Author's note: This motivation for this fic is that in canon we learn very little about Beckett's private investigation into her mother's case during season 3 and Castle's investigation during season 4 (implied by the electronic murder-board in his study). The story will be heavy on analytical discussions about the case and the larger conspiracy, including questioning what they know and how they know it. It is not exactly a "rational fic", but it leans a little in that direction.

Basically this fic goes AU from 4x01 "Rise", but contains references to what Beckett would have learned during her investigations pre-series and during season 3, leading to some minor departures from earlier canon.

Some ideas inspired by other fics are used (but taken in different directions). Acknowledgements are in notes at the ends of the relevant chapters.

We begin in media res; the story of how we got here will emerge later.

Ends and Means

Chapter 1

A Rational Response

Thursday 15 September 2011

"What? Do you think I'm paranoid?" Richard Castle asked.

Kate Beckett leaned back into the armchair and looked at Castle sitting behind his desk. Her first visit to Castle's loft after returning to the city from recuperating at her father's cabin was, in the everyday sense, already going strangely; in the Castle sense, it was almost typical.

"Seriously, Castle? In the — what? — five minutes since I arrived at your door — excuse me, your new high-security door — you've told me that you've had all the windows replaced with bulletproof glass, upgraded your apartment's and the building's alarm systems, and ensured that there's always a second armed guard backing up the doorman downstairs. You've told me that you've had the open shelves closed off and this new sliding door installed to make your study soundproof." She stopped ticking off the points on her fingers and gestured at the shelves behind her and the now-closed door in front of the exit to the terrace. "None of which you mentioned in any of our talks during the summer," she added. "Then, when we come in here you insist we leave our phones outside. And to cap it all you assure me you sweep for bugs every day. Didn't it occur to you that people would think you're paranoid?" She raised her eyebrows.

"I'm not asking if 'people' think I'm paranoid, Beckett. I'm asking if you think I am."

"Yes, Castle, you are definitely paranoid," she said. Then she gave a small smile. "And I'm not objecting. Whoever is behind my mom's murder and my shooting can hire teams of mercenaries and snipers who turn into ghosts. Paranoia seems like a rational response to me."

Castle smiled back, then sobered. "It's more than that. Seriously, I think our phones are tapped."

Her smile vanished. "What? Why?"

"I was thinking again about something we talked about briefly during the Raglan case. Raglan was killed because he was about to tell you something about your mother's death, about the 'Dragon', as McCallister called him. But how did the Dragon know that? We know that Lockwood — or someone associated to Lockwood — started watching you at some point, but how did he know about the meeting with Raglan?"

John Raglan, the retired detective who had once worked Johanna Beckett's murder, had called Beckett one morning in January, saying that there was something she didn't know about her mother's death. Beckett had already known that Raglan had been wrong when he decided Johanna's murder was random gang violence, for two years earlier Castle's consultant Clark Murray had identified three other people who had also been murdered in 1999 in the same way. Early the previous year, the murderer had been identified, in connection with a different case, as a professional killer named Dick Coonan. Raglan had told Beckett to meet him in a coffee shop, and not to bring any other cops. She had brought Castle — someone she trusted — and Raglan had told them that he was terminally ill. He admitted that he had written off Johanna's murder as gang violence because he had been told to. He had kept quiet because he was afraid, but knowing he was soon to die anyway seemed to have lessened his fear. But he had barely started to tell his tale, beginning with a "bad mistake" he had made nineteen years earlier, when Hal Lockwood had killed him with a single shot fired from the building opposite.

"You mean that following me wouldn't be enough," said Beckett slowly. "He wouldn't have had time to set up across from that coffee shop, because there was only about two minutes between us arriving and Raglan being shot. That wasn't enough time to find out how to get into the building and find a place to shoot from, unless he or someone else had already reconnoitered the building, which still means advance knowledge of the meeting. And that doesn't even count the time he needed to assemble the rifle he smuggled into the building in his briefcase."

"Exactly," said Castle. "When I realized that I started wondering if Lockwood had initially been following Raglan. But that doesn't make sense unless he or the Dragon already knew Raglan had to be taken out."

"Maybe they found out that Raglan was dying and thought that might make him talk to someone?" suggested Beckett. "McCallister said that Raglan told him he was dying a week before he was killed."

"That was my first thought, but in that case they would have been anxious to kill him as soon as possible, before he could... write a letter or email someone, or even make an affidavit. He could just have been shot in the street. So I speculated that the coffee shop might have been the first place that made him an easy target, but then I remembered that Raglan took a refill of coffee just after we arrived..."

"Which suggests that he had been there for some time."

"Yeah. I asked Ryan, and he found the witness statement from the waitress, who said that Raglan had been there for at least fifteen minutes before we arrived. So Raglan was there, presenting himself as a target, for more than enough time to kill him before we arrived. Even if it was only seeing you there as well that led to the decision to kill him, why would Lockwood wait two minutes before firing?"

"Wait. The building Lockwood shot from had keycard entry and security cameras. Surely there's a log of when the card Lockwood stole was used? We should be able to find out exactly when he arrived."

"Way ahead of you, Beckett," said Castle with a smile. Seeing her look, he hastened to continue. "The security footage doesn't have a timestamp, but you're right about the logs. Again, Ryan helped me with this. Going by the entry logs and the logs from dispatch, Lockwood entered the building six minutes before you called in the shooting. Since that was before we arrived, it's confirmation that Lockwood wasn't following you at that point. Since it was at least ten minutes after Raglan arrived, it makes it unlikely Lockwood was following him. Six minutes was barely enough time for him to find a room to shoot from and to assemble his rifle. So he fired as soon as he was ready. Taking it all together, I think that Raglan's shooting was laid on — in a hurry — by someone who knew, without following either of you, that Raglan was going to be there. So the most likely possibility is that somebody listened in when Raglan called you and told you to meet him there. Presumably whoever monitored the call informed the Dragon, who called in Lockwood, who took out Raglan as soon as he was in position. Or maybe the Dragon has some lieutenant who did it on his own authority. In any case, it's actually kind of impressive, arranging a hit in under an hour."

Castle sipped his coffee and continued. "In retrospect, that alone almost completely convinces me that there was phone tapping going on, but I only worked it out much later, after Gates kicked me out and I started thinking about what happened that night at the hangar. You see, when Montgomery called me, he didn't call me on my cellphone or here at home: he called me at Black Pawn — I had told I him that I had to go there for a meeting to sign off on the character designs for the Derrick Storm graphic novel. At the time, I wondered why he didn't call my cell, but I was more worried about why he called me at all. Much later — just a few weeks ago — I looked at Black Pawn's call log and checked the number he called from — it was a prepaid burner cell. So I'm pretty sure Montgomery suspected his phone or mine was tapped but he figured that calling me at Black Pawn using a burner was probably safe. And since Montgomery knew who the Dragon is, he probably had an accurate assessment of his capabilities."

Four months earlier, Hal Lockwood had escaped while being arraigned for murdering Gary McCallister in prison. He had received instructions to continue his mission, seemingly to kill Beckett. Roy Montgomery had called Beckett to the hangar where they had found the helicopter used in the escape, to lure Lockwood, and had called Castle to drag Beckett away, leaving Montgomery to sacrifice himself in killing Lockwood and his associates.

Beckett nodded as she followed Castle's reasoning. "You know, that would also explain what happened when I arrived at the hangar. I parked on the airport perimeter and walked to the hangar. Lockwood drove right to the hangar but didn't arrive until several minutes after me. So he probably wasn't following me or waiting for me to arrive, which makes sense if he knew Montgomery had called me and told me to be there. And Montgomery said he brought me there to 'lure them', so he must have thought either that they were following me or that they would have some other reason for believing I would be there. Clearly, he thought that just telling them I would be there wouldn't be enough, because in that case he would never have called me."

"Yeah," said Castle. "And if they followed you or saw you arrive, they probably wouldn't have spent time talking to Montgomery. They would have just killed him and searched for you. That also suggests they and the Dragon couldn't GPS track your phone or triangulate from cell towers to know where you were — which would imply some limit to their reach, although I wouldn't rely on that. All of which brings us back to the phone call."

"Why not just kill me in the street, anyway?"

"My guess is that Lockwood wanted to interrogate you first, the way he did Ryan and Esposito." Castle was referring to the Raglan case, when Lockwood had abducted Ryan and Esposito and tried to force them to divulge how much the police knew. "Or maybe he just wanted revenge and intended to make you suffer."

Beckett shuddered slightly. "Either scenario would explain why he wanted Montgomery to bring me to a deserted location. Somewhere I could be seized without witnesses."

Castle nodded. "Exactly. Anyway, both then and with Raglan, someone listened in to your conversations — or seems to have. And Montgomery's actions seem to indicate that he believed his call to you would be monitored. It could have just been Raglan's and Montgomery's phones that were tapped. It would make sense for the Dragon to want to monitor their phones — and McCallister's, of course — since they knew who he was. But if the Dragon can arrange phone tapping, it would make sense for him to tap yours and probably mine too, and maybe Ryan's and Esposito's. So I think we should proceed on the assumption that all our phones are tapped."

The Dragon was the shadowy figure that seemed to stand behind all of the deaths from Johanna Beckett's onward. The name came from Gary McCallister, who had been an academy classmate of Raglan's. In the early 1990s, the two of them and the then-rookie Roy Montgomery had dealt their own brand of justice by kidnapping mobsters and ransoming them. One kidnapping went wrong and led to the death of an undercover FBI agent named Bob Armen; they pinned the murder on Joe Pulgatti, the mob enforcer who had been their target. The investigation into Raglan's death had turned up enough to convict McCallister for his role in the cover-up, and to indicate that Johanna Beckett had been killed for her work on an appeal for Pulgatti. McCallister had denied having Johanna or Raglan killed, only saying that it was someone else, somebody Beckett and her colleagues could never touch, that they "woke the dragon", and that the case was far bigger than they realized.

"But the Dragon didn't know about Montgomery calling you, so he probably doesn't know you were there at the hangar..." said Beckett. She frowned in thought. "Wait... if they couldn't locate our phones, he can't be sure I was there, either. Ryan texted me just as I arrived, telling me that Montgomery was the third cop. If my phone was monitored, the Dragon could reasonably conclude that I would have backed away from meeting Montgomery..."

"And because we left and didn't call in what had happened, let the airport workers find the bodies the next morning, there's no record that we were there. And all the slugs recovered at the scene were from the guns belonging to Montgomery and Lockwood. So the evidence indicates that no-one was there to help Montgomery."

They exchanged a painful look. They had felt compelled to leave in order to protect Montgomery's reputation; if their presence had been known officially, it would have raised too many questions about what they and Montgomery had been doing. As it was, there were unanswered questions about why Montgomery had apparently gone to the airport alone, but the assumption was that he had been checking up on a lead and had unexpectedly encountered Lockwood and his men.

"But you seem to be worried about our phones being hacked," said Beckett. "If you're right, the Dragon might have listened in to what happened."

"I don't think so," said Castle. "My phone was in my pocket. Montgomery's was found in his car. You put your phone in your pocket as soon as you saw Montgomery."

"You remember that?"

Castle gave a humorless laugh. "Every detail of that night is etched into my memory, trust me."

"Okay, so our phones were in our pockets...?"

"Ever get a call from someone who butt-dialed you?"

"Not since phones got smart enough to prevent it, but I know what you mean. All the microphone picks up is the movement of clothing."

"Exactly. So even if our phones are hacked — which they might not be, especially since they don't seem to have been able to track your phone's location — the Dragon or his people wouldn't have heard what happened."

"But he still ordered my shooting," Beckett pointed out. Five days after Montgomery's sacrifice, while giving the eulogy at his funeral, Beckett had been shot in the chest by a sniper and had only narrowly survived.

"Yes, but that was days later. If he was worried that Montgomery had told you something, he would have assumed that you told others. Me, Ryan, Esposito. None of us were targeted. No, he specifically wanted you dead. First Lockwood, then the sniper. Whatever his motive was, it wasn't to do with anything Montgomery might have told you. At the time, I thought that he considered you the one detective good enough, and with motivation enough, to be an actual danger to him. But if that's right, why hasn't he tried again?"

"Could my shooting have been about sending a message?" Beckett suggested. "Maybe you're right about why he wanted me dead — but perhaps sending a message was why he did it at a full honors funeral, instead of just having me gunned down on the street. Make a spectacle, show that he can get to us anywhere, even with a crowd of cops around. Make everyone aware that he can kill them or their families."

"That makes sense," said Castle. "And it fits with the change in MO: Lockwood wanted to kill you in private, without witnesses, possibly after interrogating you, but Montgomery sacrificed himself to stop that. Maybe using a sniper was supposed to make it clear that it didn't matter who sacrificed themselves. It wouldn't stop the Dragon." He paused to take another sip of coffee. "Another possibility is that he might have been distracting us. I think he was confident the sniper would be able to disappear. So maybe he wanted you dead or seriously injured and the rest of us emotionally distracted and chasing the sniper, when he knew it would go nowhere. Maybe he didn't want us looking at something else, something that happened as a consequence of what Montgomery did."

"Like some other clean-up operation? Someone else who knew something was killed. Someone he thought we knew about and he was worried about?"

"Could be." Castle shrugged "Or it could have been just to buy time to disappear some other evidence he thought we were looking for. But if your shooting was only — and I hate putting it like that — a message or a distraction, that would explain why he hasn't tried again."

Beckett exhaled slowly. "Both stories fit, but that's all. What about..." She trailed off into silence, lost in thought.

Castle watched her for almost a minute. "Beckett?" he said gently.

Beckett refocused on Castle and shook her head. "Sorry. I was just thinking... Let me play devil's advocate here. What actual evidence do we have that the Dragon was behind my shooting? I mean, before he died, Montgomery said 'I'm going to end this'. He sounded definite, like he knew that sacrificing himself would keep me safe. If he was right, then my shooting wasn't ordered by the Dragon."

Castle looked at her skeptically. "I don't— I can't believe it. Lockwood — a sniper — is sent to kill you, Montgomery saves you, another sniper targets you five days later at Montgomery's funeral. There's no way that's a coincidence, Beckett."

"Okay, consider this. A friend or comrade of Lockwood's — another sniper, maybe they served together — blamed me for his death and decided to take revenge. The Dragon wasn't involved at all in my shooting; it was just private revenge. Do we have any reason to consider that explanation less likely than the Dragon being behind it?" She looked expectantly at Castle.

Castle winced and ran a hand over his hair, resting his hand on the back of his neck. "No," he said in frustration, then muttered an obscenity. "Given what we know, that's actually more likely to be true, because it's compatible with Montgomery being sure you would be safe from the Dragon. And it would also explain why there hasn't been another attempt on your life — if your shooter was working alone, maybe he fled to avoid the manhunt and hasn't returned yet. If the Dragon were behind it, he could just have employed another professional."

"If the Dragon could employ someone else, then why did Montgomery think that sacrificing himself to kill Lockwood and his friends would keep me safe?" Beckett's tone indicated her own frustration.

"Perhaps Montgomery thought you were only a threat to the Dragon if he — Montgomery — was alive?" suggested Castle. "I've got nothing to explain why that might be the case... Okay, let me play devil's advocate now. This goes completely against everything I've been thinking, but could Lockwood have been the Dragon?"

"Definitely not," said Beckett. "I can't see someone who employed Dick Coonan being a professional killer himself. And given that the Dragon seems to be all-powerful, it's unlikely he would stay in prison for four months instead of busting himself out earlier. Also, remember Lockwood got the instruction to kill McCallister from outside: he made reverse-charge calls every week until someone accepted and asked about 'Charlie' and 'Mike'." Esposito had explained to them that the names were words from the NATO phonetic alphabet: "continue mission" was the message for Lockwood. "And Montgomery didn't give me a name because he thought I'd go straight at him, which surely wouldn't matter if Montgomery was going to kill him."

Castle nodded, thinking. "Did Montgomery do something else, something he didn't tell us about? Something that would keep you safe... Maybe he tipped off the FBI or someone about the Dragon and then took out the immediate threat of Lockwood by himself? For all we know the Dragon has been arrested already." He started slightly. "Or maybe..." It was Castle's turn to trail off.

"Castle?"

Castle refocused. "Maybe Montgomery killed the Dragon before he killed Lockwood."

"Again, doesn't fit with him refusing to give me a name," said Beckett. "Neither does tipping off the FBI."

"Maybe he knew the Dragon had associates who would be a danger to you if you investigated him, even if he was already dead or under arrest? Associates who were afraid your investigation would expose them?"

"But then he would suspect the 'associates' might try to kill me anyway. He was sure he was ending it."

Castle shrugged. "We're running in circles here, Beckett."

"Yeah." Beckett ran a hand through her hair. "In short, we don't know for sure whether the Dragon ordered my shooting. We think Montgomery might have done something other than sacrificing himself to kill Lockwood, but we don't know what. If the Dragon was behind my shooting, then maybe there were no other attempts on my life because it was a message, or possibly a distraction, but we don't know from what. We know nothing."

"We could ask Evelyn if she knows what Montgomery did?"

"I doubt she would know. I mean, she would have told you or Ryan or Esposito if she knew anything. I suppose we could ask, just to be sure."

"We could look also into other crimes around the time of the shooting, see if any of them look like something we had to be distracted from?"

"Maybe, but that's a needle in a haystack," said Beckett. "During the summer, you told me about following the money trail. That might be the only lead. Where did you get to before Gates closed down the investigation?"

Castle looked into his empty coffee mug. "We need refills." He stood and looked at Beckett. "This is gonna get complicated."