Monday, October 27th, 2011

12:22 PM, East River

"Is this thing going to do the job?" Beckett asked while leading the way inside. A soft note of relief escaped upon being suffused by the heated interior. "You'd seemed iffy about this part of the meeting earlier."

Castle closed the door of the wheelhouse behind them, exhaled a few warm breaths across his fingers, and nodded once while rubbing them together. "Oh yes, this will do nicely." She arched an eyebrow when he reached for her, expecting mischief, but slowly smiled while he splayed both of his hands around hers, one and then the other, to ease her chill in turn. He looked around the confines of the smallish white room while doing so. A door and sound-dampening glass wall separated them from the attached command cabin where the rest of the team was gathered. Altogether, the windows throughout both rooms provided 360-degrees of visibility for the seventy-foot vessel. "I was expecting to be squeezed onto one of the smaller, Fast-pursuit crafts, not the queen of the Harbor Patrol Unit fleet."

"She's a beauty," confirmed the HPU Sergeant standing at the wheel. He was around Beckett's height, swarthy and grizzled with a trimmed, thick brown beard. "As far as official work for the unit goes, this is her maiden voyage."

Castle introduced both of them to the middle-aged guy, Wes Hammond, with all of them nodding in favor of handshakes. Then observed to Beckett, "It's the newest ship in their yard, custom-built for handling various terrorist scenarios. With something like this, we can ease in upstream of NoBro, tune our speed to the current, and effectively hover there all day long if we wanted to. The twin V-12 engines can dump forty-five knots into our wake on an open stretch. For comparative purposes, the East River typically ranges between one and four. This also comes equipped with twin interceptor units that automatically adjust our trim and list—useful when you're dealing with the conflicting flows like the ones around the islands, especially given the chop this wind is stirring up."

The guy at the helm squinted aside at the author, "You a sailor, Mr. Castle?"

Her hand-toaster smiled. "I'm an admirer of cool toys."

Hammond chuckled some at that and nodded agreement.

It remained a little surreal to be in on the inside of her partner's secrets. She knew what a woeful understatement his neat deviation of a reply was in regards to his preferences for the water. More like the absence thereof. Moments like that made it hard to fathom there had been a time when she'd looked at him and likewise perceived only the cunningly adorned playboy.

"Uh, what about making landfall?" Beckett posed to derail an uncomfortable train of thought.

Richard relinquished her hands while turning and lifting his chin toward the stern. It was difficult to see through the crowd in the command cabin next door, but a tarp-covered, thirteen-foot inflatable boat was lashed to the rear deck, black, with a low profile. A knuckle-boom hydraulic crane was used to lower the tender off the port quarter. "That Zodiac is probably the best option for getting ashore. As long as we don't go crazy, it'll suffer the rocks without bursting the way a standard hull would."

"That's the new materials version," Wes inserted with a puff of seeming pride. "Armorflate, they call it. It's bullet-resistant."

"Oh? That's good news in terms of durability," Rick acknowledged, duly impressed. "Even so, an outboard motor isn't ideal."

"Nah. It doesn't need much depth to fly. Up until it starts getting rocky, the water around here is actually pretty deep. According to the charts, we'll be able to bring this beauty up to within twenty feet if we can maintain the right alignment. That's hardly any gap at all. All you need is enough momentum to be able to stand and not get knocked over by the current. That's plenty of wiggle room, even in this shit." The last was accompanied by a nod to the forward-slanted windows before him. Beyond the glass, the bow was pitching in a shallow rhythm. The river farther ahead of them, however, was rife with rougher-looking whitecaps.

Castle hadn't seemed to hear at first, but then nodded a few seconds later and faced his partner. "In any case, it's what we have available. We'll have to make it work."

"It looks a bit small," Beckett noted dubiously of the craft. "We have a lotta people and gear."

"We might need to make two trips. At least they'll be relatively quick ones. The zodiac is a famously impressive little vessel on its own merit, you know. Militaries all over the world favor them, hence it's proper designation: combat rubber raiding and/or reconnaissance craft. CRRC."

"Oh yeah? With initials like that, I bet they're popular for making stealth insertions."

"Actually, they're used more for the element of surprise than—" He stopped, turned slowly away from the window, and crossed his arms with a hard glare at her. Beckett raised her eyebrows in a display of innocence, but he didn't buy it. "Anyway," the other continued with a lean of disapproval on the word, which she didn't believe for a moment either, "this should do the job just fine."

"You two might wanna head back into the command cabin with the others and grab a proper seat," the pilot spoke up. "We're gonna be passing Lawrence point in a moment. Even in this beauty, it won't be a smooth transition. Or did you need something else when you came in?"

"No, no," Rick assured while visibly bracing himself physically to exit into the cold again, "I was just taking advantage of an opportunity to explore. Thank you for indulging us, Wes."

"There're handrails," Beckett pointed out. "We'll be fine in here."

Officer Hammond looked askance at her and seemed about to object.

Rick beat him to the punch with a smirk aimed her way and a humored, "At least I thought we were exploring. Maybe we're hiding from a couple of our teammates."

Nabbed, curses.

"Look for yourself. They're still double-checking our gear," Beckett stated with her most casual shrug. "It's not a big space. We'd probably just get in the way right now. Give 'em ten more minutes."

"Not to be a jerk," Wes commented, "but you're kind of in my way being in here. Going through this area isn't easy on a good day, and this mess is making me wish for a mere bad one."

Kate arched an eyebrow and returned, "We do this neat trick sometimes where we contain ourselves and don't talk. I think you'll be okay."

Castle, looking uncomfortably between the two of them, said, "Beckett, it's fi—"

But Wes overrode him that time. "While you're on this boat, you're under Harbor Patrol jurisdiction, detective. Don't make me pull rank like an asshole."

Partially too late, she thought sourly.

With a shake of her head, the woman turned to Castle and nodded with a wave of both hands to shoo him on out ahead of her. The steady rumbling of the boat engines came back to clearer audibleness as they exited. Eruptions of diminutive speckles greeted the bow with every downward cut into the brackish tidal strait. It didn't seem to matter where one stood; the sloppy kiss of the river was omnipresent. High above, the clouds had begun to yield their own contribution to the miserable day. The raindrops were sporadic for the moment, but the sky looked fit to burst.

"He does have a boatful of other people whose safety is his concern," Castle pointed out, raising his voice some to be heard above the din.

"Huh?"

"Wes."

Kate glanced back through the rounded window of the doorway. The HPU Sergeant was watching them, frowning. She waved with a pointedly false abundance of cheer before turning back to Castle with her lips quickly lowering back into a snarl. "Jackass."

Coldness bit in deep when she grabbed onto the safety railing fixed at about head-level which ran along the exterior wall of the central structure. She followed in the author's wake as they shuffled toward the stern. The walkway of the deck was plenty wide, but it was slick with wetness. Lanie, outfitted in borrowed ESU gear the same as the rest, spotted the two of them through the windows they were moving past and burst into a brief fit of giggles that weren't audible. Shush, you!

A grumble emerged amidst a fresh sheet of pellets striking them. She couldn't have said whether it was rainfall or river water at that point. "Are you telling me that these guys aren't accustomed to operating under stressful conditions? That's a pretty big chunk of their intended purpose for crying out loud. If all it takes is having a couple people in the same room to make that guy lose focus, I shudder for whoever actually depends on his skills when the time comes."

Castle laughed aloud ahead of her, resonant and rich, which made her halt in confused annoyance. The complaint wasn't intended to be funny. Nonetheless, he grinned back at her with those blue eyes crinkled at their corners. "Is this how you always get when you're aroused and not properly sated afterward?"

"Better make a note of it for future reference just in case," she fired back waspishly. In the privacy of her mind, however, the timing of her mood swing did bear a rather striking alignment to his theory. That could potentially explain a lot. Maybe too much.

"What have we here?" she heard the man ahead say moments later. Before she could protest, he pulled ajar a doorway they had bypassed on their way to the wheelhouse and ducked inside.

A narrow staircase with a pair of glowing lights overhead led them down into a lower deck. Being in a relatively quiet space put a rather pointed tip on the quality of their gear. The clothing barely whispered from brushes of friction during their movements. They moved like phantoms.

"Whoa." Rick stopped in the open archway of a doorway to the right. "That's trouble."

Frowning, but curious, Kate leaned around the obstacle of his bulk and beheld the first-aid cabin with two cots to either side. An accordion doorway stood open across the way leading into a bathroom with a decontaminant shower stall. A smile gushed to life. "Ah," she commented with a nod to the narrow beds, "it's where the real saving is done. Are we gonna pretend you knew all that stuff about the engines, but not what was waiting for us in here?"

"Hey, now. I didn't." Rick shook his head slightly, grimaced. "And I genuinely think we'd hurt ourselves if we tried anything in such cramped quarters."

"Sissy."

He looked aside at her. Really looked with his lips poised slightly apart and his eyes dipping towards her mouth, neck, and the zipper of her tac-vest. The muscles of his throat rippled with a compulsory swallow. It was hardly the first time she'd witnessed those pupils blown with arousal amidst their perusal of her.

Knowing they were both ready, willing, and able to indulge made a hefty difference.

Kate jerked a step away from him as if zapped by a shock, out of the doorway and into the silhouette of the one behind her. "Don't even think about it!" Surprise was secondary to a rampant buzz that jetted outward from a tightness in her chest to tingle at her extremities.

Rick exhaled a clipped laugh, but the deep gust of his exhale made it painfully apparent that the joke was on him as much as her. He smooshed a hand down over his face in an attempt at reclaiming composure. A film still seemed to coat his muted December skies when they arose over her head to study what lay behind her. "Oh, a galley. Think they have any decent snacks?"

"Get back up there," she ordered with a swift jerk of her chin toward the stairs.

"Aw, come on. I'll behave, I promise."

"I wouldn't buy a claim like that with someone else's money. Even if I would, it's not just your self-control I'm worried about," she admitted with a discomfited shift of her stance. "Now scoot. There's nothing else to see anyway. Galley, bunks, bathroom."

"On a boat, they call that last one—

"Castle," she snarled.

A roguish smirk crept into place across the curves of his lips. He turned without capitalizing upon the admittedly rich potential for teasing regarding a subject she was guilty of bringing up in the first place. Phew. And I'm glad you're the bigger man. Heh, big, 'cause he's—no, Katie! She waited, massaging her temples, while her companion tromped up the narrow stairs with his head unconsciously ducked from the low ceiling and followed closely in his wake. It took willpower to resist the urge to goose that trimmed fanny.

"I don't think you're giving us enough credit," he commented above. "Do you really think our first time would be something as tawdry as me bending you over the galley table?"

"L-less talking, more walking."

"Would you?" he asked with a scandalized gasp. "I—I don't think my tactical vest is long enough for this conversation."

"Go, Rick!"

Another belly-deep laugh escaped him. In that cramped space, the sound was almost as tangible as it was audible, a lick of sensation against the surface of her skin and a sympathetic vibration within her bones. He opened the door to the topdeck ahead while half-turning to say something to her. She could make out the edge of his mouth tightened by some impish design.

Lieutenant Kirkland was neatly filling the pathway ahead with one hand poised to reach for the handle that had unexpectedly swung away. He blinked at them and grunted aloud, "Oh. There you are. Good. We're almost there. I want to use these last few minutes to talk to everyone together."

Saved by the frigging bell.

12:45 PM

"Are you gonna tattle on me?" Kate asked in an attempt at light humor.

Lanie made a wordless noise of contempt and shook her head, but it didn't quite wipe away the concern from her features. "Who would I tell?" She watched the detective's arms lower to her sides again. "The only people who could stop you are the ones who sent you here. Just...for heaven's sake, don't fall overboard, okay?"

"Aw," the other feigned in childlike protest.

The medical examiner ignored the insertion. She crossed her arms and eyed the other sternly. "According to the HPU officers onboard, the water temperature is around forty-five degrees today. That gives an adult with full use of their faculties between fifteen and thirty minutes before they start succumbing to the effects of hypothermia. Someone fit enough to fight the current long enough to reach Stony Point or Randall Field a little way downstream would barely be capable of dragging themselves off the rocks and onto dry land afterward. Unless help was waiting or already en route, they'd probably die of exposure right there on the shore." Her voice lowered more as a pair of ESU members passed them by on the gently pitching deck. "Honey, you'll regain a full range of motion in time, but—lordy, I'm sorry to be blunt like this—you'll probably never be one-hundred percent again with overhead extensions. Right now it's still in pretty rough shape. That would make swimming more than somewhat problematic in the best of conditions, which these most definitely aren't."

Beckett shifted her stance, discomfited, but unyielding. "I've already been made aware of what to expect in the future, Lanie. And I've been given an earful about the wisdom of making the trip this morning," she added with a darting glance at Rick's back where he stood at the railing beyond. "Kirkland knows what's up, okay? It's a necessary risk." A rotation of one arm at the shoulder was followed by the flex of the attached bicep. "Don't underestimate my doggy-paddling. These cannons are loaded."

The dark-skinned woman's eyes rolled within their sockets. She sighed expansively.

"You're up, Doc," the ESU Lieutenant called. He was holding the battery pack and wiring for the camera and microphone that each of the others had already been fitted with.

The M.E. had delayed both their outfittings to discuss the investigator's physical state in relative privacy. She stepped away presently with a backward glance at her besty. "You heard me, girl." Beckett raised her palms some in a show of surrender and watched as the other woman relented to the attention of Kirkland and one of his fellows. Lanie's eyebrows shot up when one of them tucked a battery pack the size of a deck of playing cards into one of the right breast pockets of her vest. "Whoa there, buddy. How 'bout you buy me dinner first?"

A peripheral glimpse of motion drew Kate's gaze to the railing instead. She strode that way and lurked a couple steps behind the author and the mercenary now standing at his right. North Brother island awaited their arrival a few hundred yards past the starboard bow. It hunkered low like something seeking to escape notice from the surrounding city. The smaller, similarly vegetation-choked South Brother was already passed by in the nearer distance. A little over a quarter-mile stretched out between the sibling isles. Bouys markers warned of rocks and depths that diminished to less than ten feet in several areas.

"Whadda ya see?" she heard Logan ask.

Rick started and glanced swiftly at the other man. "Wha—uh, excuse me?"

Logan looked at him and then back to the island ahead. "The other guys say yah some kinda profil'ah? Whadda ya see when ya look at this place through a lens like that?"

A rumble of comprehension was emitted before the reply. "I'm not a profiler. That's a term you'd use for people who have dedicated themselves to the task by formal education and practical training. I'm a student of human nature, that's all. Always the student," he added, more to himself it seemed.

"Yeah? Sounds a lil' more complicated than that." Castle shifted the set of his crossed arms and didn't answer. "Pretend ah'm askin' for fun then, just 'tween us."

Rick considered the man and at length faced their destination. He was silent for long enough that Beckett started to claim those last few steps to stand at his left. The shift of momentum was halted by the renewed flow of his voice. "When I was seventeen, I spent part of a summer working in a small town at the base of the Catskills upstate. An old subcontractor, the grandfather of a friend of mine, was disassembling a greenhouse; basically stripping off the roofing, wire tubing, and light fixtures—stuff like that. The glass walls were already gone, so, there was only the skeletal steel frame left in our wake."

"Ya said before that you were born n' raised 'ere in the city. That's a fair stride from home."

"That was the idea at the time," the novelist said by way of confirmation. "Anyway, we were rushing throughout that last day on the job. A storm was moving in. We could see it coming down over the mountains, massive, shining with afternoon brightness at its crown and edges which swirled darker towards its grey-black core. It seemed to hang so low in the sky that the clouds were being gouged by the taller peaks as they passed. The rain was only spitting drops here and there by the time the old man and I conceded and packed up our gear. We were a couple hundred feet away when lightning struck the peak of the greenhouse frame."

"Whoa."

Beckett completed the advance she'd halted previously. Rick was more focused on the view before them all, brow furrowed. "Before the bolt struck, there was a small gap of curious stillness. I remember the way time seemed to slow down. The hairs on my arms and head lifted from the static charge in the air. Three decades have probably altered that recollection some, but it's still intense in my mind. The prelude to the strike, I mean—an agonizing sense of...terrible potential hovering on the cusp of realization."

Logan leaned out a bit more and noticed her presence. He didn't smile. "That's the feelin' yah get now? Great," he concluded dryly.

"I don't care for the ocean. That's probably more to blame than NoBro."

The other man hummed in wordless understanding, but Kate frowned a touch to hear the author speak straightforwardly about his phobia with a stranger. The very way he had chosen not to with another unknown figure only a short time ago. It had taken her over a year to make those same inroads. Others had done likewise for longer still and hadn't gleaned access for their trouble. Where'd you get your golden ticket, cowboy?

Her gaze tracked to the silhouette of trees becoming clearer as they encroached and her frown deepened. She could just make out partial glimpses of a few manmade structures. The ruined base of a long-gone lighthouse and a crumbled outbuilding nearby. Further inland towards the southwest side jutted part of the building and gently pitched roof belonging to the Teeth of Seven Sorrows itself. "It's an abandoned place," she commented. "You said so yourself. We're gonna check it out and start the long process of picking up the pieces. If we're lucky we'll also grab whoever necessitated doing so. There's nothing unfamiliar about that. Not for us." Castle showed no change of expression despite the reassurance, which didn't feel like much of one after the words were flown from her.

"If half of my concern is due to the water," he conceded at length, "the other irrational half must stem from the fact that NoBro's legacy in the context of human habitation has been the same in every lasting circumstance. Whenever people are brought to its shore, death or madness has been the inevitable result. It's strange to think about, that's all. In a way, that was part of its appeal for me on previous visits." His lips curved slightly, mirthlessly. "Circumstance authors such stark contrasts."

Kirkland called her name before Beckett could reply. Just as well. No easy reassurances came to mind as she left the pair at the railing.