It had been more than four years since she was in the Old Haunt. It hadn't changed much, but she sure had. Her plan to leave Castle and end LOKSAT had been naively optimistic. She and Vikram were no match for who he was and what he was capable of. Her efforts to catch him and run the Twelfth had her burning the candle at both ends with neither getting the attention they deserved.
The brass at 1PP were not happy with her performance, and she knew it. They sensed what all her direct reports already surmised. She was preoccupied, and the precinct was the big loser. Deputy Chief Gates tried repeatedly to get it out of her, but it was to no avail.
Javier and Kevin both made efforts to engage her, but each was met with a deafening silence neither could fathom. Silence like that was never good for friendships, and this was no exception. Conversations became both short and awkward. If it was not about a case, why tempt another Beckett glare?
Their meeting with Castle was even more confusing. His long-convoluted explanation boiled down to something like she was leaving him to protect him. He was clearly just as confused by her actions as they were. Word of the separation soon hit the precinct gossip mill, and none saw Castle as the guilty party.
Within less than a week, wild rumors had her in some secret affair with her new favorite, Vikram Singh. Her inner circle found all this wild speculation repulsive, but hard to refute. Word of this got back to Castle, and it took a heavy toll. He didn't want to be labeled as a three-time loser. His mother chalked it up to wild conjecture. Kate was not the type to jump from one bed to another. Alexis was far less forgiving.
"She abandoned the marital home. You will never be enough." And there it was; the line Senator Bracken had told him eons ago. It was the one surmise he feared the most and never forgot.
With her LOKSAT investigation faltering, her professional life unraveling, and her relationship hideously broken, the sudden offer by Jackson Hunt hit a responsive nerve. He would deliver the whereabouts of LOKSAT, and in return, she would come work for him in the dark world of espionage.
His recruitment pitch was the frankest discussion she'd ever had with anyone. "You want revenge, feel you are a failure at your job, and walked out on your one-and-done. Your investigation is a mess, you aren't Captain material, and you know your hopes of reconciliation with my son are pure fantasy. Did I miss anything?"
"You made a choice that night you walked out. My proposal delivers the guy you want. What you do with it is your business. In return, you start putting yours skills to work for the good guys. Of course, you would have to pass our training program. Everyday is a competition. Tough at first, but you'll thrive on that challenge."
That night she returned home in a bit of meltdown. In less than an hour, Jackson had stomped on her investigation, job, and relationship while astutely reminding her what she was good at. His assessment was a terrifying slap in the face about all the wishful thinking she was amassing to justify her actions.
Up until the LOKSAT investigation, she was rarely on a case where the results were so dreadful. The big problem was trying to keep the whole thing under wraps. She had discounted how much of her success depended on the legwork and shrewd analysis that came from the rest of her team. As her mentor, Roy Montgomery, used to say, "Show me an effective detective, and I will show you a team where egos play no role. It doesn't happen often, but when you are part of it, it's lightening in a bottle."
Her new job as Captain was a colossal mistake. Her well documented hatred of paperwork should have been a warning to keep as far away from the NYPD bureaucracy as possible. The avalanche of paperwork needed to keep the Twelfth running never ceased to amaze and frustrate her. Gates made it look easy, but she now understood it was anything but. Now she was living a nightmare of her own making with no one around, like Castle, to calm her every growing distaste for the banality that was sure to cross her desk the next day.
The worst truth was his insights about her relationship with Castle. That night after her run-in with Lockwood, she had chosen him. Her mother's case was no longer the most important thing in her life. She wanted more, and for awhile, she actually got it. Now though, she had deliberately chosen to reenter the fray oblivious to what she was giving up. She shut him out with some convoluted excuse about protecting him and his family. It was to be just a temporary bump in the road. Delusions always sound good in the beginning. Unfortunately, reality always pays you back with a basket of thorns.
Now she knew it was a huge fork in the road. She had blown up their 'always', and there was no going back. What kind of person rejects great for something far less. That harsh assessment led to much soul searching and finally a decision. That next Wednesday, she submitted her resignation down at 1PP and wasn't terribly surprised no one tried to talk her out of it. She would join Jackson, end the LOKSAT threat, and decide on a life plan after that.
Ah, the training camp, a place she hated and loved at the sametime. Her class was the first all female group, and the trainers made clear that no allowances would be made because of it. By the time she left, she had gained ten pounds, and none of it was fat. Her hosts called it gravitas; she called it purposeful misery. Just as Jackson promised, the daily competitions were excruciating at first. She had never experienced a training regimen where the pace never let up. The strain was both physical and mental. Praise was rare, while criticism was rampant and often done in front of the others. No one liked being singled out because extra sessions were sure to follow.
The extra sessions were the beginning of a three part punishment process. They always occurred after a full day of training. Your primary trainer got the fiendish task of programming something as fatiguing as possible. Her trainer liked sprints and burpees. The session came to an end when you were considered ripe. Ripe in this context was anything but a compliment. It meant you were a frazzled exhausted mess with a palpable sheen of sweat emanating from every pour. The second phase concerned making your recovery as miserable as possible. That meant just water to drink, no shower, and a fitful night's sleep wallowing in the hardly pleasant stink of your own making. The next day was the worst. All the trainers were aware of your extra session and ruthlessly called you out for any performance gaps knowing full well how grossly unprepared you were for any strenuous activity. It was a humiliating struggle that played out in front of everyone. None liked the increased scrutiny, and that was exactly the point.
Before the end of the second week, Kate had settled on what she hoped would be a winning strategy. It was all a matter of perspective. Instead of concentrating on the cumulative miseries each day was sure to bring, you needed to break it down into a a series of competitions where being ahead of your peers was all that mattered. From her high school days, she had always been a competitive person, and now she adopted that same steely determination every time a trainer presented a new challenge. The impetus to win forced her to personalize every competition. Anyone pitted against her was a weakling who couldn't keep up, and she made sure to voice her opinions with as much vulgarity as possible. Those rants led to some understandable extra-circular tensions with her peers, and Kate was not shy about participating in some impromptu brawls that left both in sorry states for all to see.
By the end, they had transformed her into a combat machine skilled with her firsts, a variety of handguns, and not bad with a blade either. Their graduation was a subdued affair. Jackson and Rita were there, but not for any sort of congratulations or welcome. No, they were there to make two important announcements. First, the whole class would go into the field as a new team he ironically christened the 'Boys Club'. The second was even more of a surprise; he and Rita would be their co-leaders. Kate knew he did not shy away from tough assignments, and now she and her team would be his brutal pawns in the field
After training camp Jackson gave the team a two-week holiday to decompress. Kate never said what she did during that time, but Jackson had his suspicions. Rita actually found the report. The person, they identified as LOKSAT, was found quite dead in alleyway with a single stab wound to the kidneys just like Joanna Beckett many years earlier. The NYPD never made the connection and had no suspects. Jackson had fulfilled his part of their bargain right after the graduation and never spoke of it again. The only person to be informed of the details was miffed at her, but not at all displeased by the outcome.
Within a month of LOKSAT's demise, Kate learned Vikram had abruptly resigned and vanished. At first, she liked to think it was because the new Captain was not as supportive as she was. The problem was it was just too coincidental to not merit some suspicion. Her mentors at training camp had instilled in her a healthy skepticism for all such coincidences, and she wondered if she had been played by someone with a far different agenda than her own.