Path to Paradise

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Beckett really - really - could have used Castle here today.

Esposito kept throwing her dark looks across the bullpen, and she knew she was jumpy, but having a sniper terrorizing the city would do that to a woman whose boyfriend had been shot in her place. Especially when she'd moved in with said boyfriend and now was attempting to console two of them over the relative merits of her safety in a crowd of police officers.

Not that she wasn't running to her therapist's office every morning after a quick coffee with Castle, not that she didn't find her heart fluttering and her throat closing up whenever they were called to a fresh scene.

Not that she wasn't killing herself to solve this case.

But she had to admit that the Twelfth Precinct wasn't the ideal place for him right now. And Beckett herself wasn't the ideal partner for him either. Though she missed his coffee fiercely.

So when she saw her father's ID on her phone, Beckett jumped to her feet with that peculiar feeling of dread now long associated with Jim's reaching out to her first. She knew it was irrational, thank you, therapy, but with everything that had been going on in her life, it didn't really feel all that irrational.

It felt like bracing herself for impact.

Beckett scuttled for the break room and pushed her body into the corner space by the vending machine, pressing her head to the wall as she closed her eyes and answered. "Hello, Dad?"

"I know you're at work," he began, no preamble but a kind of strange excitement in his voice. "But I was talking to Rick the other day and it got me thinking-"

"Wait. What?" She wasn't certain her father had ever formally met Castle. Other than a few visits in a hospital when the writer had been unconscious.

"How about the two of you take a long weekend, a few days on either side, and use the cabin?"

"Dad," she said, trying to stem the veritable flood of planning her father apparently had been doing. "What's this about? The cabin?"

"Thanksgiving is coming up soon, and I know you're in the middle of this - the gunman out there. I've been watching the news. And even though I find myself sitting by the phone waiting on that call, I bet it's worse for Rick. Not being able to be there."

"Gates won't let him back in until he's cleared," she murmured. He had a department psychologist, assigned by 1PP, and if that didn't tell her something about how serious this was- "Dad, when did you talk to Castle?"

"Oh, couple weeks ago, honey, met for lunch. That's not important here. I wanted to offer you the cabin, because I know you, and I'm pretty sure you won't take a break unless you're forced."

"Dad, I'm in the middle of a case," she gritted out. "And since you said you've been watching the news, you know I don't have time."

"When it's done, Katie. All I'm saying. When it's done, you take Rick and you get out of here."

"Dad," she said tightly, her mind racing. When had Castle met up with her father? "What have you and Castle been talking about?"

"Oh, honey," he chuckled. "Don't worry, nothing too bad. Just that time when you were six and you took off your shirt and said you were playing baseball the same as the boys."

"Dad," she growled.

"Rick really liked that one."

"When did you guys - I never even introduced you." She felt strangely stolen from, the fact that she hadn't been given the chance to tease Castle with the prospect of meeting her dad, have her dad tease her with all the stories he'd apparently already told.

"Before all of this, I showed up at his apartment and asked him to look out for you."

"What?" she gasped, jerking upright and smacking her elbow into the vending machine. "Dad. Why did you-"

"I could tell he cared for you, sticking around like had for so long. And the way you talked about him. I figured if someone could stop you - it'd be him. And then he got shot. I've - ah - felt rather guilty over that. Found myself eager to get together when he called me."

Kate slumped back to the wall, her heart thundering. "You didn't - it wasn't your fault. Nothing you did."

"I basically charged him with the task of throwing himself in front of a bullet."

"Dad," she sighed. "As Castle has told me numerous times now - he was only trying to knock me down. He never intended to take a bullet."

"And as you and I both know, doesn't change a thing."

No. It didn't.

"So take your hero to the woods, Katie. Give him a chance. He deserves it."

"A chance?" she cried out, indignant. "Dad, I moved in with him."

"You moved in with him?" A grumble in her father's throat that had her shoulders coming up. "Why am I only hearing about this now?"

"Well, I don't know, Dad," she drawled, "since the two of you are apparently so close." Castle had called him, not the other way around this time.

"Don't be pert," he said easily. "I'll swing by your - well, his place, won't I? - today and drop off the keys. You know how to start the generator?"

"Yes. But Dad-"

"No buts, young lady. Give Rick a chance."

What chance? Wait. A couple weeks ago? That had been the day Castle had come back to the loft in a suit.

"Dad," she said sharply. "What's going on?"

But her father had already hung up.

Or quite conveniently, he had hung up and quit the witness's stand the moment she'd hit on this very interesting line of questioning.

"Rick Castle," she muttered. "What the hell did you do?"

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