Banal conversation starters tease the tip of Beckett's tongue during the fifteen minute drive back into downtown East Hampton. None of them emerge. John's sunglass-shielded gaze and scruff-obscured countenance is flat-out uninviting. The man's posture is slightly more talkative, but not in a good way; those thick shoulders are scrunched, and both hands are gripping around the wheel at the ten and two positions. He's pressed almost flush against the driver's side door. The only way he could get farther away from her would be if he thrust open the door and combat rolled away upon the unforgiving street. She can fathom the why of his behavior, the potential threat she poses in his mind, but it still seems ridiculous.

Beckett changed earlier into denim jeans, a pair of blue chucks, and a powder blue peasant top with a split-V neckline and short sleeves. Now she wishes she'd worn a bra, which is equally silly, but true. What had been more relaxing and a fun flirtation with Castle is beginning to feel like an uncomfortable sense of nakedness with the Sergeant. Embarrassing sensitivity induced by the awareness of his dislike has her nipples stiffened into turgid buds against the fabric in a direct pain-in-the-ass contradiction to attention she doesn't want on them. Go to sleep, bitches.

Without dipping into egotism, she finds her company's lack of engagement disarming. Most hot-blooded men are glad for a chance to chat her up, and that's not necessarily about coming onto her. She loosens their tongues just by being. Even shy men can be goaded into falling under that spell. Beauty is the realm of genetics, not a skill she can claim to have earned, so there isn't an abundance of wounded pride when it fails, but when that happens it's generally not a good sign. By the time they pull into the parking lot outside of a red brick building her patience is already wearing thin. She watches John look askance at her while stowing his hat and shades. He cants his head indicatively before exiting the truck without a word.

"Alright, enough," Beckett voices as she follows after him. The truck bleats behind them as the officer locks up in their wake. Her eyes skim the mundane exterior of their destination without discerning its function before they lower to her companion again. Far from intimidated, he looks only a bit perturbed by the delay of her cross-armed halt upon the sidewalk. "Say whatever you want to say to me, John. I'm serious. Let's get it out of the way right now. I've got enough on my mind without you tip-toeing around because of the stick you have lodged up your ass."

The Sergeant doesn't merely not reply. He doesn't even react. No one home.

"What?" she demands, arms lofting from her sides. "You think I'm going to wig out and take off, right? Or something along those lines, like the last woman you ferried around here? Well that isn't happening. I don't quit the people I care about like that. And not to toot my own horn, but I've been picking up the wreckage after human monsters for almost ten years now. I don't flinch easy. I'm here for answers. So, you and I need to suck it up, bury this awkwardness, and get this thing done. Then we can both get back to the people we do want to be with."

"I hope you're a bit more circumspect in the interrogation room," he observes dryly. "There's a reputation on the line."

Beckett blinks at him, tilts away somewhat. Silence drip, drip, drips. It puddles and lays there between them. "Did you just make fun of me?" He scowls at her for having to ask. That's a yes! She blinks a couple more times, wide-eyed, then huffs at him amidst a sudden torrent of relief. "Good grief, John! What the hell?"

"Right back at ya. You're the one losing your shit, not me."

"Because you're acting like I'm patient zero of a disease you don't wanna catch!"

The Sergeant scratches the back of his neck. "I'm...acclimating."

"Acclimating? Oh my—jeez!" A palm rises to smooth over her hair. "Okay, no. Fine. Are you, uh, all better now?"

"No. It's been twenty minutes, lady. I don't know you from any other asshole."

The detective grinds her teeth and jabs him sharply in the chest. "That's all the more reason not to assume the worst."

John backs off a pace and rubs at the site, but is otherwise calm. "I'm a pragmatist. And I don't like surprises. For example, Richard said you were funny. Clearly that was something of an overstatement."

"What the fu—I am funny!" she howls back at him. "I'm hilarious."

He sniffs, unimpressed, and turns away. "Your modesty is certainly laughable."

Oh snap. She gapes, almost laughs, but quickly scrunches her lips at the unexpected jab, which she's guessing is about her protrusions at chest-height just as much as her declarations of a vaunted sense of humor. When did he even check her out? She missed it. Damn, he is good. "I should've known," Kate mutters, rubbing two fingers into the corners of her eyes. "Any lifelong friend of Castle's couldn't be normal, not even here, where things are so different."

"What shade of eyeliner is that? Kettle black, pot maybe? It suits you."

Beckett huffs again, amused against her will. She is relieved, and not just because this might make her work tonight easier. It's not only her; Castle laughs with other people here too. She would have guessed as much really, but the looming shadow cast by his history was starting to make her wonder. It could have gone either way. "Look," she begins, "we're not in the box. And we may be from different jurisdictions, but we toe the same blue line, right? I'm giving it to you straight here, John, and I expect the same in return. I need your help. I really need to...not mess this up."

The other regards her with the same stoicism displayed thus far. If she hadn't just seen him play with her she wouldn't believe him capable of it. Hell, she did and it still feels like an error of some kind on her part. "I prefer candor as well," he replies mildly. "And you're right. There's too much on the line to play around with getting our signals crossed any further." A hand rises from his belt to gesture to the door. "Let's head inside. There's a coffee machine."

Say no more. It's going to be a long night. She has that feeling. Beckett slips through the door he opens ajar enough for both of them, noting as she passes the only identifying feature on the portal, frosted white letters stenciled across the glass: Assessor's Office. There are phone and fax numbers beneath. Mystified, Kate forgoes any questions for the moment. She crinkles her nose at the scent of fresh cleaning supplies draped upon the air in the wide hallway. The floors are polished concrete wrought in a curiously distinctive brown. Under the three-foot sections of UV ceiling fixtures patches of it shine a paler, handsome shade of copper.

John leads the way forward. They bypass a partitioned office on the left where a security guard is sitting behind a glass wall at a desk. The pale-faced fellow is a little older, rounder, and shorter than her Native American guide and wears a white dress shirt under a black vest. He looks up as they pass and beholds her with a sharp spike of his eyebrows. Kate tries to be a good sport about such things. She swishes a hand blindly backwards near her ass as they continue on by, as if swatting at a bothersome insect. A telling, embarrassed cough emerges from the office.

Some guys are subtle, others not so much.

There's a principle one waiting right now who looks at her in a way no one else has. An already dim humor darkens as her thoughts turn to imagining what Rick might be doing. Probably washing the dishes from their quick dinner that polished off the rest of the lobster stew and shrimp scampi. Maybe he's poking around online to determine the likelihood of rescuing her water-logged cell. Let it be a task as mundane as either of those, not him tucked away and worrying in some dark corner of that huge house. Castle has never struck her as the kind of man who doesn't know what to do with himself without her around, not even at the precinct where a smidge of inaction might be called for. You never struck me as the kind of guy that I would be discreetly sleuthing around about either though. It's all fluid again, as if we're meeting for the first time.

"You should know," John says, ripping her from her thoughts, "that there are still nondisclosure issues in play with this case." He pauses before an unmarked doorway. "Normally it would take serious political muscle to get access to this room."

"Uh, okay. Wait—are we actually allowed to be here?"

John glances down the hall towards the office, now out of sight, and then to her again. He finds the necessary key on a ring of them and sinks it into the lock, opening the way into a smallish office suite with the same flooring, pale tan walls, and polystyrene ceiling tiles. "Technically, no one is. I have the key for emergency purposes only, like if a contractor working in the ducts fell through the ceiling and needed help. That's what I was told." John snaps on the overhead lights and she enters after him, squinting around the twelve-by-twelve space. There's no window in the room, only a central table with two metal-limbed, black padded chairs and a bank of grey file cabinets at the far wall. Atop the last are stacked unmarked cardboard filing boxes. The room smells of aged papers and vaguely of mildew.

"Why are the case files here in the first place? Assessors don't work serial murders."

John turns sharply, looking to her and then the doorway. He closes it. "Keep your voice down." Beckett arches an imperious eyebrow, but that doesn't give the Sergeant enough pause for her to chide him the way she did Castle last night about shushing her. "This used to be the old police precinct. When the location changed all of this was left behind."

"Why?"

The Sergeant uses a different, smaller key to unlock each of the five cabinet sections. Her eyebrows lift at the thought of them having to plow through so much content. As he works at the task John says, "DOJ files can't legally be destroyed without a process of approval, which would garner renewed attention to the existence of these files. None of this has been digitized. You won't find any of it in NCIC or the like. It's here specifically because no one wants it to be anywhere else. There's no need for it to be after all this time. You might liken this place to a tomb in that respect. It has nothing anyone in the Hamptons wants to remember, but its everything we can't forget." Oh god. "It's looked after by private security now, hence that armed guard in a building where a security system would normally suffice."

"We aren't going to get into trouble for being here?"

John's expression is stony as he faces her again, revealing neither concern nor its opposite. "There's no need to sweat over that. You're here with Richard in a fashion. That buys enough grace with everyone else involved. Having said that, I cannot caution you strongly enough, Detective: what you see here needs to stay here."

"Sure." No flippancy was intended, but such easy concession proves the wrong thing to say.

The Sergeant narrows his eyes and lowers his chin in a glare that straightens Kate's spine where she stands. Yeesh. "A few of the victim's families are old blood and older money. Any one of them would happily buy up everything familiar in your life and burn it to ashes in front of you just to express their displeasure before the real trouble starts. And there are three such families, none of whom would pass up the chance to throw in their two cents." Pride be damned, Kate swallows uneasily. "Then there are the cops and select civilians who were involved, many of whom carry it with them to this day in their own manner. And, of course, there's Richard, who might be the one to worry about most when it comes to betraying the confidence of what lies in this room."

"John, I would never—

"No," he interrupts, "of course not. I believe you, Detective Beckett. Rather, Richard does, and that's good enough for me. We wouldn't be here otherwise. But I'm obliged to give you the spiel. Not just by law, but from the perspective of someone who wouldn't want to see you pay dearly for a thoughtless slip of the tongue months down the road from now when the warnings have faded from mind and worry. Bury all of this somewhere deep after you leave. No one will care how unintentional any leak is. No one will forgive it."

Beckett exhales a puff of a breath, nods more slowly in agreement. Then tilts her head somewhat, recalling what Castle said about the Sergeant's father being the lead on the case, how it has lingered with the family to this very day. "You didn't mention where you weigh in on that."

John stares at her for a long moment. She watches with her muscles tensing in apprehension as his gaze slowly softens in a swift and subtle display of pity. Then he turns slowly away, moving to the cabinets.

Fuck me...

No verbally issued threat could have topped that.

When she finds her voice, Beckett says, "I, uh, wasn't asking that to be obtuse. It's sounds like people were affected by the case. I mean, obviously they were, and it's not unusual for those feelings to linger for the rest of peoples' lives." Her voice quiets some without her permission. "I know it has for me." John half turns to look at her. He might not be overly expressive, but the small connection of his direct focus is something at least. He's making the effort now. She wonders if he realizes it. "Do you get my meaning in this instance though? This feels different."

"It would." A few of the boxes stacked atop the cabinets are moved onto the table. "You'll understand why as we get into it. Uh, there's something I'd like to discuss before we do. But first, I promised you a cup of coffee. How do you take yours?"

Beckett tells him and watches as he goes with a quiet sigh. He's testing her, right? Seeing if she'll wait like he asked or dive right in while he's gone. If it were her case the latter would be a safe bet. This one clearly demands more restraint. She lowers into the chair on the right side of the table and slips out Castle's cell. An immediate ache settles in for want of his company. He sent her out with John, and in his own weird way the Sergeant is a pleasant, if gruff, reminder of her partner. But he's certainly no substitute for the genuine article, and tonight only genuine will suffice.

What's in here that you can't bring yourself to face? And how will I ever find it in this morbid aggregation?

The password on Rick's cell has been temporarily disabled. His lock screen photo is one of Alexis sprawled on their couch with her fair face half smushed into a throw pillow. Kate smiles sadly and thumbs the phone open. The main screen image is different, and yet shockingly similar. It's one of Kate likewise laid and zonked out on the break room sofa. Sonuvabitch. There are also pages and pages of downloaded apps. No surprise there.

Kate pokes her way into his photo app to set a new wallpaper. There are over a dozen folder options. Oh God! There's a 'KB' folder with two-hundred and eighteen images in it. The cell clatters to the table as her hands loft to her face, splaying there as if she were hiding from the thing. I saw nothing. No.

When Beckett tentatively reaches for it again, she tells herself that she's going to make sure he doesn't have anything inappropriate from any of their crimes scenes in there. Yes. It's logical. Castle might have snapped a picture of something without even knowing he shouldn't have. When you think about it, it's her duty as a public servant to check.

That's right when John walks back in toting a pair of mugs. She flinches guiltily away from the cell before making contact, which makes him look at it and then at her. But he ventures no accusation or even a change in expression, merely slides a plain blue mug before her on the table and settles into the other chair with a shift of his wide leather belt.

"Thanks," she mumbles with a testing sip of the piping hot fluid. It's strong, but not as bitter as the NYPD brew was in their pre-espresso-machine days. "So, uh, you wanted to talk about something first? I hope it's not another warning. Trust me, the message was received loud and clear."

"I suppose it could be considered one," the other replies, folding his hands before him on the table. Those dark eyes stray to one side after speaking. The disconnect there is a little disquieting. Even when he was just starting to 'acclimate' to her company the man didn't shy from eye contact. "I hope you'll bear with me. Last time I sat in this room I dove right in, like ripping off a Band-Aid as Richard said. I...I'm afraid my, um, brusqueness may have contributed to that other young women fleeing to the far side of the world the way she did. Maybe if I had gone about this differently..."

He studies the table with obvious regret. "So, you see, like you I want to get this right. These files have a lot to say, Detective Beckett. One of the reasons they're doomed to molder away here is because most people would pour over the story they tell without a thought or care for the lens through which it was experienced by the people of this town. These days killers are akin to celebrities. It matters to us a great deal, as you can imagine, that this matter is respected."

"I can," Kate replies quietly. "It's not a lens I possess either, I know. But I'll do my best, same way I would with any case."

"You know the manner of our loss, and that's as close as any outsider can get. Uh, anyway, I make the comparison now because the man we both left behind tonight is also in these boxes. Part of him anyway. To me its just as important that Richard is seen through the appropriate lens, insofar as this case goes. Do you understand?"

"Yes." She sighs, looking to the boxes set to one side. "Two days ago I would've claimed to have a pretty decent grasp on that much. But now I'm not so sure. He's already shown himself to be different from what I'm familiar with."

John smiles, actually smiles, and for the first time Beckett realizes that he's quite handsome. There's no attraction attached to the observation, merely an appreciation for the difference that even a small curve of his mouth can make. "The first step of acquiring knowledge is admitting we lack it, don't you think?"

"I do. Lucky for me I'm sitting across from an expert on the subject."

John's smile, such as it was, fades back to the more familiar neutrality. "I know some of him, the same way that you do. Make no mistake, neither of us has the full picture where our friend is concerned. I doubt anyone does, not even him. That's true for all of us to varying degrees. But we'll put together what we can, hmm? I'll tell you what I know. And then I'll show you where Richard Rodgers stopped, stopped dead in his tracks, and Richard Castle began."


A/N: Nothing like an unanimous answer to make me appreciate having asked a silly question. I'm enjoying this too, so we'll keep it moving right along. Thank you for your thoughts on the matter. Actually, the point of telling this story in the first place was to layout an AU mythology for Rick. Because I'm already a few chapters into the story that'll be following it. So yes, onward, and hopefully to plenty more. Even an eventual finish for Promises, if John doesn't get there first.