Chapter Thirty-Three

Staring at the murder board without actually seeing it, as she listened to Ryan and Esposito trying to run down leads, Kate's eyes got stuck on the face of the young boy in the school picture. It was the familiar shade of blue in his eyes that caught her. It was the eyes of her partner passed to his daughter that seemed to drive home the fact that this was someone's child more than any other aspect of the case.

Beckett knew loss was difficult, but this was a loss she couldn't even fathom, never had been a parent. She found herself closer to understanding the more time she spent with Castle. Her friends didn't have kids and neither did she, so Castle was the only person she interacted with who had kids. She knew how hard it would impact him if something happened to Alexis and somehow, despite how heart wrenching these cases were normally, this one became even more so.

She didn't want the intimate knowledge of how this type of loss could devastate a person as she was sure it would him. She wasn't sure how she was supposed to run an investigation, meet with the parents, when she had that kind of intimate knowledge of the pain and torment the person being interviewed was likely experiencing.

She didn't notice when Castle came back from his pointless mission of procuring dinner that could have been delivered. She didn't realize that he somehow slipped a carton of Chinese food into her hands. She didn't even make the connection that she was eating until she was full and looking into a nearly empty take out container.

She finally pulled her eyes off the whiteboard. She spotted him in a quick sweep of her gaze as he leaned casually against Ryan's desk, working with the other detectives. Obviously, he was giving her the space she had pushed him for. She didn't know how much longer she could keep pushing him away and some part of her was no longer sure why she was doing it in the first place.

It was as if he knew she was looking, or perhaps he was too in the habit of keeping an eye on her, because it was only a short moment after her gaze landed on him that his eyes shifted to meet hers. He gave her a weak smile and she lifted the take out container just slightly as if to thank him. He simply nodded and tucked back into his own food, trying to keep up with the conversation between Ryan and Esposito surrounding the case.

She was pulled from her lack of focus by Castle calling her name. When she acknowledged him by bringing her eyes to meet his gaze she realized it wasn't the first time he had attempted to get her attention and he had actually moved up to stand near her. She nodded for him to continue.

"What made you think it was Fletcher?" he asked, but only received a quirked eyebrow, because apparently she needed more sleep since she wasn't following him. "I mean, what was it that Alexis said to make you think it was him." He asked, starting to flip through the file again.

She shrugged, trying to figure out a way to say it without giving away the context of their conversation. "Something about worrying that she won't always be around to take care of you."

He seemed to think about this a moment flipping through to the page with their statements. "He said he broke up a fight where she was being bullied by several other students and gave her private tennis lessons, doesn't really shout crazed kidnapper."

She pulled the file out of his hand as another thought struck her. "What if the house wasn't in his name? Maybe it's something he has access to?"

"He'd know which families were out of town, but it's the middle of the school year." Castle responded, apparently forgetting his initial question. "Maybe he has some relatives with property in the area?" he asked.

She missed building theory with him, something didn't feel the same about this and she knew it was the undercurrent of tension that was following them wherever they went. "Guys," she addressed Ryan and Esposito, "Check out his family history." She passed the file back to Castle, "Let's check in with the school, see if there are any families that have been out of town this whole time."

It had taken over an hour to get in touch with someone who was able to get into the school that night and access the records, but it turned out to be a waste. By the time Beckett hung up with the vice principal, she was beginning to feel the fingers of exhaustion pulling at her.

Suddenly, Esposito shot out of his seat, slamming the phone down in its cradle. "We got him." The detective said, tossing his little notebook to Beckett so she could take down the address, "He inherited a house from his mom, but the deed was never transferred. It's still registered to her under her maiden name that she reverted to after she and Fletcher's father divorced.

Everything from there seemed to move in fast forward as they geared up and prepared to ride out on the address immediately. She didn't want to get her hopes up, but couldn't seem to squash the little bit of hope that sored in her with the news.

Once they were finally ready and headed out of the precinct, Kate called Agent McCain again. She had been surprised that he was still not there from the earlier phone call, but once she got him on the line it became obvious. He apologized for not getting her call earlier as he seemed to be soothing a whimpering baby in the background of their conversation. "I'll meet you there." He told her before taking down the address. "Don't wait for me." He said just before hanging up.

She understood that his request for them to move if he didn't get there with them didn't have anything to do with him shirking his duties. He knew as well as she did that every minute could be a game changer.

Finishing the call, she turned towards the three guys and signaled that it was time to head out. From her spot beside the car, she watched as Castle seemed to debate something before finally walking over and sliding into the passenger seat. She knew what he was thinking as his eyes darted between her and the two detectives climbing into a cruiser a few cars down. He had been thinking about riding with them.

She wondered how they had gotten this far, but she didn't have to wonder on it long, because she knew a lot of it was that fear of action on her part. Sure, he'd been an ass, he'd said things that were more hurtful than she could have expected from him.

Surprisingly, she wasn't as mad at him as she knew she should be, or perhaps hoped she would be. She had finally come to accept her part in what had happened between them and the damage she caused. Her inability to send him away that first night, the offhand comment that set him off in his loft, even her silence had done the same just a few hours before.

She wasn't fooling herself with what they'd find when they made it to location. If the girl was even there, the odds of her being alive, much less unharmed, were slim. She didn't want whatever this was between her and Castle following her into the darkness she might be facing in just a few short minutes and being another thing that would drag her down in the aftermath.

"I was going to tell you." She finally spoke, her soft tone shattering the silence that had surrounded them through the first tense minutes of travel.

"Beckett." He said her name like a warning and under any other circumstance she would have laughed at the total role reversal. Normally it was her trying to get him to stop talking.

He should have known that her own methods wouldn't work on her, but she watched the muscles in his jaw tighten as he seemed to clamp down when she ignored him. "We need to talk about this."

"There's nothing to talk about." He responded tightly, avoiding her gaze by staring out the window beside him. His body language screamed his need to hide from this conversation as he seemed to lean into his door heavily, apparently in an attempt to put as much distance between them as he could.

"The hell there isn't." she snapped.

His eyes did move to her then, but only briefly before he was staring straight ahead again. It only took him a moment for the anger she had seen building in him to boil over. "What do you want to talk about?" he asked, but it was obviously rhetorical as he barreled on heedless of her potential response. "Do you want to talk about how you lied to me? How, after all these years of telling me that you weren't a one night kind of girl, you threw everything we are away for exactly that? You took everything, everything, I told you and threw it back in my face. Or maybe you could explain to me how that one night was worth giving up what we've built over the past three years?" his voice was rising now, but he didn't yell at her.

The cold tone was somehow worse than the screaming match she could have easily seen the fallout of them being. "Don't even try to pin this all on me, I wasn't the only one there."

"You were the only one fighting this." He gestured between them, and she heard the intensity in his voice. No longer cold, she realized that had been his way of trying to control his emotions. "Fighting us."

She swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat as his words hit home. When her eyes blurred slightly, she realized now was not the time, but it had started and it needed to be finished. Checking her surroundings and blinking away the moisture, she felt her spine straighten as she went on the defensive. Kate knew she was acting like a cornered animal, but something told her that if they didn't finish this conversation now, they never would.

"You're the one that ran off in the middle of the night." She responded sharply.

Castle's quick inhale was the only indicator of his shock she could sense as her eyes were busy scanning the streets in front of her for either the address they had been headed to or Ryan and Esposito's car. The other men had gotten ahead of them while Kate was distracted with Castle. She spotted the cruiser a little over a block ahead and wanted nothing more than for the cars in front of her to disappear so she could be there already and get out of the car before one of them said something else that they'd regret.

"What the hell was I supposed to do, Kate? Huh?" he was so quiet, she almost couldn't hear him over her own pulse.

She pulled up in a spot several cars down from Ryan and Esposito and reached in the back seat for her vest. "Stay in the damn car, Castle. I'm serious."

"Was it guilt?"

His question seemed so out of place that she stopped in the middle of opening her door to turn a questioning look his direction.

"That night, after we," he didn't finish the sentence; she knew exactly what he was talking about. "You don't cry, Kate, not unless it's something profound or horrible." He kept his eyes on hers, never wavering. "So, I just thought," he trailed off, eyes falling away from her a second before coming back up with purpose as if he had found a new resolve or some hidden reservoir of strength. "Was it guilt?"

This time when he asked, everything seemed to fall into place. She shook her head, "It wasn't guilt." She was finally able to say. "I have to go in, Castle."

"What was it?"

"It was," her voice trailed off as she tried to figure out how to say it. "amazing." She finally breathed, not willing or able to lie to him.

His sigh came first, followed quickly by a small smile that she didn't stop herself from leaning across the car and brushing her lips across before she stepped out.

She turned to find her two detectives staring at her with matching looks of surprise and cocky little smiles. "Oh, shut up." She told them, fastening the Velcro on her vest. As if it flicked a switch, the act itself instantly shifted them all into full blown seriousness as they descended on the house, guns at the ready.

x.x.x

A/N: Ok, tomorrow or Saturday will be the first chapter of my new fic, but I won't leave this one hanging long and will probably have a chapter out this weekend for this as well. Now, it's after midnight and I have to go to bed. If you see any glaring errors I missed in my lack of editing, shoot me a message and I'll fix it after work tomorrow after work.

Review that made my day: Aliah Rose, I love it when you guys get as invested as I do. Talking to the characters makes me feel like a wacko, but at least I'm not alone.

Thanks to everyone for reading.