Kate had tried not to go abnormally fast in the convenient store on the side of the highway twenty miles out. Yes, she was in a hurry, the thought of him alone and unprotected gnawing at her guts with every passing second, but she didn't need to draw attention to herself either. The owner recognized her, much to her chagrin, but after an overused condolence for the loss of her father, he let her pay for her small haul of food and wished her a nice time at the cabin.
She hated that everyone in the area knew of her whereabouts when she came to stay, that all of her father's old buddies still remembered her after all these years and called out to her in the open. Maybe she was just paranoid, but she had a long list of enemies nowadays, and if anyone were to ever find out her true identity, if they ever came here, all they would have to do is ask around and they'd locate her with little trouble.
She went a steady twenty miles over the speed limit on her drive back, eyes darting to the rearview mirror every thirty seconds, but when she slowed at the road that would lead her back to the safe haven of the cabin, she scanned the brush and saw no sign of Castle.
Kate took a deep breath, allowed the relief to spread and flow through her body. She was probably overreacting, he was likely right where she had left him at the dining room table, filling the legal pad she had found for him earlier, and her lips slipped into a smile at that. She hadn't had the chance to experience the passion he held for writing firsthand since this entire ordeal had begun, but she had caught a glimpse of it today when he had requested a paper and a pen, his fingers twitching with the urge to divulge the story stirring inside him.
A strange flicker of excitement flared in her chest. He was probably fine, filling pages with words about a character she still failed to approve of but couldn't deny him right to either, and she found herself eager to spend an evening tucked away in the cabin with him and his words, as well as an actual meal. It almost felt like... like this could be a trial run for a future she couldn't have but already fiercely wanted.
Kate pulled into the driveway exactly twenty-five minutes after pulling out of it, forgoing the extra safety measure of working the car into the slot of trees as she had last night in favor of hastening her return to him. Just to ensure he was okay. That was all.
"Hey, Castle," she called the moment she walked through the door, striding into the kitchen and setting the grocery bags on the counter near the sink. "I brought dinner. Along with that tub of ice cream you mentioned, if you're still up for it," she added with a growing grin on her lips, but it quickly began to fade when she received no response.
He wouldn't greet her with silence.
"Castle?"
Still no answer. And as she scanned the cabin, she saw no sign of him at the dining room table, no hint of his presence from her bedroom or the bathroom off the hall. She glanced towards the sliding door into the backyard with a flicker of hope, gnawing desperation, but she had a clear view of the dock from here and he wasn't out there either.
He was gone.
Shit, she had been right. He wasn't fine, he wasn't even here.
Kate stepped away from the kitchen, her hand automatically drifting to her hip, where her service piece would be if she had it on her, and she cursed herself for leaving it to Castle in case of emergency.
A hint of movement in her peripheral caught her attention and hope blazed wild in her chest, ready to persuade her galloping heart into a steady rhythm.
"Rick?"
"If you know him at all, you should know that he's always up for ice cream."
Kate spun towards the entry only to be met with Gina Cowell in the cabin's doorway, a gun in her hand and a practiced smile stretched across her lips. But it wasn't Beckett's Glock in her hand and Kate felt a small flutter of relief amidst the bubbling panic.
She hadn't found him. Not yet.
"Ms. Cowell," Kate greeted, taking a cautious step closer to the other woman. "Nice of you to drop by."
"Cut the bullshit, Agent Beckett." Kate squared her jaw at the use of her profession title, saw the satisfaction it elicited in Gina to have secret knowledge in her hands. "You're not so great at what you do, by the way. If you were, you would have known you were being watched, listened to, this entire time."
She wanted to curse, to punch her fist through the wall, or at least have the luxury of sulking in disappointment or uttering the demand of how? She had failed this entire mission, she had failed him, and now her only chance of getting Castle out of this predicament alive was getting the gun from Gina's grasp.
Kate shrugged. "How do you know I wasn't aware the entire time? How do you know I didn't lure you here on purpose?"
Gina wavered for only a moment before donning a smirk that was far too smug.
"You wouldn't lure me to a secluded cabin in the woods, where you and my husband are all alone with no backup to save you. And I highly doubt you would have slept with him in his hotel room if you had known I'd placed a listening device in his suitcase." Beckett paled, couldn't help it, and felt her insides begin to knot at the idea of Gina hearing every single thing they had said, everything they had done in his hotel room. "You're smart, Agent Beckett, and I'd truly hoped you wouldn't let me down, but I couldn't help taking precaution. I'm sure you understand."
Gina winked at her, flexed her slim fingers around the gun.
"I'm good at what I do, how do you know I don't have backup nearby?" Beckett mused, but Castle's soon to be ex-wife still wasn't buying it.
Gina exhaled calmly through her nose. "Instead of prolonging the inevitable, why don't you just tell me where he is so we can get this all over with?"
Beckett took a bold step forward, watched the gun in the other woman's hand lift, but there was a hesitance in Gina's handling of the weapon and it gave Kate a surge of confidence, an upper hand in the situation. There was a reason Castle's wife had hired someone else to murder him.
"You'll never touch him."
Gina's perfectly groomed eyebrows spiked upwards. "Oh? Well, what if I did something even worse?" she hummed. "What if I killed you first? The best way to lure Richard out of wherever he may be hiding is to make his precious new toy a damsel in distress, don't you think?"
"Do you even have a plan here?" Kate challenged, inching closer. "What do you expect, to kill me and Rick and then what? Dump us in the lake and expect no one to notice?"
Gina shrugged, the nonchalance of the woman's posture causing Kate's nerves to rise. She had deemed Gina a sociopath after their first meeting and the woman's behavior was definitely holding true to the assessment. Which wasn't good news for them. There was little reasoning to be done with someone of Gina's status and mindset; Kate wouldn't be able to talk her out of this.
"After you failed to do what I thought was your job at the time, I moved on to my next resource. They'll be here soon and they'll happily help me with the grueling task of disposal." Gina raised the weapon in her hand, admiring the shine of the revolver. "Though, if you keep stalling this way, I may have to allow them the honors of putting you down. Which would you prefer, watching him die or forcing him to watch your life end first?"
Kate snarled and jerked closer, eliciting a threatening cock of Gina's head and a slide of her finger to the trigger.
"Take another step, Agent."
The idea of Gina having backup of her own could very well be a bluff and Castle's ex-wife wore one hell of a poker face, but if Rick had made it out before Gina had arrived, then Kate trusted he had used the possession of her cell phone to his advantage. The cops could be on their way, set to come barreling down the driveway at any minute. If she could just keep stalling for a while longer...
"You think I haven't been shot before?" Beckett questioned, her voice cold, lethal as she takes the forbidden step forward, and then another, causing Gina's posture to tense, her jaw to harden with apprehension. Kate was so close, nearly in arm's reach of the gun between them, she just needed another step. "You've never handled a weapon in your life, I've been on both ends of one."
She may not be the cold-blooded assassin she had fooled Gina into believing she was from the start, but she could be ruthless when she needed to be, she could kill for someone she loved if she had no other choice. She would kill for him without hesitation.
"And I always have the guts to pull the trigger."
The intimidation tactic worked, sending a subtle ripple of surprise through Gina's sharp brown eyes, just enough of a distraction to rattle her and allow Kate the chance to lunge forward.
A screech of anger left the other woman's lips as Kate's hand closed around the gloved knuckles clutching the gun, followed by a yelp of pain when Beckett used her knee to strike Gina in the abdomen, causing the other woman to gasp and double over. But Gina's grip on the gun was iron tight, determined, and though Kate was able to keep the weapon aimed to the ceiling, Gina was refusing to let go, twisting away from Beckett instead.
"You're not going to win," Gina seethed, both hands wrapped around the revolver now, even as Kate managed to tug her arms backwards, an angle that had to be painful for the other woman's shoulder, before knocking the heel of her boot into Gina's calf muscle.
The other woman cried out, staggered in surprise at the blow, and reflexively closed her finger around the trigger. The gun fired, a loud, echoing shot into the ceiling. Chips of wood rained down, getting caught in Beckett's hair, coating her shoulders, and she watched with a surge of hope as Gina stumbled, her arms wavering as her body swayed, her grasp on the gun loosening-
"Kate!"
Time seemed to pause for just a moment, both women frozen for that split second as Castle burst through the front door, Beckett's gun in his hand. It was a mere second and it was enough to ruin everything.
Gina broke free of Beckett's hold, striking Kate in the ribs with her elbow and aiming the hand still clutched around the gun at Rick. There was no time to grapple with Gina for the gun again, no time to tell Castle to get the shocked look off his face and raise his own weapon. There was only enough time for her to bolt from Gina's back and maneuver herself between the bullet and the man she'd managed to fall in love with.
When the glow of headlights had illuminated the cabin's window, he had jumped up from the table with a smile, surprised and somewhat smug over the fact that Beckett had returned from her trip to the store so quickly. But from the single glance he spared through the slit between the curtains, he realized the light that had flooded Kate's cabin was not coming from a familiar suburban, but instead a sleek black car that quickly went silent. And then he saw his wife – soon to be ex – slide out of the vehicle, retrieving a gun from the inside pocket of her trench coat.
The teasing grin had fallen from his lips, succumbing to a quiet gasp of terror, and Castle had snatched Kate's Glock from the table, slipped through the sliding back doors just as he heard the distinct click of Gina's heels on the porch steps. He knew he couldn't go far, couldn't disappear on Kate, but he couldn't play the sitting duck and allow Gina to put a bullet in him either.
He had tried to go to the road through the trail of the woods like Kate had instructed, but escape had quickly proven impossible when Gina had spent the entirety of Kate's absence scoping out the property, examining every form of exit, constantly forcing him to move from one hiding spot to the next. By the time a chance to slip away had finally arrived, it was already too late.
Once Kate had returned, he'd had no way to signal her. No way to warn her of the car that was now hidden around the side of the cabin, of the woman lying in wait within their temporary haven.
But when he heard the shot, instant panic had swamped his mind, worse case scenarios filling his head at lightning speed, and he had raced away from the window to Kate's room where he had been trying to sneak in, and pushed past the front door, shouting her name and distracting her for a second too long.
Gunfire exploded through the air for the second time, twin shots – one from his wife, the other from the Glock in his hand.
Gina staggered at the impact of the bullet, her hand flying to her shoulder, where crimson spread and coated the left side of her blouse. It wasn't a kill shot, but her mouth still fell open in shock, her eyes still rolled back and her body crumpled to the hardwood floor.
But Kate… Kate was still with him, eyes still wide and flaring with agony while the blood spilled from her body. She had jumped in front of him, tried to push him out of the way, but it was too late, too late for her to save them both, and the moment he saw her body jolt and ripple with pain, he hadn't hesitated to take aim at the woman who had caused it.
Castle collapsed to his knees at her side, felt the blood seep through his jeans and the panic slip around his throat.
"Kate," he choked, sliding a hand underneath her neck to support her head, cradling her ashen face in the other. "God, I'm so sorry. So sorry, I-"
Her head was heavy his palm, her unfocused eyes locking with his through the tortured sounds of her stuttered breathing. "S-still write about me?" she rasped, the corner of her mouth quirking up for him, but it did nothing for his shattering heart. It only made it worse.
"I will, I will and you're going to read every word," he promised, stroking the hair back from her face as the color drained from her skin. "I used the phone, Kate. I called 911, they'll be here."
He brushed his hand down her side, gently searching. She whimpered when his fingers tripped past her ribs, across her abdomen and over the pool of blood slicking down her side.
"I'm going to try to staunch the bleeding," he murmured to her, easing his hand from her nape and tearing his shirt from his shoulders, bundling it in his hands. "I'm sorry, Kate."
She cried out at the pressure he applied to her wound, helpless gasps and choked sobs forcing his chest to splinter with the sharp ache of causing her more pain. She had suffered enough, too much, but this couldn't be it for her, couldn't be how her story ended.
"Stay with me," he pleaded when her eyes began to flicker shut. "Please, Kate, don't - don't leave me. I just found you again."
Castle kept one hand secure on her abdomen as he returned to hover above her, remaining in her line of sight in hopes of keeping her awake and alert. He prayed to anyone, anything, that may be listening for the sound of sirens, for the flash of red and blue lights to paint the floors from the windows, but the silence of a night in the woods was his only reply, the red of Kate's blood the only color to smear the floorboards of her father's cabin.
She started to fade again, her head lolling to the side and her body going limp.
"Kate-"
"Castle," she breathed, the dull light of her eyes settled on him, a tiny curve of a smile lacing along her lips. "Love you - I loved you."
He could hear sirens in the distance.