in which we're alike," Jordan remarked, which, though undoubtedly unintended, had Kate feeling flattered. "It was a year I'd rather forget most of, too. Divorce, custody," she explained off Kate's curious look. "No one ever said we could have it all. Speaking of exhausting men, how's that author of yours? Still following you around with his pen?" She paused. "Still complicated?"

Unfortunately for Kate, among Jordan's many achievements appeared to be a commendable memory.

"I've tried to get rid of Castle many times, believe me. He has this annoying habit of only hearing what he wants to hear. Lucky me," she wisecracked.

"I'd say so. He did dive on you in that cemetery when bullets went flying, or so I read. As annoying as his habits are, it does seem like Castle might just be one of the good ones."

"Yeah, well…"

"What did he have to say about your visit to the capital? I'm sure he can't be thrilled at the prospect of losing his NYPD muse to big bureaucracy." Skilled in the art, Jordan quickly read Kate's face, crossed her arms, and moved on. "I'm only interested in you. Tell me how you felt when you heard I was asking about you, Detective Beckett. I imagine my call must've come as something of a surprise. A lot can be learned from a person's initial reactions."

Kate's thoughts diverged down two separate paths: one of honesty and the other of performance, and in a matter of seconds, she had to choose which to follow, which might be lined with fewer hazards. She chose the former.

"I could pretend I did, but I'm fairly sure you'd be able to see through it, so, to be honest, I'm not sure I understood. I mean, I know I'm a good cop. The numbers are there to back that, but something at this level isn't what I ever thought could be next in line for me. I've only ever known the NYPD."

"And there's nothing wrong with that. Have at it. There's room on the NYPD ladder to climb if you want to climb it, but their ladder isn't mine, Kate. Mine can go as high as you want it to go. As for numbers, they may look pretty on paper and they may've helped me get you in the door today, but that's someone else's paperwork to push.

"I wanted you here because in New York I saw what you're capable of. I saw how you move, how you operate, how you go at things head-on, and that might be stupid sometimes, but I'll always respect you for it. Most of all, I saw that when the shit goes down, you're the first to pull on your boots and grab a shovel. We deal with a lot of shit around here."

That was so much of why Kate loved the job she was doing. She had no interest in spending her days behind a desk, sending others out into the action, hoping they'd return in one piece, while she sat around going blind staring at spreadsheets and reports. She wanted to be out in it, doing the work and solving the puzzle, even with all the blood, sweat, and tears the work demanded.

"You were honest with me, so I'm going to be honest with you," Jordan went on. "The transition would require a lot…of learning, of time, of commitment, of sacrifice. I don't know what your situation is and I'm not going to ask. I was married, now I'm not. You can do the math on that. I also used to have friends and see a movie once in a while. Things get pushed to the side. Sometimes you have control over that, mostly you don't. That wasn't easy for me. I'm sure it won't surprise you to hear I enjoy control."

"It doesn't," Kate replied, her narrowed eyes betraying the casualness of her aim. "Captain Gates said this was all going to be happening fast. When would someone need to be here?"

Jordan returned the smile, tamed to mirror it.

"That question means I haven't scared you off yet."

"Is that what you're trying to do?"

"What we intend to do and what we actually do don't always align, but to give you an answer: could I? I am talking to a woman who survived a sniper bullet to the chest and then probably dove back into hunting murderers while her doctor's autograph on the paperwork was still wet. That's not someone who gets scared off. Besides, I don't enjoy wasting my time, what little of it there is to spare."

Kate unconsciously sat up a bit straighter in her chair. "You haven't," she said, firm. "How soon?"

"Soon." Jordan rose from her chair. "Let's go. I'll show you around, introduce you. My aid said she told you I want you to spend the rest of the day with some of my people. You only have minimal clearance while you're here, so I can't send you out. We'll meet up later, go for a drink." She came around the desk, leaned in. "I can't wait to hear all about what Nikki Heat's been up to," she grinned.

xxxx

Jordan reached out and tapped the rim of her glass against Kate's, swallowed down a sip of the Stoli delivered to their table after too long a wait.

The lofty, rectangular box of a place that surrounded them was trendy to a fault yet still pleasing to the eye, glowing in a light that favored the skin of youth, and buzzing with a crowd of its very beneficiaries, who were still tucked into their pencil skirts and pinstripes on a detour between work and home. They'd all gathered to blow off a collective steam, their Monday business behind them.

Not Jordan. She was set to get down to the most important business of hers, and she didn't waste a minute.

"I already asked everyone what they thought of you," she opened, cutting straight to it. "Tell me what you thought about today. Did anyone try to steal the new girl's lunch money?"

Kate chuckled into her matching glass, drank. The chilled liquid slid down her throat, and she welcomed its instant calm. "I don't know, you'd have to ask her. My day was fine."

With a knowing smirk, Jordan tipped back her vodka.

"Some days on this job, fine is going to feel like you won the fucking lottery. Soon is three weeks," she added on the far side of a pause, supplying the reserved detail she now recognized was warranted. "Three weeks means three. I have no room on that." She looked at Kate square. "The person I'm looking for won't need it."

Kate took her drink in hand, leaned back in her chair with it. "Three weeks," she echoed coolly, though hearing a number so small had rarely ever had such a grand effect. Three weeks might as well have been the blink of an eye.

"You know, I meant to tell you earlier that I was sorry to hear about Roy Montgomery. I know from my time with the two of you that admiration went both ways. I'm sure his loss must've been difficult."

She didn't have the first idea how difficult, Kate thought.

"It was. Thank you."

"Your new captain certainly shares that admiration. If it interests you to hear it, she sang your praises when we spoke, and I didn't get the sense she's a woman who's easily impressed. Maybe that's why I liked her as much as I did."

Kate understood. Despite the lifting her manner required, from day one Gates had driven her to want to be better, and for that she'd won esteem.

"Castle's been trying and failing every day for a year," Kate said with a note of amusement in her voice.

"You're deflecting. You don't do well with compliments, Beckett. Is that because you don't have the confidence to believe they're true or because for some reason you don't want people know you do? Being confident requires no apology."

That had Kate momentarily wordless, but she found her voice.

"I just try to do my job the best I can. That's always been the way I work. The people I'm out there for deserve that. And I know who I am. I know what I'm good at. I don't need attention and I don't need praise. That's Castle's kind of fuel, not mine."

Jordan eyed her a moment, then set her gaze off for a pass around the room.

"I met my ex-husband in a bar," she offered without prompting, but not without point or purpose. "It was a hole in the wall, below ground. The steps down from the sidewalk smelled like piss, and it sure as hell wasn't filled with suits and ties. I was on the job that night. We went in there looking for witnesses on a body found in a vacant lot around the corner.

"He was wearing a leather jacket, I remember, this artist-I found out later-with dried paint all over his t-shirt and caked under his fingernails. The leather had a cigarette hole burned through one of the forearms," she described like she was seeing it right there in front of her, "and I couldn't tell when he'd last washed his hair, but I knew it hadn't been recently.

"It took a four-minute conversation for me to know he and I were night and day, but I left that place and those four minutes were all I thought about for a week. Up until that point, the only thing I thought was important was my career. Realizing it wasn't was something I ended up taking for granted."

"Not to be rude here, but why are you telling me all of this?"

"I want you to be a part of what I'm doing here, Kate, and I think you want that, too." Jordan pushed her empty glass to the center of the table. "Do you realize you've mentioned him three times since we sat down? Castle."

She continued when Kate stared down into her drink, absent anywhere else to hide.

"Take this or leave it, but from me and my experience to you, you don't have to choose between him and this job. What I suggest is that you really understand going in which choice would hurt more if you did, and then don't forget it."

xxxx

After what'd been a night of tossing and turning, of little meaningful rest, Kate had been up since before dawn for her flight, and with the heightened emotion of the day and all that came with it, she collapsed onto the bed in her hotel room like it'd been a week since she'd last slept.

Her head foggy from the ratio of too much alcohol to too little food at her catch-up session with Jordan, she feathered her eyelids shut and inhaled the hush, exhaled it with gratitude for the salve it provided.

Eventually, from where she lay, she untucked her shirt and unbuttoned it, let it fall open. In practice almost automatic, her fingers found the circular scar between her breasts and stilled atop the puckered skin.

Every day it whispered to her, reminded her of what could've been but for time and place, luck and skill, and every day she granted it further forgiveness for the pain upon pain it'd inflicted. She'd been in love with Rick before it, but her hunger to live in that love with him had been its great, improbable gift. That's what made the ache of his recent distance so crushing.

Dipping a hand into her pocket, she pulled out her phone, skimmed over her missed messages and granted herself permission to leave her effort at that, but Rick's name managed to draw her eye. It was there among the list of texts, lifeless for an unthinkable number of days and weeks, as it'd never been, not even in the beginning, long before she'd called him a friend, let alone anything more.

And so, whether by the boldness alcohol occasionally earned credit for, or the foolishness, she opened the message and began to type.

"I love you," she wrote and that was all. That was everything there was.

She stared at the blinking cursor for minutes, until her eyes blurred, but there was no reply. There could be no reply because she never sent the words.

Letting the phone slip from her hand, she left it where it landed, reached for the light switch beside the bed, and darkened the room for sleep.