Learn to Have Been
February 2015
To say she's surprised when she opens the loft door is an understatement. Javier stands before her with a soulsick look in his eyes, and her heart hits the cage of her ribs.
"Espo?"
"Beckett," he starts, but falls terribly silent.
"What's going on?" she says. She just got Castle back to the apartment only a few hours ago, has been delicately avoiding the conversation they had in the precinct this morning, even worse, avoiding the way he fell apart afterwards. She has too many questions, never any answers, and she's still trying to decide if she should have pushed him.
Maybe it was memories. She doesn't want to hope too much, but memories would be a good sign. They need something good.
"I messed up," Esposito says. "This is on me, Beckett. I messed up and I ignored the kid when I should have-"
"What kid?" she cuts in harshly. She's disoriented by having Esposito standing in front of her, shame-faced and trying to explain. "What's messed up?"
Javi takes a quick breath and steps forward, gives her that you mind? look as he slips past her. Kate shuts the door after him, turning to confront this strange confession, but Castle has come out from the bedroom.
"Sito," he smiles. It's stretched too tight, though. He looks uncomfortable, still rattled. "What brings you to our humble abode?"
He sounds like himself, Kate think desperately. It's been a long time coming, but for some reason, right this moment, he sounds like Castle even with the out-of-sync look on his face. She's clinging to that, and she knows she is, but she can't help the dread that's taken lodge in her guts at Espo's arrival.
"Castle, man, I messed up. I dropped the ball on this. I didn't see it for what it was and I was pissed off at Joey for trying to play the tragedy."
"Joey?" Castle shoots her a swift look, the bewilderment on his face heartbreaking. "Am I - do I know who that is? Am I supposed to-"
"No, no," Kate promises. "I don't know who Joey is either. Javi, who are you talking about?"
"Well, actually you do. Remember that punk kid we picked up two years ago? He'd been working with a DJ who'd gotten murdered after a party, turns out Joey was stealing-"
Castle snaps his fingers. "Monster!"
Kate frowns, stepping towards her husband, but Javi nods and fist bumps Castle. "That's him. Ain't no monster. Joey Malone."
"What about Joey Malone?" Kate interrupts, recalling the kid now. She crosses her arms over her chest, still near the door, while Castle is standing nearly at the couch, smiling at Esposito. But Kate has a terrible feeling there's nothing to be smiling about.
"Joey came to me," Esposito says, hanging his head. "Back in October. He told me there'd been a white guy in Washington Heights asking about you, Beckett. I thought your mom's case, and I shut him up. But. It's not that. It's the same guy in the Mercedes."
"What?" Castle croaks.
"Why didn't you say something?" Kate hisses, jerking forward to confront Espo. Shut him up? About her mother's case?
"I've been on this kid for two years, Beckett. He's a punk, comes right down to it, despite me in his life. I figured he was trying to take us for a ride." Javier rubs the back of his neck and Kate falls silent, all of her words gone, completely blown open with it. "His fifteen minutes, you know? He was talking about your mom."
"Her mom's case. What's that have to do with this?" Castle looks like he can't breathe all of the sudden, and Kate diverts her attention from Espo long enough to take a half-step towards him. But he backs up. "Asking about Kate. This guy - Joey heard this guy asking about Kate?"
"Which is why it didn't connect," Espo said. "I thought it would be Bracken again, but that's been dealt with, and Beckett, I swear." He was staring at her now, hard-jawed and yet also vulnerable. "I swear, I was just trying to keep the load off your shoulders. I was looking into it myself and getting nowhere, but that's because I was looking at it like it was about Bracken. And it's not. It's about Castle."
Her mother's case? Castle is about her mother's case?
"Wait. How do you know it's the same guy?" It's Castle who takes over questioning, the real question here. "How can you possibly know it's the same guy in the Mercedes? That photo is so bad that all you can see are pixels."
"Yeah," Espo said, but he was shaking his head and looking at her. "The screen grab we took has the guy pumping gas - with his left hand."
"So?" Castle says. There's a hint of desperation in his voice that has Kate's hand trembling for an instant; she wants, very badly, to be right at his side, to prop him up. "What does his left hand have to do with anything?"
"Joey was talking about a scary white guy in Washington Heights with a fake hand - mechanical he said, but back then I thought he was blowing it up. And his source was a meth head - so I took it with a grain of salt. Only now we got this guy driving the Mercedes, and he reaches out across his body to swipe his card, his left hand down to pump. Only reason to reach across your body is because your other hand is injured or-"
"A prosthetic," Kate finishes hollowly. A man with a fake hand. She's completely lost. How does that relate to her mother's case?
If Bracken sent someone to wreck her husband, to kill Castle-
"When I saw that, Beckett, I swear, I went straight to the manager of the Stop-N-Go-"
"It was a Citgo," she mutters. Bracken sent someone to kill Castle? She's finding it hard to breathe.
"No, the manager at Joey's job is at the Stop-N-Go. He's the one who had the run-in with our man. I took a sketch artist down there with me - the second you two left - and this is what he came up with. Give or take a few details."
Esposito pulls a piece of paper out of his back pocket and unfolds it twice, holds it up to Beckett.
But it's Castle who surges forward, snatches the sketch from Espo's hands.
"Oh, God. This is the man who kidnapped Alexis."
Esposito has cleared out - fast - and now it's just the two of them, Kate stalking him around and around, and she knows it, but she can't help prowling.
"Tell me you remember what was going on in January of 2014," Kate stresses. "Last year. Tell me you remember that."
But Castle is still shaking his head, pacing the living room, his back turned away from her. She sent Esposito to the 12th to drag up everything they had on the murder and Alexis's kidnapping, but Castle still won't face the real issue.
"Rick," she insists.
"I know."
"Your father was here in January." She scrapes a hand through her hair; she could strangle him. He's being so close-minded. "That man followed your father straight to you, Castle. After that whole fiasco - after he used us, this guy in the sketch followed Jackson Hunt straight to you."
"Gregory Volkov," he says quietly.
"You have a name?" Kate seethes.
"That's all I have," he promises, and there's desperation in his voice that she doesn't like. It pulls her up short, makes her close her eyes, reassess.
"Volkov," she repeats. "Tell me. Castle, tell me what's going on because this doesn't make sense to me."
"I told you," he says hollowly. "I don't remember."
"I know that. Tell me about Volkov." She didn't think she'd be interrogating her own husband about this. She's always trusted that he would explain, that he would bring it to her the second it came to him. "Tell me why he's in Washington Heights asking about me."
"I guess because my father was here," he admits. He looks shame-faced, agitated.
"And Volkov is what? - his nemesis? This isn't a comic book, Castle. Why was he asking about my mother?"
"I don't know," he suddenly bellows.
Kate steps back, caught off-guard, but Castle rubs both hands down his face and growls, not looking at her. She has to get it together, figure this out, because it's true - unfairly true - he doesn't know. He won't know. He doesn't remember.
He's not going to be able to help her. "Okay," she says slowly. "We have a name. That's more than we had, Rick. That's a lot. I'll track down the Mercedes, the boys and I will go after known associates, I can-"
"No!"
She pauses, lifting her eyes to look at him, really look, and she sees a wild and desperate fear clawing out of him. Kate comes straight for him, wrapping her arms around his torso only to feel the frantic thud of his racing heart.
"Castle," she soothes. "Castle, it's okay. I'm a cop, remember?"
"God," he croaks. "Don't - don't - don't tell them."
"Who?" she murmurs. "Tell what? Espo and Ryan are on this with me; Captain Gates has made this top priority. We'll get this guy. We can get him."
He's shaking, and she slides her arm up his back and palms the nape of his neck, hoping to ease him down. He drops his forehead to her shoulder and takes gulping breaths.
He's not okay.
This fake-hand man, Volkov, he did something to Castle, and her husband is afraid, and that is not okay.
"I'm going to get him, Rick. He can't do this to you, to us."
"No, don't-" His words are a gasp, but she clutches him tighter, her arms banded around him as if she can hold him together.
"He can't do this to me," she says fiercely into his ear. "We didn't come all this way to have it ruined by your father's damn enemies."
"He kidnapped Alexis," Castle scrapes out.
"And you," she insists. "We can't let him get away with it. We're not going to let your father's enemies use us as some kind of revenge."
"He had the walkie-talkie."
"What?" she gasps. "Do you remember-"
"No, back when - when we got Alexis out of France. It was a ruse - capture me as a ruse. My father put explosives in the walkie-talkie and Volkov confiscated it and pushed me into the room with Alexis and then it blew up."
"It blew up," she states numbly. What is he talking about?
"The walkie-talkie blew up in his hand."
"Oh." Oh, his hand. The fake hand is because of that? "Is that - that was when you MacGyvered the lock on the cage?" He's told her this story, but she realizes now that he's told her pieces. That he kept some back to cover his father's tracks, protect him. "Or did Hunt do that?"
"He was the noisy diversion at the front. I was the one who grabbed Alexis and ran. That's what he said. Grab her, put your heads down and run."
"You got her out of there," she reminds him. She feels like he needs it, a reminder - everyone is safe, they're all here. "You got her out."
"I thought Volkov would be dead."
"Why?"
"Because my father isn't."
What did she call Volkov? Nemesis. Sounds like that's exactly what's going on here. And now she's been dragged into it somehow, with her mother's case in Washington Heights - but that's over. That's been over; it shouldn't matter. Was he trying to get to her, back in January, trying to find her weaknesses?
"Castle." She cups his face with her hands, drawing back to look at him. "When the boys get everything pulled from records, I'll go back to the 12th. I'm going to get this guy. Do you hear me?"
"No, don't-" He grunts and closes his eyes. "This is too dangerous."
"Have some faith," she whispers. Her mouth touches his then, finally, a brush of a kiss. "You said it first, Rick. What's a great story without some obstacles to overcome?"
His arms are suddenly tangling around her, an embrace so bone-crushing that her breath leaves her in a rush. But she cradles his head where he buries it into her neck, holds him close, because in a few minutes, she's going back to work and she's getting Volkov.
But then his words come to her, close at her ear, and she shivers to hear them:
"If it was Volkov, then where's my father in all this? Why hasn't he said anything? Why hasn't he explained?"