Richard frowned at the murder board from his chair beside Beckett's desk. "I sometimes forget how much harder this is without a crime scene."

His partner nodded with her gaze similarly fixed. Her desk phone rang moments later. The details of her discussion were lost on the author, but he heard enough to know she was talking to someone about Long Island's native flora.

Precious little information had been added to their casework yesterday. The pilot, Dufrane, was a well-known quantity at that point but the team was unanimously unenthusiastic about his role as their killer. It was definitely still a lead worth pursuing, but it made no sense to do the deed and then drop the victim off at a hospital. However smart he might be, the man had shown no signs of being a psychopath, which is what Richard assumed he would need to be in order to have pulled off that interview with Beckett without leaking any signs of guilt or dark excitement. Whoever had called him prior to liftoff on the tarmac was more likely. Strangely, the man's finances had still not turned up any big deposits or attempted withdrawals as of yet. No payment was odd enough, but the pilot had left a respectable amount of money untouched before he ran, around three-hundred thousand in savings and liquidable assets.

The forensic accountants pursuing the origins of the funds used to pay AngelAir's bill were likewise still scratching their heads. Their update that morning stated they had tracked the money through three different banks and countries. Presently, they were sorting through the legal issues involved in gaining cooperation from investigators in the Cayman Islands, the earliest known point at which the funds had sloshed through.

The board still had nothing listed on the victim by way of personal information; no name, family, or friends despite the fact that her picture had been circulating since yesterday morning. They knew how she was killed, more or less. Castle and Beckett knew why. The latter might still be resistant to the assumption if pressed, but to the author, the only mystery there was the nature of the information that had gotten her killed. The girl had to have not-heard something someone wanted to keep quiet. Unfortunately, that could be anything.

Beckett's decision to split the call list of candidates who might be able to track down the particulate matter recovered from the victim had been sound. Between the four of them, no one had failed to do their homework last night. The information had been disseminated across a slew of state and local forestry authorities, environmental agencies, and even universities from the surrounding region that had relevant curriculum. That was where they started regaining some sense of momentum in their investigation. Around nine the calls started pouring in, so many that Karpowski and Hastings were recruited to help answer the phones. Ryan, who stood at the ready near the board, had a map of Long Island tacked to one side and was marking down locations as the others called them out to him. A laptop that sat open nearby was presently signed onto a hastily organized Reddit forum that one of the callers themselves had set up to let the experts discuss the matter in real-time.

Around ten-thirty, Esposito fielded a call from Montauk Airport. A mechanic working there had seen the federal BOLO on the private jet Dufrane had stolen and claimed he had an unfamiliar Phenom 100 sitting in a private hangar. The tail number matched the missing bird.

That brought most of their team to a halt at their respective tasks.

"So Dufrane did stay relatively local," Beckett murmured with a look at Ryan. "You really had this guy's number. Good call."

"But why?" Esposito asked with a frown. "Why stick around?"

"Why not just stay in town for that matter?" Karpowski noted with one palm laid over the receiver of the phone she was holding. "He's lived here long enough for this to be considered home turf. A city of eight-million plus is a good place to hide."

"It also gives you eight million chances to get spotted," Ann observed.

"Jail sounds better to me than running off to Bumfuck, Long Island," Javier muttered and the pair of ladies nearby chortled appreciatively.

Castle was aware of Ryan looking at him while the others continued their calls and theorizing. Maybe the author's uncharacteristic silence throughout it all made him stand out at the time. He smiled faintly, arched an eyebrow to keep the other man's attention, and reached for his to-go cup on the edge of Beckett's desk. He turned the item where it sat in a slow, half revolution.

Seconds later, Kevin's blue eyes widened in realization. "Oh shit."

The others fell silent and looked at him.

"We're only looking at one side of what we know about this guy—the cunning half. Dufrane was military. He almost got married, right? This guy, he sticks to his choices. He's solid and stable once he commits." Ryan looked up at his peers with an expression of grim exultance. "He isn't running and probably never was. I'm sure taking the jet appealed as a chance to direct our attention farther afield, but this was no mere feint." He grinned over at Richard and concluded, "This sonofabitch is still local because he's still helping whoever called him on the tarmac at LaGuardia."

The others looked at one another.

"Damn. That sounds pretty good," Karpowski spoke up.

Ann nodded her agreement. "Maybe the reason we're not seeing a payment is because there isn't one. This could be good ol' fashioned altruism. Sounds shaky to me too, but I'll start looking into his friends and family."

Javier grunted and nodded to Ryan. "I feel like I should've caught that. Nice one, bro. I'm gonna see if I can get in touch with any of his former commanding officers in the Air Force. Loyalty like this? If ain't blood, it's probably brotherhood, and there's no stronger kind than the bond between soldiers."

Beckett, who had hung up from her call by then, spoke up from her desk while rubbing at her temples. "If that's true, and I agree it has merit, Ryan has narrowed down our search grid considerably. Someone find me some aspens around Montauk. Castle? That's your neck of the woods, isn't it?"

The author shook his head in disapproval of her pun. "Nothing specific comes to mind, but there are huge tracts of designated park land all over the southern tip of Long Island, including Montauk."

Ryan uncapped his marker and stepped back up to the board.

"Camp Hero, Hither Hills, Montauk Downs, Montauk Point, Shadmoor—all state parks." Rick added a few more as they occurred to him and soon concluded, "It's hard to narrow that list down more. Most of them have at least some stretch of coastline where our wayward diatoms could have been picked up by our vic."

"Better than the list we had a minute ago," Esposito said.

"Amsterdam is already out," Ryan read aloud from the forums. "So is Montauk Point. Man," he muttered while correcting the map, "these guys know their stuff."

"Try Montauk County Park," Castle rumbled from where he sat. "That's right on the sound along the northern coast," he explained to his partner when she glanced up.

Ryan typed it in and shook his head a few moments later. "Inconclusive. No known aspens, but someone is saying their funding has been running dry for years. Their full-time, long-term staff is minimal, which means details are too."

Richard dug his cell phone out of his pocket. Several personal texts were present as recent arrivals, but nothing pressing. He poked his way in, opened up his message listing for Alexis and texted: Didn't you do a summer thing with the Chamber of Commerce last year about invasive species of plants and trees in Montauk?

He lucked out and got a quick reply: How do you remember this stuff?

Castle smiled faintly to himself. Fatherhood. Quick question: Do you remember learning anything about aspens at the time? Golden aspens or white poplar? Same rose, different name.

He sat up straighter when he saw her texting back another quick reply.

Not in Montauk. The writer grunted softly to himself and relaxed against his seat, but soon glanced down again as another series of chimes sounded, one after the other with a rapidity that made him shake his head in bewilderment. Lionheart Island. Biggest aspen colony in Suffolk County. Cool tree. Their rhizomatic root structure kinda makes them one big family. They're like the attack of the clones! For plants! The colony on the island is over 500 years old.

"Know-it-all," he rumbled aloud with a soft chuckle.

Before he could reply, Alexis asked: How is she?

Castle glanced up at his partner. She was mid yawn at that moment and looked about as haggard as he had ever seen her. She's hanging in there. Tough lady. I'll update again soon. Thank you for the help. A-plus.

Wish all my grades were that easy to come by. Love you.

"Lionheart," Rick said to himself. He knew of the island. It was privately owned and therefore off-limits. Anyone with a boat berthed in a Montauk marina probably knew about the place. The sandbars that extended out from its southern tip made navigating that parcel of the sound a pain in the ass.

"What was that?" Ryan asked.

"Hmm? Oh, uh. Lionheart Island. Alexis says there are aspens on it."

Beckett looked up.

Ryan turned to his laptop and typed rapidly the keys. "Someone mentioned that name a ways back, but I think the others said it wasn't in Montauk."

"If it's on Block Island sound, it's close enough to be fair game," their team-leader said, looking interested despite her weariness.

After about a minute, Ryan nodded. "That's confirmed. They're saying it's privately owned land."

"By whom?

"The Lionheart family," Castle answered. "I know that much. They're old blood—as in pre-Revolution old. Originally Reinhardt, I think. The anglicized version took root after the clan left the war-torn fatherland and made their move to the New World in the early 17th century." He paused to consider. "They were a significant importing power for the House of Habsburg. That's how they originally acquired the island. It was purchased and gifted to them by the emperor himself."

"Where do you get this shit?" Javier asked.

The novelist shrugged. "It's part of the local lore in Montauk marinas. Maybe that's less true these days, but it was common knowledge when I was a kid."

"What's on the island?" Beckett asked.

"Not much as far as I know. There's a dock and a windmill, and an impressive mansion that's been around for centuries. Once every ten or twenty years you'll hear about major construction overhauls to modernize the place. Newsworthy," he added, "because they always import workers from out of state and sometimes out of the country enitrely. It was relevant a few years ago when Architectural Digest did a piece on its pioneering implementations of tidal, solar, and wind power. It's completely self-sufficient."

"You've never been there?" Karpowski asked.

"I'm not that kind of rich. Guests have always been rare from what I understand. There's a somewhat amusing local rumor that President Nixon once tried to visit the place but his boat was turned away at the dock."

"Wow," Ryan blurted.

"Epic snubbing," Hastings chortled.

"Well, it's just a rumor. Even so, the list of visitors has been known to include prominent people. They say Pope Pius XI once stayed there as well as literal royalty. The island became a semi-popular stopover during the jet set for a couple years; that's how the local airport originally came about and partly why summering in Montauk grew to be en vogue among the upper class. Since then, though, the place has gone very quiet. If they still receive the occasional visitors, it's done with enough discretion that it rarely circulates the local rumor mill."

"It would take a helicopter to airlift someone off the island if they got hurt," Beckett mused aloud while massaging her left temple and jaw.

"True, but there are plenty of hospitals between Lionheart Island and Beth Israel."

"Is there a connection between the family and the hospital?"

Everyone exchanged unknowing glances.

"Put that on the to-do list," their leader said. She watched Ryan add a note to the murder board. "Low-priority for now. If the island is our crime scene, I would expect they chose a hospital farther away simply to mitigate an easy geographical connection."

"How big is that place?" Javier asked.

"Over three-thousand acres altogether," Castle provided.

The group went quiet, both digesting and glancing to their dark-maned figurehead, whose lips were pursed in consideration.

At length, she rubbed centrally at her forehead and nodded. "Let's run it down. Rose, can you hang with us a bit longer?"

"I'm all yours."

"My beat is covered too if you still need me," Ann said.

"Okay, great. You two start on the Lionheart family. Ryan," she added with a squinted glance his way, "keep going with the geographic profile for the moment. I don't wanna put all of our eggs in one basket yet. Castle and I will help out with any remaining call overflow, okay?" The other detective nodded and her focus shifted to Esposito. She hesitated a beat there, wincing with the clear receipt of some inner dialogue the author both wanted to know and didn't. "Check Dufrane's military and personal history, like you said. That sounded good."

"You got it," Javier confirmed with a nod.

They broke apart for lunch an hour later, a little prior to midday. By then, the flow of incoming calls had slowed to a trickle. Also by then, Beckett's discreet touches to his knee or his idling hand upon the desk had graduated from occasional brushes to an almost constant connection. She held one finger subtly aloft from the hand on her desk as the others stood up and filtered out of the bullpen.

"Can you get us something from Martino's?" she asked when it was just them left.

"Oh. Sure." Castle stood hesitantly, studying her as he forewent the jacket resting across the back of his seat and shrugged into his overcoat. "I'll see you in thirty."

"Downstairs," she replied before he could step away. "Um. Gymnasium."

"The most empty room in any precinct," he joked lamely. "Okay."

The novelist called the delicatessen across the street on his way downstairs. Martino's was a popular meadow for lunchtime grazing. The din of background conversations audible over the line suggested that day was no exception, but the woman on the other end of the line assured he wouldn't wait long. Kate was right about going into work, he thought while navigating out of the looby and pausing in the sudden brightness of a blustery midday. At last having a task to focus upon kept the mind engaged and focused. He hoped that was the case for her anyway. It was for him.

About twenty minutes later, Rick returned by the same route with a bag holding a pair of salad containers and a couple others laden with rolled slices of meat and cubes of varied cheese. It was, he suspected, an overly optimistic bounty, but it wouldn't go to waste if the leftovers were put in the break room refrigerator without a name on it. The twelfth, like any workplace, bore an abundance of opportunistic scavengers.

The gymnasium occupied the building's single sublevel. The lower sprawl was split between the gym, an evidence lockup, a secure area for holding cells, and a few utility and storage rooms. Richard descended by the east stairwell which led directly to the heavy metal doors of the exercise and training area. A glimpse through the narrow rectangles of safety-glass windows revealed an empty space. It was an expansive chamber, deeply dug in preparation for the occupancy of its intended purpose. Unlike other precincts which were frequently repurposed and retrofitted buildings, the twelfth was precisely what it had always been intended to be. The gym's subterranean placement was not fully complete; daylight shone in clear, cold shafts through several short, broad windows in the south wall near its twenty-foot ceiling.

Kate sat near the base of the south wall upon a weight-lifting bench. The lonely, becalmed visual struck him inert for a few moments. He studied her, unobserved, while she rested with her head bent in her hands, elbows propped against her knees, dark hair released into a honeyed pour of chatic curls around her shoulders and sides. The solitary detective did not glance up at the hard metallic clack of the door's mechanism when he entered, doubtless aware of the visitor's identity merely by the unlikely silence she claimed enshrouded him. He advanced with a prickling awareness of each audible footstep.

She looked up as he neared, smiled faintly, and scooted to one side to make room on the bench beside her. Any other time, the offered wedge would have been invitingly, even tantalizingly narrow. When the author shrugged off his coat and sat, they warmly merged at the hips and shoulders.

Whatever quiescent surrounded him did its queer work capably. Beckett perked up a little as the minutes wore on. She ate all of her salad. They exchanged the empty containers for the meats and cheeses and picked from one another's treasures with less urgent indulgence. Even after she'd had her fill and the lunch was set to one side, they lingered for a time in the dim stillness.

It still felt like time was running out. There was so much to say and do. But Richard stared forward at the nearest pool of sunlight, at a loss for words. He couldn't help associating the spherical glow to a spotlight thrown on a school gym floor, a mental recreation of the awkward soirees of youth, but without any students present, or anyone else for that matter. The author watched an imaginary version of himself and the woman at his side, both figments dressed as their real-life counterparts were at that time, slow-dancing through the spearing radiance. He felt his companion's head come to a rest upon his left shoulder and the placement was echoed in their imagined versions without conscious thought. The dreamt-of Kate rested her cheek against his made-up chest, their hands entwined, free hands wrapped around each other.

Owing to the unfamiliarity of the phenomenon, he did not realize his partner was seeing it too until he heard a stealthy wet sniff and caught a peripheral glimpse of her brushing the backs of two fingers at her cheeks.

Kate took his hand in hers. They sat there and watched it happening.

A minute later, she said softly, "I love the ways you dream we are."

It seemed he had not kept his imagination locked down tight throughout their morning efforts. He could not recall those moments now, what promissory instances he might have unwittingly conjured up. At least he'd had the foresight to warn her and, apparently, whatever it had been was nothing unduly florid or otherwise unsettling. Castle wanted to tell her they weren't dreams, that they were merely placeholders until reality caught up to both their imaginations. Somehow, he did not think those words would bring her any comfort. Looking at her then, slightly pale, bloodshot and bruise-encircled eyes, her shoulders sunk and her spine curved beneath the weight of exhaustion, it felt like the woman was beyond those or any measures he might employ. In that context, the brief tumble of her tears struck him as being funerial, a deeply reluctant goodbye to what might have been.

The thought scared and angered him in equal measures.

"I need a little assistance from a skeptic." She lifted her head her eyebrows in mute prompting. "I have a thought stuck in my head like a thorn and I can't seem to dislodge it."

"Finally, a little normalcy. Go ahead. Spout this crazy theory and watch me work."

His lips quivered slightly but he could not manage a smile. "Before I do, tell me something: what do you imagine led to our victim's demise at this point?"

"We can only speculate."

"Then speculate," he returned with more sharpness than intended.

Kate's eyebrows lifted in surprise. A frown ticked to life and three familiar furrows appeared between her eyes, a glimmer of the woman who took no shit from anyone, even him, but the energy for combativeness only lasted a moment. Instead, she obliged, "I'm gonna assume that you in turn are assuming our victim suffered the same infliction I am. I'll remind you we have no proof of that, but if it were the case, I suppose I could get behind the idea that she ended up being privy to information someone else wanted to keep quiet."

"Think about the way Lanie described her death—the reluctance it implied."

His companion tilted her head slightly and, seemingly unaware, ran her thumb across his knuckles as if the idle gesture spurred creative problem-solving. "Our vic not-heard something she wasn't supposed to from someone who knew her. A friend, lover, or family member. Maybe her half brother," she relinquished with a purse of her lips.

"Or," Castle suggested, building upon her logic, "she might have become privy to multiple secrets from multiple people, a sum of sudden acquisitions that might've led to immediate accusations from our victim while it was happening. Remember, you thought I was talking to you like normal right up until the moment I showed you that wasn't the case. Imagine if you had started off with this happening in a crowded room with people you weren't as familiar with."

Beckett shifted her weight in discomfort but nodded. "This is pure speculation now, but okay. I'll give you that one. It makes more sense than the idea of one person being able to spontaneously convince two others to help them murder someone else."

"Well, that's where things start getting sticky. You'll recall the foreign DNA in the girl's wounds."

"Right. Not three versus one exactly, but a free-for-all." Beckett's chest rose and fell with a light sigh and her brow furrowed in thought. Her thumb skated over the hard ridges of his knuckles again and again. "Are you suggesting they were all telepathic then?"

"That's possible as well, I suppose, but I'm worried it might be something…else. As much as I like to champion keeping an open mind, I have to admit: I didn't believe in telepathy either until you started pulling my thoughts out of my head. It's ludicrous."

"You're telling me this now?"

"I do believe it's possible now," he stated with a wary glance around the empty gym. They remained isolated for the time being. "But I don't think it's a naturally occurring condition." Beckett started to reply but stopped and studied him silently for a few seconds. At length, she gestured with her other hand for him to continue. Despite the signs of weariness her eyes were alert and intense in the hold on him. "What if none of them or you actually have the ability? What if you're all victims of external influence?"

"Like what?"

"Oh, I have no idea."

She huffed at him.

"I mean, I have ideas but they're ridiculous. I'm picturing some underground government lab where there's some poor, tortured soul who was either born or afflicted with something the rest of us lack. And he or she is sitting there, locked up when they aren't being used as a living weapon to incite madness in others or unearth and deliver secrets from other world leaders. Ridiculous," he repeated in conclusion.

Beckett shook her head once, bemused. "You said you needed my help shooting this down. Sounds like you're managing fine alone."

"The nature of the antagonist is moot. My problem," he explained, "is that I'm seeing recurring patterns of adversarialism." His blue eyes automatically tracked to one side to the open gym floor.

The space around them went pale with a dense mist. It shone under the isolated spears of sunlight and refracted its glow to the particles hung upon the dimness until all the room was an ethereal pallor. Through it, shapeless, featureless forms moved—not walked or flew exactly, but drifted like ghostly things—except that where the figments passed the mist rolled and wavered from tangible disturbances. The investigators were surrounded by hateful entities of barely half-conceived form and fully realized threat. They danced and capered through the concealment and dreamt of inflicting utter agony. Now and again, though, appendages were more clearly suggestive. Exaggeratedly long limbs, beating wings, swishing tails, writhing eldritch tentacles, and poised hands eager to rip with razored talons. Towards the ceiling, high above, a terrible, gargantuan head that was similarly only visible by its negative space moving through the mist lowered towards them in silent study. A set of immense horns displaced the ethereal membrane surrounding it.

"I can see the results of someone acting with malicious intent," Richard murmured deeply, his eyes distant and unblinking. "I just can't tell who's doing it."

Beckett squeezed his hand and whispered urgently, "Stop. Please stop."

Damn. He'd forgotten he was sharing the canvas with an audience again. I'll never get used to that. He let the mental imagery go and found her sitting scrunched up with her eyes clenched shut and her breathing labored. The woman gave a violent shudder and smoothed her free palm down her face in relief.

Castle winced. Hard. "S-sorry."

"Just—" Beckett stopped right there and shook her head. It took her a minute to collect herself. At length she did and looked up at him. "Wh-what patterns are you talking about? What're you referring to?"

"Your condition," he replied simply. "You haven't been sleeping well and when you do it's like whatever defenses you possess while you're awake go lax. The attacks get exponentially stronger every time."

"Attacks," she muttered with a tired sigh.

"What really unnerves me how disorganized it all feels," he said with a slight shiver, unheeding of her interjection. "It has this strange texture of uncertainty, as if whoever might be doing this to you is fumbling in the dark and trying to find the right way. You heard me at first. Now you don't. You didn't hear anyone else. Now you hear everyone. You pulled out the best of me but you only seem to be hearing the worst aspects of everyone else. Think about it from an adversarial position: at this point, you're kind of isolated from the people who could help. You're exhausted and afraid. It sounds like you're even starting to doubt the cause that's been driving you all this time. Maybe you're precisely where it's been trying to shepherd you."

The detective's hazel stare drifted to one side as she considered his proposition. She shifted uneasily upon the weight bench and frowned. "I'll grant you it feels strange when you string everything together like that." She shook her head and added, "It also sounds like physical deterioration to me."

"You seriously still think this might be brain damage?"

"Tess says it could be. She rattled off a whole list of potential injuries and diseases that could explain what's happening to me. Huntington's disease attacks neurological integrity. People who suffer from it have been known to have all kinds of hallucinations and mental problems. They've even been known to physically act out their dreams."

"You called her while I was gone? What did you tell her? Everything?"

"I had to tell someone." Kate snapped. "Someone with a different perspective than yours," she added more calmly with a touch at his right bicep with her free hand.

Irrational anger surged within the author but he took a deep breath and released the charge of negative emotion, faced the woman before him more squarely with a loosening roll of his shoulders. "Yeah. Of course. That's…that's smart. What did she suggest?"

"What you'd expect. She wants to order an immediate battery of tests. She even managed to schedule me in some time at Langone Health. They're one of the best neurological medical facilities in the country, Castle. I'm headed over there after my shift today. I'll probably be staying there for the weekend."

It took all his might not to protest. He managed it mostly because he didn't know precisely why that sounded like a grave mistake. The only clearly shining reason he could imagine at that moment was Tessa. He wasn't going to risk Kate's health on jealousy alone.

"Ease up," she murmured with a slight wince.

Castle realized he was gripping her hand too tightly and forced himself to relax. "Sorry. Listen, I feel like that's a mistake."

"Which part? A logical, medical causality, or my spending a weekend around my ex?"

"I know how it sounds. And you bet your ass I don't like it," he growled. "You know she wants you back and we both know she won't waste the opportunity to spend more time with you." He exhaled gruffly and shook his head. "Even so, that's not what bothers me the most about that course of action."

"What do you suggest I do, Rick?"

He scowled briefly at what he thought was a dismissive tone and narrowed his eyes. "I don't know what to suggest except to push through whatever trouble we've found ourselves in. This began. I have to assume it could also end. Obviously I can't disagree with pursuing this responsibly, medically. But at the same time, no, I don't believe you're going to be free of this at Langone. In fact, I'm afraid you'll end up going to sleep one night while you're there and wake up having done something you can't undo."

Her eyes widened. "What?" she asked breathily.

"We're only assuming you gathered those weapons in your apartment to defend yourself last night. Have you considered the alternative? What if you weren't? You took your sidearm with you. Those cops—you said they almost shot you. They must have believed they were in danger. They didn't open fire as soon as they saw you were armed, so what changed during that standoff? What was it that suddenly made them feel like it was your life or theirs? Did you ask?"

She hesitated a moment and shook her head. "I…I didn't think to…"

"Did you happen to notice that your somnambulant voyage was taking you east?"

The woman's expression went slack and the blood drained from her already pale features.

Richard leaned in and grasped her other hand, holding both as he squeezed warmly, trying to impart through the physical connection his emotional dread. "Everything we uncover is leading us east. I know there's a reason for it, even if I can't give you a logical explanation why. I'm not sure we ought to go. It scares me half to death to imagine us following the directions you seem to be keying onto, but I don't know what else to do, and I feel like time is working against us. I feel like I'm losing you."

"What if it is just me? Just me being sick or crazy?"

"No one excluding you or Jim is going to be more relieved than me if a mundane illness turns out to be the case. Does this need to be an either or scenario? When is your first test appointment? Not today, right?"

"Well, no. My first MRI is scheduled for Sunday morning. Eight o' clock."

"Give me until then. I'll get you to that appointment, Beckett, but please… This one time, help me explore the crazy theory before you commit to logic and reason."

"Castle, jeez. It'll take more than a day to organize a tac team for Lionheart Island."

"I'm not suggesting we take a tactical team. And let me handle the travel arrangements."

"It's private property. We don't have a warrant." She must have read the look on his face because his partner sat up ramrod straight upon the bench and said coldly, "I'm not breaking the law."

"Not even for a chance to save your own life?"

"The law is my fucking life."

He sat back from her seething rejoinder, blank-faced. She hadn't even bothered to lean on the obvious retort of there being no concrete proof that her life was in danger, or that there were no reasonable signs that the island held any meaningful answers if it were. It was impossible not to be rocked by the way she had gone about responding. My god. How on earth did you get this way?

Beckett winced and immediately backpedaled, "Wait. D-don't take that the wrong way. You know what I mean."

"Do I?" he rumbled quietly. "Do you?" She looked pained and could not answer. The other shifted closer with a smoothing of his palm across the back of her still captured appendage. "I'm sorry it's come to this, Kate, but I feel like it has come to this. I'm asking you to choose. Not me. Choose life." He watched her twinge again with a downward glance and raised the hand against hers to cup her right cheek instead, shifting her manually into meeting his eyes. "I won't pretend to understand the self-destructiveness you feel—at least, not in the same way or to the same degree you feel it. It blows my mind that you find it so hard to believe sometimes, but you damn well deserve the time you've been given in this world. Nothing should get in the way of preserving that. No law in a book or staggering amount of grief. If Johanna were here, you know what she would say."

Kate closed her eyes and shook her head with an angry sway of dark hair. "F-f-fuck you," she stuttered softly. "Don't use her memory against me."

"You don't get to champion her love of justice and ignore her love for you. People don't peeled apart that cleanly or conveniently." He sat up straighter too and released her cheek. Then her hand. "I'm going, with or without you." Her eyes narrowed to blades of ire but the novelist was done playing games. He offered no further pretenses and stared back at her, undaunted. "I'm going and I'm asking Ryan, Esposito, and Lanie to go with me. It terrifies me to think of bringing others to that island without knowing more, but I can't take that choice away from other people who care about you. And they do care—no matter what that inner voice has been telling you. Maybe it's imperfect and complicated sometimes, but they do love you. I'm going to tell them why I'm going and they'll make their decisions the same way you'll need to make yours."

Castle stood from the weight bench.

"Just wait. Can you wait? Let's talk about this rationally."

He started walking away.

"I need you here right now! Jeez. Don't do this. You know I want…"

Richard paused with a half turn of his head, though the angle did not allow direct sight of her. "You want the silence?"

"I want you, damn it." Goodness. No allusions made previously, despite being wildly bolstering in their own right, equaled hearing it aloud and in no uncertain terms.

"Then follow me, Kate." He did turn a bit more, smiling sadly at the irony. "It's your turn, don't you think?"