Chapter 3

When Rick set out from the loft for The Old Haunt that night, winter was already in the air, the force of the biting wind as it lashed against his body making his walk from the subway feel akin to what he imagined attempting to push his way through a block of ice might be like.

He did the same thing every holiday season now that he owned the bar, delivered gift cards and cash to his team in thanks, both because he was a sucker for Christmas and because, despite being its proprietor, he spent almost no time there in any official capacity as such, leaving the beloved treasure of the city and of his past entirely in their hands, and they'd never complained for one second about it, instead caring for it as though it was their own.

"Nice touch with the red and green blinkers, Jonesy." Rick unknotted the scarf from around his neck, smoothed his mussed hair back into place. His bartender slid a hit of whiskey across the mahogany without prompting, and it was swiftly swallowed down. "Eddie in tonight?" he followed, noting the piano absent its regular player.

"Yeah, he'll be here. He had a Christmas thing at his granddaughter's school or something. Haven't seen you in a while, boss. You slumming or what?" he teased.

Rick pulled out a stool and parked. "Why do you think I got all bundled up in this disguise, the weather? I don't want anyone to find out I drink at a dump like this. I'm a world-famous novelist. I have a reputation to uphold." He asked for a beer, raised the bottle in toast when Jonesy obliged, and handed over an envelope with his name written across it. "I'm just here to play Santa Castle for the night, man. Thanks for helping me keep the lights on for another year."

"I appreciate it, boss. Thank you." Jonesy tapped the bottle with his tumbler of ginger ale. "Here's to the next. Oh, and hey, speaking of people who drink at this dump, some girl was in here asking about you last night, wanted to know when you'd be in next."

"Girl?" Rick asked around a sip.

"Well, not a girl, a woman-cute, nice enough. She looked familiar. I'm pretty sure she's been in, but I'd never talked to her before. I assumed the two of you were friends from the way she was talking. I mean, she knew about your daughter and the whole police thing and about Kate." Something obviously came out in Rick's expression, because Jonesy immediately apologized. "Shit, boss, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring that up."

Rick realized his hand had clenched into a fist in his lap and he released the tension. "No, it's fine. I'm just trying to-"

"Nikki, I think her name was. Yeah, I think that's what she said."

"What?" It wasn't a matter of not having heard it, but of trying to process it, and before Jonesy could get the name out of his mouth again, Rick grabbed his coat and pushed off the stool. "I need to make a call. I'm going to use the office."

"Sure, yeah, it's all yours. Everything okay?"

Without a reply, Rick went off to the back, closed the office door behind him. It had to be her, he thought as he walked an unsettled circle around the tiny room-the coffee shop Nikki, or whatever the hell her name was. She had to be the one, and she'd been standing right next to him just the day before. He'd smiled at her, fucking thanked her, for Christ's sake. Even the remembrance of it had his stomach rolling.

He pulled out his phone, sent a text message to both Javi and Kevin to tell them he knew where the letters came from, though what he knew amounted to, essentially, nothing. He had no name-not a real one, at least-no age, no idea where she worked or lived. She was a brunette, average height, just a ghost with a fucked-up mind, who, apparently, had everything about him and his life catalogued in it.

Javi didn't reply. Kevin was out to dinner with Jenny and said he'd call when they were finished, so Rick left the rest of the gift envelopes on the desk for the staff and went back out to the bar, asked Jonesy to take over Santa duties and took off.

A wet snow had started to fall while he was inside, and it crunched beneath his feet as he headed up the stairs to an empty stretch of sidewalk. When he passed the narrow alley not thirty yards from where he emerged, he felt something hit him in the upper arm, and then hit him again in the back, twice, three times.

Whatever it was burned hot, the sensation radiating as seconds passed, and when he found himself on the ground, when he realized he was on all fours and the crystals of ice on the sidewalk around him were speckled red, he knew he was in trouble.

xxxx

Kate had just succeeded in prying herself out of a much-needed hot shower and climbed into bed when her phone rang again. Unfortunately, that she'd left work and walked through the door at nearly 10 p.m. on a Saturday was her new normal now that she was a fed. No one she worked for ever seemed to acknowledge a weekend, let alone a clock.

She rolled over in the darkness with a huff, saw the caller's name and swiped her thumb across the screen. "Three times, Espo? These better not be drunk-dials. I've been up for almost twenty-four hours straight."

"It's not," Javi said, and right away she knew something was wrong. "It's Castle." As if flipped by a switch, her heart instantly began to pound. "Look, I don't know what the situation is between you two, but I thought you should know. He was attacked on his way out of the Haunt tonight."

"Javi, please don't-"

He didn't even want her to have to say the words. "They're sewing him up, Kate. His mother called me. I'm at the hospital with her now."

Kate's eyes had blurred with tears and she squeezed them free. "Jesus Christ, Espo. What do you mean?" She'd already climbed out of bed, gone to the closet for her travel bag. "What the hell happened?"

"Some nutjob fan's been sending him messed-up letters and following him around for, like, six months, I guess. She jumped on him with a knife tonight, got him in the back and in the arm. A couple of guys chased her off before she could do any more damage. One of them caught her, held her until unis showed up."

"Six months?" She'd only been gone three. "He never said anything to me about any letters."

"You want me to call you when they're done with him?"

She told him to call, and then she packed the bag, got in the car, and drove.

xxxx

By hospital policy standards, Kate wasn't anything to Rick, and that was like a knife of its own. The hour being what it was when she'd finally arrived there, she hadn't wanted to call Martha, so she'd done the only thing she could and flashed her government I.D.

At the nurses' station on the 11th floor, where she was sent and where Rick had been settled, she did so for a second time, earned herself an update on his condition and access to his room. Martha had left a few hours before, the woman at the desk told her, though not without a fight, of course, having proclaimed in dramatic fashion she'd be back the very minute visitors were once again permissible. The whole thing sounded just like Martha, Kate thought. How she missed Martha.

Rick didn't know she was there. She kept herself at a distance and watched him as he slept, his face inexplicably elegant in spite of the hell he must've come through. It'd been three months without him, without the whisper of his voice, without his taste, without his touch, without the missing piece of her heart she'd waited so long for and hadn't yet learned how to live without, and she stood there wondering if his ache could be even a fraction of hers.

She hadn't even stopped to consider it before she'd come, and the fear rushed in like a wave. Maybe he wouldn't want her there. Maybe his eyes would open and he'd see her and wish she was a dream he could blink away. The possibility suddenly felt acutely real. She'd once wrapped her love inside a promise and given it to him out at those swings, but if all that played in him now were the last moments they'd spent together there, would her presence now only inflict more hurt?

Kate stepped back out of the room when her phone vibrated with Javi's text message, but with her eyes weary, rather than go on typing back and forth, she opted to call.

"Yeah, I got here a little while ago. I just saw him." She'd caught the time before she dialed and had to ask. "It's, like, 4:30 a.m., Espo. What the hell are you doing up?"

"This shit has me wired or something. It's a different ballgame when you love the guy. How's he doin'?"

"He's asleep. I'm jealous, thanks for asking," she deadpanned. "The nurse told me he was lucky," she added after a thoughtful pause, sharing nothing he didn't already know. He'd been there, after all. She hadn't.

"Yeah, but we probably shouldn't be surprised. Castle's always been lucky. Bastard." Kate managed a half-giggle, but the weight of it was still there. "You need a place to crash, partner?"

Hearing the word was bittersweet, and she gratefully accepted the invitation.

xxxx

Javi had already been to the gym and returned home later that morning, Kate up again, herself, after only a few hours of sleep, his couch and its too-short-for-her-long-body confines one of the reasons, to say nothing of the relentless throb of her head, born of more hours without food than she could recall.

He'd come back with a bag of fresh bagels under his arm, lucky for her, which now sat empty on the table between them, along with a pot of coffee which, in short order, they'd put a decent dent in.

"Thank you for this," she said before popping her last bite, "and for letting me stay. I appreciate it, Espo."

"I told you, mi casa es tu casa. How long are you sticking around?"

Kate narrowed her eyes at his playful delivery. "Probably just a couple of days. I texted McCord last night to let her know I had to come up, but there's a lot going on right now. It feels like we've been working nine-day weeks."

"You look like it," he ribbed. "Naw, I'm just playing. You still look like Beckett. It's really good to see you around here. I think even Gates misses you. Don't quote me on that, though. She doesn't need any more reasons to be pissed off at me."

"Not much has changed, then, huh? Well, at least you still have Ryan to throw under the bus."

Javi clinked his mug against hers. "I'll drink to that. He makes it so easy."

Off to the side sat a pile of mail and a collection other papers that'd gathered, among them the thirteen letters that'd been sent to Rick. He hadn't yet given them back, but they were to be evidence now, and when they caught his eye, he reached for them.

"What are those?" she asked when it became clear she'd lost his attention.

"They're Castle's letters. When he got the last one, he asked me and Ryan to take a look. They're fucked up, but there just wasn't enough for us to do anything."

Kate had seen guilt in him before, but she knew him, and if someone he loved ever came to him for help, she was sure he'd always do whatever he could.

"The woman obviously isn't right, Javi. People like that are unpredictable. I'm sure Castle took whatever precautions you told him to take. I mean, come on, you know what a good listener he is," she said with what became a shared smile, and when her eyes asked, he handed over the stack. "I just don't know why he never told me."

"I called his mom on my way home. She was already over at the hospital. Alexis was out of town on some ski trip for the weekend or something, but she should be back this morning, too. I guess the doc was in there early and was going to release him. They just wanted to watch him for the night."

Kate's mind flashed to the loft, her second home-its comfort, its warmth, his bed. "I'm glad," she replied, flipping between the letters. "More for the nurses."

"You're going to go see him, yeah? That's why you came all the way up here in the middle of the night."

She let a moment go by. "I just didn't even think, Espo. I just-you called and I needed to see for myself that he was okay, so I got in the car. We haven't said a word to each other since I left. He probably wouldn't even want me here."

Javi shook his head and muttered something unintelligible. "I don't get you and Castle at all. You guys had more love between you than anyone I ever met, including Ryan and Jenny with their puking rainbows all over each other all the time."

"That's charming, Espo."

"So you live in different cities. Who gives a shit? You do what you have to do, man. Come on. After everything, you honestly think he wouldn't want to see you? That's just stupid, Beckett, and you've never been stupid," he said and pushed out of his chair. "Whatever. I need a shower."

When he was gone, her mind swirling though it was, she opened the first letter and began to read.

xxxx

Kate wiped the tears from her cheeks, flipped down the visor and checked her look, found her skin a bright pink with the wind's burn. She'd been out there on the frozen ground for over an hour talking to her, as she always did, this time after too long away. Visiting her mother's grave never got any easier, no matter how many times she did it.

She'd already been to see her father, too, surprised him as he readied for an afternoon out at the stadium for the Giants game with friends, and the brief time she'd spent with him had been everything she hadn't known she'd needed. There were only two people in her life that had the ability to soothe her as he could, to quiet the noise she carried around with her, and by just his presence alone. Rick was the other.

She reached into her pocket for her phone, her fingers stiff from the cold, and pulled up her contact list. Martha's number was still listed there, of course, despite having not been used in months, and after staring at the screen until her eyes blurred, she clicked to dial it.

"Katherine? My word, is that really you?"

The shock in her voice stung like the cold, but Kate pressed through it. "Hi, Martha," she said after allowing the welcome sound of her unabbreviated name to sit for a few seconds in her ear. No one else ever called her that, and she'd forgotten how much she enjoyed it. "Am I-Is now a bad time?" A stupid question she knew, given the circumstances.

"Oh, don't be silly. There's never a bad time for you, darling. It's wonderful to hear your voice. You know, I was just thinking about you the other evening. How strange. Is everything all right?"

"That's what I'm calling you about, actually. I wanted to find out how Castle was doing."

"You heard about…Well of course you did. Javier and Kevin were at the hospital. Boy, I'm telling you, kiddo, you two must have some incredible guardian angels looking out for you because he's doing great, I mean considering. The docs stitched him up and bandaged him up, and with some time he'll be as good as new they say. I've just brought him home, not an hour ago."

Kate didn't tell her she'd been there, that she'd gone to the hospital. "That's great to hear, Martha. It was really scary to get that call."

"I'm sure it was, Katherine. It was for me, too, but Richard is in excellent hands, if those hands do say so themselves. He's going to be just fine."

Up until that very second, she hadn't known if she could go through with it, if she could make the difficult choice, but before she realized what was happening, her heart spoke up.

"Martha, I want to come see him."