Close Encounters 13

"Probably been long abandoned," Mitchell said in her ear. "This stuff with Bracken went down like fifteen years ago almost."

"Yeah, you're right," Beckett answered quietly. They'd split into teams around the farm yard in upstate New York, the winter air cold and crisp in the morning light. Ice had formed on the branches overnight and frost broke off under her boots. Castle looked forlorn and alone standing as point just ahead of her, but he was going over the blueprints with his other tact team leaders.

"You don't think we'll actually find anything, do you?"

"Is this your way of telling me not to get my hopes up?" she snorted. The lawyer had rolled late last night, offering up an address of the place where he'd done business with Bracken off the books.

Back in the day, this farmhouse had been a front for the senator's illegal activities and a clearinghouse for a majority of the money - and the cargo. The lawyer had been clear that this place had been a staging ground for Bracken's illegal activities. It was owned by a tangled knot of companies that had thin and obscure ties back to Bracken, but ties they were. And close enough.

The warrant had come through the AG's office and the Secret Service were at their side for this one. For fifteen years, bad things had happened at this place. Kate could feel it in the air, see it in the creaking bones of the farmhouse, the haunt of crows in the trees and their still, watchful eyes.

She was ready to end this. Ready for this story to have its close.

"Suit up," Mitchell murmured under his breath.

She glanced up and saw Castle turning to their squad, his weapon in hand at his thigh. He looked so strong, the bullet proof vest laying over him like a thin sheen of armor, the collar of his dress shirt poking above one strap and making her fingers itch to tuck it in.

"All right. We've got our warrant. We don't expect trouble, but we don't know what we'll find. Rusty farm equipment or something else. Listen to your team leaders and go on my command."

He nodded once and turned to lead them across the property.

Beckett, along with thirty other agents, unholstered her weapon and stepped into her stance, following in formation. She tasted the metal of winter in the air and the sense that everything that happened here today was going to be pressed into her memory for the rest of her life.

For good or bad.

She shivered as she entered the old barn, the smell of rotted wood in the air. Castle and Mitchell both were at her flank while the majority of their team was back at the farmhouse, crawling over every last inch of the place. She took in the details of the outbuilding even as she noted her guys' positions.

The wood was dark, the interior both cavernous and dim. No light reached the inside, and part of the barn had been remodeled into what looked like holding pens and work areas. A series of pulleys and chains was mounted into the reinforced ceiling, hooks at regular intervals, a clear path underneath with a thigh-high guiding wall. Castle stepped ahead of her to quietly clear the cage-like partitions to her left, while Mitch inspected the gears that seemed to control the chains.

"Slaughter," he said finally, giving her a swift glance back.

For animals? Or for people? Beckett pressed her lips together and kept searching with her gun raised before her. She didn't like the feeling in this place, and the chains and hooks were making her skin crawl.

She noted the great, terrible splash of dirty brown on the floor, layer after layer of stains right below the line of hooks.

She heard the blood-curdling scream first, the gunshot second. She pivoted automatically even as she saw Castle raise his weapon to defend himself against his attacker. But the wicked end of a shovel caught his shoulder and neck, felled Castle before he could stop the guy.

Her husband went down. The man lifted the shovel above his head like an ax and Beckett put four rounds in his chest, Mitchell another two in the same instant.

The first shot - she had no idea where it had come from, who.

"Castle," she called, vaulting over the wall and running to him even as she kept her eyes on his attacker.

"I got our guy," Mitchell called to her. "You get him."

"Look for a gun," she warned him. "I heard a shot." She came to her knees beside her husband, reached out a hand to the bright bloom of blood on his jaw. But his pulse was steady under her fingers and she caressed his face.

His eyes opened, breath sucked in even as he jerked upright, wheezing.

He'd caught a bullet in his vest, just at his ribs, and he clawed at the straps even as she caught his shoulders and steadied him.

"Fuck," he groaned, head tilting back as she released the strictures of the vest. "That's gonna leave a mark."

She grunted a laugh and slid her hand over the ugly mark at his neck where the shovel had gotten him. He hissed and pulled away from her touch.

"What happened?"

"He came out of the dark with a gun and I moved to intercept him. He was aiming at you."

"Moved to intercept," she said dully, watching the way the blood on his chin dripped down his neck. He was rubbing at his sternum and had his eyes closed; he looked pale and battered.

"You were in full view," he muttered.

"He shot you," she said quietly.

"I knocked the gun out of his hands," he said in return. "He grabbed the shovel and nailed me."

"Not before he shot you," she reminded him.

"He came out of nowhere."

Castle had been too slow. A basic self-defense move that they had practiced a thousand times, together, in training, for fun just messing around... and Castle had been too slow.

"Thank God for the vest," Mitchell interrupted. "He's dead. Weapon's secure. Both of them. Nasty cut you got on your neck. Hit you pretty hard."

Castle reached up and touched the side of his neck where the blade had bit into his skin. Beckett looked away, the knot in her chest unable to unravel despite the easy way Castle got to his feet, the good-natured banter between him and Mitch.

She stood finally too, watched her husband with her heart sinking to her stomach. "You should get checked by the EMTs," she said.

Castle opened his mouth like he was going to shake her off, but she must look as completely done in as she felt, because he didn't say it. His vest dangled from one hand and his weapon was back in its holster on his hip, but he watched her a moment and then nodded.

"All right. Let me check in with team leaders and then I'm all yours."

Kate wrapped her arms around her body and watched him hustle back outside to get a report from his team, leaving her alone with the dead man in the barn.

Castle looked as stunned as she felt when the CIA medic diagnosed him with a concussion.

"A concussion. From just that?" he said into the silence. And then the surprise was blanked from his face.

She was moments from a panic attack; she could feel it. "What do we do?"

"Just keep checking on him. If he feels abnormally tired or gets confused, bring him into the clinic. He might throw up, but that's to be expected once or twice. If he throws up all night-"

"Bring him in," Kate said tersely.

"Exactly." The medic excused himself and headed for the dead guy still in the barn. The rest of the CIA team had found four others hiding out here, still doing day-to-day maintenance on a place that must still be operational. For what, they didn't know yet.

But they were close; even Beckett was feeling it, just how close they finally were to bringing in the senator who had ordered her mother's death. Strange how this how whole thing had felt so removed from her until this moment. Until she was standing in front of her husband - her partner - behind a tract of land where it had all started.

She reached out despite the witnesses milling around, and she stroked her fingers carefully through his hair. His scalp was sticky with blood; his eyes shifted to look at her, gave her a long and solemn gaze.

"You shot to kill," Castle said.

It should matter more than it did. "It was - instinct."

"Training," he muttered, lowering his head.

CIA training, yes. She'd shot to kill rather than disarm. "This is the life I have," she said, not sure it was really what he wanted to hear. "He's dead and... you're not."

"What do you think happens here?" Castle asked, his arm sweeping out towards the farm. He hadn't ducked away from her touch, though she knew he couldn't possibly love it in front of his men, so she dropped her hand.

"I have no idea. Barn looks like it was used for slaughter at one point."

"The stalls on the side were fresh - clean and in use."

"Slaughter still?"

"Or other cattle," he said quietly. "You know, about two years ago when Black started the initial investigation, there were at least two places we busted that were shipping girls over from war-torn Middle Eastern countries."

"Coonan was part of that," she answered.

Castle nodded thoughtfully, but he winced and lifted his hand to the side of his neck. The medic had bandaged the gash left from the blade of the shovel, but the bruise had already bloomed black and purple underneath.

"Could be his main source of income. Girls."

She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, holding it back. "Human trafficking," she said, pulled for a moment by the idea that - over the last fifteen years - Bracken had ruined the lives of so many. So very many - not just through death, but with enslavement.

Beckett had been enslaved once as well, enslaved by Bracken to this obsession. But now she was free because of Castle. He had released her, dragged her out of the black hole of her mother's case, and he'd given her life again.

Now Kate had to do the same for him. Life for life.

Castle pocketed his phone and rubbed the side of his neck gingerly; the bandage covered the worst of it, but the bruise itself made his head throb. Didn't help that his fingers and toes were going numb now too, off and on.

Beckett came around the corner and into his office, stopped suddenly when she saw him standing right there. She looked tense enough to break, her body almost trembling with the tight control she exerted.

Castle reached out and dragged her all the way inside, shut the door behind her. He had to force her into his arms, so fiercely was she wound, but the moment her fingers curled in his shirt, he knew he had her.

For a little while at least.

"I called Boyd," he said softly into her hair. A peace offering. "I told him what happened."

"Yeah?" she scraped out. Her face was against the uninjured side of his neck, but one of her hands came up to smooth her fingers along the surgical tape just below the bandage.

"Yeah. I'm gonna go up there late Thursday night instead. Stay until Saturday night - maybe Sunday morning. The concussion makes it harder for them to do their tests and they want to go slow with me."

She nodded against him, a tremor running through her that she quickly suppressed. He wrapped his arms tighter around her as if that could help, as if the force of his grip would translate into a show of strength.

"I'm okay," he promised her.

She nodded again but it felt for show. Castle cupped the back of her neck and angled her mouth to his, took a slow, drugging kiss to prove what he couldn't find words to explain. Her fingers in his shirt dug in and the hand at the bottom of the bandage splayed out, and her body rose to meet his.

Castle broke to press his forehead to hers, breathing shallowly in the thin air between them. "I'm fine, Kate," he promised again, stroking his thumb at the vulnerable part of her neck, feeling her swallow. "I'm fine, sweetheart."

She nodded, the movement dislodging him, and he moved to wrap his arms around her again even though nothing he said or did seemed to reach her. She was a wall, and it was up against him this time, and he knew that was only because she was going to collapse if she didn't have it.

So he stopped trying to break it down, stopped trying to sneak past, and he simply stayed.

Even though she was inside his arms, she was so far removed. He felt the loss of her like a chill, and the numbness crept closer.

"I'm going to be fine," he said again, and the slight amendment to his words seemed to catch her.

"You are," she insisted. "You're going to be fine."

When he'd headed back to the command center to catch up on reports about the farmhouse and the four men taken into custody, Beckett finally found her way down to the room of servers. She closed the door behind her and took a breath, but she couldn't get enough air.

Leaning back, head against the metal, she closed her eyes and pushed it down, swallowed it down, reasserted her will. She took a final moment and then pushed off the door to the work station.

The keyboard slid out smoothly and she rested her fingers against the home row, searching inside herself for some measure of strength, for a better way. But there was only this way.

One way.

Through Black.

Beckett minimized the running programs that Ryan still had going on the desktop and she called up the station to station communiques. Her mouth was dry as she typed in the requisite code words for today, the command key that would give her access.

When the little black and green box popped up with the connection, she let out a breath and asked for the Station Keeper to verify.

The cursor blinked in the black box.

She crossed her arms over her chest and waited. The room was cold to keep the computers running efficiently and she drew her arms tighter and shivered.

The green cursor paused.

Continued to blink.

Beckett paced the length of the room and came back, but the Station Keeper still stayed dark. The hair on the back of her neck rose and she leaned over the keyboard and typed in the prompt once more.

She held her breath but nothing came back.

No one was answering.

Kate let out a frustrated growl and snagged a hand in her hair, squeezed her scalp as she closed her eyes and tried to think. Why would the station be dark? Why wouldn't the station keeper answer?

Black.

Of course, had to be. Had to be.

So she typed her plea directly into the machine: He won't come. He was shot today - he needs the regimen.

It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the whole truth either. The only way to get anything from Black was through his son. She hoped that was still true; she was banking on it.

And when the silence went on, when the cursor blinked without remorse: Please.

It was still connected; the black box told her someone was there.

Please, she thought. Please.

And then the black box closed. Communication lost.

Beckett sank to her knees and pressed her hands to the floor, head bowed, gulping for air, but her chest only torqued tighter, a fist around her lungs.

Castle dropped everything on the floor of the entryway - maybe a little too hard - and put a cautious hand up to his neck. Behind him, Kate pressed her palm to his back and pushed him gently inside so she could shut the door.

Home. He half-turned in the space and caught her hand. "I'm tired," he admitted. "More than just..."

She nodded tightly and her fingers curled around his, snared him. "You can sleep." Her eyes were searching his - for dilated pupils or trouble focusing, he knew - but she seemed able to let him go.

"Hungry though," he said. She pushed past him to leave her keys on the table, set her laptop bag on the stairs in a much gentler way than he had dumped his own stuff on the floor.

"I'll make you something," she said. "While you change."

"Change?"

She sighed and nodded her head towards him; he glanced down and saw the blood that stained the collar of his shirt. The bandage had gotten dirty too, he'd noticed earlier, and he should probably check it out.

"I'll go change," he sighed. "What are you making?"

"I don't know. We'll see."

"I like breakfast," he said hopefully. "You make good waffles."

Her smile snagged at the corner of her lips and she came into him, her hand brushing the buttons of his shirt. Her kiss was soft against his cheek. "Waffles then. Go."

He went, using the rail to haul himself up the stairs, and headed eagerly into their bedroom, stripping clothes as he went. His neck and shoulder were bruised, but when he got into the bathroom to get a look at it, it wasn't as bad as he'd feared.

From the look on her face, he'd been half cleaved in two and it was a miracle his head was still attached. But as he peeled the surgical tape from his skin, the bruise was already that blotchy yellow and blue of healing, and the cuts where the shovel had gotten him were scabbed over and nearly gone.

Castle picked at one of the spots until it bled, watching the dark red in the mirror until it dried up. Quickly, without fuss, and he wondered if this was normal.

Was any of this normal?

Castle sighed and pulled off his pants, headed back into the bedroom for pajamas. His muscles were tender with every movement but the twinges and strains were to be expected.

All in all, it wasn't that bad. He was grateful to his vest; he'd need a new one too. But really, he'd been dealt worse blows.

That time they'd tried to cut off his hand? Yeah, much worse. And hadn't Kate just asked him about that story this weekend? She knew he got into regular scrapes, that this was par for the course with him.

He wasn't less; he was just... in the thick of things.

Castle padded back downstairs barefoot, noted that his right hand was still intermittently numb from where the nerve in his neck had gotten pinched. Paramedic had said it'd be okay in a few days, but Castle hadn't exactly told Kate about it. He was afraid she'd see it as symptoms of the injections rather than what it was.

When he got to the living room, he could already smell the batter on the waffle iron, the scent of syrup latent in the air. It made him hungry in more ways than one, and he was glad he'd suggested it - maybe it would remind her he was still strong.

The picture she made in their kitchen had him halting in the doorway. In her work clothes, high heels still on and the swing of her necklace out over her breasts as she leaned forward to check the timer, Kate looked confident and supremely at ease. Maybe the waffles had gotten to her too, nudged her open to him again, made her mind stop spinning.

"Hey," he said softly.

She looked up and he realized that the confidence in her face wasn't about him, it was about herself. What she'd resolved to do or not do. She was done with worrying; she'd banished it by force.

"Smells awesome," he grinned.

She smiled back, though it was tight.

"I'll take over," he told her, slipping into the kitchen. He came to her side and ran his hand down her back, tugged her hip to draw her into him. His kiss fell on her temple and she sighed. "I've got it."

She turned into him and pressed her body to his in a moment of something he couldn't understand, but he held her with both arms, murmured love into her ear with his every breath.

When she was under control again, she stepped only marginally away from him.

"Go on, Kate," he said. "Go get changed."

And she went - like all she'd needed was his permission.

Kate didn't sleep.

For hours, she watched the moonlight draw long shadows over his face, the path of the light sinking, drowning out his features. She figured the night was over for her anyway, so she slipped out of bed and headed quietly for the empty bedroom.

She opened the closet door and stood in front of her timeline, studying each and every point she'd plotted, the moments and details of his life as a spy, the places she'd recreated from photocopies she'd taken out of her detective's notebook, or stories he'd told her in bed after sex, or the scars themselves along his body.

A knife blade here, a bullet wound there, a near-death hallucination, a drowning in a lake, an explosion mid-air, a collision on an international freeway, a motorcycle that spun out, a cracked collarbone, a concussion, a bridge-jump at night, a parachute that didn't open in time.

She skimmed her fingers over the copies she'd made of his own stories, his writing cramped and quick or straight and familiar, his very own words giving her hope if only for the richness of detail and the way he made it come alive.

But there were no more clues. No trails to follow, no leads to investigate, no details to track down. No matter how long she looked at the work she'd done over the last few weeks, it all led to the same place.

His father.

She was afraid.

It washed through her now, sudden and swift as a flood, filling her up and making her sink to the floor, hands pressed into her eyes as she let it. She was afraid of Black. But she was more afraid of what happened if she didn't confront him, what happened to Castle if this went on without redress, afraid that one day her husband would be a half-step behind on some important mission and she'd come back without him.

Afraid, afraid, afraid.

There was so much want in her. So many things she wanted for him because he deserved them, because he was such a good man, because she loved him and his broken, little-boy heart, because he'd had so much taken from him that he didn't even know the lack. She wanted to give him a child of his own and a family to make it home to; she wanted to make love to him in Cyprus in that infinity pool one more time; she wanted to thwart evil plots with him and save the world and be driven by such purpose and conviction and good.

Not fear.

But that's all she held room for inside herself; fear was crowding out everything else - the dreams and the wants and the love, all of it subsumed by the fear. And she knew she wasn't being a rational person; she could feel the panic attacks bubbling just under her skin; she just didn't know what else to do.

She lifted her head to stare at the timeline, hoping the change in angle would illuminate her way. On her knees, subjugated by love, wanting only to save him. Save them.

No answers were revealed, no mysterious paths to enlightenment.

She rubbed her wedding ring with her thumb and twisted it again and again, hoping for more, needing more, but it could be anywhere and nowhere; it could be a lab in Venezuela or the German scientist who'd relocated to Prague. It could be the facility at the Turkish base, or the military hospital complex at Ramstein.

She hooked her fingers in her necklace, realized she was playing with the things he'd given her - wedding ring and the necklace with his thumbprint etched into the Roman coin. She pressed the coin to her lips and felt the whorls of his mark, closed her eyes to breathe.

She couldn't take it with her. It'd be - nothing that could trace back to him, nothing to blow her cover as she got out of the States and moved deeper. She fumbled at the clasp and finally opened it, let it fall from her neck. She clasped it again and pressed her fist around the coin, the thumbprint, her proof of him.

The ring. She wasn't supposed to wear it on a mission; she wasn't supposed to take it out of the country. When they were overseas, she wore it on her mother's chain under her clothes and even that was pushing things. But when she moved to slide the ring from her finger, it wouldn't come loose. Wouldn't budge over her knuckle despite how thin her fingers were.

She was going to throw up; she couldn't leave it here. He had asked her to never take it off. He'd asked her to make it real and she couldn't - she just couldn't.

The cool blue stone gleamed in the dull light, and she twisted it around her finger to hide the gem in the cup of her hand, leaving only the band in view. She placed the necklace on the shelf inside the closet where she'd left her detective's notebook as source material, and then she stood up, closed the door on it all.

Castle would leave for Stone Farm tomorrow night, and she would leave as well.