On Saturday of the sixth week since he had left the city, Castle finally felt that he had made sufficient progress on his book that he could take a morning off. He did so with great relish, sleeping obscenely late and then, a little after one o'clock, wandering into the family room in his boxers to turn on the XBOX. The house was blessedly quiet, only the sound of the surf and seagulls rolling in through the open windows, and he relaxed onto the sofa with a sigh, pulling on his headset and scrolling down his friends list.
He paused over one name. Ryan and Esposito were playing Halo. Excellent! He smiled. He hadn't spoken to anyone from the city since coming to the Hamptons, and this would be a great chance to catch up on whatever he was missing. He couldn't wait to hear about what awesome cases he'd missed out on, and to find out how they and Lanie and the Captain and… everyone… were doing.
He grimaced slightly at the thought that he was going to be forced to hear about how happy Beckett and Schlemming were, but there was no help for it. And even if he would rather not hear about the robbery detective who'd ruined all his chances, he did want to hear about Beckett. He took a deep breath, steeling himself for the inevitable, and joined their in-progress game.
When he materialized on the playing field, he couldn't believe his luck; Esposito was located just in sight, and Castle took him out with a headshot before Esposito could move. "Whoa," he crowed into his headset. "Might want to take better cover there next time, Target."
There was a long silence – long enough to make Castle nervous. "Uh… Esposito? Ryan?"
"Yeah." Both men answered at the same time, their voices identically flat.
Castle paused, confused. "Is… something wrong?"
"Nah, man, why would anything be wrong?" Esposito replied in that same flat voice.
"'Course not," Ryan agreed, also flat. "Everything's fine here."
"O…kay…" Castle said, staring at the television screen, thoroughly confused.
"So, how's the Hamptons?" Ryan finally asked.
His brow furrowed, Castle replied, "Quiet. I've been getting a lot of writing done."
"Yeah. Writing." Esposito's sarcasm was nearly biting. "That's what the kids are calling it these days, right?"
"Yeah, I bet you're getting a lot of writing done with that blonde chick hanging all over your arm," Ryan agreed.
"Actually, Gina's not here," Castle admitted. What was with the two of them? "I made it almost ten days with her in the house before I remembered why we got divorced in the first place. I've been by myself for over four weeks."
There was another long pause before Ryan spoke again. "Dude. Seriously?"
"Seriously. Guys, what is going on with you two?"
Esposito answered this time. "I'm… not sure we can really talk about it right now, bro."
And suddenly, Castle felt himself pale. "What the hell is going on, guys? What's going on? Is it Beckett? Is she okay?"
The pause that followed his question seemed to go on forever before Esposito finally answered. "We don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?" Castle jumped to his feet, headset still on, and ran for the bedroom, grabbing the first clothes he could find to pull on. "What the hell is going on down there?"
"Well," Ryan finally said, "She got shot a couple weeks ago."
"WHAT?" Castle practically screamed into the headset. "She got shot and you didn't call me?"
"Dude!" Esposito shouted back. "She freaking dumped Demming so she could hook up with you, and you took off to the freaking Hamptons with your freaking bimbo ex-wife that you hate. Why the hell should we have called you?"
Castle froze in mid-motion, halfway into his shirt. "She… what?"
"She broke up with Demming," Ryan reiterated. "When she pulled you out of the party, that's what she was gonna tell you. But then Gina showed up and you… you ripped her heart out, man."
Castle sat down on the side of the bed. "I didn't know," he said softly.
"Yeah," Esposito replied. "We know."
Castle finished pulling his shirt on. "Where is she?" he asked finally. "What hospital is she in?"
"She's not in the hospital," Ryan told him. "She was in for a week, but it was a through-and-through to the shoulder so once they got her stitched up and dealt with the blood loss, they released her."
"All right. I'll go to her apartment." Castle began throwing things into his bag.
"Don't bother," Esposito's voice cut him off. "She's not there. Hasn't been in days."
Castle fell to the side of the bed again. "Where is she?"
"That's what we're trying to tell you," Ryan explained patiently. "We don't know. She's just gone."
Three hours later, Castle was standing in the middle of the 12th Precinct, digging through Kate's desk looking for clues. Unfortunately, all he found besides her usual paperwork and office supplies was half a bag of gummi bears, a broken pair of sunglasses, Kate's spare makeup kit, and a well-worn paperback copy of Storm Rising. He shut the last drawer with a bang of frustration. "Fine," he murmured to himself. "I'll go to her apartment."
"No, you won't."
Castle spun around. "Lanie!"
"Uh-uh, you do not get to Lanie me." She folded her arms, staring him down. "How could you do that to her?"
"I thought that was what she wanted!" Seeing Lanie's disbelieving look, he dropped himself into his usual chair. "Look. I asked her to come up to the Hamptons with me. Just for the weekend. First she lied to me and said she had to work, then I found out she actually had out-of-town plans with Demming. She gave me this speech about how she didn't want things to be awkward between us now that she was with Tom." He said the name with a contemptuous toss of his head. "She wanted me to move on so she could be with him, so I did. How was I supposed to know she was going to change her mind that night?"
Lanie paused, examining his logic, and found that what he said actually kind of made sense. It just figured that this would happen to the two of them. "Have you called her yet?" she asked gently.
"Of course I've called her. I did nothing on the trip back here besides call her. She won't answer."
Lanie briefly considered the notion of making a call herself, but discarded the idea. This one they were going to have to work out for themselves. She shook her head. "Go home, Castle. You're exhausted. Get some rest. I'll come by in the morning and we'll talk about what you ought to do."
"In the morning? No. No, I need to find her now." He stood, turning toward the elevator. "I'm going to her apartment."
"You do, it's just gonna make things worse," Lanie pointed out. "You think she wants you rummaging through her sock drawer while she's not there?"
He turned back to her, and she felt pity fill her heart. She'd never seen a man look so desperate and so defeated at the same time. "Lanie, I don't know what else to do," he whispered.
"Go home," she repeated, her tone kind. "Keep trying to call her. Maybe she'll get so tired of the phone ringing that she'll pick up. I'll come by tomorrow and we'll talk."
He sighed, his shoulders slumping. "All right." He turned again and left.
Lanie rolled her eyes heavenward. "Lord, look out for fools like Castle and Beckett, would you?"
The first week Kate spent with her cousin was relatively uneventful. Kim hadn't been lying about being busy – in addition to all her research, she was also teaching two summer classes – and so Kate found herself spending quite a bit of time either curled up on the couch with Cujo and one of Kim's fantasy novels or lurking in the back of a classroom, fascinated by the topics of Kim's lectures. With so many distractions, it was easy for her to shut off the part of her brain that encompassed New York and everything related thereto. The Saturday following that week, though, was entirely different.
Kim dragged Kate out of bed early, squealing about monkeys. Once Kate was finally washed and dressed – an accomplishment that involved her bending over the kitchen sink while Kim washed her hair, since there wasn't room enough for both of them in Kim's tiny compartment shower – Kate found herself being dragged out into the sunlight again and whisked across town.
They got breakfast at a Shoney's, where Kate was only slightly horrified to find chicken nuggets and some kind of rice on the breakfast buffet. After breakfast, though, Kate learned why it was that Kim was going on and on about monkeys: she had decided to take Kate to the zoo.
"Really? The zoo?" Kate laughed at her cousin as they paid their admission fees. "You're like a big kid, Kim."
"I love the zoo," Kim replied. "Here's the thing." She took Kate's hand, drawing her to the side of a nearby enclosure. Inside, several small tiger cubs played fiercely under their mother's protective eye. "I spend all day, every day, in books reading and in classrooms teaching about people and their motivations for doing things. This event or that event is so much more complicated when you consider the ramifications of the blah blah blah that happened just before, when the blah blah did blah. You know? But animals…" Kim paused, leaning against a railing that was clearly marked Do not lean on railing. "Animals are simple. They have two motivations: food and reproduction. They don't have political leanings, they're not racist or sexist, they don't do petty things to get back at their exes, they don't have any of that extraneous bullshit that we have, and we think we're so evolved. Animals just… are. And that's enough for them."
Kate considered Kim's words as she watched the baby tigers play. They were so innocent, pouncing and tussling and squalling, and Kate found herself smiling as she watched them for the first time in weeks. She looked up to find Kim watching her, grinning back. "See?" Her cousin grabbed her hand again. "Now come on, I want to see the monkeys!"
They were just sitting down to a late lunch at a café in downtown Knoxville when Kate's cell phone started ringing. She checked the screen and felt her heart clench. It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the immediate vicinity when she saw Castle's name on her caller ID. Struggling for breath, she silenced the ringer and pushed the phone back into her pocket. A moment later, it rang again. She silenced it again. It rang a third time.
By the seventh call, Kim was looking at Kate with a mixture of confusion and amusement. "Why don't you just answer it?"
"Because if I never talk to him again, it'll be too soon," Kate replied honestly. She looked down at the Caesar salad which had seemed so appetizing just minutes ago, poking it listlessly with her fork.
"Aha," Kim said softly. "And now we get to the reason behind your sudden desire to see east Tennessee. What's his name?"
"Rick," Kate confessed.
"Rick? Castle? The writer guy?"
Kate nodded. "That's the one."
"But I thought Mom said you were seeing some guy named Tom."
"I was."
Kim studied her cousin for a long moment before leaning back in her chair. "I think maybe you'd better start at the beginning. And eat; you're still too thin."
The story took longer than anticipated, because Kate did start at the beginning: with the case that had brought her together with Castle for the first time. By the time Kate got to Castle's nosing into her mother's murder, a revelation that brought an indignant gasp from Kim, they had finished their lunch and were strolling down the street. When Demming came into the story, they were seating themselves under the gazebo in Fountain City Park. And when Kate finally choked out what had happened on that last, horrible night, Kim reached out and wrapped her arms around her cousin, holding Kate tightly as she finally cried the desperate, painful tears she'd been holding inside for almost six weeks.
Without knowing what else to do, Kim merely sat there, holding Kate tightly while she cried on Kim's shoulder, rocking her gently and whispering soothing nonsense into her hair. If a few tears of her own trickled out, no one was the wiser, and they had stopped by the time Kate had finally cried herself out.
Kate sat up, wiping at her eyes, and gave her cousin a watery attempt at a smile. "Sorry," she sniffled. "Didn't mean to break down on you."
"Honey, please, what are mostly-sisters for?" The two women laughed at their childhood nickname for each other. Kate's phone rang again, and she silenced it again without even looking at it. "You know you can't avoid him forever," Kim said softly. "Seems like he's pretty desperate to get in touch with you."
"Yeah, well he can stay desperate," Kate replied. "I'm not talking to him." She shook her head. "I was there, Kim. The words were actually coming out of my mouth. And then she showed up, and they weren't just going off for the weekend; they were going off for the entire summer." She sniffled, hiccupped, shuddered. "You have no idea… It hurt so bad, I thought I was going to die. I literally couldn't breathe for a second when she said that."
Kim nodded. "You're still gonna have to talk to him eventually."
"Not if I can help it." She silenced her phone again, making a face, her tone turning bitter. "He must have finally gotten out of bed long enough to play XBOX."
Kim's brow furrowed. "Lost me on that one."
"He plays XBOX with Esposito and Ryan," Kate explained. "He must have gotten on today and they told him about me being shot."
"Ah. And you're not feeling charitable enough toward him right now to let him know you're not dead."
"Bingo." Kate silenced her phone again. "Let him wonder." Then she snorted softly. "I'm surprised she hasn't made him stop by now."
Privately, Kim was as well; from what Kate had told her, this Gina person had to know that Kate was someone Rick was at least interested in. Were she in Gina's place, she would have serious problems with her lover spending all afternoon making frantic phone calls to another woman he was attracted to, shot or not. There was more to this story; she was sure of it. But now wasn't the time to try and push Kate for more details; that would come later. Now was the time to be there, be supportive, and hold her cousin while she cried.
As the sky was growing dark, they arrived back at Kim's apartment. Kate was mentally and physically exhausted and her shoulder was hurting, so she took a pain pill and went to bed. Kim seated herself at her computer, staring thoughtfully at the screen and wondering what she ought to do. The wisest course, at least as far as personal safety went, was to do nothing and remain firmly in Kate's corner against the Bad Almost-Boyfriend. But there was more to the story, and it was not in Kim's nature to leave stones unturned in a search for truth; that was part of what was making her dissertation so damned hard to write.
As she sat there, her fingers lightly stroking the home row of her keyboard and her brain running at ninety miles per hour, her own cell phone lit up and buzzed at her. She didn't recognize the number, though the area code was New York City. Curious, she flipped the phone open. "Hello?"
"Is this Kim Wilder?"
"Yes… Who's this?"
"My name is Lanie Parish. You don't know me, but I'm a friend of your cousin Kate. Are you in a place where we can talk for a few minutes?"
Kim felt her eyes widen. "Yeah. Hang on." She stood, grabbed her soda, and walked out onto the balcony, shutting the heavy glass door behind her. "I think she's asleep, but I came outside just in case. You want to share something with me about what's going on with this writer guy?"
"Girl, do I ever."
After hanging up with Lanie, Kim sat on her balcony for a long time, staring up at the sky. There were really relatively few options at this point. Doing nothing still remained the safest, for purely selfish reasons. But Kate had been through so much. She really deserved to be happy. And if Kim could help with that… Taking a deep breath, she opened her phone again and dialed the number Lanie had given her.
It rang several times, and Kim thought it was going to go to voice mail. At last, though, it was answered by a cautious male voice. "Hello?"
"Is this Richard Castle?" Kim asked.
"It is. May I ask who's calling?"
Kim took a deep breath. "Being a writer, Mr. Castle, I assume you're familiar with the term deus ex machina?"
"Of course," Castle replied, clearly confused. "What's this about?"
"Well, Mr. Castle, I think you're about to get yours. Lanie Parish gave me your number and suggested that I should call you; she seems to think we have a lot to talk about. My name is Kim Wilder. I'm Kate Beckett's cousin."