"Tori has come at the recording from Castle's phone with everything she has," Esposito sighs, plopping down next to her in the precinct's dingy break room. "Enhancing it was a waste of time," he shakes his head, stealing her mug of coffee and taking a sip. "You know what she found? What she was able to make loud and clear enough to hear? A fuckin' gull. There's nothing recognizable about the shout at the end; it doesn't last long enough."
"And the sounds at the beginning?" she asks, trying to hide the hope in her voice.
"Sounds like he dropped the phone," he shrugs. "Nothing insightful."
"Oh." She takes back her coffee, spinning it in a circle on the table in front of her. "Did you see Ryan out there? Has he gotten anything back from Connecticut?"
"He's been locked up in one of the offices for almost an hour now. Not sure if that's a good sign or not."
"Seeing as not much is proving to be a good sign today…" she trails off, standing up and taking her coffee over to the sink, dumping the remainder down the drain and depositing the mug against the rusting metal rack on the left side. "Call me when he gets done with them?" she requests, turning to face him. "I can't just sit here and hope for the best while doing nothing. I need to go for a run or something."
"'Course, Beckett. Be careful."
"Usually am," she smiles sadly, knocking her hand against his shoulder as she leaves.
She barely remembers the drive back to the house, mind overflowing yet somehow relentlessly empty at the same time. She changes into her athletics and goes to grab her iPod on the way out, stopping when she sees his laying nearby and choosing that instead. She unlocks it and goes to his playlist page, choosing the one named after her and setting it to shuffle. It contains a collection of sappy love songs and pumped up songs that apparently reminded him of her fiery personality.
With the volume jacked up as loudly as it can go she ventures back down the stairs, bolting out across the back lawn and towards the beach as soon as she's got the sliding door securely shut.
She runs for over an hour, returning only when her lungs sear and the phantom pulls of her scars cause her to double over, unable to catch a complete breath. When she makes it back to the house she bypasses the kitchen, ignoring her body's desperate pleas for cold water and using the banister to pull herself up the stairs and to their room. She rinses off and redresses quickly, heart still calming in her chest as she checks her cell for any news from Esposito.
Ryan's got state police techies following SUV on cams. We have a copy of his driver's license from dealer; running now to see if legit.
She texts back to let him know she's on her way back to the precinct, but as she reaches the front door Alexis calls out from the kitchen.
"Did you find anything?" she asks when Kate enters the room, her eyes swollen and red from crying and a crystal tumbler like the one Kate had used the night before clutched in her hands, and something tells Kate it's not apple juice that she's drinking.
"We've got some potential leads that we're tracking down right now," Kate nods. "But I don't know how far they're going to go."
"Can you talk about them?" Alexis begs, her wild eyes desperate for information.
"Well, there's not a whole lot to talk about," Kate warns. "We know where the other car that they found came from; a dealership in Connecticut. But we don't know who the driver that stole it is; that's one of the things we're trying to figure out right now. It was a man and a teenaged girl; none of the dealer's cameras show their faces but we have a copy of the license he gave before taking the car for a test run and they're checking the validity of it as we speak. Connecticut police are also working on tracking the car from the dealer to the border. Once we know where it came in, we can get New York police to continue its path.
"Your dad also made a voice recording right before he disappeared. It doesn't offer much in terms of clues, though; he makes it sound like he's running."
"He would never," Alexis gasps indignantly.
"I know he wouldn't, Alexis, and there's another voice in the last few seconds that doesn't really support that he was. But if that's the case, he tried to make it sound like he was running, gone voluntarily, and we have no idea why."
"You will," she says confidently, nodding to herself firmly. "You're the best at what you do, Kate. You're dedicated and quick on the mark… You make everything personal, and that's how I know if anyone can find him, it's you."
"Thank you, Alexis," she sighs, coming around the island to give her a hug. "I will do everything I can to bring you back your father. Whatever it takes," she promises, squeezing her shoulder before she gets back on the path to the precinct. "Whatever it takes," she repeats to herself resolutely as she gets into the car. I will never stop.
When she arrives back she finds her partners seated across from each other at one of the standard desks, Gates looking over Ryan's shoulder as he points something out to Esposito.
"What did you find?" she asks, coming to lean over the latter.
"Only some info on the license so far, and it's not great," Ryan cautions. "The ID number belongs to a woman from Greenwhich named Reagan Ford. Unis are trying to get in touch with her for an interview, and we're trying to run the photograph from the ID through facial recognition. The address on it does not exist."
"So if Reagan Ford doesn't recognize him, we're back to square one."
"Not if she's in on it," he shrugs.
"Pull her history," Kate orders, standing up. "See if there's anything to indicate she's a part of this."
"On it," the two say at once, jumping into action. This could be it. This could be a real lead, and they both knew they couldn't afford to waste any time.
Kate's hands come up to clench the hair on either side of her head, clutching painfully as she watches her partners split off into different directions. She feels so useless, sitting around whenever a new possibility comes up, waiting on the sidelines as everyone else struggles for their goals.
"Detective Beckett," Gates says somberly, startling her as she rests her hands gently on each of Kate's and pries them loose. "I truly don't have the words to express myself the way that I wish I could. I know you're stressed, frightened, hurting, but tearing out your hair is not how you get through this. Putting on your brave face is not how you get through this. You get through this by relying on your partners, your friends, and by letting them bear the heaviest loads and helping them decipher them. You cannot do this on your own. You cannot run around leading the chase on something like this, it's too much. Come back to the break room and sit with me, and when they have Ms. Ford's histories we'll find anything that's there."
Her heart is pounding in her chest, working through everything the captain has said. She knows, of course, that this is not something she can take point on, something she can control, and while Gates' assurances are somewhat… well, reassuring… she can't help but to still feel mostly useless. Thankfully, they aren't made to wait long before she has Reagan's information to comb through.
The woman is thirty-two and single, a high-ranking associate at a contracting firm in Hartford, and she's got nothing worse than a red-light cam on her record. "This is useless. Utterly… useless," she sighs. Just like me.
"Be that as it may, she's agreed to meet with me for an interview in the morning," Ryan tells her. "It may lead nowhere… that seems to be our trend, after all. But I have a good feeling, Beckett. She made it sound like she had something to say." Or maybe he was just trying desperately to find the light in the dark, ever the optimist.
"Go home, Kate. Spend some time with Martha and Alexis, get a good night's sleep. The sun will still be shining in the morning."
And we're gonna be all right
Dry your tears and hold tight
Can't you tell? I got news for you
Sun is shining and so are you
-Sun is Shining
Axwell Λ Ingrosso