CH10
Just for clarification purposes. The main house is made up entirely of 10-inch structural cinder block, interior and exterior walls. However since piping and wiring can't go inside cinder block whose holes are filled in with concrete, all of the walls that have plumbing have a furred out wall made of 2x4 wood studs with sheet rock on one side. All of the other walls are furred out using 2x4 studs with drywall also. For interior walls this means both sides. Since wood is not suppose to come into contact with concrete there is a 1-inch air gap between them.
This is part of what you do to have a home that can survive a hurricane. It also helps lower insurance costs.
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"Yeah, about that." Keep it together Kate, he's just your dad. "Like we said we've been doing this a number of times and Alexis has become my daughter in my eyes and Rick is my, … boyfriend." Kate knew she was never going to hear the end of this. Rick was going to jump all over that.
They had never had to explain themselves to anyone before, so they hadn't been forced to label what they have. So boyfriend girlfriend was as good a one to use as any.
"Mom is, … Kate is the only adult woman in my life that I could call mom. My real mother has never been much of a mother and Kate is everything that she isn't." Alexis explains.
"I never knew you hated Meredith that much dear." Martha speaks up.
"She's, … just not my mother to me. Kate cares for me and loves me. She's even fought to protect me. And she helps when I'm sad and does what she can to make me happy." Alexis shrugs her shoulders. Kate simply did everything Alexis thought a mother was supposed to do. Everything Meredith didn't.
"Meredith?" Jim asks.
"My first wife." Rick answers. "It's a long story, basically I caught her cheating on me and Meredith filed for divorce. Meredith got the house and money and I got Alexis, which was one of the better deals I've ever had." Rick moved over to Alexis to kiss her head.
"First wife?" Jim wasn't liking the sound of this guy and his daughter was involved with him.
"It's not what it sounds like dad." Kate really didn't want to have to do this in front of everyone, and hurt Alexis. "Come with me dad." And Kate takes his hand and lifts him up off of the sofa and out the back patio door.
"So you and Katherine." Martha can now question her son and granddaughter.
"Yes mother, me and Kate. … We're in love with each other and she isn't anything like Meredith or Gina. Kate doesn't care that I have money and actually cares about Alexis unlike any other woman ever has. Kate is just the type of woman I've been looking for without actually knowing it." Rick knew she was making him better. His days of page 6 had already been over before he met her, but having Kate he knew he was never going to be thought of like that again.
In fact he had every intention of taking care of that during this event.
Jim and Kate were soon back inside and from Rick's point of view Jim looked a lot more happy. It did however get Rick to look at Kate. "I'll tell you later babe." Kate whispers to him.
"Oh, there is one thing we need to do for you two unless you brought one. It gets warm here and while the A/C is on now, we turn off the two in this room and turn on the one's in the bedroom and you'll find that it gets to warm outside to dress in anything but a swimsuit. And not to worry we have lots of sunscreen for everyone. So if you two didn't bring one we need to take you down to the store to get you one of more." Rick tells Jim and Martha.
"Grams only has just the one." Alexis speaks up since she packed for Martha.
"I don't have one, just shorts and t-shirts." Jim offers up.
"I'll let Kate take you down to the store to find 2 or 3 suits to wear. As to wearing a t-shirt, that's up to you. Personally I don't." Rick tells him and it had Kate smiling since she loved seeing him bare chested. And Kate had a surprise for him this trip. She had bought 3 new bikini's Rick had never seen her in before along with a couple of new wraps.
Rick headed for the master bedroom to change and Alexis got Martha up so she could change while Kate grabbed the keys and took her father down to the store.
"Find at least 2 if not 3 that are in your size dad and the flip flops are over there." Kate tells him and walks over to the flip flops and grabs 2 pairs for Martha to try since she had brought her own as usual.
Kate had her items sitting on the counter and waited for her father. When he finally had his on the counter. "Cash or charge sir?" Kate asked him, and was instantly laughing after seeing the look on his face.
"Sorry dad, Alexis pulled that on me my first few times here, so I couldn't resist. Come on, it's already getting hot outside and in here." Kate tells him since the building was closed except for the coolers being the only thing working.
Kate locked the door and pulled down the hurricane shutter and locked it in place. "What are those." Jim points at what Kate just pulled down. "Hurricane shutters. If history holds we will have 3 pass us by while we are here. And we need them, especially the first one in a few days. The cistern under the house is kinda low at the moment. Rainwater supplies all our water.
It's really big. We only really need a couple of good rain storms. This first one will fill it from almost dry to overflowing." Kate explains as they walk back to the house.
Kate stepped inside and found Rick in one of his swim trunks looking through the DVD cabinet and it had her smiling. Kate was soon back out of their room wearing one of her new bikini's and a new wrap and soon had Rick's undivided attention.
Kate spun in place. "Like it?" Kate was smiling.
Rick stepped up to her and took Kate in his arms while she did the same to him. "I look forward to taking it right back off you tonight." Rick nuzzled in so he could start kissing Kate's neck with Kate tilting her head to allow him access.
"Sorry!" Jim quickly turned to look a different direction after stepping into the main room.
That got Kate and Rick to jump apart. They were going to have to get used to having Jim and Martha around. Alexis didn't have a problem anymore about witnessing the two of them kissing each other.
"Sorry dad, we'll try and keep in PG rated." Kate tells him. "I'll find Alexis, we need to move some of the cold drinks up from the store." Kate tells them and give Rick a quick kiss and goes in search of Alexis and pick up the quad with the trailer while the golf cart charges.
"Do we need to have the 'what are your intentions?' speech?" Jim asks looking at Rick after Kate and Alexis were gone.
"No sir, my intentions are completely honorable and I have 9 months to prove it to you." Rick tells him.
"If your story is accurate I probably have you two to thank for Kate being so happy." Jim offers.
"Kate is an amazing woman, you and your wife have done a good job of raising her to be the woman she is now." Rick tells him putting the DVD in the player.
"I'm not sure I can take much credit for that." Jim knew he had let his daughter down when his wife died.
Rick wanted to say something, it's just that they had already dropped a bomb on him and his mother. Adding another one about him knowing all about his trip with a whiskey bottle didn't sound right, so he kept his mouth closed.
"The early years is when a child's personality is formed, and you and your wife had everything to do with that." Rick points out.
Jim was however finding that he was learning to like him. His daughter obviously did. "I don't know too many young women that can fly a plane." Jim points out.
"That was all Alexis's doing. I was going to hire a pilot and she took it upon herself to learn. I may have paid for the lessons, but I had nothing to do with it. Alexis can accomplish pretty much anything when she puts her mind to, and I can't, just isn't in her vocabulary." Rick tells him, sounding proud of his little girl.
Jim could hear it in Rick's voice. Rick was a father, just how had Katie turned into mom?
Kate and Alexis had returned and were transferring the drinks into the refrigerator. "Where's grams?" Alexis asks as they finish.
"I haven't seen her." Rick tells her, getting Alexis to knock on her bedroom door and open it when no one answers.
"Alexis dear, I look terrible in this, … thing." Martha was standing in front of the mirror looking at herself in the only one piece swimsuit she owned that Alexis had found and packed for her.
"We have more down in the store grams plus it helps if you use a wrap." Alexis tells her and disappears into her bedroom going through the adjoining bathroom.
"Here use this and follow me down to the store. You're going to need more than one anyway grams." Alexis tells her.
"We're going down to the store." Alexis informs everyone when the emerge into the main room. And Alexis takes Martha down to the store using the quad since it seats two.
After the movie Rick went down to the cistern to measure how much water they had. "Same as always, we really need that storm that will show up in a few days." Rick informs them.
Dinner turned out to be more marinated papaya steaks and cut fruit. "Not to worry, tomorrow will be different." Rick tells them, since tomorrow was going to be a pig hunting day. Good thing about doing this so many times, Rick had gotten good a cutting up a pig. They now had pork chops to add to the others. The following day Rick and Kate would go out shark fishing.
"My poor arms!" Kate moans. It was one of the things about everything re-setting on them. They lost their tan and Kate lost her guns.
It did however get Kate a kiss from Rick. "And my hands and oil can fix all that." Rick kissed her again.
"What's wrong with your arms?" Jim asks stepping from the back patio where he had stepped out to, to have a quick peek. Now he was seeing Kate in Rick's arms, likely having just finished kissing, and he wasn't sure how he felt about that.
"Castle will go out hunting for a pig tomorrow morning allowing us to have baby back ribs, pork shoulder, bacon and pork chops. The following day we go shark hunting so that we can fill the freezers with meat." Kate explains not leaving Rick's arms.
"I saw the smoker out back, smoked pork sounds nice. So does going fishing." Jim was all for fishing.
"This is deep sea fishing dad. Though we will go fishing for catfish eventually." Kate comments.
"There's nothing to say that you two can't go fishing together tomorrow while I'm out pig hunting." Rick offers.
Kate perked up instantly. "We can can't we." Kate wasn't used to having her dad around. "Want to go fishing with me tomorrow dad? … You'll get to see Flash." Kate was grinning.
Jim saw the look on Kate's face and the fact that Rick was shaking his head. "Sounds, … nice." Jim was conflicted. It did however earn Rick a light punch in the chest.
"I'll go get the rods out of storage and put them on the boat along with the tackle box." Kate offers and goes out the back patio door.
Rick waited until the door was closed. "Don't say I didn't warn you. … Flash has 3 outboards aft. She's capable of 70 plus, and trust me Kate knows how to get up to those speeds. Just remember to take a fresh pair of shorts with you." Rick warns him and starts chuckling at the look on Jim's face.
Just as the sun was going down Rick led everyone into the office, which made things crowded since it wasn't all that big, and turned on the radio and started calling for Robert in England. Problem was Robert didn't know who they were so Rick had to play dumb.
What Jim and Martha learned was that England was locked up tight already. There were still a few boats under power that were making their way across the channel. Each was intercepted by the navy and searched from bow to stern, before being allowed to get close.
Robert had only been talking to his contact in the navy for just the one day so far. He did know however that Europe was devastated by what was presently being called a disease. A very fast acting one.
He knew that there were roughly two different varieties of the same disease. At first it had taken hours if not days allowing it to travel by plane. However it had mutated into something fast acting.
Rick had signed off. "Maybe that explains why our warning to the CDC and WHO didn't work." Rick offers.
"We told them how to use the invisibility for the mutated version that didn't work on the original version." Kate finishes his thought for him.
"Even the navy when we told them couldn't do anything about it." Rick keeps going.
"But it's the mutated version now, right. So who do we tell?" Kate asks.
"Our contact is still limited. Robert hasn't created a trusting relationship with his navy contact yet. We don't even know if we can talk to Andy in Alaska this early." Rick thinks ahead.
"We need him to talk to someone in Japan, and we didn't get in contact with anyone in the Midwest until months from now." Kate went down their list of people.
"There's your friends in the 12th using our satellite phones." Rick offers.
"Who in turn have limited contact with anyone outside of Manhattan thanks to the infection. And in just a couple of days they are going to nuke Boston, Philadelphia and DC to try and stop the spread.
Likely everything south of that is already gone." Kate points out.
"Taking out the CDC." Rick surmises.
"You two know what is wrong and how to stop it?" Jim looks at the two of them.
"We do now, only because of how many times we've done this dad. Earlier we had no idea since we forgot what we learned the previous time.
At first all of this felt like Déjà vu. Things felt familiar but we just couldn't place it. Now that we've done it so many times we understand what is happening." Kate tells him.
"How many times?" Jim was curious while afraid of the answer since it looked like this was real.
"We stopped counting somewhere around 20." Kate tells him.
Jim tried to work that out in his head. "You've spent the last 15 years doing this?" Jim's mouth fell open along with Martha's.
"It's why I love them dad. These two are my family. … Alexis has become my daughter and I love her. It's why she calls me mom. … And Rick, is, ..." Kate didn't know what to call him. Boyfriend was so weak sounding for what he meant to her. Rick had never proposed during any of those nine months so he wasn't her fiancé. They obviously couldn't get married so he wasn't her husband.
Rick had wanted to wait but he could see the look on Kate's face. "Hold that thought." Rick got up and ran for their bedroom and his bag, and was quickly back.
"Katherine Houghton Beckett, since I met you at that coffee shop you've made my life extraordinary. Now I can't imagine my life without you in it. I had planned on making this some grand gesture after our parents could see how much we love each other. However I can't take seeing the hurt in your face, ... so." Rick gets down on one knee and offers up his little black box to a Kate Beckett who had tears running down her face with her hands over her mouth.
"Would you do me the honor of being my wife? … We can figure out how to get married when we stop repeating this, … event." Rick uses his free hand to open the box.
3.60ct Natural Untreated Burmese Ruby Platinum Ring with 1.44cts of Round Brilliant Diamonds.
Kate could only manage to whisper out a yes that she feared only she could hear so she began nodding her head and wrap her arms around Rick's neck and kiss him soundly after Rick stood up. And then watched Rick slide the ring onto her finger.
The tears were still flowing when she kissed him again. Kate broke from the kiss to smile a brilliant wide smile at Rick and heard Alexis say "YES!" And pump her fist. Which got Kate to open up and invite her into their group hug.
"This event has to end mom, it has to." Alexis wanted her life back just as badly.
The three of them heard a sniffle and turned to see Martha had tears. "It was gorgeous." Martha tells them. "Let's see it." And Martha took Kate's hand. "It's unusual and, … big."
"Kate is unusual since there isn't anyone else like her, so she deserves something special and unique." Rick defends his choice of ring styles.
"It's gorgeous Rick." Kate looked at it as Martha looked at it. "He's my fiancé dad." Kate answers his question.
It was fast for Jim since he didn't even know Kate was involved with Rick and now she's engaged. It got Jim to open his mouth to say something, only to close it and think this through.
"Do you love him Katie?" It was his one and only prayer.
"With all my heart dad. … With all my heart." Kate answers his question and not letting go of Rick.
They discussed what was going to happen tomorrow and when and watched Matha and Jim excuse themselves and go to their room for the night.
Kate was sitting wrapped up in Rick's arms while holding her hand where she could see her new ring. It felt weird having something on that finger. It had gone empty for so long and she had consigned herself to leaving it that way.
"Happy?" Rick asks taking Kate's left hand in his so he could look at the ring on her finger with her.
"Very. … I had convinced myself that there wasn't going to be anyone in my life and it allowed me to move up from officer to detective and now captain of my own precinct. … If I could just get there." Kate really was tired of doing this.
"You'll be there Kate, you'll be there. We've ruled out a lot of things and we've even figured out who likely had your mother killed." Rick offers.
"With no proof babe. We're basically guessing. We've got nothing any prosecutor can use and get a conviction." Kate points out.
"We need that one domino as dad puts it. Just who is that domino and how do we reach him?" Alexis questions. Who had been sitting in a side chair just watching them.
"We know it was three cops, not one cop, one commissioner and one prosecutor." Rick needed to fix that portion of his book.
"We know that Montgomery is involved, just now how exactly. But enough that he is being paid enough to buy dads house in the Hamptons for his silence." Alexis points out.
"Your CIA guy managed to get into that Cayman account to find out who owns it. Just that there is nothing illegal in any of this." Kate points out.
"He's dirty Kate. He's got blood all over his hands, even IF he isn't the one who did the killing. … We're convinced he's getting the money from drugs now. It's the one answer that makes sense. Why he doesn't have to be beholding to any PAC's or anyone else." Rick points out.
"Without an ounce of proof that will stand up in court." Kate points out.
"We need that domino. He likely knows." Rick tries to get Kate to see.
"Fine I'll talk with Espo and have him dig while Roy is trapped in the precinct with no access to him." Kate relents, finally.
"He's locked himself away Kate. He's hiding out like all the other Senators.
Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, it's only 61 miles or about an hour by car from DC. Even less since they are using helicopters to get there." Rick points out.
"He has surrounded himself with people that he can't afford to have find out what he is doing. Plus his military killers are either infected, going to be infected or trapped just like we are. Except we have access to a domino." Rick points out.