A/N - Hey Everyone! I'm so excited! I think we're in the home stretch, maybe just a couple of more chapters.

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to write a review or comment. I know I write this every chapter, but it's so cool to have all the positive feedback. We've reached 91 reviews (anyone want to push it to 100? wink, wink, nudge, nudge) 45 Favs, 136 follows and over 23K views. I amazed and overwhelmed at the response for my first Fan Fic. What a wonderful community! We are a great fandom!

Shout outs to my serial reviewers - hfce, Purple Satin, wendykw, TorontoSun, southerngirl1, Mouserocks-nerd (happy to keep you anxious), ebfiddler, a few guest reviewers and a PM from momandwife33.

Enjoy!

The Castle Wall

Chapter 18

Histories

Joe Buchanan sat on the porch outside his grandparents' home waiting for his older brother, Liam to return. He counted on Liam for restraint. He wanted to kill Richard Castle, but Liam convinced him to wait: to make him hurt first. He reminded Joe that he needed Castle to feel the same optimism and elation that he had felt only to have it ripped out from under him. Because of Castle. He needed Castle to cling desperately to that last shred of hopefulness before Joe severed it and he desperately needed to watch Castle tumble into nothingness. It meant Joe's freedom. It did not mean he couldn't kill his whore. His real life Nikki Heat was not getting out of this close call as Castle had written his beloved character out of so many life and death scenes in the past. She did not matter. She was the bait and she had finished her usefulness. She was collateral, the appetizer. He licked his lips and finished his beer. He stood up, stretched, and walked down the steps. He went around the right side of the house and walked out back, past the house and the barn where he picked up a ladder that was leaning on the wall. He came to stop a few feet from the back of the barn. He looked down, smirked and started sweeping the straw out of his way. If he had any witnesses, they would have said he was looking for something that he had lost in the dirt and straw, but there were none. He looked around the yard, bent over the trap door hidden in the earth, and unlocked it.

Patricia Stoddard had been sitting in a holding cell at the twelfth precinct for nearly a day. She could not understand why she had to wait. She just needed Richard's help. She wanted her collection back. She needed her collection back. Somebody was coming. She could convince them that she needed to see him. This was her chance. She peered down the hall outside of the cage. It was an officer. Patricia made a face: she had never trusted police.

"Patricia Stoddard, please stand." She stood up and he entered the cell. He unlocked her wrists and ankles from the manacles attached to the bench.

"Please, I need to talk to Richard."

"Ma'am, please put your arms behind your back." He locked her wrists together again. She ironically thought about all the security she had outsmarted whenever she wanted to see Richard. "Come with me." He led her out into the main room and then down a hall and into a smallish room with a big glass mirror on one wall. He un-cuffed her wrists. "Sit down, Ms. Stoddard. Someone will be with you shortly."

She sat down at the table. There were two microphones on top of the table and a camera in the corner of the room. She stared at the camera for a while, fascinated by the red light. Her camera didn't have a red light. Her leg started to fall asleep so she looked around and rose. She walked over to the mirror. She put her face up close and cupped her hands around her eyes. "Richard? I really need to talk to you. Please come see me."

"Oh man, oh man, Javi, I've got it, yes!" Ryan stood up, stretched, and excitedly hopped around his desk.

"Ryan? What did you find?" Esposito was tired; it was evident in his voice and lack of enthusiasm. Tired of his friends disappearing, tired of not having a lead, tired of the whole last few days.

"I dug back into Buchanan's financials. Further back." You could hear the giddiness in his voice.

"Yeah."

"He and his brother, uh," he flipped his notepad, "Liam, inherited a farmhouse from his grandmother last June."

"Where's a better place to hide two people…"

"It's worth a shot, right?"

Espo shook his head and held up his hand haltingly at his friend's chest. "Dude, we need to do it right. This psycho is not getting away. We need a warrant."

"Which is precisely why we have not one, but two," Gates entered the bullpen extending the folded piece of paper to her detectives. "This one was issued by the Borough of Manhattan for crimes committed here. There's another waiting for you upstate. You can search the grounds, the house, any vehicles, any and all hiding places. Hell, you can search the outhouses, if they have any."

"Sir?" The detectives asked simultaneously.

"Black Pawn had the address. A little hamlet named Denning, in Ulster County. I called upstate and asked the locals to pull their traffic video," she puckered her lips and continued, "but they don't have any cameras. They did, however, identify Buchanan's van. The locals have been keeping an eye on the Buchanan boys," she looked down to consult her notes, "uh, Joe and his brother, Liam, since their grandmother passed. Apparently, they rub them the wrong way and always have. They have never been able to catch them at anything illegal, but the sheriff thinks they are in it up to their necks. The address combined with the videos, evidence collected at his residence here, which I will want to see, and the threatening letters, and we have probable cause."

The boys grinned.

"Now," she continued, ice and fire in her eyes, "Go get this son of a bitch and bring our people back."

Gates gave her detectives the information she garnered from Black Pawn including the farm's address, the number of the sheriff for Ulster County, a man named Kevin Callis and sent them, Reynolds, Karpowski and a half a dozen uniformed officers on the two and a half hour trip.

She sat on the leather sofa staring. If anyone else were with her, they would not be able to see what she saw. They would see nothing. They might even think she was crazy. Martha took another sip of Richard's excellent Bordeaux that she had opened after speaking with Kevin Ryan. Her son did have marvelous taste in wines, in numerous things actually. Her son. She bit her lip. The discussion with Ryan informed her that her son had been abducted, taken, right off the street and that there was nothing she could do but wait. For one type of news or another. Detective Esposito said they were on their way. That she should stay at home so that they could reach her.

She thought about calling Alexis home from her classes, but that would just condemn the girl to have to sit and wait, like Martha. No, she should wait to make the call that would panic his daughter. She had Alexis' schedule. Martha resolved to call her after her last class. More waiting.

In the meanwhile, from her perch on the leather sofa, it appeared that she was staring into the space between his bookshelves, into his office. She observed his life: it played like a film before her eyes: from that incredible, noisy, smelly, wiggly bundle that she delivered and whom others labeled an accident into his childhood, her breath caught in her throat as she remembered how inadequate she always felt, how unprepared she was. She thought of his teen years, how she'd missed most of those. He spent that time enrolled in boarding school and then college. She thought back that she probably should have spent more time with him before he left. It all went so fast.

Then came the first of his successes. Oh, how she worried. She had seen so many younger people in her profession suddenly thrust into fame and fortune and they had been abused or used by it. They partied hard and some of them paid a high price. She had no illusions that her son was an angel. She knew about his brief dalliance with drugs after the first book. He thought she had been blissfully ignorant of it. She wished she had been. She also knew it had gotten him into serious trouble and that had scared him and that was the end of it.

The things that concerned her most were his romances. He had been in a long-term relationship with Kyra. She smiled as she remembered her. She was a lovely girl. She grounded him, completed him, kept him in line. Martha could tell he loved her. Then she left for London and it was over. She never found out why and Richard never offered to fill her in. That was when he tried to destroy himself. Reckless, self-centered, devil-may-care arrogance. He tried to forget her with diversions: parties, alcohol, and women. She drew herself out of the painful recollections, took another swallow of her wine, wiped away the tears, and the bad memories.

He met Meredith at one of those parties, had fun with her, dated a few times, got her pregnant, and married her. She and he had clashed about this decision. He was adamant that his child would not grow up without a father. His words hurt her, they cut her deeply, questioning every decision she had ever made regarding him and all of her feelings of inadequacy. They stopped speaking for a while. He broke her heart. She accepted him back when, inevitably, Meredith hurt him. She hated that woman. She broke him and abused his sense of honor. He won Alexis in the mess, the only part of their life together he still cared for. He adored her.

He grew more and more successful. Martha really was proud of everything he had accomplished. A smile tugged at her lips as she recalled the countless times she kept his ego and his conceit in check, grounded, humble. She actually would have preferred to shout out "This is my son! He is wonderful and talented!" However, knowing him as she does, she knew that that would backfire. He would have become insufferable. She shook her head.

Gina made him feel good, important, loved. Gina was in love with his image and when he couldn't or wouldn't measure up, she grew bored and his heart was hurt again. She had another round of knockdown drag out fights with her only offspring when he decided that he was going to embrace the playboy image. He said he just wanted some fun. She said it was not who he really was. She lost that fight, too. Along with the fun came more parties, the all-nighters, and the procession of women all willing to stroke his shattered ego. She and Alexis grew closer during this time, as he was not around as much for her. He still loved her and would do anything for her, but he really had become a self-centered, egotistical jack-ass.

He began to ignore his writing. He pushed it away, angry with his talent and career. He told her once that he was done with it. Everything was boring and predictable. Then, suddenly, he settled down. He started writing again; what's more, he enjoyed writing again. He had met Kate and had wormed his way onto her squad. That caused another round of fights between them. She was so worried, all the time. He had put himself in danger before, but not on a daily basis. He started coming home battered and bruised, always with a smile on his lips, but then went back again and kept going back, over and over. Martha stayed still and quiet, afraid to lose him. Maybe she should have been more adamant, maybe she should have…what? Forbade him? She laughed aloud. She could never deny him anything. Then she realized that he had fallen in love, really for the first time since Kyra. Kate did not return his feelings right away. He worked away at her defenses. She hurt him and broke his heart. Martha could not understand why he kept going back, even if he did love her, she clearly did not return his feelings. She chuckled, sipped her wine, and considered that maybe her son was a masochist with all the mistreatment he was willing to endure. But now, it seems he was right to be patient, to persistently chip away at her parapets. He did and now they're together. She has never seen him so happy. She thinks about Kate, also taken. She took another sip of her wine and raised a hand to her lips to stifle a sob. She looked at the time, picked up her phone, and called Alexis.

"What are you thinking about?" Esposito glanced over to his partner in the passenger seat. It had been an unusually quiet ride.

"Hm?" Ryan had been staring out the window, but not really seeing the passing scenery. He looked at Javi.

"What's on your mind?"

"Oh, nothing. Well, Castle, actually."

"Yeah? What about?" Espo prompted. He eased his grip on the wheel. They both were edgy about the upcoming raid.

Ryan dragged his eyes over to focus on Espo. "Well, just this whole thing and the psychology behind it. How can you get so attached to someone that it basically takes over your life?" He rubbed his hands on his thighs. "I mean take, Stoddard…"

"Psycho," Espo interrupted.

"Yeah, psycho, but, at the end of the day, when you reflect or pray or journal or whatever you do to self examine, how do you tell yourself it was a good day because you collected hair clippings from your favorite author? Or stole his kid's backpack? I mean how do you reconcile that?" He looked out the window again, puzzling out the behavior.

Esposito was quiet, contemplating Ryan's words. Ryan always looked for the deeper meaning behind events or whatever made people tick. Esposito wanted to get the job done. Bring the perp down, take out the trash, and clean up the streets. He rarely gave a second thought, beyond motive, to what possibly drove people to their crimes. He was more black and white than Ryan was. Cut and dry. "I don't think you can. Stoddard does not strike me as an introspective type. What about Buchanan? I mean I don't think he has any great love for Castle, I don't think he idolizes him like Stoddard does," he cocked an eyebrow and made a sour face, "unless you think he does, ya know."

"No, I don't think he idolizes him or anything else that is remotely that disturbing, but Castle is the object of his obsession."

Esposito raised his eyebrows for clarification. "Huh?"

"I mean," Ryan said scrubbing an impatient hand over his face, "whatever wrong Buchanan feels Castle has done him, Buchanan's mind has blown it out of proportion, and I'll bet he blames Castle for everything that has ever gone wrong in his life."

"But, how could he? He hasn't known him all that long."

"I don't know, Javi, it's not rational."

"You got that right."

"It just fits the profile, "Ryan continued, "Castle didn't live up to some inappropriate and probably exaggerated expectation of Buchanan's, and Buchanan wants payback from him. Whether it's justified or not."

"That's messed up, dude." Ryan agreed with his partner and nodded. Espo looked at his watch. "Thirty minutes. Time to finish this."

"Right." He dug his cell out of his pocket and called Sherriff Callis to coordinate the operation.

He couldn't feel his fingers, wrists or forearms and his shoulders developed a burning ache. The kind that starts out like a kink and you can usually stretch it out or get someone to rub the knot. He couldn't even move his arms, let alone stretch. The kink was making its way up his neck. It planned to settle in the back of his head. He didn't usually suffer migraine headaches, but his mother did and he would rather not try one. He was just getting used to the normal headaches. He stretched his neck around in a circular motion trying to stem the pain brought on by his own body's betrayal. Think. Damn it. Okay. Rick reigned in his vivid imagination and tried to focus. 'What did Beckett say she did in dangerous situations? Really? Freakin' situations? Here is the situation. The nutball is going to kill me and then Kate and…oh, Kate. Um…' He calmed himself. "Assess," he said aloud. "That's what she does. Assess what, exactly?" He pressed his lips together. "Well let's see, I'm injured, I can barely take a deep breath, I'm thirsty and hungry. It's freaking dark. Like cave dark. I'm mentally and emotionally corkscrewing down into a hole in the ground." He took a shallow breath. The shallow ones did not hurt as much. Nothing was being accomplished by listing everything that was wrong, he needed to focus on the assets. He closed his eyes and tried to come up with a positive picture himself. His mind's eye looked at several publicity shots he had taken. "Mm, no, I need the one on the back of the Storm novels." He had the full on face shot, the one in which he was a little younger, a little more fit, the one with the cocky grin. That grin that was responsible for a lot of positive results. A lot. "Okay, you optimistic bastard, what have you got for me?"

Gates sat in her office, sorting phone and email messages, and voicemails. She had messages from One PP, the Mayor and the Commissioner. Mister Castle certainly was well connected. Thankfully, there was nothing, so far, from the press. That would only muck up the operation. She checked her cell phone for the hundredth time since her team left. They still had two hours on the road. She needed something to do. She stood up and walked out into the bullpen. Her focus had been on the extraction and she had temporarily forgotten about Stoddard's interrogation. She walked back into her office, picked up the file, and opened it. She sat back down and began to familiarize herself with its contents. Her detectives would bring her people home and arrest the bastard responsible and she would lock up Patricia Stoddard and finally end this hellish nightmare.

Buchanan carefully lowered the ladder into the dry well and stepped down into the darkness. He and his brother had discovered this maze of underground tunnels and storage rooms when they were younger, just kids kicking around their grandparents' farm for the summer. He was only seventeen when he and Liam had used the structure the first time for something other than for a game of hide and seek. It was just a game of hide. Liam, who was six years older than Joe, whom Joe idolized, went on a drunken rampage one summer night. He kidnapped and raped a young woman and left her in the tunnels. She died there. Joe, although not a participant, did nothing to stop his brother, nor did he report it. By saying nothing, he was complicit. He used the scene in his first book. He described it in detail. Castle, thinking that it was a work of fiction had said it was very dark and he suggested that he might want to edit it depending on what type of audience he wanted to attract. That was his advice, what Buchanan heard was, "You did it wrong. You are a horrible writer."

He took out his mini mag light and shone it around the room and then down one of the tunnels. He walked silently down the tunnel toward the room where she was being held. The room had an outer hatch, much like the one he used to access the tunnel system. The underground entry way was just a niche in the wall. Without light, you could feel around on the walls and never know it was there. The stupid bitch could've left at any time, if she just could have found the niche. If you felt it with your hand, you'd say it was just an oddity or bump in the rough dirt walls. It was perfect. It's how Liam separated Castle and the detective. He argued that they were working together and would eventually figure out how to escape. He waited, right there in the room with them and when they were apart, drugged them both. Dragging Castle through the tunnels hadn't been easy, but it was a smart safeguard. Besides, it was easier to kill him where they had dumped him. He turned off his light and squeezed into the room. He and Liam had used night vision goggles to play here as children. He slipped a pair of goggles on now. She was slumped next to the wall. He sighed. He really wanted to play with her before he killed her.

Gates silently assessed the woman sitting in interrogation from behind the two-way glass in observation. She did not look like such a huge threat, but the charges against her spoke otherwise. Murder, conspiracy to commit murder, aggravated assault, and all of the felony and misdemeanor charges and there were many, regarding her stalking of Mister Castle and his family. That's the part that Victoria Gates couldn't wrap her head around. How do you become so fixated on someone that you have done nothing else with your life for the past fifteen years, maybe longer? She double-checked Stoddard's financials. She had a trust fund. The law firm who managed her affairs paid her bills. She received a monthly allowance. It was all very nice and neat. The records showed that her mother was tragically killed in a hit and run when she was three years old. Stoddard, then a toddler, had witnessed it. The perpetrator was never apprehended. Her father, an attorney, had passed away from cancer when Stoddard was seventeen. Stoddard had been diagnosed with schizophrenia just a year prior to that. Gates surmised that no one ever checked on her after her father died. They set her up and paid her bills, but essentially forgot about her. She rolled her neck to get the stiffness out, straightened her jacket, and entered interrogation. "Patricia Stoddard, I'm Captain Gates. Have you been apprised of your rights?"

Sheriff Kevin Callis sat in the driver's seat of one of three cruisers his county owned, laced his fingers together, and stretched his arms out in front of him to loosen his shoulder muscles. He had his entire police force here, all five of his deputies. They were currently waiting for NYPD detectives. He had received a phone call and briefing from the woman Captain Gates and agreed to provide back up for her detectives. Detective Ryan had called a few moments ago to say they were thirty minutes out. Callis had his boys already on the road outside of the Buchanan Farm, one car watching the front of the house and one watching the back. His car was at the crossroads, waiting for the New York cops. The Buchanan boys were up to no good. He always kept an eye on them. He had never trusted them, even when they were younger. They would visit their grandparents, Barb and Nick, who were wonderful folks. Longtime residents and decent people, they had been saddled with two troublemaker grandsons. Callis did not know anything about the boys' parents, Nick, junior and his wife, except that they were from the city and dumped the boys here every summer. And every summer some kind of misfortune would happen. Pets would go missing, car accidents, items stolen and that poor Missy Young girl went missing and never was found. The sheriff wasn't saying that he thought the Buchanan's were responsible for everything bad that had ever happened in his county, but the bad stuff seemed to happen more frequently when they were here. Now, they owned the farm. He brought his fingers up to the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and pinched. He had a feeling that if the Buchanan boys weren't caught today, he would be dealing with them for a long while. Captain Gates had said it was probable abduction of two of her people. He sighed; the Buchanan's certainly had balls. Kidnapping New York cops. He shook his head. Balls or no brains at all.

"Uh, chief?" Deputy Wilson's voice broke the silence on the radio.

Annoyed, Callis yanked the handset off the radio. "Mark, I told you not to use the radio. I don't know if they're listening."

"Uh, yeah, but I thought you should know that Joe just disappeared into the ground behind the barn."

Callis sat up straighter in his seat. "What do you mean disappeared?"

"Just that, he opened a hatch and climbed down into it."

Callis considered his deputy's report and looked at his watch. Ten minutes until the New York cops were here. Joe Buchanan could accomplish a lot in ten minutes and he was pretty sure he wasn't knitting down in that hole. Damn it.