A/N: Minor correction has been made to the previous chapter – Lanie has sent the bullets 'originally' pulled out of Detective Slaughter BACK to ballistics to be re-examined. She did not remove the slugs from the body (Dr. Niska pulled them out during the first autopsy).
Also THANK YOU so much guys for the continued support & your amazing reviews - forgive me for not individually thanking you all last chapter, but I love hearing what you think, you all ROCK.
Chapter Twenty One: For all of my days I'll be brave, I'll be stronger.
One month ago . . .
Sweat pours down his face, and Castle blinks to get it out of his eyes – the salt stings.
His body is bruised, aching and sore, it wants him to call it quits, to give in and just take the beating already by lying curled up into a little ball on the cool sand.
His body wants him to simply admit to his defeat.
Never. Never gonna happen.
It's night and the beach at the foot of the villa is dark. There isn't much of a moon tonight – just a sliver that comes and goes again through the clouds that are heavy in a sky that threatens to rain. The humidity is thick in the air, cloying when you are gasping for breath as hard as he is – making it hard to breathe, like soup being pulled into your lungs.
"Have you had enough?" A voice asks quietly, darkly.
The writer forces his back to straighten and he stubbornly shakes his head, eyes his opponent with derision. "Not yet," he throws back, "you should know me better than that."
His adversary smiles at Castle, his white teeth gleaming in the gloomy darkness, his harsh face betraying now a smugness that virtually screams 'victory'. But the writer is catching a second wind and he's bound and determined, he will not go down without one hell of a fight. He knows the other man is underestimating him, and he knows exactly how he can use that to his advantage.
He just needs to pick the moment - carefully.
Because even against these stacked odds he believes that in his heart – that this victory can still be his.
The other man comes at him again and he's so fast. He moves like lightening and with years of skill under his belt and on his side, but Castle has always been a fast learner and he knows this move. He knows what's coming, and he sidesteps the attack with a freshly acquired skill, lets the man's momentum trip him up as he stumbles a little on the slippery sand.
"Nice," the man remarks, "but you're going to have to do much better than that."
He comes at Castle again, even faster this time and before the writer can think of a direction in which to turn. A strong arm wraps around his throat as he takes a swift elbow into the side, pain lancing through him bad enough that Castle sees stars for a second as the blow lands cleanly against already somewhat battered ribs. The author feels his vision blurring and he can't draw a proper breath, a combination of the tight throbbing of the pain and the pressure of the other man's arm against his neck. He can barely even think.
His knees give out and he drops like a sack of potatoes, his full weight dropping him down onto the floor. It's enough to loosen the hold his opponent has on his neck and the split second of leverage is all Castle needs now to turn this thing around.
He rolls with incredible speed to his right, the pain his body is experiencing being pushed by the brute force of his will completely out of his mind, and he springs to his feet before he rugby tackles his assailant in an ugly but effective maneuver that lands the other man on his back beneath the writer on the sand.
The other man is strong through, and very well trained, he easily blocks Castles first attempt at choking him, almost manages to just cast the writer off of him with his hands. But the writer has been taught a thing or two, knows now how to use his opponents own moves against him, he shifts his weight swiftly, keeps the man pinned down.
Castle brings his knee up and rolls a little, pulls his assailant up and shifts over him, bending the man's right arm up and behind him, locking it in an arm bar than has his opponent tapping out for clemency in seconds.
Victory! Castle thinks – is mine.
It's the first time they've ever done this that the son has been the man who's won.
Castle pushes himself, exhausted to his feet and then extends his hand out to Gabor, who's strangely enough looking up at him and grinning hugely, Gabor takes the proffered appendage and the writer hauls his father back onto his feet.
"Excellent. Rick you did it." Gabor exclaims. "You got the drop on me."
Castle is smiling, he just can't help it. He's in pain and he's bone weary, and his father is still technically not able to perform at a hundred percent, but none of it matters, it's his first win and so he'll delight in the glory of it just the same.
He breathes deep, grinning like a fool he imagines, and then he formally extends his hand for his father to shake.
"Thank you," he says to Gabor sincerely. "Thank you for helping me with this, for all these hours you've put in these last weeks to teach me. It really – I mean it really, means a lot to me."
The CIA operative smiles, he looks really pleased and in the darkness it's hard for Castle to truly tell, but his father looks a little bit overwhelmed suddenly. He tugs on Castle's hand without warning, and pulls his son towards him, wraps the writer up in a fierce embrace.
For a long moment Castle is stunned, he doesn't know how to react, but then he just stops his brain from over-thinking this and does what he instinctively wants to – he hugs Richard Gabor back.
"I'm so proud of you Rick." Gabor says quietly, before he releases his hold on his son, and takes a self-conscious step back.
Castle swallows hard around the lump that's suddenly taken up residence in his throat and he ducks his head, avoiding eye-contact and just nodding his appreciation of the sentiment.
The two men are about to call it a night on their sparring session when the light breeze that has been ghosting across the beach all night changes direction slightly, and the sound of a boat motor cutting out carries across the air. Gabor slows Castle's progress up the sand beside him by grabbing the novelist's arm and stilling his son in his tracks.
He tugs Castle with him quickly into the shadows created by the cliffs at this end of the shoreline, and stills his son's instinctual questions with the merest hint of a raised eyebrow, his blue eyes flashing in the darkness he emphasizes his desire for silence by raising his index finger to his lips.
Castle nods his compliance, and presses his large form closer to the rocky face rising up behind him. Both men listen intently but there is no out-of-place sound being carried in on the wind and Castle feels himself relaxing – he pushes off of the rock face and is genuinely surprised when a strong arm comes across his chest and forces him back with a dull thud.
He eyes his father in the darkness bemused, almost goes to speak but the fierce look of concentration that the CIA operative is wearing causes the words to remain lodged in his throat and die there unspoken.
Tense, the silence stretches, and Castle is surprised, but he can sense the preparedness suddenly coiling in Gabor's large strong frame, and the writer listens intently, his ears straining, because surely there must be sounds that Gabor is hearing that maybe he's not.
His father turns to look at him at this point, something is his gaze that looks almost like indecision, but then his jaw tightens perceptively and it's obvious the agent's reached a choice. Gabor pushes Castle further back, further away from the villa and towards to the water, then he steps around his son quickly, and leads the way, inching the pair of them backwards towards the blackness of the ocean, and then actually into the cold water. He tugs Castle after him as he makes his way off-shore, following the curve of the cliff out to sea.
What the hell is going on?
Confused as all hell, Castle fights with determination against the tide that's now pushing very strongly against his broad body, the t-shirt and shorts he's wearing not aiding his quest as soaked through they weight him down. He tries to swim quietly and with as little splashing as he can manage, while he simultaneously tries to avoid getting smacked into the craggy cliff face at his side by the surging sea in the darkness. Gabor let's go his hold on the writer's arm as he wages his own battle, but he keeps checking every couple of seconds to ensure his son remains only a few arm lengths behind him.
The two men continue to follow the coastline of the cliff, the curve of the island leaving the beach far behind them. The writer has no ideas about what's going on but he does come to realize the trust he's developed for his father goes a long way – farther than he would have imagined it seems – before tonight and this strange desertion of the relative safety of the sand.
A large wave takes the novelist unaware. Dark rain clouds are continually obscuring the slivers of moonlight that are the only illumination now as the lights of the villa that fell weakly across the beach disappear from view, and out of nowhere a particularly huge swell crashes over Castle's head in the dark.
Pain lances through the writer's left shoulder as he's hurled by the force of the water into the rocks, spluttering he re-emerges with his left arm numbing and fighting really hard not to be loud and cough.
The salt-water in his mouth tastes awful, but he pushes onwards following Gabor painfully and slowly another forty or so meters.
They are maybe two hundred meters from where they started out now, and as they round another large out-cropping of rock Castle notices the cliff dips in sharply behind it. Very sharply in fact, and it becomes clear quickly that there is a cave here that his father is swimming towards; a cave that even in the daylight would be hard to see, hidden as it is between the curving of the rocks, a cave that's very obviously only accessible from the sea.
Excitement causes a swell of adrenaline to flood the author's tired body, and Castle closes the gap between himself and Gabor until he's right on the CIA operatives shoulders as they swim into the cave. Absolute inky blackness swallows the pair of them and his father grabs hold of Castle again, guiding him unerringly until Castle feels the water getting shallow again and he ends up deposited on a beach at the rear of the cavern, washing up like a seal on the sand.
Once more Gabor finds him in the sheer black, tugs him to his feet and with a strong hand on Castle's now throbbing left arm he tugs the writer behind him up the incline of the beach, pulls him behind a large rock and then tugs him down to sit beside him. Only then does his father speak.
"We've got company," he growls quietly.
Castle's makes a puzzled face the other man cannot of course see.
"What makes you so sure of that?" he whispers.
"Back on the beach, when the wind changed I heard a motor cutting out – you must have heard it too?"
"I heard something that sounded like a motor yeah – but then nothing. What are we even doing here?"
Gabor sighs softly.
"Not taking any chances," he replies. "No-one is scheduled to visit, but I know what I heard, I caught voices on the breeze right after that motor died – someone is here."
The writer shivers, mostly from the cold of the water and the chill of the cave and his soaking clothes that are plastered so uncomfortably against his skin, but also from the menace, the implied threat in his father's quiet voice.
"For you," he asks with trepidation, "or for me?"
"Me," Gabor says with finality. "Has to be for me, only three others know you are here, and one of those is Dianthe."
Castle imagines his father is shaking his head thoughtfully.
"The ones that do know though, how trustworthy are they – really?" he questions.
"Rick, I trust them with your life – that should tell you everything."
It does. Castle does not question his fathers commitment to the protection of his existence.
"Okay," he says. "So if you're right and someone is here, then they've either come for you, or perhaps their arrival is unrelated. I mean this place is a CIA safe-house basically, isn't it possible that it's just being used by another operation?"
"No."
"How can you be sure?" Castle asks impatiently.
"Your presence here is secret, but mine is not. This place might belong to a corporation that's merely a CIA shell, but I'm the one pulling all the strings on it. No other operation that wasn't being directly controlled by me would ever have access – trust me Richard – we have uninvited and most likely dangerous company."
Castle's eyes are adjusting the to darkness of the cave but he still can barely make out his hand in front of his face.
"So what do we do?" he asks.
His father's voice is grim when he replies, grim and deadly.
"We need to retrieve your novel," he says, "and then I need to get you out of here."
"I'm assuming you have a plan to do that?" Castle says, barely able to discern what he thinks is a nod from Gabor.
"Get back inside the villa without being seen, get the manuscript, and take my transportation out of here." The spy replies.
The writer laughs softly.
"You make it sound easy,"he says. "And what then?"
"It's time for the end-game to begin Richard. I'm still going to have to hide you for a little while longer my son, but I'm going to do it back in New York."
Castle's heart leaps.