A/N: Thank you to everyone who left comments and followed this story. I'm incredibly flattered. You're all lovely!
Here's chapter two, please let me know what you think.
:)
Inconclusive.
When the word fell from Lanie's lips Kate struggled to restrain her reaction. It was difficult not getting crushed under it. Even now, a few hours later, it is a marvel that there is still air entering and leaving her lungs. The weight of the word still surrounds her and she remembers with painful vividity that this is what suffocating feels like.
She paces in front of her mystery board. When her mother's case had adorned the shutters, she and Castle had referred to it as Murder Board South, a name he ended up borrowing for Frozen Heat. Now it's simply the mystery board. It's not a murder board. She won't call it that.
It's not much of a board if she's honest with herself. The lack of definition here is going to cost her valuable time. She needs her team elbow deep in this, needs every resource available to her looking for Castle, and she doesn't know how to get that without proof that he's alive.
The car fire had burned so long that it meant there were hardly any viable tissue or hair samples to begin with. That was why they went to dental records in the first place. Now that the body was cremated there weren't any samples to run.
Kate hurls the marker in her hand at the board. It bounces back with an unsatisfying click, and hits the floor just as anticlimactically. The DNA test was supposed to be her vindication, now it's just another road block. She wants to throw more things. She wants to scream and stomp and be an utter child, because none of this is fair. On bad days, when she would lament the unfairness of life, Castle would always toss a modified Calvin and Hobbes quote at her. "I know," he would chime and then ask, "Why can't it ever be unfair in our favor?"
God, she missed him.
Everyone was treating her so gently, as if there was something wrong with her, as if she was fractured or worse unhinged, and at any moment she could have a full on psychotic break. After her shooting, and then again when she had her first attacks of PTSD, they had acted the same way. It had been frustrating then, to be made to feel weak when it took everything she had to get out of bed in the morning. It's worse now, worse when so much is depending on her strength. Even though she knows they're only trying to help, trying to be comforting, she can't stop resenting them a little for it.
She immediately puts a tourniquet on where the uncertainty bleeds, does her best to stem the flow of it, to keep it from pooling into her heart and diluting the conviction and determination that started her on this pursuit. It's time to take a step back. Square one is a space she is familiar with.
If Castle were there he would find the right question to ask. Plot holes were his specialty, and he would be able to come up with the problem that they had all missed. The "odd sock", as he had Nikki Heat calling it. There's a twisted irony to the knowledge that he would be able to solve this, and it's barbed wire in her chest.
Her thoughts are interrupted by a knock at the door. The knocking gets a little more persistent, and even though she's in no mood for company Kate finally closes the shutters and goes to answer. She's met with a pair of familiar blue eyes, exhausted and red rimmed from a sorrow with which Kate is far too familiar.
"Alexis," she greets, trying not to sound too surprised. The young woman looks exactly how Kate feels. Worn. Devastated. Raw. Somehow in this state she looks even younger and much smaller.
A tidal wave of guilt suddenly floods over the detective. Before she and Castle were lovers, when they were still just partners, precariously balanced on the edge of something more, they made a pledge to look after the other's family should the unthinkable ever happen. He was tasked with making sure her dad didn't fall back into the bottle, and she was supposed to take care of Alexis and Martha. Even if he wasn't really dead, she was failing her end of the promise.
"Hi Kate," Alexis says, and holds out a cup. Kate sees that her almost step-daughter is offering her one of a pair of coffees. The movement is so gentle and so painfully thoughtful, that if Kate's heart wasn't already broken that would have been the thing to shatter it.
Kate carefully accepts the drink, but then folds the girl into a hug. There's nothing to be said. No need for the empty question of "How are you doing?" Right now they understand one another completely. They stand there embracing for several minutes before Alexis pulls away with a sniffle.
"Sorry for barging in, but-," she covers her face with a trembling hand, the fancy wedding manicure she had now chipped and a little dirty, "Gram finally fell asleep and I tried...I was just knocking around the place and I didn't want to wake her up."
Kates softly takes her elbow and leads her further into the apartment. "Don't you dare apologize," she replies easily, "As far as I'm concerned, this is your home too anytime you want it to be."
The redhead grips her coffee cup tightly in both hands and stares at the lid. "Thank you."
"Your dad and I might not have made it down the aisle, but that doesn't make us any less of family."
The words earn Kate another hug.
They take their coffees and sit on the couch in a companionable silence for a while. Kate is grateful for the joe. She had been drinking battery acid since after the accident and it is a relief to have a proper latte. Her apartment doesn't have much in the way of food or drink. Though she and Castle had decided to keep her place for the times that they needed privacy, the majority of her things had migrated to the loft, and she never bothered to stock her fridge anymore.
Alexis sinks into the sofa, her typical vibrancy muted by grief. Her hair is in a loose ponytail, and she wears a grey blouse and jeans that are too rumpled to have been put on that morning. Kate wonders about the last time Alexis got any sleep, but she keeps the thought to herself for fear of the concern sounding like judgement. She's barely anymore put together anyway, having slept on the sofa in the black t-shirt and jeans she has on now.
Alexis only a year older than Kate was when she lost her mother, and she knows that there is no comfort she can give. Nothing that will ever make this alright except bringing Castle home. She wants to promise Alexis that, to swear to her that everything will be all right, that everyone is wrong, and they'll find Castle, probably a little worse for wear, but whole and alive. She wants to but she can't. The path she's on could destroy her, could end up crushing her world twofold and while she's willing to gamble with her own existence that way, she can't do it to Alexis.
"We're going to get through this," she promises instead. She sets her coffee on the table and takes the other woman's free hand with both of hers. "You are strong enough to survive this," she pauses and then adds, "We both are." The words are easy to say, and she nearly believes them as they escape her lips. They are quiet again for a long time after that. Kate isn't sure exactly how long they sit together, just drawing strength from the presence of the other.
"I was going to tell you most of this in my best woman speech," Alexis says finally challenging the quiet, and her nose wrinkles and her eyes crease in an adorable way that is nearly identical to Rick's, "But I'm really glad Dad found you." She blushes and focuses back on her cup, picking at the rippling cardboard sleeve with her thumb. "I wasn't at first," she confesses, not looking up, "I mean you remember what he was like when you two met. He hardly ever took anything seriously. I was convinced he was going to laugh his way right into a bullet." She shakes her head and there is both fondness and sadness in the gesture. "I'm sorry if I was ever a brat about it," she apologizes almost wryly.
Kate waves it off, "You were worried about him. I understand."
Alexis nods and continues. "I didn't. Understand that is. Not at first. I didn't understand that kind of love. The kind of relationship you have to work for and fight for. That lets you forgive and sends you back for more even when the other person hurts you. This year watching you two and then seeing what I had with Pi...well the side by side opened up my eyes, and suddenly I got it. I knew I had to grow the hell up. And I realized that's what Dad had done too. He grew up so much being your partner and I'm certain that as much as he had fun gallivanting back then he loved the man that you made him even more."
"Thank you for saying that," Kate says, trying not to let the pressure she's suddenly feeling behind her eyes win. It would be too melodramatic to shed tears now.
"It's like you said. Family."
The low evening sun begins peaking through the blinds, the grey haze of rain finally cleared, and it's the first time in a couple of days that the weather hasn't matched her mood. Kate picks up the styrofoam cup again and takes a long drink from her coffee, finding comfort in the burning on her tongue. It's from the cart a few blocks over, coffee that she and Rick had had a hundred times over.
"He threw me for a loop when he came along," she says, suddenly gripped with the need to share, "he drove me totally insane." She and Alexis exchange as close to smiles as either of them can get. "I never really wanted a partner, and I was so mad at Roy for letting your dad ride along. But the Cap was right. Lord knows how uptight I was, I desperately needed someone who could balance me out. And then your dad was in my heart before I realized how he got there."
"He did alright for not being a cop."
"Better than most cops actually. You know, in my brief stint with the FBI I had a hard time shutting up about him. Rachel used to tease that I was going to give her an inferiority complex."
In half of the time it takes her to draw her next breath everything shifts. Alexis sits up, nearly flying off her seat. Her eyes light up in a way that is so reminiscent of her father that another barb sticks in Kate's chest. But it's the look of Castle realization, the look of finding the story, and suddenly, the detective is riveted.
"FBI," Alexis says, the focused, gear-turning crease appearing her forehead. "I knew it. I knew something felt weird about all of this."
"Weird about what?".
"We were so distracted by everything with Senator Bracken's arrest, and then worrying that the wedding was going to be derailed. We never stopped to think about it," Alexis' words are not aimed directly at Kate, rather it seems that she is thinking out loud. She almost leaps off the sofa and paces, before turning her attention back to the cop. "Kate you worked for the FBI!"
The detective has her own wheels spinning as she tries to keep up, to grasp the same thread Alexis seems to have found between the wedding and the short lived job. Then, cleaner and faster than a bullet to the heart, it hits her. "My background check."
Alexis nods, her eyes wide with uncertainty. Kate knows she can tell this is big, but doesn't know quite what to make of it. "If you had really married O'Leary in Vegas it would have come out during your screening. You said yourself, you hadn't thought it was for real."
"My god. I'm an idiot," Kate declares in a low exhale. It feels like her stomach has no bottom. If she had eaten in the past two days it would be coming up now.
"We all missed it," Alexis consoles. "Even Dad. We were preoccupied. Whoever this was chose their moment well."
"Rogan conned me." Kate's heart accelerates ten fold, as she says it. She thinks for a moment then backtracks. "No, he wouldn't be smart enough for that. Someone had to falsify those records well enough to fool your lawyer, not to mention hack the City Clerk's office. If it didn't show on my FBI file then it all had to be done after I got the job, and after Castle proposed, so within the last nine months."
"But why?" Alexis asks. "Why would someone want to make it look like you were married?"
Kate's on her feet then too. They've found something here, and hope starts sewing together the rips in her chest. This is what she needed all along. To build theory with a Castle. She thinks for a moment.
"So I would have to get divorced. They wanted me to go up to Willow Creek. They wanted me in Mickey Barbozza's path."
"The venue fire," Alexis continues to stack. "What if that wasn't an accident either?"
"They were trying to keep him in the city!" Both conclude at the same time.
"Castle wasn't supposed to be with me. If he hadn't met me up there I wouldn't be here," Kate says.
They stop then. The enormity of the theory fills the dead air for a moment. Someone had wanted Kate dead. That is sadly a mundane enough scenario these days, but the lengths they had gone to are disturbingly familiar.
A molten anger drips into Kate's veins and immediately burns away her fear. It's suddenly abundantly clear who is behind this. She looks at Alexis, their entire world vastly different than it was two minutes before.
"What do we do now? Kate, what does any of this mean?"
Kate doesn't answer. She brushes into her bedroom and breezes back out with her dark leather jacket and her holster. "I need you to call Ryan and Esposito and tell them what we've just discussed." She spins the lock on the safe in her living room, and removes the off-duty piece that nearly sent her to prison a few weeks prior. She pulls on her holster and settles her jacket on over the piece. "Then I need you to have them get a hold of Mickey Barbozza's file. Have them look into the hits he's accused of orchestrating. We need to find out if any of the victims were strangled."
She clears her hair from the collar of her jacket, and when her eyes settle back to the red head's she is surprised to see a cool understanding rather than fear. She should have know better than underestimating the resolve of a Castle.
"Where are you going?" Alexis demands.
"I'm heading back to Willow Creek. Dear Rogan has some explaining to do. Something will shake loose."
"I'm coming with you." There is no hesitation in Alexis' voice, and Kate feels another great swell of affection for her.
"Out of the question."
"Dad trotted across Europe when I was abducted. I can drive upstate for him," Alexis defends. It's a feeble argument, and she seems to know it.
"We don't know for sure what's going on yet kiddo," Martha's pet name for Castle slips past Kate's lips, but it doesn't feel odd to address Alexis that way.
"But you think Dad's alive?" Alexis presses. Kate, resolved to protect Alexis, opens her mouth to refute it, but despite her best effort the lie doesn't come. The lack of denial is enough of an answer, and Alexis relaunches her argument, some of her color returning, "Then you have to take me with you."
Kate softens. In those first few days after she and her father came home and found detective Raglan waiting for them she would have climbed Everest with a fork if she thought it would bring her mother back.
She opts a different approach. "If this is who we think it is, then it's dangerous. Our first priority is keeping everyone safe. You need to be here to make sure Martha and my dad all get to the precinct. And you know that's what your dad would want."
"And what would he think of you going off without back-up?" Alexis counters, though Kate can see the defiance fading in her eyes, a longing and a hope settling there instead.
"He would absolutely hate it, but he wouldn't have a leg to stand on. He would do the same for me. He has done the same for me." It's true, but she has to compartmentalize it to a degree. The lengths she knows she's willing to go to for Rick, the things she realizes she would be capable of doing to bring him home unnerve her.
Alexis seems to accept her answer though, and she opens the front door for Kate.
"I'll call you from the precinct, but be careful," Alexis says, and the second half of her sentence is almost pleading. Kate can hear the unspoken, we can't lose you too, and she grips Alexis' shoulder in solidarity.
"I will." It's almost not a lie when she says it.
They leave and Beckett locks the door behind them. The weight of her pistol is calming presence at her side, and despite everything it's good to feel like a cop again, and not the desperate not-quite-widow she's been this past week.
She's focused. And angry. And as such every bit as dangerous as the people she's now hunting. It's not often she's outsmarted, but given recent history she needs to be at the top of her game to come out on the other side of this.
It should be an unsettling notion, but then she thinks about Sophia Turner, Scott Dunn, and Radford Hayes, about Coonan, Maddox, Lockwood and Bracken, and every other person who has ever tried coming full force at her and Castle. The fear dissipates before it ever takes hold.
She's good at this game. Hell, she's a God-damned pro. If Kelly Niemen and Jerry Tyson had wanted to play they should never have come after her family.
They were out of their league.
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