It's a few hours into her daily shift at the store, and Kate is sitting on the swivel stool behind the register with an excited tingle at the base of her spine. With a content, pleasant smile on her face that she usually has to fake for customers, she spins herself around and grabs for her cup that sits next to the register, taking a large sip from her luke-warm coffee, using the heel of her sneakers to break herself against one of the legs of the stool.
As she sets her cup down in between her legs, watching a few customers roam about the store, a middle-aged man in a tackle vest and rubber boots and a woman with short, straight blonde hair off in the corner of the store, her dad comes out of the office of the store nestled in the corner, a stack of papers in one hand and adjusting the collar of his jacket with the other. "Are you sure you'll be alright while I'm gone, Katie?" He asks as he makes his way around the other side of the counter.
"I'll be fine, Dad." She says with a relaxed smile. She just can't take her mind off him, how it will go tonight. She's just fluttering for the moment she gets to be with him again.
"Are you sure?" He asks, setting his large stack of papers down to the counter. "You just got over the flu, sweetie. I hate leaving you alone to open up the store tomorrow."
"I'll be fine, Dad." She reassures him as the older man in the store steps up to the register with a smile. "Hi," she greets him.
"I could always cancel, Katie. It's just a class for a license." He shrugs, rifling through his paperwork.
"Dad, that license is important." She tells him, checking out the man for his spool of fishing line, a bright orange jig lure, and a few small weights. "It will be great for business. I'll be fine."
"If you're sure," Jim sighs, grabbing his keys and slipping them into his pocket. "I'll be back tomorrow night, okay?" He says and leans over the counter, placing an awkwardly placed kiss on her cheek.
"Bye, Dad. Be safe." She smiles as she finishes checking out the customer's items.
"Aw, that's nice." The portly man says with a smile, which Kate returns brightly, feeling in a really good mood. "Been ages since any of my boys even gave me a hug." He says with a shake of his head.
Kate decides not to reply, unable to think of an answer that would be suggestive, and simply decides to smile, giving the man his change. "Here you are."
"Thanks again," the man says, turns around and makes for the door, giving the blonde woman still roaming slowly down the aisle to the left a friendly nod. Kate watches as the woman stops near the end of the aisle and takes up her coffee cup again.
Once her cup is to her lips, her cell phone lights up on the counter. She reaches for it without thinking and answers the call. "Hello?" She asks, having become accustomed to not answering with her overly professional greeting as before.
"Uhm..." A tightly wound, frantic voice comes in over the other end of the line, "Hi."
Her brow pinches as she sucks her teeth after taking a drink from her coffee and setting the cup down. "Castle?"
Back at the crime scene, Rick hides in one of the back rooms of the victim's house, looking precariously through the doorway and out into the family room of the house, looking to see if anyone is watching him. "Hey, uh..." he says, leaning back into the laundry room, "I need your help."
"Castle," She almost sighs as she sits back down onto the stool, waiting for the woman to pick out what she's looking for, "I already intruded enough as it is, I can't barge in any more than I already have."
"No, no, that's..." he says worriedly, "that's not what I mean." He says in somewhat of a harsh whisper. "I mean, I need..." he trails off in a frustrated sigh, looking cautiously through the doorway to see a very large set man in a tight-fitting polo shirt, a pair of sunglasses, and tactical boots step into the house. "Crap, the chief of the police is here." He says into his phone and hides again. "I need to know what to do."
Kate quirks her eyebrows. "What to do?"
"Yeah, you know," he shrugs and shimmies himself away from the doorway to not be found, "how to go about solving this case, like... like what would you do?"
"Castle," she smiles as the woman steps up to the counter, placing a large spool of yellow and blue rope on the counter, along with some hiking boot laces, some replacement fishing hooks, and a can of worms, "you spent five years as my partner doing research. You mean to tell me you don't remember what to do?"
"Well, I-" he cuts himself off on a hard sigh, "I didn't exactly spend as much time researching police protocol as I did researching the main character."
Kate feels her lip slide wantingly in between her teeth. "You did, huh?" She asks, her voice lowering. "What exactly did you find?" She attempts.
In a rushed voice, Rick huddles himself in the corner in the darkness of the laundry room as he hears the chief's booming voice from across the small house. "That her knees buckle if I kiss her hard enough."
Kate lets a chuckle escape out in a loud belt as she checks out the woman's items.
"Now, I need to know what to do? Sierra took the body back to the morgue over an hour ago."
Kate smiles warmly as she looks over to the woman, watching absentmindedly as she swipes a credit card. "Do you have a canvas going yet?"
"A can..." he starts, the idea seeming obvious to him, "a canvas!" He quietly exclaims.
Kate nods softly. "Get a few uniforms to go up and down the street, asking people if they noticed anything suspicious."
"Right," he says, feeling himself relax.
"After that, you'll want a CSU team to go over the victim's house. I'd start with the front window in the family room and the garden out front."
"It may take a while for a CSU team to get up here, but I think someone around here can pull it off."
"And once you have CSU going on the scene, the autopsy should be done by then."
"And uh..." he starts in a shaky voice, "what if... those don't turn up anything?"
Kate feels herself harden as she takes the woman's recite from the register and hands it to her with a smile, waiting until the woman exits the store to give him an answer. "A random occurrence doesn't happen in a small town like this, Castle. Someone killed her for a reason."
"But Beckett," he tries again, feeling a knot in his throat, "this woman had no family, everybody said she was liked in the neighborhood."
"Yeah, well," she says in a small voice, her head dipping, "that's why you were so good, Castle." She says softly. "You found the story."
Rick feels his heart tighten. "Well, I should go."
Kate nods to herself, her throat closing with nervousness. "Are we..." she starts, "are we still on for dinner tonight?"
Rick, the pressure having been lumped back on his shoulders again, feels his chest clench. "I might get a bit delayed, but I think I can make it. I'll..." he trails off, hearing the chief's loud footsteps creak the floorboards in the family room, "pick you up at seven-thirty?"
Kate feels her heart flutter wildly in her chest. "Okay," she says with a bright, face hurting smile.
"Great," Rick says and awkwardly hangs up.
After another few hours of him organizing the canvas of the neighborhood with Crestfield's chief of police, Rick got a call from Sierra, asking him to come by when he got the chance, and he'd just parked his Lexus outside of the morgue, a small brick building at the end of the street of the police station in one of the less traveled corners of town. Walking inside and eventually maneuvering his way down a sterile feeling hallway and into a door to the right at the end, he pulls it open and sees Sierra in a set of dark pink scrubs, her short, wavy blonde hair down as she leans over the victim.
"Doctor," Rick greets her casually.
Sierra looks up from the victim with her usual bright, intense smile. "Hi!" She shines. "I didn't expect you here so fast."
"Time is usually of the essence in a murder case." He rattles off as an excuse.
"Right," Sierra says, squaring off her shoulders, straightening her brow and pouting her lips into a stern glare. "Serious then, super... super serious. Murder serious."
Rick smiles softly and steps up to the slab. "So, what did you find?"
Sierra's smile returns softly as she leans back over the victim, putting her hands on her neck. "Ms. Carlson's neck was snapped."
Rick's brow pinches intensely. "Really?"
"Mmhmm," she says and moves over to the wall off to the right, turning on the screen to display an x-ray, Rick casually following her. Sierra points to the bones of the neck in the x-ray with her finger. "Right here, see?"
"Breaking someone's neck usually requires a tremendous amount of force for it to be lethal though." Rick retorts.
"Usually, yes." Sierra agrees with a shrug. "But here," she says, pointing to the neck in the x-ray again, "her neck was broken with enough force for bone fragments to sever her brain stem."
"So, we're looking for someone strong enough to pull that off. Probably male."
"Well," Sierra says in a disagreeing tone, lifting her finger and moving back over to the body. "Here, look." She says, lifting up the sheet over the victim's right leg, and pointing to the back of the knee. "There's bruising on the back of her right knee, suggesting-"
"That," he starts on a nod, following her line of thinking, "someone kicked her to the ground from behind."
"Ms. Carlson was barely five feet tall." Sierra says as she replaces the sheet.
So, whoever killed was probably around that height if they needed to bring the victim to their knees. "But still," Rick shakes his head, turning to face her. "breaking someone's neck requires a lot of force to be fatal."
"Well, Rick," Sierra says, leaning against the edge of the slab. "Ms. Carlson wasn't exactly a young buck... err," she stops, her brow pinching. "buck is a male deh... a young doe? No, that doesn't sound-she was old... is what I'm saying."
"Hmm..." Rick hums as he looks over the victim again. "Did you find anything else?"
Sierra shrugs, "Apart from the animal markings... she had some dirt in her throat and mouth."
Rick nods slowly. "Maybe the killer get it on himself when he was breaking in and she inhaled it when he was trying to kill her?"
"Maybe." Sierra says with an admiring smile that Rick doesn't notice until he's looking over to her.
He smiles slowly, returning her friendly gesture.
But after a moment, Sierra's smile turns to a sullen, nervous frown. "I'm sorry, this... this must be pretty hard for you, I... I didn't think of that. I'm sorry."
Rick nods to her, looking down to the floor and giving her a casual shrug. "I'm just used to building theory with someone else, that's all."
She gives him her smile that just exudes understanding and Rick feels as if he just won't be judged. "It's nice of you to help us out like this, Rick, knowing you rough it will be for you. It must," she says nicely as he paces around to the other side of the slab, "bring back some painful memories."
"Actually," he says with a light smile, turning around to face her over the slab, "no. None of the memories I have of her are really... painful in that way. At least, not of the ones of us working cases together."
Sierra gives him a soft nod before starting again in a very soft, underwhelming tone. "What drew you to her?" She asks.
Rick feels himself smile as his eyes trail away from her. "Well... she was... extremely beautiful."
She smiles brightly at that, but gives him a nod, "And... what usually ends up being the most difficult question for people to answer," she prefaces before looking back over to him, "what else?"
He chuckles under his breath. "She was..." he says as his mind drifts, "strong. But she had this... inner passion for what she was doing that drew me in. Made me ask myself why someone like her felt such a drive to do what she was doing. She had a way of putting her heart into finding justice for the victims that I couldn't help but admire. And she did it with this unwavering bravery yet... at the same time... she had such grace about her. There were moments that I admired the person that inspired me to write again, almost making me wish I could be more like that... that I could just look in the face of things that everyone else was afraid of and not flinch the way she did."
Sierra's smile brightens softly. "Don't think I've ever heard someone talk about someone like that before." She admits. "What made you fall for her?"
Rick leans against the slab opposite her. "There was a person underneath all the... bravado and the... badge, underneath the cop that she let me peak at when she wasn't paying attention. She was softer, she was happier, she... she could actually keep up with me in a battle of wits, she... I knew she had it in her to be as happy as she deserved. I felt that she could grow into the kind of person that could just... leave her badge at the door when she came home and cuddle up for the night and just..." he shakes his head, his emotions getting the better of him as he pictures it in his head, "let someone understand her."
Sierra seems to give him a moment, recognizing the look of deep thought. "And... she never let that happen." She concludes.
Rick shakes his head, a soft smile appearing on his face as he looks back up to her. "I thought it did."
It's later that night that when Rick finds himself in a small booth for two near the back of a local diner.
"That must have been lonely." She says back, poking the ice of her diet soda with her straw.
Rick shakes his head as he leans back in the cushion. "I like to say that I tried to make the most of it, but... looking back..." He trails off as his voice hardens.
"Rick," she says with a smile, "getting raised by a single mother is difficult enough for any child. I can't imagine what it was like for you, having your mother performing as many nights as she was."
He shrugs. "It's hard to hold it against her." He says, looking away from her. "It's not like she planned to have me in her life, after all."
"Whether you do it or not, Rick, you do have a right." She reaffirms. "Letting your child raise themselves just because someone didn't choose the right guy is wrong, like it or not, Rick."
Rick shakes his head, "Sierra, I had enough to get by. I had food, shelter."
"Rick," she smiles, "that's two things on the list of ten things the CPS looks for when they look for a suitable home for a child and it's so basic, they don't even bother separating them. You needed love."
"It's not like I never saw her." He tries again to defend his mother. But when Sierra just squints her bright blue eyes at him, giving him an almost sly smile, he concedes with a smile. "When she sent me off to boarding school for the first time, it did feel like..." he tries, having to look away from her as the words form in his throat, "I was... being abandoned."
Kate looks over to the clock behind the register while simultaneously checking her phone for the time.
Almost ten minutes to eight o'clock... and no messages. What was she thinking? Getting her hopes up that high?
Her heart quivers painfully over the lump in her throat as she turns off the lights in the shop and makes for the door with her keys in her hand. As she locks the front door for the night, pushing on it to double check the store is locked up as she does every night, she turns around and makes for her Impala. Her stomach admittedly is still a bit weak, but she could go for some comfort food. One of those breakfast cheeseburgers from the diner sounds incredible right now.
She goes in her phone and finds the number to order something to get picked up on her way home.
"I just..." he struggles again, even after telling more to her than anyone else and never once being judged for it, "I just don't want to get my heart broken like that again. I mean," he says, leaning forward as Sierra stays sitting across from him as calmly as when she sat down, "so she turned down this job offer. What about the next one?"
"Rick," she smiles, "you've been skirting the real issue for a while." She challenges him, making him lean back and look down to his empty glass. "You already know she's willing to marry you and you're not worried about her leaving again."
He feels a lump form in his throat as his heart tells him to just say it. "I don't..." he struggles, "I don't want to end up being a regret... like with..." Sierra nods and gives him a smile, silently giving him an out of saying it out loud. "I just don't want to marry someone who's going to look back in ten years and tell our children that she could have been something in the world if it wasn't for her useless lump of a husband." He aches saying that, feeling weak and vulnerable admitting it. "I don't want to marry someone whose going to act like her life includes me up until the point when she doesn't want it to."
"Then, Rick," she says, shaking her head, "why did you ask her to marry you?"
He grits his teeth, looking toward the wall next to him. "I just..." he looks back down, "I thought we could work it all out."
"Rick, marriage isn't some kind of magic switch. No one can just slip on a set of rings and make all of their problems go away."
"I knew we would have problems to work out." He says in an emotionally honest voice. "I just thought that proposing to her would give her enough of a reason to stay intead of..." he shakes his head and decides not to say it.
But Sierra smiles and pulls it out of him. "Instead of what?"
He meets her eyes, knowing he's showing a glimmer of emotion. "Not end up being the side of the hill whose grass just wasn't green enough again."
"Rick, in my experience," she says with an understanding tone, "the people that are looking for greener grasses do so because they don't know the color of the grass under their feet already."
Rick meets her gaze until his armor is gone. "Then why should I take her back at all?" He asks her honestly. "Why should I believe her when she tells me that she loves me?"
Sierra keeps his eyes for a second before answering him. "Would you believe anyone if they told you they loved you, Rick?" Sierra's eyes keep him locked in with her, pulling more and more out of him as she looks over to him. "It's not that she's just not the type of person that can love you the way you want." She says in the same soft, understanding tone that she's used all night. "It's that you don't believe that you're the type of person that can be loved the way you want."
Rick bats his stinging eyes and looks away with as much courage as he can muster up. "So, what now? What do I do about her if I really do believe that I just can't be with someone that loves me like that?"
She smiles again, "That's kind of what loving someone is all about, Rick. And... as hypocritical as it sounds for either of us to say... marriage is telling the person you love that you're just not leaving." She says confidently. "No matter what happens. And you can't expect to make that promise hold true if you feel you constantly have to top yourself just to keep someone around. You need to know that... she loves you for you, Rick."
He feels his heart ache, like a small child looking for acceptance. A feeling he hates feeling long accustomed to. "I can't really imagine how I'd do that."
She just smiles, despite him not looking at her. "You make it easier than you think, Rick."
He finally feels himself muster up a smile despite himself and looks over to her. "Thank you."
Her smile brightens in welcomeness and after a moment, she's nodding off to her side. "We should probably go, huh? It's getting kind of late."
He smiles and nods to himself. "Yeah, probably."
Sierra scoots herself out of the booth of the diner and brushes her hands down her scrubs. "I just have to go to the little girl's room and I can drop you off at the station."
"I'll take care of the bill." He says as Sierra darts down off behind him.
But when Rick stands up out of the booth, he looks up through the diner and sees her, standing dead still a few feet away from the register with a plastic bag hanging from her hand, looking right at him with a low furrow in her brow. He can see her eyes shimmer from her.
He... he stood her up... for her? He didn't even call her, didn't even send her a text message. And he was with her?
When she feels a cold tear leak out onto her cheek, she turns and rushes out of the front door as fast as she can.
"Ka..." he tries, but cuts himself off.
She just always has to assume the worst about him, doesn't she? His hands ball up into angry fists as his teeth begin the gnash. After a moment, his impatience hotter and hotter by the second, he feels a soft hand lay itself down on his forearm. He turns to see Sierra smile at him softly. "Ready?"
He smiles, feeling his tension ease. "Yeah."
A/N: Adjust your search parameters for the next chapter. I'll try to have it up by at the very latest Wednesday. The next chapter, the rating will officially be upped to M. So if you're not already following the story, go ahead and follow it so you can get notified. /=]
