Chapter 9

Castle swallowed, trying to dismiss the worry that was curling in his belly. She was a hundred feet away? Was this the plan? How could this be the plan? How could they keep Beckett safe without letting her know they were here? How did Houghton know the other Castle would come here?

She was a hundred feet away.

Crap. He closed his eyes, his heart squeezing in his chest. Mere seconds away. All he had to do was take a few steps in the direction Houghton had pointed, and she would be in sight.

He opened his eyes, the soft light in the forest filtering down, dancing through the leaves, and he shook his head. Not yet.

"Pass me the tent," he said, turning back to Houghton and holding out his hands, and he was rewarded with a grin as she handed him the khaki green package.

"Tell me if you need help. I'm going to inventory our weapons and prepare a fire pit."

"We're having a campfire? I forgot to buy marshmallows and graham crackers."

She shot him a look, before replying. "Before night falls we're burning the machine in the trunk."

Alexis huffed for the third time in a row, the sound echoing around the empty room. The voicemail from her dad was still ringing in her ears, and she set the phone on her dresser, dialing in to listen to it again.

"Heyyyyy…" The first syllable was drawn out, and she frowned as she pulled her knapsack from the closet. "Sweetie, I'm going to be another day or two. I don't want you to worry, everything's good. But, uh-" He'd paused and she wondered again what the hell was going on.

Nothing made sense. Detective Beckett showing up, pretending like she was Kate for the whole drive down here until revealing she was Beckett's long estranged twin. She shook her head as she shoved a shirt into the bag, then her iPod.

"Just stay there, Alexis, and I'll be back soon. I love you."

She shook her hair back, grasping it in her hand and pulling it into a rough ponytail, then slinging the bag over her shoulder. Nothing added up, which, knowing her dad, meant he was in trouble, and she wasn't going to hang around the Hamptons any longer. She would take a cab to the train station, and then it would be just a few more hours before she was back in the city.

The bullpen was quiet, and Ryan took the opportunity to lean back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. Gates had left, Esposito was upstairs in the men's locker room, and at eight o'clock in the evening, only the bare minimum of officers were left.

What a day.

Their slow start had been turned upside down, their cold case shelved. A body had dropped the moment Castle had stalked out of the precinct. Ryan and Esposito had exchanged a few terse words on the ride to the scene, but he suspected his partner was as shell-shocked as he was. By the time they'd figured they needed to phone Castle, see where his head was at, they were pulling up at the crime scene, and - body parts strewn across the cold concrete floor of a warehouse - figuring out their friend was put on hold indefinitely.

The murder may have been messy, but it was nothing if not an easy solve; DNA evidence littered the scene, and they'd made short work of rounding up their suspect.

He cracked his fingers, exhaling slowly and reaching for his phone to check his messages. Not only had he been unable to call Castle, he'd barely spoken to Jenny all day, and man, at this time of night, after today… He just wanted to go home, curl into bed with his someone; he wanted to breathe deeply, soaking her in long after she was asleep, letting her scent and soft snuffling sounds remind him why he did this.

There was good in the world, and he did this for a reason. Like narcotics had been, before homicide, and the beat before that, he'd become a cop not because it was a job, but because it was a calling.

It was in his veins. But right now, he wanted Jenny, and he wanted oblivion.

He stood, at last. Jenny's latest message promised that dinner was waiting for him, and he only had the murder board to clean off, paperwork to box up, and he was free to leave. The rest of it would have to wait. The sound of the elevator was an invitation to turn his head, and he narrowed his eyes, shaking his head as the youngest Castle made her way into the bullpen.

Unlike Castle's swagger earlier today, Alexis was the picture of uncertainty. Rather than anger radiating off her, her hesitant steps were cautious, faltering as she made her way across the room.

"Alexis? Is everything okay?"

The look on her face promised that everything was not okay, and he stepped forward, half reaching toward her before he stopped himself.

"Detective Ryan?" she asked. "Have you seen my dad?"

"Well, actually, yeah," he said, nodding at Esposito's chair. "Take a seat. He was in here earlier today. What's up?"

She sank down into the office chair, looking younger than her - what was it, Ryan wondered, her fifteen years? Sixteen?

"He and Beckett's sister left this morning, they said they'd be back. But then he left me a voicemail, and I haven't been able to get on to him since."

"He and- who?" Ryan frowned. Since when did Beckett have a sister? He shook his head. Not important. If Beckett hadn't told them, they didn't need to know. A flash of betrayal laced its way through his body though. Javi knew, he must. Beckett and Esposito had always had a bond, he'd always been the new guy, at least until Castle had joined their team-

He swallowed, pushing the flare of chagrin down. He needed to figure out where Castle was now, for Alexis. "We went to the Hamptons, she said we were in danger, and then she and dad left this morning, and-" Alexis let out a sob, and Kevin gulped. Murderers? Those he could deal with? A crying teenage girl? No NYPD training had covered that particular contingency. "-And they didn't come back," she finished.

"It's okay," he said, in lieu of anything better to say.

"But, wait- you said my dad was here?"

"Yeah. He, uh- stopped by. Earlier. He seemed- actually, Alexis, he seemed pretty mad." Mad didn't begin to cover it, but how could he tell the man's daughter that - on some level - Castle had seemed out of his mind?

"Where did he go?"

"Home, I assume? But he was asking about Beckett, wanted to know where she was."

"I can answer that." Esposito said as he approached them, looking all the better for a shower, and shirt that wasn't covered in their suspect's blood, courtesy of a fist fight that had broken out moments before they'd arrested the man. Frankly, the way their perp and his buddy had been going at it, Javi had been lucky to avoid getting socked himself.

"You can?"

"Yeah. I called Beckett." He grimaced. "I called Beckett, got no answer, and then-" Espo had the good grace to look sheepish. "I called, uh- Jim."

Ryan raised his eyebrows at Esposito's confession. "Dude, when she finds out you called her dad, she's gonna kill you." Something else occurred to him. "Did you know Beckett had a sister?"

"No way." The look on his partner's face was something of vindication, and Ryan managed a half-hearted grin. For once he hadn't been the only one left in the cold.

"But where's Dad?" Alexis asked, and Javier shrugged.

"I don't know. But my guess is that he's up at Jim's cabin. According to Jim, cell phones are pretty hit and miss up there, but if he got in touch with Beckett, got the address, he's probably on his way up there."

"Great." Alexis stood up, straightening her shoulders with a determination that echoed Castle's stance today, albeit a hell of lot less threateningly. "What's the address?"

Alexis walked slowly from the subway station, not at all eager to return to an empty loft. Detectives Ryan and Esposito had been kind, and it had been good of them to give her Detective Beckett's father's address upstate. But she wasn't quite sure how that would help her. Without a car, she couldn't exactly go charging up there, and besides, even if she could drive, four hours was a long way to go on a whim.

Not for the first time since she'd left the precinct, she selected her dad from her contact list, listening yet again as it went straight to his voicemail. If only she'd thought to get Houghton's number before they left the Hamptons this morning. But they'd promised they'd be right back.

They'd made her promise she would stay in the Hamptons, too, and her stomach curled at the thought. Her dad trusted her, and she was betraying his trust by returning to the city. But even if Beckett was in trouble it didn't make a bit of sense that she, Alexis, was in any danger, and she shrugged, turning into Broome Street and making her way one more block, to the corner of Crosby.

She waved to the doorman as she entered the building, the sight of Mitch on night duty a reminder of just how late it had become. Had it really been just yesterday that she'd laughed with Houghton and her dad over coffee?

She leaned against the wall in the elevator, suddenly exhausted. Nine pm felt a lot like midnight right now, and she stretched her hands over her head, yawning as she stepped onto their floor, rounding the corner and pulling her key from her pocket.

The door was open.

Uh-oh.

Alexis shook her head, willing herself to think rationally. It was Grams, home early from L.A. Or maybe her dad had come home, maybe-

She pushed the door open, wincing at the familiar sound of its hinges, exhaling in relief as her father strode toward her from his office.

"Dad!" She laughed, her heart still pounding in her chest as she struggled to get a grip on her overactive imagination.

"Alexis."

There was no warmth in his voice, no light in her eyes, and she frowned.

"Dad?"

He stopped at the kitchen counter as he focused on her, and she shivered, the truth staring her straight in the face.

Slimmer than Richard Castle, this man was distant, his features cold. Almost mechanical in his now slow movement, he was looking at her as though she was an experiment, a puzzle piece, not like she was his daughter.

"You- you're not my dad." Terror gripped her, and she froze. The instinct to run thrummed through her body, but she continued to stand still, her brain waging a terrible war with her body as she tried to figure out what was going on here. Beckett had a sister. Or, Beckett had a doppelgänger who claimed to be her sister, and now her dad had one too, and what the heck was going on-

"No," the man agreed, his tone emotionless as he took a step toward her. "But you're going to tell me where he is. I need Richard Castle, and I need Katherine Beckett."

Night had fallen after the day passed slowly. Castle had spent the hours pacing as Houghton watched the cabin, stalking around reminiscent of the way she'd cleared all the perimeters at the Hamptons.

"You can't sleep either?" he whispered in the dark, and beside him, the machine shifted.

"I don't sleep," she said, her voice clear in the silence of the forest.

"You don't need to… rest?"

"I'm lying down," she pointed out.

"Are we safe here, Houghton?" he asked, and her silence was anything but reassuring. She moved again, the sleeping mat rustling below her, and he closed his eyes, picturing for a second that it was Beckett beside him.

"What about bears?" he imagined asking her, as if bears were the greatest threat in the world, as if he knew nothing of artificial intelligence and machines that were programmed to kill.

"There are no bears here," his Kate teased him, and she shuffled closer to him, whispering in his ear, "besides, you know I sleep with a gun."

"We have guns," Houghton said, her voice low in his ear, and he shuddered at the feel of her breath on his neck, intent on keeping his eyes tightly shut. If he went to sleep, there was always the chance that when he awoke this would all have been a dream. He pinched himself, though, unable to kid himself a moment longer; Beckett wasn't beside him, and ouch, his arm hurt where his finger and thumb had gripped too hard.

"Well, that other guy was easy enough to kill, right? So if I come here - the other me, I mean - we can just shoot him too."

She hesitated, and as the gentle breeze stirred the trees around their tent, her answer came, bringing with it with more questions.

"He was a second generation model. A II-38. But the other you - and me - we're third generation. III-47's We're almost impossible to kill."

A/N: I love that this story is getting so much love. Thank you. x And Kylie and Jamie for the beta, thank you! x