Army Spy (one of two)

"...freshly cut Christmas trees smelling of stars and snow and pine resin—inhale deeply and fill your soul with wintry night…"

A Familiar Rain, John Geddes

She was so enraged that it was a taste in her mouth and an ache behind her eyes.

She smashed through her front door and slung her bag to the kitchen counter, shaking with it.

She heard the jangle of Cujo's tags, but no dog appeared to jump her (she might have found a way to shove it down, the fury, if the dog would only come out and greet her, loved her no matter what). What came out from the bedroom instead was him.

"Richard," she spat. "How the fuck did you get in the door?"

"Hello to you too," he grinned, so fucking proud of himself for getting past her new locks. He bent down and whistled, calling Cujo out of the bedroom and to him. "Go see Beckett. She looks pissed and you're the better choice."

She could strangle him. Two weeks with no fucking word and now he showed up?

But Cujo came bounding her way and knocked aside the direction of her anger. She found herself being jumped, both paws on her forearms as she caught him, which was good for him, because she might have choked the dog in the instinct to just fucking squeeze something.

Her love often manifested as physical intensity, the therapist said.

No shit.

"Who wronged you?" her spy said.

She shook her head, nostrils flaring.

"Tell me," he insisted, shifting to the balls of his feet. And she could tell, just by that stance, that he was ready to fucking go for her. He would kill for her.

"Why? You're never here to do anything about it," she hissed.

His eyes narrowed.

She knew she was in for it.

"You ever done this before?" he said, close, his breath in white icy mist.

"No," she admitted. "Seems crazy."

"You're a crazy kind of woman," he grinned, one eyebrow up. Thought he was so hot.

He was. He was so hot. She both hated him and longed for him, that handsome face smug and arrogant and yet inviting. And she knew what he invited her to, she knew what would happen if she crossed his threshold. She wanted to anyway.

"You ever go cow tipping?" she asked. Just to one-up him.

"Yes." A smirk.

"You're an asshole," she whispered in the dark.

"Quite often," he admitted. He was carrying the hatchet. His fist around the well-worn wood handle made her guts clench. The blade glinted with moonlight through the trees. Dangerous. Made her feel like the wolf, ready to go for a throat. Except she was probably less well-trained, considering where they were right now. "Come on. Up through here."

She followed. She tried not to wonder why he had access to a hatchet at such short notice.

They shouldn't be doing this; she shouldn't have agreed when he'd said I know how to get back at them. But she put that out of her mind in deference to the promise that hatchet held, the promise of work and effort and likely sweat, sheer raw physicality. And vengeance.

She enjoyed that. Maybe too much. Maybe why this man infuriated her and called to her at the same time. Called to her in a bad way, a way her therapist would want to dissect. The power he had.

"I saw King again," she told him. A kind of preliminary punch.

"Good."

She scowled. Still followed. "He says I have anger management problems."

"I like your problems," he grinned, flash of teeth in the moonlight. "Now, hush, we're close."

She kicked the back of his knee to collapse him, but he dipped and jumped, avoided her attack. She kept her mouth shut as they climbed the ridge near the river and stood at the top, surveying the fields of trees. Basalm, pine, juniper, fir. It smelled of sap and needles, something almost bitter, something earthy. Something Christmas.

"I can't believe we're doing this," she grumbled.

"Not you," he answered. "Me. You have plausible deniability."

"That's one of your father's phrases if I ever heard one."

He grinned. "You hate him."

"I despise him. But I promised I wouldn't say shit about your father for Christmas. I should stick to that."

He gripped the handle of the hatchet like he wanted to grip her, and she flashed him a look in return.

"Go get me a tree, Richard."

She watched him swing the hatchet in the moonlight, a continuous sharp chop against the trunk in a fast clip. She had expected wood chips, but she saw only the rise and fall of the hatchet and the work of his arm and shoulders. He had a fist around the trunk higher up, he seemed to be pulling the tree towards him, willing it to break free.

When it did, the tree gave a shivery sigh and swooned into his waiting arms. He embraced the tree as needles and snow rained down on him, but not even that could detract from the raw power he exuded, the sense that he was in complete control.

"Get moving, Beckett," he said, nodding back down the row the way they'd come. "I've got it. We have to be fast."

She was so so so stupid for this. Stealing from a tree farm. But she was also a lit fuse of anger, as the therapist liked to tell her, and her anger spewed indiscriminately out over the world that had betrayed her so personally.

She was working on it. She was stealing a tree and not burning down his house. Progress, right?

She heard Richard behind her, carrying the tree under his arm (it was only a four foot thing; not some monster they had to wrangle up the stairs of her walk-up and into the narrow hallway. She felt like the Grinch, in reverse maybe, stealing Christmas for herself.

At the treeline, where the natural woods took over from the orderly rows, she waited for him. Not long, he was right there, but she wrapped her arm around the narrow top of the tree and forced him to let her help.

"Accomplice now," he warned her.

"Haven't I always been?" she answered. It seemed like every time he was in town, he was backing her up on some plan of hers that had gone sideways.

They walked quickly, less quietly, back the way they had come, avoiding the ridges when they could, team-working the tree up an embankment when they couldn't. The seat of her jeans was damp with mud by the time they made it to the truck, a loaner he had acquired from a friend of a friend of a friend.

Inside the cabin, Castle behind the wheel, she felt that giddy surge of possession she usually only felt when they were having sex. Weird that it would shiver through her now, in a truck pulling out onto the highway with a stolen Christmas tree in the back.

"What you got for decorations?" he said, checking his rear view like the paranoiac he was.

"Nothing."

"Nothing," he said. "Shit, you're not Jewish are you?" A glance her way.

She played it cool for a heartbeat to watch him squirm. Then shook her head. "You know I'm not. I told you it was right after Christmas when she was murdered."

"Yeah, yes. Usually my instincts are right about people, but often not with you," he said, like it was a grievous injury he'd done her, not being sure.

Maybe it was, the fact he couldn't get read on her, couldn't figure out what she wanted when he was born to do it, raised and trained to do it, did in fact do it all over the damn world.

Okay, yeah, she was insulted. And deeply pleased that she was so unique.

"No convenience stores," he said. "Don't want to be on camera buying Christmas decorations right after a tree got chopped."

She snorted. "Let's get it home first. Then we can talk about decor, Richard."

He reached across the console and snagged her hand before she could jerk it out of his grip. She always was so prickly when he first showed up. He'd only been in DC this time, working locally for his father, but two weeks was long enough to despise herself again for loving him.

He forced his fingers to lace with hers, and she turned her head out the window, watching the woods fall away.

Her throat was a knot that would not ease.

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