"Maddox," The gruff voice says over the speakers.
He turns quickly and looks toward the camera mounted at the top of the stairs as a body enters into view. "Who are you?"
"Room A, bottom of the stairs, knock twice."
Their victim seems to disengage. "You took the test?"
"I wrote the test, kid."
"That's clearly not Mr. Castle." Gates points out as she watches the video her new lead detective presented to her.
"What do you want? I'm on assignment."
"Don't bother." The second older man in the video says before he raises his hand and fires two shot from a small handgun, making their victim's body contort as his chest explodes with plumes of dark red dust, then his entire body going limp as another blood cloud erupts from his head and Maddox falls back, sliding down to the ground quickly, just as they found his body.
"Where'd you get this?" Gates looks up to Detective Sharpe, who is standing on the other side of Gates' desk with her hands clasped behind her back and her feet shoulder width apart, in her usual uniform of black slacks and a long-sleeved pale blue dress shirt, her hair tied back into a low ponytail.
Sharpe simply shakes her head, "It was left on my desk this morning, Sir." She says in her soft, underwhelming voice. Gates only response is to raise her brow. "I reported in this morning and found the USB drive sitting on my desk. What you just saw, Sir, was the first video on the drive. The second video is of the incident involving former Detective Beckett."
Captain Gates pulls her glasses off her nose and leans forward. "From last night?"
Sharpe gives her captain a firm nod, "Yes, Sir. The video shows the officer raise his gun and fire a shot just before he was gunned down in the same manner as Cole Maddox was. The killer had the camera on his person and from the voice, it's the same person. Ms. Beckett was present, but nothing more, Sir."
Gates lets out a harsh sigh and nods. "So, now we just have to figure out who this guy is." She says, waving her hand at her screen.
Sharpe nervously shifts her weight around before blurting the words out. "Officer Bartlet had a suspicious wire transfer of a hundred thousand dollars go into his bank account late last night, Sir." Gates stops working from her screen and points her eyes back over to her detective, silently scolding her as to what made her look into it in the first place. "Ryan and Esposito made the suggestion that Officer Bartlet was sent to kill Ms. Beckett, so I-"
"So, you went digging." Gates finishes for her.
"We're detectives, Sir." Sharpe says confidently, her voice still soft and underwhelming. "Forgive me for speaking out of turn, Sir, but-"
"Did you find," Gates stops her again, speaking over her loudly enough to cut her off, "where the transfer came from?"
Sharpe shakes her head once, "We were blocked, Sir. The system wasn't letting us through."
Gates sighs harshly again and looks down to her desk, picking her glasses back up by the frame. "You three have been working this case for almost a day straight. I'll take care of the paperwork for now, just..." Gates trails off, waving her hand in the air as her phone starts to ring on her desk, "release Mr. Castle from holding and go home. Yes, Captain Gates." She says into her receiver. Sharpe nods sternly and follows direction out of her captain's office. "I'm sorry, who?" She hears just as she's shutting the door behind her.
Samantha is exhausted but knows better than to falter now. Especially now as she makes her way back over to her desk, where Ryan and Esposito are waiting for her, Ryan leans on the side of his desk with his hands in his pockets and Esposito on the back with his arms crossed.
Sharpe gives them both a look as she reaches her desk, surprised by their silence. "Well?" She demands as she mindlessly adjusts the paperwork on her desk.
"Well what?" Espo asks.
"Aren't you going to rub it in?" She says, giving them both a look as she digs around for the keys to the holding cell in her drawer.
Esposito shakes his head slowly, "Nah."
She breathes a small breath of relief and takes the keys in her hand, closing her drawer just as Ryan is speaking up. "We have to wait a couple days first."
Against everything in her mind telling her not to, she feels a friendly smirk force its way onto her face. "Units are bringing Beckett over here now." Esposito informs her. "They didn't think it was her that killed Bartlet, seeing as she didn't have a gun on her, but the video was a good touch."
"Yeah," Ryan continues, "now we just have to find the guy in the video."
She ends the interaction there and moves out of the bullpen toward holding. She feels something coming, but doesn't want to sound crazy if she's wrong. Having to swallow her pride and admit she has the wrong guy in holding, that this obnoxious dunderhead in holding as actually telling the truth, is hard enough. When she walks into holding, she sees him with his jacket off, his legs crossed and splayed out in front of him, his arms crossed over his stomach and his head leaned back with his eyes closed. She stares at him for a moment and admittedly, he is attractive.
Wordlessly, she jangles the keys and unlocks the holding cell.
The loud clanging of the metal wakes him and his head jolts off the wall. When his vision focuses, he sees Detective Sharpe, in much the same outfit she wore yesterday, sliding the door to the holding cell open. "I don't remember scheduling a wake-up call, Detective."
Sharpe pulls her keys out of the lock and spins the keyring on her finger only once before standing at the door to his holding cell, squared off with her shoulders back. "An officer was gunned down in your apartment last night."
Rick's casually joking facade fall away in a flash at her words and he's on his feet before she can blink. "What about-"
"She's fine." Sharpe says, ahead of him. "Units are bringing her here now." Rick lets out a very audible sigh of relief as every muscle in his body drains of the terror that had gripped him. Taking a moment, Rick catches his breath as Sharpe stands in front of him. He places a hand on his hip and runs a hand through his hair, trying to get rid of the layer of cold sweat that drenched his body. "As for you, a video file was left on my desk this morning." Sharpe continues, catching Rick's attention back. He looks back over to her with an arched brow. "I'm not allowed to share the full details, but it exonerates you of the murder of Cole Maddox."
Rick nods and feels his stomach untangle. As patient as he has been in this holding cell and with the Twelfth's new lead detective, he's impatient to have her back in his arms. He wants this all to be over. He just wants to go home, be with the woman he loves, be with his family, be happy. Let someone else deal with the pits of human suffering.
"It seems I owe you an apology, Mr. Castle." Sharpe struggles after a moment of pause between the two. Rick looks back up to her again, surprised that she's offering one at all, even if she feels obligated to. "I feel I made a rash judgment."
Rick shakes his head dismissively and raises his hand to slow her down. "Beckett and I have put people away on far less than what you had."
Wanting not to have another word on the subject, Sharpe gives him a sharp nod and steps off to the side to let him pass through the door ahead of her. But the thoughts swirling around in her mind and the messy feelings in her heart tangle together as he passes her and starts heading toward the hallway. "I read about you." She stops him.
Rick stops and turns back around, his sportcoat hanging from one hand.
Sharpe looks over to him with a far less serious look, a more open and understanding, almost wondering gaze. "About what you tried to do at the funeral for this precinct's former captain." Rick's heart gets lodged in his throat when she brings up what she has on her mind. He never wanted to brag about what happened that day, mainly because it's not a thing he can be proud of. "You must really care about her to put yourself between her and a bullet."
Rick feels a warm smile tease his lips as his mind travels. After a moment of reflection, on her and his love for her, he casually shrugs his shoulders. "I have to keep her around somehow, right?"
He can tell she wants to smile but can also see her will it away as he turns to quickly move down the hallway. He's excited, if he can describe what he's feeling in any sense of the word. He's paying no thoughts to Jack, no thoughts to Maddox or anyone behind any of this. His one and only focus right now is her, is getting to her and making sure she's okay, is seeing where they are and if they're okay, if they really are where he always dreamed of them being. So much has changed for them, he just wants one chance to be able to sit down with her, not worry about anything else, and just be with her.
And as he rounds the corner of the hallway and moves into the bullpen, he sees her in the area just outside of the bullpen in front of the elevator, clad in a pair of light blue jeans, a thin black t-shirt, and a pair of running shoes, her hair cascading down in soft curls and her brow pinched together as if she'd just stepped off the elevator and is searching for him.
Kate, having been slowly driven over to the precinct after being held at the loft for hours while they looked over the scene, had just stepped off the elevator and can only see Ryan and Esposito, who are just stepping into the captain's office and have shut the door behind them. Scanning the floor of the precinct, she sees the usual faces until, out of the corner of her right eye, she sees a glimpse of him. Doing a startled doubletake, she sees him standing at the other end of the hallway with an open, waiting smile looking at her, in his satin polo shirt that he looks so good in with his coat hanging from one hand.
A smile explodes onto her face and she goes racing toward him.
Rick paces forward just a few steps, not wanting to set his heart on her jumping into his arms. They're at the precinct and she's always maintained, or at least tried to, a professional distance. But as she jogs toward him as quickly as she can without full out sprinting, his arms open up to her and she shows no hesitation in slamming her body against him and throwing her arms around his neck, absolutely no care as to who might be watching or who might judge them.
Hugging her as tightly against him as he can, his arms coiling around her midsection while her arms squeeze his neck and her face is pressing against his neck, he feels her warm breath fan off him as she breathes a sigh of relief.
"Thank god you're okay." He whispers into her ear.
Hearing his voice in her ear, his soft whisper and his caring tone, she hears his words in her heart again, making her eyes burn. She snakes her arms even tighter around his neck at the feeling, wanting to be as close to him as possible. She wants to blurt it out. But she settles for reveling in the feel of his hands caressing her sides while his arms coil further around her.
After a minute, she pets the back of his hair, her nails scratching softly in between the strands just as she did on that hill in Ireland, and steps back out of his grasp, her eyes shining and dancing up at him. His smile is so sincere and warm, his eyes so bright and happy to see her. She feels no doubt at all that this is where she belongs now. No matter where her future takes her, she knows that with him is where she belongs. Moving her hands down to lay flat across his chest, she sends him an emotional smile.
"Are you okay?" He asks, tugging on her sides.
She nods vigorously. "Yeah, I'm fine." She tells him honestly, petting his chest with her thumbs. "Sherlock was looking out for me." Rick laughs breathlessly as his bright, open smile warms her system and makes the want to pull him close to her again intensify.
"Sherlock?" He asks, a smirk coming onto his face and a raised brow.
She smiles and nods at him. "He's a pretty special bear, Castle." She jokes along with him.
He gazes into her dancing hazel eyes for a moment, losing himself in the feel of her hands on his chest and his hands on her waist. But after a moment, he sees her eyes flick away from him and over toward the bullpen. Rick follows her line of sight and looks over to the captain's office, where he sees Ryan, Esposito, and Sharpe slowly walk back to their desks, with Sharpe moving over to the murder board and start to take it down. Ryan and Espo are over at their desks, starting to pack up the case files.
Rick and Kate silently agree, give each other a look, and start to move around the barricade and into the bullpen. "What's going on?" Rick asks, staying close by Kate's side as she comes to stop near Esposito's desk.
Ryan looks over to Castle with a disappointed shrug. "Case got pulled."
Esposito turns, "Higher ups claimed the case is now classified, need to know only."
"Gates just got off the phone and was ordered to pack up all case filed related to Maddox's murder." Ryan says as he pulls up a storage box from the floor.
But Kate is tired of hearing it already. She wants to go home. She wants to get out of this life. She's tired of the darkness. She's tired of having to be the one to face it down. She wants to be the one in the light instead. She's tired of constantly having to make sacrifices just to stay in the same place. She's already tuned Ryan and Esposito out, but she knows Rick wants to hear more.
"They ordered you off the case?" Rick asks. "That's never happened before, has it?"
Esposito nods. "When we tried to track down where the wire transfer that Bartlet got came from, we got blocked. It's all being handed over to the feds now."
Letting it all go over her head, Kate looks over to her desk, what used to be her desk, and feels her heart tug.
Slowly, she starts to move out of Rick's side and over to the desk that used to be her's. It's not that this desk was her home for the past decade or better. It's not that she feels it belongs to her. But on the desk is a black square pencil cup with all identical pens sitting inside, a commendation from school, a plain white coffee mug with black coffee, and hidden almost out of sight next to the computer monitor, sits a small troll doll with yellow hair sticking straight up.
If this were her desk, still her desk, she'd know exactly what would be the most precious to her.
"Your partner," A scratchy voice says in front of her, Kate looks up to see Sharpe step toward her from the murder board, "if you don't mind my saying... he's a little... unprofessional."
Kate smiles warmly to herself and nods slowly. "Don't worry about it," She lifts her hand dismissively, "he acted the same way the first time I interrogated him too."
She hears the slender blonde chuckle under her breath and nervously brush her hands down the front of her creased slacks. "Must be easy to forget about considering he's rich and famous though, right?"
Kate rolls her eyes humorously. "Actually, most of the time, I forget that he is rich and famous." Kate tells the detective matter-of-factly. "Maybe it's because I never really cared about that." She shrugs her shoulders and looks back down toward her old desk.
Sharpe sees the look in the woman's eyes that she replaced. It's a look that holds no doubt, no regret. This woman in front of her is certain. She's heard impressive things about her predecessor, but how can she just walk away from it all and be this... at peace with it? "Can I ask you a question?" Sharpe says quietly to Kate, taking a step forward to make sure it's just between them.
Kate looks up calmly with a small smile.
Sharpe shrugs her shoulders and clasps her hands together in front of her. "Why'd you quit?" Kate's eyes quickly flick down to the floor as she gives the detective a slow nod. "I mean... you were at the top of your field, the youngest to make detective, highest case-closure rate, you were one of the top picks for the captain's desk, I-I..." Sharpe trails off and shakes her head with a knit in her brow, "I guess I'm just wondering why you walked away."
Kate nods and looks down to Sharpe's desk, focusing on the doll hiding next to her monitor. "Are you asking me why..." She says and turns back to look at her, "or are you asking me how?"
Sharpe's brow lowers in confusion. "I don't know what you mean."
Kate lets out a sigh and looks down to her desk again, reaching over and taking the small, three inch high, yellow-haired troll doll in her hand and looks back up to her replacement with a soft look. "You have a black square pencil cup on your desk," Kate starts, "a commendation from the academy, a perfectly organized desk, a plain white coffee mug with black coffee..." it's then that she looks Sharpe in the eye and lifts the doll up to her, "and a yellow-haired troll doll?"
When Sharpe doesn't respond passed a tight crease in her brow, her eyes fixated on the doll in Kate's hand, Kate smiles and looks down to the doll.
"It's alright." She says, waving the doll in front of her. "Mine gave me a teddy bear dressed like Sherlock Holmes."
Kate can feel Sharpe's eyes bore into her, almost angrily. And Kate knows, probably, what's going on inside of her mind. The same thing that went on in her own mind when she had to hear the truth out loud. Looking back up to Sharpe, she decides to tell her what she could have used.
"This is an important job, Samantha." Kate begins softly, the small troll still in her hand. "Families are going to be looking to you to bring their loved one's justice in an unjust world. They're going to be looking to you as a source of good and you can't afford to have anyone see you waver. It demands nothing less than one hundred percent of yourself and the families in need of that justice deserve nothing less. It can be wholeheartedly fulfilling." Kate says with an honest, open smile as Sharpe's eyes glimmer with the same held back grit that she'd see in her own eyes. "Just be prepared to make the sacrifices it's going to ask you to make. Because it's going to end up taking them from you either way."
She can tell that struck a nerve as Sharpe's eyes flick down to the troll sitting in Kate's hand.
"So, to answer your question, Detective Sharpe... I quit because I wasn't willing to make that sacrifice." She says and looks over her shoulder at Rick, who's lost in a conversation with Ryan and Esposito. After indulging herself by the sight of him, she turns back to the woman in front of her. "And as to how..." Kate shrugs her shoulders and hands the doll to her, "you already know how."
Sharpe blinks hard and takes the troll doll from Kate's hand angrily and slams it back down to the surface of her desk, leaning forward to her with a hard furrow in her brow. "You don't know me, alright?" When she turns around and starts to march back to the murder board, Kate can't help but chuckle audibly. Sharpe slows to a stop and turns around, shrugging her shoulders and tossing her hands out. "What's so funny?"
Kate shakes her head with a smile. "That's exactly what I said whenever I heard the truth."
All Kate gets in response is another angry shake of Sharpe's head as she turns back around and moves toward the bullpen. Kate smiles to herself, takes one last glance at her old desk and turns back to the boys, getting Rick's immediate attention when she starts toward them. Rick sends her a soft smirk when he sees her smiling. After everything they went through, he thought she'd be having a rough time keeping it together.
"You ready to go?" Kate asks.
"Uh..." Rick agapes, surprised that she seems happy, even excited, to be moving on. Not a word about the case, no questions, she just wants to go home with him. "Ready when you are." Rick says just as his eye catches sight of the muted TV hanging high in the corner of the precinct.
"I'm more than ready." Kate says and shuffles toward him.
Rick, taking only a moment to look at the screen, can see a headline reading 'Breaking: Secretary of Defense to resign. DC rocked with surprise at announcement'. The politician is giving a speech, but he can clearly see Jack in the far corner behind him, in a pressed black suit and glasses. "Mission accomplished."
"You okay?" Kate asks, stepping into view.
She seems to break the spell and Rick focuses down on her with a warm smirk. "I'm great." Kate smiles brightly nods her head off to the side. They quickly fall into step as they head toward the elevator, Kate sliding her hands into her back pockets and Rick weaving one arm through her's and putting his hands into his own pockets. "I've got to say," Rick starts as the turn around the barricade, "this has been one of the worst first dates I've ever been on."
She laughs brightly and shoves herself into his side. "Well, maybe it isn't over yet." She tells him.
"What do you mean?" He asks on a chuckle as he presses the button. "Getting arrested kind of ended the evening."
"Do you remember how I said I wanted to talk about things?"
"Yeah," Rick says as the elevator dings.
"Well..." Kate starts and looks over to him warmly, "I remembered, Rick."
Rick's heart skips a beat as she tugs him into the elevator by the arm. "Remembered... what exactly?"
Kate's smile grows as they step into the elevator. "Come here," she says breathlessly and takes her hands out of her pockets, weaving her arms around his waist and clasping her hands together behind his back and taking a step into him. "I love you too, Rick."
A/N: Next chapter will be the epilogue. To be honest, this story kind of didn't turn out like I hoped. Certain dialogues made it in, like the one between Beckett and Sharpe. The overarching theme played out like I hoped though. Hope you enjoyed! Everything will be wrapped in the epilogue as it always is. I'll most likely continue with Will of the Wisp after this story. I have a few more ideas for new stories, but need to flesh out the full story before I start on them. So, if you haven't, go ahead and give Will of the Wisp a look through if you want. :)
A/N2: Couldn't wait so I posted the epilogue. Fanfiction has a 24 hour layover for new chapter updates, so go ahead and read it. :)