"Katherine Beckett, that's one impressive stunt you pulled there."
The voice coming out of the phone was most definitely not Lanies. The slow, punctuated words froze Kate's heart as she struggled to keep the phone to her ear. The calm, sharp voice of the unknown man on the other side of the phone formed a stark contrast to her own panic, her trembling.
"Not just running, but disappearing. Dying." His voice was barely a whisper and she couldn't bring herself to even form words to reply to him. The fear was overwhelming her, because she didn't know what this was, but she knew it was bad. "Do you still feel the bullet burning in your chest? I hope you do. You should have just died right there, it would have saved you the trouble of trying to hide." He chuckled and Kate heard footsteps and the opening of a door through the phone.
"And you nearly succeeded you know?" He paused, momentarily waiting for her reaction. When she didn't reply she heard him taking slow steps forward and heard the faint, familiar click of a gun. "But the thing is, Kate. You can hide from your enemies, but you can never hide from your friends." He chuckled again, and at the thought of this man hurting her friends Kate regained her ability to speak, albeit with voice trembling of fear and anger.
'Who are you?" She whispered, her hand resting on her gun and glancing at the door as if he would come barging through it at any second.
"Ah you're talking, that's an improvement. You seem to need a little incentive for lots of things." The caller's voice stayed calm and he seemed utterly comfortable with the situation. The thought was sickening to Kate, because she knew that whatever he was planning, he was enjoying every second of it.
"What do you want?"
"Oh come on, you know what I want." She could almost hear the grin in his voice and balled her fist. Her heart pounding against her chest made her scar hurt almost physically. Of course she knew what he wanted. Hadn't they told her in the mails, the letters? Hadn't they made it clear the moment they but a bullet in her heart for the first time?
"Kate, your questions bore me. You know the answers already. I'm disappointed, you're a detective, It would be terribly boring if I had to tell you everything by myself. Make sure your next question is actually interesting, or I'm afraid this is all going to be over very soon." Once again her heart froze, the realization slowly started to sink in, the realization that there was only one person who knew how to reach her. That her friend would not give the number away easily. Apparently she did need incentive to even think about anyone but herself.
"Where's Lanie?" She nearly choked on the words. Disgusted by herself at even forgetting for a moment what they could have done to her, that it wasn't the first question springing to mind, that after all, her mother's murder still dominated her mind. Once again she heard a chuckle at the other end of the line.
"That's a better question Kate. You are a wonderful friend." His voice was dripping with sarcasm and she heard calculated footsteps once again. "Doctor Parish needed some… convincing. But I'm awfully nice when people just work with me. And look, here I am, talking to you." His words did not calm her in the least, only made her heart speeding up even more. Yet she managed to find a place in her mind that wasn't clouded with hear and found some reason, straws to grasp at. She mustered her courage and tried to steady her voice.
"Lanie doesn't know where I am. Leave her alone. My friends don't know anything." Her voice dropped, the cop taking the place of the scared girl. Her mind still whizzing with fear, but she forced herself to stay focused. No need to put anyone in danger, keeping her friends safe: that was the whole purpose of this. "This is between you and me." She added on almost a threatening whisper, her fingers tightening around the phone, forcing it to stay next to her ear.
"Between you and me? Well Kate, I'm afraid we're a bit past that now. I seem to recall that your fool of a writer was pretty involved with all this right? Like Raglan, Like Montgomery, like…"
"You touch him; I will hunt you down and I will not rest until I personally put a bullet through your skull." Kate's voice lowered at the threat, she was shaking and fear crept up her heart at the idea of them hurting Castle, but she had to remain calm.
Her caller seemed to be untouched, if not amused, by her threats "Cute, Kate, but I think we're past this too. You are not in a position to threaten and we both know it. So shut up and listen to me." She heard a yelp and a suppressed groan and her heart froze. "Or rather listen to him." He chuckled and she heard the click of a gun.
"What was that?" She asked on a stray breath and clutched her hand around her gun. "Who is that?" Deep in her heart she already knew it, but she didn't want it to be true, it wasn't allowed to be true.
"Why don't you ask him yourself?" She heard the phone being handled, heard the transition from the calm breathing of her caller to labored, heavy breathing from someone else.
"Well, who are you now?" This time the man wasn't talking to her, but no question to the answer came. It stayed silent for a few heart-stopping seconds in which she could almost hear the gritting of teeth. Next was a faint noise like someone being kicked or punched and another groan. The question was repeated, but she didn't need an answer. If she hadn't figured it out by now, she could have told it by the way her name sounded through the phone on a whisper. As if someone on the other end of the line used it like a lifeline. She wanted to scream his name, but her throat was closed off, her lips frozen, her eyes staring at the murder board without seeing anything. The sounds at the other end of the line stopped altogether, except the breathing and groaning of the person she knew to be her partner.
"Well he's not really working with us. Now I could hit it out of him and, mind you, have a small amount of fun while doing it, but like I said, I am really, really nice when people work with me and I do not bear any particular grudge against him. So listen to me, Kate. I don't know where you are, and that is kind of complicating finishing what I started some time ago. You are obviously hiding somewhere and I don't feel like playing this game of hide-and-seek with you. So, Kate, listen carefully: you are going to come to me. If you want still want to protect your writer-boy and everyone else you care about, you're going to come to the address I'm going to text you. You're going to come unarmed and you're going to come alone. When you're there, you're going to stand in front of me without a fight and I'm going to put a bullet through your heart. You can try to run again, Kate, but this time you can't escape."
She heard a faint, yet piercing screaming of "No!" and "Kate!" Followed by a heart-wrenching screaming of. "Don't do it! They'll kill you Kate!" After that she heard a thud and the writer was shut up.
"Well look at him, you've got that wrapped around your finger completely right?" He chuckled sarcastically and she balled her fist until her nails dug into the palm of her hand. "Does he even know this is all your fault? All you had to do was just stop. Don't you blame yourself for this? You are so selfish Kate, leaving his life, leaving him to clean up the mess you've made and he's still only thinking of you. You don't deserve this at all, you're…"
"I'll come." Kate cut him off, her voice sounding almost distant, resigned, albeit tears were glittering in her eyes. "Just… please don't hurt him." She croaked out, her voice wavering for a second as she already was standing up, preparing to walk through her door. "Please don't hurt him. It's not his fault. I'll do as you like, just text me and I'll be there."
"That's a clever girl. Now remember: Don't jerk me around, because from the way I figure, there's still a hell of a lot of people you care about walking around here and I will kill every single one of them if needed."
Seconds later the line went dead and her phone beeped when she received the text message. She opened the text and stared at it for a few seconds. She'd die there, she'd bleed out there in front of her partner. The realization slowly sank in, but it didn't hurt her anymore. She was oddly okay with it.
She was dead already, anyway.
Rome and Barcelona were awesome! =D I hope you liked the chapter. And I am sorry for the embarrasing typo's I made in the previous chapter, I hope there won't be as much in this one.