Authors Note: And here is Chapter 6. It's way longer than I intended, but I felt the initial stopping point didn't paint enough of the story. I'm hoping to post Chapter 7 later tonight or early tomorrow. I'd like to have this wrapped up before the show airs in Canada tomorrow night.
Thanks for reading/reviewing. I really appreciate it! As always, spoilers for episode 6X09 'Disciple', including the promo video and interviews from Tamala Jones and Andrew Marlowe, as well as one of the sneak peaks (a victims name, nothing else).
Her hands had gone numb first - the edges of the cuffs digging into her skin each time she stretched her hands to wrap around the chain. Kate had rarely been so grateful for being in such good condition physically, her arm and core strength providing enough stability to pull herself upright and relieve the pressure on both her shoulders and ease the struggle to breath while her body waged a war with gravity.
But, eventually, her legs had also started to tingle, forcing her to slowly release a grip on the chain and instead stretch out her feet to find purchase against the ground.
Whatever drug she had been given, the progress it made through her body was slow. She'd had minutes of consciousness in Castle's loft - her vision had blurred almost immediately and she'd been unable to put up much of a fight as the drowsiness had crept in. This was different, as if she was experiencing the world from a long tunnel, her limbs felt heavy, like she was trying to move through molasses or syrup. Everything was disjointed and stuttered - and that was without the light chattering of her teeth as the room continued to cool, her clothes and skin in no hurry to dry and offer some warmth.
And then there were her other injuries - she was more than a bit concerned about the state her left arm would be in once she was rescued and her right side burned with fire each time she gathered enough strength and energy to pull a deep breath instead the shallow pants she could manage from moment to moment.
The thing was, when you were stuck hanging from a pipe and waiting for rescue, there was time to think. To reflect. And she had realized, regardless of the number of times she'd faced death before, Kate had never been given that particular gift. She had always faced it quietly, working towards saving herself, or Castle, or New York City, in a steady blaze until there was no more time. She had been so cold in the freezer that deep philosophical thoughts had been beyond her. And the bullet, well, it had hit her before she knew it had left the barrel of the rifle.
Her reflection after staring death down had always come while she was safe at home, it was then she'd had time to process and fall apart. Now she had nothing but silence, nothing but time as she alternated between gripping the chain and struggling to touch the floor.
It was the quiet acceptance in her mind that was the scariest facet of all. Not the increasing difficulty to draw a breath, not the strain and pull of her muscles, not even the coldness or the throb of her arm. Somewhere deep inside, a part of her had accepted that this could be it. That she would suffocate or freeze to death or have her heart stop from whatever she'd been injected with.
It was the first time she could remember that every inch of her soul hadn't been scratching and clawing for life. And it scared the hell out of her.
Groaning, Kate extended her fingers again, wrapping them around the chain as she bent her wrists against the cuffs. She could feel her skin splitting open, the beads of blood smearing against the metal while she gritted her teeth and tensed her muscles to pull herself upward, a small cry falling out of her mouth as her shoulders and arms were relieved of the agonizing pressure and she sucked in deep, lingering breaths.
Maybe she had accepted it because it seemed inevitable, that her quest for hard facts and logic told her that she couldn't possibly keep up this back and forth game forever.
It wasn't that she wanted to die - she had never wanted anything less in her life - but, maybe, that she would be leaving behind something worthwhile. That, if her life was to end in this way, that she would go knowing that everyone in her life knew how much she loved them.
Maybe it was because she no longer had unfinished business that brought her some resemblance of peace.
It had taken an hour to establish a perimeter around the motel, another thirty minutes to canvass not only the building but any directly adjacent. The result had been what they'd all expected - Tyson wasn't in the building.
But there were indicators that he had been. It was accepted unanimously that all the evidence had been planted - before and after photos of the two victims in their gradual morphs from themselves into Lanie and Esposito. Letters and emails from the two of them to Tyson, detailing the ways in which he had guided and manipulating them into becoming something 'better' than themselves. To focus on an individual who had been deemed successful and worthy.
It appeared that both victims had been stalking Lanie and Esposito. Photos of them individually and as a couple spread across the room. Pictures snapped on the street, entering or exiting work and crime scenes, in bars or restaurants. Photos with Ryan, photos with Kate and himself. It all created a portrait so disturbing that Castle had thought he'd throw up the few bites of food he'd managed to eat in the past 24 hours.
The team had retreated at 11:45, dissolving into the shadows while he waited inside the room, the photos seeming to mock him and how oblivious they all had been to the danger.
He had put the 'Writer' vest on only at the insistence of the team leader, ripping it from Ryan's hand when he had held it out. Now he found himself grateful for the extra padding. It reminded him of Kate, it made him feel safer.
The remaining minutes were their own special agony, time in which Castle could sit and contemplate the last 24 hours. he hadn't dwelt on it much, to encased in the ultimate goal of finding Kate and making sure she was safe, but in the quiet moments he could feel the shreds of his self control unravelling.
He had told Kate once that there weren't many things he wouldn't do to protect the people he loved, his words issued with so much certainty that he felt it in his bones. Castle didn't like to think himself a man capable of murder but, in the height of Alexis' kidnapping, he had discovered that to not be the case. He was very capable of murder, perhaps even more so than the average man or woman on the street.
It was a dark side of him, one which he believed that everyone possessed in one form or another, and in the quietness of the night Richard Castle knew that he would kill, should anything happen to Kate. He would use his hands, not content to allow a weapon to do the job for him. His hands would be the device that took the life out of Jerry Tyson, or anyone else, who tried to harm Kate or anyone else in his family.
As the clock ticked away the minutes remaining, he was content with the knowledge while offering up prayers to a God that he wasn't sure he believed in that he would never be pushed towards that breaking point.
He was a man who prided himself on punctuality, measured steps cutting a path through the parking lot of the motel and straight up the stairs to the room he had once inhabited as a witness. The room where he had first been unmasked, had been forced to abandoned a carefully built facade. One where he should have put a bullet from Kevin Ryan's gun into the writer's head.
He sometimes debated with himself on if that had been a mistake. Tyson wasn't a man who lived on regrets, he was a man of action, of decisiveness. But that decision gnawed at him sometimes, waging a war with the satisfaction and fun he'd found in toying with Richard Castle, his lovely muse, and her rag-tag sidekicks ever since.
Not that it mattered, much. He considered the time as he checked his watch, mentally counting the time since he'd abandoned Kate Beckett on the West Side docks. She'd been hanging there almost two hours, long enough for the strain of her muscles to have become unbearable, long enough for the drug to spread through her system and begin beckoning her towards unconsciousness. It was really a matter of time, the question of if her body would give out on its own from the pressure to continue breathing or if the drug would beat her organs into it, pulling her unconscious and eliminating the basic desire to fight until her final gasping, stuttering breathing was silenced by drugs and gravity.
His shoulders lifted slightly in a shrug as he stopped in front of the door, the writer having left it open while he stood staring at photos. The click of two guns on either side let him know that Castle wasn't alone, that the ragtag sidekicks were also on the hunt.
And he only smiled, raising his hands on either side of his face, "You could shoot me, but then you'd never know where she is," he offered, his grin growing that much wider as the writer physically flinched.
'You bastard," he growled, quick strides sending him across the room for his left hand to connect sharply against Tyson's jaw.
The two detectives reacted immediately, one lunging towards Castle while the other hauled him away by the back of his shirt, tossing him up against the wall with the gun pinned in his face.
All the while Tyson laughed, gently touching the swollen skin, "I seemed to have touched a nerve," he spoke, fresh chuckles issuing from his mouth as Javier Esposito sandwiched his body between the two of them.
"Jerry Tyson, you are under arrest for the kidnapping of Detective Kate Beckett and two murders - of Pam Ho-" Ryan spoke up, Tyson's voice clearly cutting across his as he smirked.
"Actually, its three murders," he said calmly, using the moment of stunned silence to reach forward and grab the gun, slamming it against Kevin Ryan's face for the second time in his life.
"He really should expect that by now," he said, raising his left arm to point the gun at the two other men as Ryan slumped to the floor, 'Now, you two, I'm going to back out of here. And you are going to give me a ten minute head start. Once I'm gone? You can go retrieve her body, I'll even throw you a bone and text the location."
He continued walking backwards as he spoke, his gun trained on Esposito's chest until he had reached the staircase.
It was then that the man fired, the bullet grazing Tyson's calf as he swung his weight down the stairs and let off a couple shots of his own.
And then he ran, dodging a few more bullets as they flew through the air, one shattering the glass of an older model sedan while he ran past, his leg smarting from the sting of the metal.
In that moment, Castle cared very little about the physical status of Kevin Ryan. Both he and Esposito had left the detective propped against the railing, a trail of blood painting his forehead, while Espo clutched his radio to call for paramedics.
They had both taken off after Tyson, Castle keeping in stride as they sprinted across the parking lot.
Tyson was slower than usual, the injury to his leg leaving him unable to put his full weight into his stride as they gained on him, the two men communicating with a few measured looks and gestures.
Esposito pulled up short, his gun draw and ready to fire as Castle put on a burst of speed, his entire body screaming in protest as the gap closed and he launched his body into Tyson's and tackled him to the ground.
And then he rolled. pulling the extra weight with him as he moved to his feet, hands latching around Tyson's neck in a haze of adrenaline.
"You tell me where she is!" he spat, the words low and heavy in his throat while he squeezed, the muscles of his arms contracting in time with the pressure as the man gasped for air.
"Castle, bro, let go!" Esposito called, pulling against his grip with one arm while keeping his gun aloft with the other.
"NO," Castle shouted, elbowing the cop away and giving another squeeze, "Not until we know where Kate is."
'He isn't going to tell you Castle, let him go," he spoke up, watching as Tyson's eyes closed, his attempts for air slowing as he headed towards unconsciousness.
It was the weight of the body held in his hands that did it - the haze of adrenaline and fury giving way to something sickening as Castle dropped his hands, Tyson slumping to his knees as he fought to stay conscious, air rattling against his windpipe while he sucked it in.
He heard Esposito reading Tyson his rights, the click of handcuffs against his wrists and a dispatch call for both paramedics and a cruiser but it meant nothing. He had almost killed a man, almost choked the life from him.
And he didn't regret it. A large part of him was sorry that he hadn't, was convinced the only reason he had stopped was desperation for Kate's location.
The nausea hit him suddenly, Castle stumbling several steps away to dry heave over a small patch of grass and bushes. He'd almost killed a man and he wasn't sorry. He almost killed a man without caring about the consequences or discovering the information he so desperately needed.
He'd almost killed a man.
Tyson was in custody, booked on multiple murders in New York with countless others pending across the country. The kidnapping charge was nearly an afterthought, though it had now become the priority.
None of them had missed the certainty with which he'd declared there were three murders and Javier worked to suppress the shiver of fear that crept along his spine.
He was a military man, and he knew how easy to was to end a life - he had been the one pulling the trigger with alarming regularity not so long ago - but every lead had been a dead end. There were no credit cards to track, only cash, the ID in Tyson's wallet had been fake, likely created by the man himself. Even the cell phone in his pocket had been purchased with cash, another burner phone.
The phone was the only remaining lead, all of the cell's used during the case lined up in front of Tori as she typed away furiously. She had run down their locations one by one, noting any towers that read multiple phones, any neighborhood or central location with which to start a search for Beckett.
Tori was one of the best in the NYPD, but she had come up with depressingly little so far.
"The phones all came from the same store, we tracked them by the manufacture number and where they were shipped - a bodega in Queens, uni's went out and questioned the cashier on duty but they weren't of any help. Gates is having a couple detectives from the borough wake up the owner and the manager, they will be on their way in - we've also requested all the records of cell phone sales for the past month," his partner rattled off, a pile of paperwork in his hand. He was sporting a giant bandage across his forehead, a couple of stitches enclosed underneath, and a spectacular bruise but it was Beckett - he'd been back on the case the moment he was conscious.
"We'll find her, Castle," Ryan added, glancing towards the corner where their other partner was huddled, face in his hands. He hadn't spoken much since Tyson had been booked, even forgoing the interrogation that had stalled out long before it had ever started.
The writer only nodded, his hands falling to his lap, shadows smudged under his eyes - eyes that looked as if his world was on the verge of a complete collapse.