Close Encounters 13
Thursday afternoon, Castle couldn't figure out what was going on with her. "Doc cleared me," he reminded her. "No concussion. I can drive."
She turned her head to him, confusion lacing her gaze. "I know."
"Oh. Good," he muttered. They were in line for a warrant and he hated to pause the investigation right now. "The leads we've gotten are good. Mitch and the boys will take care of things."
"We're very close," she said quietly.
He thought that was it. Maybe that was it. His leaving at such a crucial point in their case against Bracken when they both knew that Kate couldn't officially be in charge. Not if they didn't want the evidence to be thrown out; she couldn't possibly be that close to the evidence collection. It was bad enough that her husband was the lead, but his Agency name wasn't ever supposed to come to the light of day. The trial would take place behind closed doors, and hopefully that meant his name, the CIA, and their connection wouldn't be called into question.
Just that they could think in terms of 'when' the trial would take place was a huge step forward. "The prostitution ring we busted this morning is another good sign that he has no idea we're coming."
She nodded but she still stood at attention on the floor of the command center. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, saw the way she tracked every small movement on the screens.
"We've got it covered, Kate."
Her head jerked to him and a flash of something like despair was there and gone again. "We do," she said. "I know we do. It's not - it's just a matter of putting all the pieces together."
"On Friday while I'm gone, Mitch will have picked up the Senator's Chief of Staff. We'll hold him over the weekend, and Secret Service can interrogate him."
She nodded; it was all information she knew already, but he had the feeling she needed the sound of his voice going over it once more.
"By Monday, we'll know more about Bracken's operations out of DC and can tie him to the stuff here in New York."
"And then?" she said quietly.
"And then we build our case. The evidence is all on Floor Two, secure room, only me, Malone, you, and Espo can key card into it. Not even my damn father can get in that room."
She blanched. "I'm worried about Bryce."
"We're still looking for him," he said quietly. "When he disappeared... I can't say that I was surprised."
"I figured your father would leave him here to keep tabs on us. I never thought he might kill him."
"Bryce..." They didn't know for sure that Bryce had been murdered, but it was looking to be likely. Castle couldn't say that the man had gotten what was coming to him because Bryce probably hadn't known a thing about Black's real plans. But Bryce had been spying on his fellow operatives; he had been passing state secrets and classified information over to Black at the listening station, and so there was no way to measure how much damage the missing agent had done.
"I wish we knew," Kate said. "One way or another. Where he is."
"Probably in the Hudson," he sighed.
"But who? And when? If someone got to Bryce here, Castle, then those are enemies we don't know anything about - unknown agents who killed one of their own. And if Bryce isn't dead, then he's out there... a threat to us as well."
"We'll figure this out after we get Bracken cleared up. Once we have cuffs on the guy, I'll feel a lot better about everything. He's my first priority."
She sighed and when he glanced over at her; she turned her head away from him. Almost like she didn't want him to see what was in her eyes.
"Kate?" he murmured. Even though the command center was bustling with activity, he hooked her pinky with his and jiggled. She turned back to him and all of it was carefully gone from her face.
"I'm just... thinking about you," she murmured. "The tests."
"I know," he said softly. How it weighed on her. "I know, love, but the concussion is gone and the bruise is healing. That's fast, right? That's faster than normal people. I'm still super. You don't have to worry."
She nodded, gave him one of those sad smiles that made his heart ache, made him want to slay her dragons and lay the world at her feet. "Still super," she agreed. The smile lifted for a moment, wider and lighter, and she turned towards him in the middle of the room with everyone at their work stations around them. "Kiss me."
"What?" he laughed.
"Kiss me. Right here. How you want to kiss me."
"How do I want to kiss you?" he grinned.
"I can see it on your face, Rick Castle," she said back. Her fingers teased at his hip, stroking. "What you want to do to me."
"No, sweetheart. It's what I want to do for you."
"Then kiss me."
So he leaned in and punished her mouth with his, taking even what she didn't want to offer, all of her anxiety and fear for him, all of the carefully held back reserve, sweeping it away with the force of his love for her.
They broke apart to catcalls and whistles, someone pounding him on the back, someone else saying something about victory sex, and Kate had her fingers against her lips like she could trap it and hold it forever. Her eyes were light as she watched him.
"That do you?" he said roughly, hearing the want in his voice.
"That will do me," she murmured. And then she reached out and touched those fingers to his lips as well, the caress more erotic and potent and beautiful than his kiss.
It was like saying good-bye.
Kate walked him down the block to the Range Rover, holding hands. His fingers were strong around hers, his palm so wide. Their shoulders brushed and he talked the whole way, his voice wrapping around her like armor, shoring her up. He'd admitted that he was feeling the cold in the tips of his fingers, but that it came and went.
It only solidified her decision.
At the car, when she lost the connection of his hand, she felt cast adrift. She couldn't help the way she was looking at him, couldn't help leaning out after him as he threw his bag into the backseat in that easy, cavalier manner he had.
Life was good for him. Even when it hadn't been, even when his father had been domineering and punishing and exacting, Castle had still thought life had been good - in his head. That was the thing she took from him like strength, that's what she drew from him when he was with her, that sense that life could be good no matter the circumstances.
And she was letting it go.
Because she knew better.
Life wasn't always good to her. She had to work to keep it.
"Hey," he murmured suddenly, his hand catching her hair and pushing it back. He cupped the side of her face and kissed her, little soft kisses, one after another, coming back for more again and again. "Hey, sweetheart. You're killing me."
She crashed into him, and he wrapped his arms around her and murmured against her ear.
"Hey, hey. Why the face? Just some tests. Not the end of the world."
"I know," she got out. "I know."
"Do you - did you want to come with me? I didn't think to ask..."
"No," she choked. "No, I can't - shouldn't. I won't."
He released her, his fingers running through her hair like she was four years old and needed the comfort, the safety of him. And maybe she did. For as long as she could get it, as long as he'd give it to her. She leaned her head into his touch and sighed.
"Hey, seriously, Kate. You're worrying me."
"No," she said, eyes flaring open. "Don't be worried. I'm fine. It's fine." She didn't want him to call it off and stay. He couldn't stay.
His brow furrowed and she didn't think he was all that convinced, so she remade her face, softened her mouth and came in closer to brush her lips to his. He never even resisted, he just dove into her kiss whole-heartedly, happy to have her, and she gripped him by his biceps and inhaled every bit of him she could.
When he nudged her away, she could hear his breathless grin, feel the clutch of his hands at her hip and her neck. She smiled for him, dusted that smile across his cheek to whisper in his ear.
"Love you, Rick. Be safe."
He sighed and nuzzled at her jaw, shook himself and stepped back. "Love you too. It'll only be the weekend. Be back before you know it."
He moved around the car and got inside, started the engine with a roar. She couldn't see inside the tinted windows, but she moved down the sidewalk, half following him as he pulled out of the space.
He was gone in a moment and she was alone with her terrible certainty.
It was time to go to Black.
Friday morning, Beckett opened the safe in the closet of the extra bedroom and pulled out the passport issued under one of her cover identities. Off the grid, the assumed name was one that Castle had arranged for her, something his father had never set eyes on. In case of emergency, he'd told her, and at the time she knew it was for disappearing. Never to return. Castle had one in a different name.
And there was a blank one. For a small child.
She ignored it.
Sasha whined at her heels and she reached down to scratch at the puppy's head, but she didn't have much time or attention left for sympathy. Her heart was a stone in her chest as she placed the passport in the inside pocket of her bag and swung that onto her shoulder.
She'd left her detective's notebook and the necklace here on the shelf, and to it she added the soft little stuffed elephant he'd given her for her birthday, the grey fur and the big sad eyes and the floppy ears. She'd found herself carrying it around, growing disgusted with herself and leaving it in whatever room she'd wandered into it, but now she closed the door on it.
Left it there for good.
She didn't expect Castle to ever be able to forgive her for this, though he might try. More than that, she wasn't sure she'd make it back.
She shrugged inside her jacket as she left the empty bedroom, her movements releasing the smell of him from her coat collar. She moved down the stairs quietly with the dog trailing after her, and the door bell rang.
She dropped the bag on the landing and glanced at Sasha, composing her face. When she had entered the keycode into the alarm and opened the door, her father waited patiently on the other side, giving her a long look.
"Thanks, Dad."
"I don't mind," he said easily. "I just thought you guys said you'd be laying low this year."
"We are. We were. Just - had something come up," she said. She couldn't lie to him, but she was carefully not explaining the situation. He was used to that though. "Castle needs my help."
Her father nodded tightly, as if that was all the explanation needed. And maybe it was. Maybe she could get by with that simple statement of truth. Castle needed her help.
And she was going to get it.
"Here's all her stuff," Kate said then, shaking herself out of it. She turned back for the puppy's leash and favorite pull toy, the old towel of Castle's that the dog liked to sleep with. She'd collected everything and put it in a grocery bag; she gave that now to her father.
"She'll be fine," her dad said. "She likes the woods. I'll be at the cabin all weekend."
Kate nodded; she'd figured as much. Hoped for it. "I should... I'll let you know when I'm back," she said tightly.
She didn't know when, how. She had no idea what awaited her off the coast of Tunisia. She only knew that the Station Keeper didn't seem to have it under control and that Black hated her with a consuming and deadly-logical passion.
She had destroyed everything Black had built for his life; she had taken his son from him.
And now she was heading straight into his hands.
She shivered and the dog whined at her, but Kate leaned over and rubbed her roughly, pressing nose to nose for those wet kisses. "Thank you, puppy. My sweet girl. You be good for my Dad."
When she lifted again, her father was drawing her into a fierce and crushing hug, his arms tight. "Don't be stupid, Katie."
"I'm not - I won't. I won't."
"Love you, kid. You know that. Even when - after your mother - I just..."
"Love you, Dad. I know. Don't worry."
"Fine, fine," Jim said gruffly. "I got your baby. We'll leave so you can go. Airport?"
"Taking a cab. I'm fine." She snaked the leash out of the bag and hooked it on Sasha's collar, handed everything over to her father. "Thank you."
"Any time. Come on, Sash. You're with me."
Sasha gave Kate one last backward look and whined, tail tucked down, but she followed Jim out the door and down the street. Kate watched them until her father got into his truck, the dog up front, and then she closed the door and took up her own bag.
A cab to the airport, her cover passport, and a flight to Tunisia. She palmed her phone and stared at it a long moment, gave in and texted him.
At the Office. Text me if you need anything.
Just in case. Just in case.
Time to leave.
She realized with a sickening sink to her stomach that today was Valentine's Day and she was leaving him.
There was only one direct flight to Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, from New York's JFK International and it left at eight o'clock that Friday morning. She didn't expect to be able to hide from Black, to at all fly in under his radar, so she didn't even attempt it. In the last four years, Kate Beckett had undermined and destroyed four decades of Agent Black's work. She knew - without a doubt - he'd find her anywhere.
So she'd save her energy for fighting for Castle's life.
Tunisia, the smallest country in North Africa, held a CIA listening station off its northern coast, a supposedly isolated and secure facility where Castle had sent his father under house arrest. The young democracy had ousted their leader in 2011 and installed their first free elections, so it wasn't like the assignment was a dead end or boring. She had no idea what had happened to the Station Keeper, but she could imagine.
Black was a smooth talker, and he'd been in power longer than Castle had been alive. Reynolds was a likeable guy, from what Kate remembered of him, but he'd been on Castle's team back when Black had been in charge. He might have been persuaded, even duped, by the man now.
Even if she had attempted to enter the country by guile, even if she had done so by stealth, Black would have known she was coming and found her anyway. At least now she didn't waste a whole week's worth of travel on obfuscation; she had the weekend and she needed it to be done by then.
Whatever happened happened.
So, of course, it didn't take long.
With the long flight and the time change, the day was gone when she arrived at nearly ten that night. Tunis was an invigorating flux of French European and Ottoman styles, a culture both colorful and drab, severely religious and also moderately liberated. A Roman amphitheater spread across from a domed mosque; the great throne hall with its gold-leafed walls and rococo design was sandwiched within a district market. She had just left the airport center and headed on foot for a stand of cabs, the massive mountain in the blue-hazed distance, the smell of the Mediterranean in her nose, when the black SUV pulled up at the sidewalk and blocked her way.
That it was Deleware who opened the back door, that it was Deleware who pointed the gun at her shocked her to her core.
"Del-?"
"Get in."
Somehow this made it worse, made her feel sick to her stomach as she slowly stepped towards the SUV. A man at her left took her bag and patted her down, stripped her of the jacket she'd had to sling over her arm; a man on her right steadily pressed his fingers into her spine to hustle her forward.
She put a foot on the running board and felt the goon now running his hands over her ass, coldly, professionally, plucking her phone from her back pocket and tossing it to the ground. He smashed the heel of his boot into the face of her phone and her heart fluttered with hope when the protective case held. And then the goon brought his foot up once more and crunched the phone just like that, the back popping open and the screen splintering in a thousand spiderwebs. It flared to life, a message just received that Kate could see from where she was perched - half in and half out of the SUV.
It had been from Castle.
And then her phone was in pieces and Deleware was giving a guttural command to the driver, and the guy who had taken her luggage was shoving her inside the vehicle. The man handed over Beckett's passport to Deleware and the former CIA analyst rifled through it slowly. It felt like he was reading all of her most intimate stories, the things Castle whispered to her at night when they made love, all the hope for a future contained in that one small book.
Deleware slid the passport into his jacket pocket but his gun never wavered.
She sat back stiffly, hands like ice, and saw as they pulled away that her luggage and jacket had been abandoned on the sidewalk in the darkness.
Rick Castle tried to keep still as the MRI machine banged and heaved around his head. His eyes were closed and he'd messaged Kate that - at four in the afternoon - it was his third of the day, that it was easy, but in reality, the sharp sense of the enclosed space was slow to leave him.
Trapped.
They were doing a wide range of scans focused on defining the most active regions of his brain during a variety of states. The last MRI had projected images of violence and death and global catastrophe on the round, white tube just above his head; all he'd had to do was watch. His brain had kicked on, of course, and he'd gotten deep into contingency plans and evacuation procedures and ready response and worldwide mobilization by the time the scan was done - four hours later.
It was exhausting. And though he wasn't required to do anything at all for this scan, even though he could drift and fall asleep, that worm of anxiety crawled in under his weariness.
He wanted out of here.
But he'd stay. Because they needed to know what the regimen had done to him, because Kate couldn't sleep at night, because this was what it took to stay on top of this thing, to make sure that his misshapen red blood cells and his extra oxygen and whatever else might be genetically tampered with didn't somehow also kill him.
He wouldn't do that to her. God, not another person abandoning her. She couldn't take it; he'd seen what that had done to her when he'd faked his death, and it just wasn't survivable. Not for her.
So he endured the MRI machine and its clattering and knocking, the way every loud clamor felt like someone breaking down the walls of his mental panic room and getting inside his head, tearing things apart in there. He'd lived through years of testing and prodding and endurance and conditioning, so it wasn't like it was new for him. He had just assumed he'd left it behind him when he quit toeing his father's line.
But if this was what Kate needed, if this kept him going strong, then he'd deal.
He'd figure out how to deal.
Logan's voice came in over the mic in the tube, Logan himself probably in the next room observing. "Hey, Castle. Man, this one's supposed to be at rest. Stop thinking so much."
Castle would've laughed but it'd ruin the results, so he closed his eyes and forced out the noise, the hot confines of the tube, and the great unknowns that still loomed before him. Whatever his body did or didn't do, whatever was mucking up his blood, whatever injections or pills he might need to take for the rest of his life - none of that mattered.
That was far away from here. Here was Kate. Here was his wife and the life they were building together. Here was Kate and the curl of her fingers around his hip, the way she slid her body over his in the darkness of their bedroom, the brush of her mouth as she both smiled and kissed him, the hum of contentment when she found him awake as well.
Today was Valentine's Day, and he'd wanted to do something special, something sweet and solitary with her, the two of them. But he supposed the best gift he could give her was his health, as lame and tired as that was, and so he was stuck in a tube getting an MRI.
For her.
At rest. At rest. He was supposed to be at rest.
Well, with Kate, he finally could be at rest.
She was not afraid. She was not afraid.
She was not afraid.
If she chanted it to herself long enough, maybe she'd believe it. Maybe her heart would stop pounding like a craven thing, maybe her palms wouldn't sweat, maybe her thigh muscles wouldn't quiver like a bow strung too tightly.
The SUV had stopped at the end of a long, concrete dock. She was not told to get out, but Deleware and the two men held a quick conversation outside while the driver remained with her in the vehicle. He had a scar behind his ear that she couldn't fathom, but she found herself fixating on anyway. How he got it, why, who he'd pissed off or assaulted to get it.
She pressed her hands to her knees and fought for deeper breaths, faintly surprised that a panic attack hadn't overwhelmed her. If any time was the time for panic, it was now.
No weapon, no passport, no luggage, no phone, no one knew where she'd gone. She had to make it to Black - had to at least get the chance to see him, face to face, to beg for Castle's life. The regimen.
The door opened and Deleware stepped back. "Maine, you're with us," he said to the driver. And then to her, "Come."
"Where are you taking me?" she said. Her voice was low but she wasn't quiet. She scanned the wharf but they were alone at the end of the dock, a small craft tied up to the pylon and bobbing in the water. Two men with guns were on the prow, waiting on them, and the man at her back nudged her forward.
"Go."
One word phrases, the resolute lack of conversation or explanation - it didn't bode well. They were trained militia, hired guns who knew better than to engage their captive. She darted a glance down the dock, towards where people and other boats teemed the shore, but they were too far.
And, she realized dully, she didn't want to escape them. They were taking her to Black on that island listening station, and she had to see him. She'd rather have done it on her own terms; she'd rather have caught a cab to the docks and hired a boat like she'd planned. She would have rather shown up at the listening station and demanded the Keeper let her inside to talk with his prisoner, but she knew - she had known - it wasn't going to play out like that.
Deleware gestured her towards the boat. "Step over."
She had to time the slow swell of the water so that she made the jump on her feet. The others piled in after her, easily, even as the two guards kept their guns on her. She still had her hands free, but she assumed that had only been so she could get onboard and they wouldn't have to carry her.
Sure enough, Deleware nodded his head towards a low door and she ducked inside, found a blank and cramped room that looked like the pilothouse. The driver from the car who'd been called Maine grabbed her by the wrist in a bruising grip, but she bit her tongue and flared her nostrils to keep from crying out. He bound her wrists behind her back roughly with a sailor's expert knots, no slippage, no loose ends, and then he pushed her down on the floor.
She felt the sick crunch of her knee against the heavy-duty metal of the floor, listed to one side to let her shoulder take her weight against the wall. The flare of pain in her knee subsided with effort, and she inched down to sit as best she could.
Deleware came inside. "A forty-five minute boat ride," he said. The gun was held easily at his side, his movements more natural and far less fumbling than he'd been as an analyst in Castle's unit.
He'd been an inside man all along, no doubt. His hesitancy, his mild rebellions against Black - all intended to create a sense of little brother kinship with Castle. She watched him check his phone, but even in his distraction, he was still totally and completely in control. Aware.
"To Black," she said then. "You mean you're taking me to him."
Deleware lifted his gaze to her and she saw she'd been right; he had nothing of the soft-waisted desk jockey in his eyes. "Of course," he said calmly. "Who else?"
At least there was that. Black was better than whatever other factions might be raging through this small, newly-democratic nation. She'd seen what had happened to the man who'd gone to Cairo in Castle's place, what they'd done to his body. If she was going to die, it had damn well better be under her terms. For her purposes. For Castle.
"What happens next?" she asked Deleware.
"When we arrive, we'll see what happens." He shrugged and then gave her a smile that made her bones freeze. "Good to see you again, Kate. Too bad you weren't a smarter agent."
Her mind blanked, snow white and terrible in its roaring silence, but Deleware was already heading out the door.
Whatever else, it was too late; she was here now.
Nothing left to do but face the beast in his lair - live or die.