Chapter 4

"I guess," Beckett said. "Could you give me a list of people who've commissioned those nails from you?"

"Yeah." Tarrant's previous terseness had returned. "Office."

They followed the blacksmith to the office, which was in the sort of chaos normally occasioned by a Category 4 hurricane or Castle on a three-day writing jag. Despite the horror in Beckett's eyes at the disorganisation, Tarrant flicked over two apparently messy piles and produced a list without a pause. The look of disbelief that replaced horror would have been worth an Oscar.

"There. Need anything more? I gotta get back to my iron."

"Not for now," Beckett said. "Here's my card. I'll probably want to talk to you about each of these buyers, but I've got some inquiries to make first. Thanks." She produced a blinding smile of gratitude, which widened Tarrant's eyes.

"You know where I am," he said, and Castle was dead sure it was an invitation.

"Thanks," Beckett said again. "I'll be in touch." She swung out, confidence in her stride and cheer in the set of her shoulders. "Progress," she exulted. "We need to get back to the precinct."

Castle thought that they could also usefully go back to Beckett's apartment, but he supposed that had better be after they'd been to the precinct.

"Call Ryan or Espo and get them started on these names," Beckett said. "That way we won't lose any time."

Castle complied, exchanged barbed compliments with the boys and cut the call, then looked to see if there had been any response to his social media messaging.

He whistled. "Beckett, I got replies. Lots of replies."

"You did? Okay, as soon as we get back you can download all of it and we'll cross check with Tarrant's list. If you get the list out you could start now."

Castle, as interested in the trail as ever, and recognising the irresistible force of the Beckett-huntswoman on a trail, did as he was told. Most of the responses were irrelevant and merely protestations of how wonderful he was to be supporting small craftsmen. Nice as it was to see those, they weren't helpful and probably weren't wholly sincere. Some answers, however, might be useful. He scrawled the usernames down so that they could find them again later, though none specifically matched Tarrant's list.

As he looked up, he realised that they'd reached the precinct and Beckett was parking neatly in front of it. "You coming?" she demanded. "We've got leads."

Castle bounced after her, enjoying the rear view, and hopped into the elevator, where he stood just a fraction closer than he normally did. Happily and quite deliberately, that allowed their hands to brush. Well, er, it allowed Castle to brush Beckett's hand. She wasn't brushing anything. On the other, um, hand, she wasn't pulling away, or worse, stepping away.

He tried curling his fingers around hers, ready at any resistance to back off – and nearly fainted when she didn't. There might even have been a tiny curl back again, though that also might be wishful thinking. Still, she wasn't actually shooting his fingers off, so he was definitely in credit. He essayed a slow, seductive stroke of his thumb across her hand, and saw her eyes fleck with gold and heat and a fine line of colour rise on her cheekbones.

Game on.

He managed one more slow, sensual stroke before the elevator doors began to open and she jerked her hand away, for all the world as if she hadn't realised that she'd allowed him to be close. He followed her irritated stalk into the bullpen and tried to smooth the grin from his face. He didn't entirely succeed.

"We got something," Beckett announced before she'd reached her desk. The boys clustered around her.

"What?" Ryan asked. "We didn't get anywhere."

"We found people who bought bronze nails," Beckett said.

"And I found people who are interested in buying bronze nails from anywhere, not just the ones who went into the forge."

"So," Beckett said, "cross-checking time. Ryan, you're the tech guru. You take Castle and sift through these social media junkie fans" –

"Hey!" Castle cried. "They're my fans."

Beckett made a face that showed that she considered them to have no taste.

"You're a fan," he continued, backed up by enthusiastic nodding from Ryan and Espo – from a very safe distance. "Are you a social media junkie too? Maybe you're a follower!"

"I don't use social media," Beckett shut down. "And if I did I certainly wouldn't need to follow you. You tell me everything that falls into your head and you follow me."

Not everything, Castle thought. If you knew everything you'd shoot me. If you could read my thoughts right now you'd dismember me slowly and dance on the dripping entrails.

"You're blushing," he teased, since she wasn't. "I'm going to go through my fan sites and see if I can find you."

"You won't find me, 'cause I'm not there to find."

Castle wiggled his eyebrows disbelievingly. Beckett harrumphed. Ryan and Espo snickered, swiftly stifled on receipt of Beckett's glare.

"Now," she snapped, "get to work. Ryan, check these fans. Castle, you're with Ryan. Espo, on me. We're going to run all the people who commissioned bronze nails, and when the databases are full, we're going to see if any of them match people who bought harpoons." She looked at her team. "We do have a list of people who bought harpoons, don't we?"

A certain quality of silence suggested that perhaps there wasn't – yet – a list of people who had bought harpoons.

"Is there a list of people who know about the construction of the building?"

More silence.

"Tell me the run on our victim is done and we at least know who he is?"

"The lab's backed up again. We'll be lucky to get an ID before tomorrow, and that's only if his prints or DNA are on file. You know there wasn't any ID on him. You spoke to CSU." Espo met Beckett's furious glare with a cool look, no doubt forged under fire in his Army days.

"So what can we do?" she snapped. "We're losing time here."

"Run the buyers of bronze nails," Espo said reasonably.

"If that's all we can do," Beckett humphed angrily, and thumped down in her chair. "You take the top half. I'll take the bottom." She began to clatter the keys, irritation manifest in every keystroke.

Forty minutes or so later, Beckett hit the enter key on the last run hard enough to trigger NYU's seismographs, then stretched back in her chair. "What have you got, Ryan?"

"Matches," Ryan said, "which is what you'd expect. But we've also gotten a list of interested people – real people not just their social media handles – who could've bought from anywhere."

"Ugh."

"And," Ryan went on, "I'm just waiting for a list of other forges elsewhere in the USA – and Canada" –

"That was my idea," Castle said proudly. Beckett didn't dignify his smugness with a look, never mind an answer.

"I'll have it shortly," Ryan continued. "Then we can start asking them about bronze nails."

Beckett softened marginally. "Good." Then she hardened again. "What about harpoons?"

"Not yet."

Beckett hardened to diamond "Why not?" she snapped.

"Because we've asked every fishing store we can find but we haven't had all the answers."

"Hurry them up."

"It's after six. They've shut. We won't get more till tomorrow."

Beckett glared viciously around her team and then attempted to glare her computer into faster action. It didn't work. "People who know about the construction or live in the building where he was found?"

"Waiting" –

"Have we anything that isn't waiting?"

The boys looked at each other. "No," Espo said.

Beckett emitted a screech of frustration. "I'm going, then." She cleared her desk in seconds, and was gone before Castle had even realised she'd picked up her jacket.

The three men shrugged at each other. "She's not happy," Ryan declared, which won the prize for obvious statement of the year.

Castle considered. He could go after Beckett, but she'd be halfway home by now. He could go home, and write Nikki, which basically translated to write about Beckett. Or he could go home, have dinner, and then go out to see Beckett, who might not shoot him on sight. Yes. That was definitely the best plan.

As he went home, he pondered the day with considerable satisfaction, especially that kiss. Oh, yes. That kiss. Wow. And best of all, she'd kissed him back, much, much harder than he'd kissed her. She like-liked him.

He knew it. He knew she wasn't indifferent. He bounced home, and bounced through preparing a delicious dinner, and then bounced out again.

His bounce abruptly un-bounced when he rapped on her door and was greeted with nothing. No noise, no answer, and, crucially, no Beckett. He pouted at her door. It wasn't fair. Just when he'd – she'd – found out that there was a whole lot of something and he had plenty of ideas how great it would be…she wasn't there. Definitely not fair at all.

He had another idea, and called her phone. He couldn't hear it ring in the apartment – so she wasn't there. He pouted again. Where was she? She should answer her phone. It was rude not to answer, especially when it was he who was calling. Just as he was pondering what to do now, the elevator tinged.

Beckett had done what she invariably did when her frustration at having to wait for results (at least, she told herself that was the only reason that she was frustrated) boiled over, and gone out immediately for a long, hard run. She would have gone back to the precinct afterwards, but she knew that there wouldn't be anything new, and staring at her desk from her not-particularly-comfortable chair wasn't going to improve her evening. On the other hand, two pints of coffee-chocolate ice cream from her favourite store, with top-quality chocolate sauce, would. She turned for the store, obtained her ice cream and sauce, and then went home, already tasting its unctuous chocolate delightfulness on her tongue. She swung out of the elevator, keys in hand –

"What the hell?" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

Castle produced a suave smile. "I had a thought," he said, and let Beckett believe that it was about the case. She unlocked, and went straight to her freezer to deposit the ice cream.

"What's this thought?" she said unwelcomingly. "Why couldn't it wait till tomorrow?"

"It's not a good thought for the precinct," Castle said.

"So it's not about the case," Beckett stated. "You just want to annoy me with innuendo and pestering. Nope. You're interrupting my evening."

"You're scared to talk to me," Castle taunted. "You're scared that you won't be able to control yourself, just like you couldn't in the car."

Beckett turned a shade that was, to be fair, found in Nature. Normally in the crater of an active, magma spouting volcano, to be sure, but still, found in Nature. Castle smiled sunnily, and proceeded to improve the shining hour.

"I mean, I really enjoyed it, but technically, Beckett, you harassed me."

"I harassed you? You, you over-sexed octopus, assaulted me first."

"I shook your hand," Castle pointed out, and didn't mention his delicate kiss.

"You kissed me."

"I pecked you. That wasn't a kiss. You didn't just peck me, you really went for it and kissed me."

"You kissed me first."

"I told you," Castle said with an irritatingly saintly smile, "that wasn't a kiss. That was a peck."

"So what do you think a kiss is, then?"

"You're the one who disagrees with my definition," Castle oozed, "so whatever I say you'll disagree with." He humphed. "I'm not going to keep suggesting definitions just so you can argue with all of them." He scowled theatrically. "You just disagree with me for the sake of disagreeing, even when you don't really. So I'm not going to define a kiss for you."

Beckett, just as Castle had hoped, completely lost the little temper she'd had, and exploded. "This is a kiss, you brain-dead idiot!" Her lips hit his, she hauled his head down to hers again, and invaded.

This time, there was no gearshift in the way. No leads or trails to be followed up. No reason to stop. If only Castle had had a single solitary braincell left to use, he might have used them to continue, but Beckett had fried them all, and before he could recover them she was pushing him away.

"That was a kiss," she stormed. "So you can get lost with your dumb definitions and arguing and now you know what a kiss actually is, you can leave." She turned her back on him, extracted ice cream from the freezer, a bowl from a cupboard and a spoon from a drawer, and put at least half a pint of ice cream into the bowl, smothered in half the bottle of chocolate sauce.

"You need to put whipped cream and sprinkles on it, and maybe a glacé cherry or three, to have a really good sulkfest," Castle noted. He also noted that Beckett's gun was nowhere in view, which gave him the chance to annoy her without being shot.

"I'm not sulking. I'm eating my ice cream. I do not sulk. I do, however, like privacy. Which you are invading."

"Just like you invaded my mouth a moment ago? I didn't see – feel – you wanting privacy then. At least, not privacy between us. I'm sure you'd have wanted privacy from everybody else. Unless you like an audience?"

Beckett screeched, and then packed her mouth with ice cream, turning her back on Castle.

"I don't either. I prefer privacy too. It stops people staring when they hear the screaming" –

"Screams of horror, sure."

"Oh, I can do a lot better than that. Screams of utter delight, usually punctuated with cries of more!"

"Go away!" Beckett tried to yell, muffled by a mouthful of ice cream.

"You shouldn't shout with your mouth full," Castle chided. "You shouldn't shout at all, but I'll forgive you."

The noise Beckett made was utterly indescribable. Eventually it resolved into, "Get out!"

"Okay. But the next time you want to demonstrate kissing, I'm up for it."

Castle left. He thought he'd reached the limits of Beckett's tiny tolerance – but he had a second heated kiss to dream about. Still, he'd love to know why she hammered him with a kiss that would melt rocks – and then gave him the ice-shelf cold shoulder half an instant later. He did know that he wasn't going to push kisses on her…one, that was most definitely harassment, two, she would kill him – and three, it was so much more fun when she pushed kisses into his only too willing mouth.

Beckett ate her ice cream and wished that it had time-bending properties, so that she could go right back to the beginning of the day and change several things, starting with letting Castle pat her on the back when she'd choked on her coffee.

She'd been doing so well. She'd been managing to ignore his annoying innuendo, his irritating flirtation, and his far-too-sexy smile. She didn't want to have a short, blazing affair with Rick Castle or indeed with anyone. Short, blazing affairs were unsatisfying and not what she wanted at all. They only ended in tears. Sure, getting into it with Castle would blaze – oh, boy would it blaze. She'd be incinerated.

But it wouldn't last. He was a page six playboy with commitment issues, and she…

Well, she wanted something that might be permanent. Someone who'd actually love her. Someone she could love and be loved by. And while she could easily (oh, so easily) fall for Rick Castle…he would never fall for her.

So she should never have started it in the first place, and she'd better stop thinking about how that kiss had felt, and she really, really shouldn't have let herself be goaded and baited into doing it again.

Because it had been amazing. Stopping had been near to impossible, but her self-control and self-discipline was legendary – and she'd needed every single iota of that control and discipline to stop.

And then, of course, he'd spoiled it all by being frivolous and passing it off like it meant nothing to him. When two people like each other. Yeah. And then he'd just been annoying the second time. It meant nothing to him, so she'd better make it mean nothing to her.

She ate another bowlful of ice cream, chased it with coffee strong enough to dissolve diamonds, and then had a lovely hot, soothing shower followed by lovely cool soothing moisturiser. And then she put herself to bed and wasn't soothed at all by her dreams, and then wasn't soothed at all by just how far from reality those dreams would be.

Because Rick-superstar-mega-rich-bestselling-author-indiscriminate-playboy-Castle was never, ever going to fall in love with an ordinary cop.

Beckett hit the precinct far too early and in a mood that had sunk some way past appalling into abyssal. It was not improved by the results from the runs on buyers of bronze nails, which disclosed absolutely nothing of any use whatsoever. It being seven a.m., there was no information on the building's construction or from fishing stores. She didn't have Ryan's list of people interested in bronze nails. She didn't have a list of other forges which worked with bronze. In fact, coming in early had achieved absolutely nothing except to turn her mood so bad that the Lords of Hell would have fled from her without more than a single glance.

She stomped out of the precinct for coffee – she wasn't using Castle's machine, not if it killed her – and obtained a caffeinated substance that would probably have been stronger than tarmac had she wished to resurface a road. It was, technically, fluid, in that it would flow. So, as it happened, would thick molasses, almost as slowly.

When she returned to the precinct, it was only seven-thirty, and nothing more had arrived. She set herself to making a list of everything she wanted, and scrawled it on her murder board in her appalling handwriting. Top of the list was the autopsy, and when she'd finished scribbling, she called Lanie.

"What's the autopsy show?"

"Good morning, Kate," Lanie said meaningfully. "How're you doing this fine morning?"

"Autopsy."

"Manners."

"Hey-Lanie-how're-you," Beckett gabbled. "Now, autopsy. What did it show? Anything more? Time of death? Fingerprints on the ripped out guts?"

"It's first up this morning."

"You haven't done it yet?" Beckett squawked. "Lanie, I need it."

"So does everyone else in the NYPD. You're in line. You're next up. Stop whining at me. I'm about to start it."

"I don't whine!" Beckett snapped.

"Yeah, right. You whine every time you have to wait and you're whining now. Go get coffee and put half a ton of sugar in it to sweeten your temper." Lanie stopped. "What's Castle done now? I didn't think he showed up before ten."

"He doesn't. I want information, and I don't have any."

"You want to get laid, girlfriend. This is frustration talking. Take Castle for a spin among the bedsheets."

Beckett swiped the phone off, wishing it was a landline so she could slam it down and preferably burst Lanie's eardrum in the process.

Thank you to all readers and reviewers.