Chapter 12

Site 34 - Queens

Bracken is spent after his story, and he leans into his chest, sucking air. Beckett steps towards him, not ready to give up the interrogation.

"Taffet. Heather Taffet was your boss?"

Bracken nodded weakly. Booth steps forward, ripping the man's shirt out of his waistband, revealing a pale, slightly overweight stomach. A rough, ugly scar sits just above where Bracken's appendix should be.

"What do you think?" Booth asks Brennan. "Could Taffet have done that?"

Brennan leans in. "The cut shows some medical training, but I have no prior work of Taffet's by which to compare. I would merely be guessing."

"I get it, Bones, but guess anyway."

"I don't feel comfortable doing that. But I can say that it was not done in a hospital, and is otherwise consistent with the elements of his story."

Booth drops the shirt and swears under his breath. "Taffet's dead, Bracken, and even before that, she's been gone from here for years."

"She was here long enough. After that night, she had me start laundering the kidnapping money. She'd been running the cops from the beginning."

"And after she left?"

"Her boss... he'd contact me."

"How?"

"It'd be different each time. Go to a bookstore and find a particular book. Send a letter with a made up return address. Something left in my car or a note my wife would find in her purse. Nowadays it's mostly emails."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know … no! no!" he says quickly, worried that Booth or Beckett won't accept the answer. "I really don't. I knew Taffet because I worked with her. But, after she was gone, the only people I ever interacted with were different random guys. I hired a PI once to follow them, see if I could find their boss. He's never been heard from again."

"Then what did he have you do?"

"Launder money. Make sure that the DA's office passed on certain cases due to lack of evidence. He had me wire money to some military outfit a couple of times. I didn't know why, most of the time. I didn't know the one time was for your mom until years later, when he had me do the same thing and then Raglan turned up dead."

"Why did he have my mom killed then, if it wasn't about the kidnappings?"

"I don't know! I really don't. I told you, I didn't even know why I was sending out money, I was just too scared to care. But..."

"What?"

"The day before she was killed, your mom came to us and made an information release request."

"About what?"

"An undercover officer."

"Bob Armin."

"Yeah. I didn't make the connection until a lot later, when a paralegal had me sign off on the month's requests. I don't know what she found. Hell, I don't even know if she found anything. It just ... it never seemed like a coincidence, you know?"

Neither Beckett nor Booth says anything, but Castle sort of nods, knowing what Bracken means.

"Why did you pretend like you were in charge?"

Bracken looks about ready to cry. "I was told you'd come after me. He said you'd think I was the guy in charge, and that I couldn't let you know otherwise. I was supposed to do whatever I had to to keep you away."

Beckett looks up and away, like she can't decide to get angry or just quit. Booth makes a motion with his hand, pulling all four of them away from Bracken. They regroup, once again, in the corner.

"So now what do we do with him?"

"Well, he's nothing but a liability to us now. We leave him alive and he either turns us in or turns us over to his boss."

"NO!" Bracken yells. Everyone turns to stare at him. "If I turn you in... he'll know. He'll worry I talked to you. He'll kill me..." Bracken says. He continues, barely above a whisper. "He'll make it hurt first."

Beckett waits a few seconds, then goes over to Bracken. She kneels down next to him, sympathetic and motherly this time.

"There is one option, Bracken. It goes like this. You were getting tired, you needed some fresh air. Your bodyguard had gone off to the bathroom, so you figured you could slip out into the alley for a minute for some fresh air."

"I still smoke, every so often. I could say I was sneaking a cigarette."

"And you heard a noise. You went to the end of the alley the one away from the front, and there was a mugging. The mugger hit you, and then ran off. You tried to chase him, but after a block or two, you had to sit down, because the punch made your head hurt. You must have fallen asleep, but when you woke up, you wandered back to the fundraiser, but you tried to stay hidden. It wouldn't be good to be seen in your condition. Could you tell that story?"

Bracken starts to nod vigorously, but then stops. "Wait, how do I explain to them that it doesn't look like I got punched?" he asks.

Beckett stands up, and like she did a few days prior, strikes out hard, a wide closed-fist haymaker that connects just inside Bracken's temple, where the eye socket starts, and the flesh will bruise easily.

"I don't think that will be a problem," she says.

Size 32 Brooklyn

After dropping Bracken in an alley three blocks from the fundraiser, they all retreat to Booth's second hidey-hole, a small apartment in Brooklyn. On the way, Booth calls in another code to have Hodgins' team sweep and dispose of the warehouse. The apartment is a third-floor one bedroom walkup in Brownsville.

"I have to say, Agent Booth, I'm not sure we're all going to fit in this closet."

"Shut it, fancy boy. Those of us that work for a living have to put up with places like this. My place, when I first became an agent, was smaller than this."

Castle looks around. He was really just trying to lighten the mood, but the place is a dump. He wonders for a moment; Kate's a cop and yet her place is in Manhattan, much larger and much nicer than this place. He does the math, and is pretty sure that her property taxes are more than what she takes home in salary. So her frugality is largely a show. Interesting, he thinks. Just another weird thing about Beckett that she's never let him know.

But not something to worry about tonight.

Booth turns on the TV, an old CRT whose colors have faded, but is connected to a digital converter. The local news is all covering Bracken's story. They watch for a few minutes, trying to guess whether Bracken is going to out them or not.

For a tense thirty minutes, no one talks.

Eventually the news ends without any interesting revelations, and the four let out a collective breath. Booth breaks the silence.

"Well, we're safe for the night, anyway, so let's get some rest. Better or worse, Hodgins planned for four of us to be in this place, so we got a queen in the bedroom and two twins out here. You can ... push the beds together... if you want."

Castle is fine with that, though he'd like to call dibs on the bigger bed, he's sure Booth would consider that a shootable offense. Beckett, however, appears reluctant.

"Don't we need to discuss our plan of attack first?" she asks.

"My plan of attack is this. Soldier's rules - never pass up an opportunity to piss, eat or sleep, cause you won't know when it'll come again. I need all three. We all do."

Castle steps in. "We'll be sharper in the morning, with sleep and some pancakes."

"Still, we need to find out what my Mom found out about Armin."

"Yeah," Booth says, "we do. To-mor-row."

Kate tries to stare him down, but eventually gives up. The next several minutes are taken up with logistics - taking turns with the bathroom, making the beds. Castle is impressed by Booth's planning abilities - or his friend's anyway - the place is a dump, but it's clean, well stocked, and the beds are firm. Castle and Beckett are close enough in size to Booth and Brennan that some clothes sharing is possible. At least bedclothes anyway. Morning will bring its own challenges.

Castle comes out of the bathroom last to find Brennan and Booth gone to the bedroom. Beckett is waiting for him, sitting on the edge of one of the beds. He notes, happily, that she took Booth's advice and pushed the two beds together.

He crawls into bed without a word, and she tucks in beside him, a teaspoon to his soup spoon, as if they've been doing this for years, instead of one night.

"Does it ever end, Castle?"

"Does what end?"

"Every time I... we ... get one step closer, it's really just two steps farther away. Now we don't even know why she was killed."

"We know now it has to do with Armin."

"Any records around Armin would be held at 1 PP. I can't even get in there with my suspension."

"But I can."

She slides around in his arms so that she's facing him. "The mayor?"

"I'll claim it's research on cold cases for possible stories."

"But if I can't go with you..."

"It's research. I'm good at research."

"I'm more worried about you than the research."

Castle starts. Two days ago, she was choosing her mother's case over him, but now... he looks at her; his thinking must've shown on his face, because hers has softened.

"Yes, Castle. I told you, I choose you."

"Well, I'll take Booth with me then. Because I don't think The Dragon is giving us a choice."

She tucks her head down into the crook of his neck. "No, I guess he isn't," she says into his collarbone. He hugs her tighter.

"Hey, I think Booth is right. Enough for tonight. We both need sleep."

"Just sleep?"

"Well..."

She laughs, and then leans in for a kiss. The talking portion of the night is over.

In the bedroom, Booth and Bones find themselves having a similar conversation.

"Bones, I'm thinking ... You should head back to D.C. You could be under Cantilever's protection with Angela and Hodgins."

"You think I'm not valuable here?"

"I'm thinking of what I can do to make you and the baby safe."

Bones' rests her head on his chest. Her hair tickles his nose for a second and he's back in his room, nearly a month ago, when he comforted her after Vincent's death.

Only a month.

"It's a sound strategy, Booth. And maybe, one day, it will be an appropriate one. But I don't want to leave you."

"Bones..."

"First off, Booth, Broadsky left the note in my apartment. I'm involved, as much as you. And second ... I find that I am unwilling to leave you, even if it were the logical thing to do. I guess that means I love you."

She's said something like this a few times, like she know what she feels, but is still trying to rationalize it. He's fine with it. She'll get there, he knows.

"Okay, Bones. But we have to find a way to get you more sleep and food."

"The idea that a pregnant woman needs to consume twice as much is the byproduct of social constructionalism."

"Socio convolutedism aside, Bones, chasing madmen while running from snipers isn't typically considered a good idea for a pregnant woman."

"I would assume that such a situation has happened too few times..."

"Bones," Booth interrupts, knowing by her change in language that she's feeling off-balance. "Let's get some sleep."

She stops talking, and tucks further into his side, her right leg and arm coming up over him. "I do enjoy sleeping next to you far more than I thought I would. I wonder if it has some evolutionary anticedant to when..."

Booth decides to end the conversation by kissing her.