A/N: Thank you for the reviews and follows, guys!
Castle was still watching the apartment across the way when she rushed through the door and dropped her things on the couch as she passed.
"Espo and Ryan were right behind me," she muttered, looking out the window beside him even though she knew exactly what she would see. "There they are."
Castle watched as the boys exited their car, leaving the lights flashing as they legged it into the building, disappearing from sight once they were in the lobby and then the lift, only to reappear at one of the at the end of the corridor. He saw them knock on the door, Ryan's fists heavy handed and shaking the door in its frame as he said something – presumably yelling something along the lines of, 'NYPD, open up!'
His heart raced as the boyfriend pulled open the door and admitted his two friends. A quick glance right at Kate showed him that she was just as nervous, wringing her hands together until he grabbed one of them.
Not for the first time in the last two weeks, Castle really wished he hadn't broken his knee so that he could be over there and able to listen in as Ryan motioned past the murderer's shoulder and began heading towards the bedroom. His breath stuttered for a moment but when Ryan reappeared, his face showed no sign of having just found a dead body. In fact he looked unflappable as spun to face the window, shrugging at him before shaking Mr-Blonde-Girlfriend-Killer's hand.
Rick turned to Beckett to voice his outrage and confusion at them leaving.
"Why aren't they arresting him?"
Kate pursed her lips to appear as clueless as him.
"Castle, you know they can't do anything if there was no evidence," she replied, backing away as he continued to look out the window. It was a good job too. His tone and his total belief in her little scheme made her want to burst out laughing.
"But there is evidence!" Castle argued. "I watched him walk in there with a knife. And trust me, only he came back out – sans knife too, I might add!"
"Well, I'm sure Javi and Kevin are gonna come over and explain," Kate placated.
Castle continued to sulk in front of the glass while she busied herself with making a cup of latte. There was no way that Castle would want to get an early night's sleep. She was well aware that he was going to spend all evening insisting that they'd made a mistake – she'd afforded for that eventuality in the plan – and that he was probably going to spend the night maintaining a more strict vigil over Michael and the apartment than the Night's Watch did guarding the Wall.
When the boys knocked on the door, she was the one who stood to let them in, sharing a private moment of jubilance until Castle span in his chair and demanded to know what they were playing at.
"Bro, there's nothing there," Espo said before Castle could question him.
"Look, I know what I saw. He took a knife and followed her into the bedroom," Castle said, his voice filled with intensity as he wheeled himself towards the boys.
"I looked in the bedroom," Ryan replied. "Everything was fine. No blood, no body. I swear."
Castle was unsatisfied. "Did you look under the bed? In the closet?"
"Castle, the guy was relaxed and fully cooperative. He let us poke around without a warrant."
"So he probably hid the body," Rick muttered, drawing Beckett's attention again. "If he was completely calm he could be a psychopath." After all, she couldn't let things get too out of hand.
"What did he say about the girl?"
Espo answered, making the phrase they'd rehearsed sound natural with his posture. "He admitted they had a fight, they broke up, and she left."
"Not possible. I would have seen her."
"So…you were watching the whole time?"
"I-" Castle paused. "Well, not the entire time," he conceded, turning to point towards the phone on the still positioned haphazardly off its base. "I had to-"
Esposito cut him off. "So…she could have left and you didn't see?"
Kate took a sip of coffee to stop herself from laughing at her boyfriend's floundering. Enlisting the boys' help had to be the best decision she'd made yet. No way would she had been able to stay one hundred percent serious in the face of Castle's stuttered responses. Ryan and Esposito were maybe playing it cooler than she could anyway, both looking confused by Castle's conviction, their voices expressing as much doubt as they ever did in response to one of his ridiculous theories.
"It's possible, but-"
"Because he called her," Espo said, interrupting again. "Handed me the phone. I spoke to her. She confirmed his story. She was in the car on the way to her mom's house in Philadelphia."
She could see Castle getting annoyed, Esposito beginning to have too much fun. Setting her mug down, Beckett stepped in. "All right, thanks guys."
Espo and Ryan shared a pleased look before turning for the door and only giving her a wave. She was too busy consoling an irritated Castle to say goodbye anyway.
"I'm not crazy."
She kept her touch soothing, stroking the back of his neck before sweeping her hand around and down his shoulder as she replied, "No. But you do have a vivid imagination." She sat facing him, perching on the arm of the sofa much like she had that very morning. "And you've been stuck inside for two weeks. What were you doing looking out the window anyway?"
"I was-" She didn't let him finish, speaking first to plant a seed of self-doubt in his head.
"Bored? So you saw what you wanted to see?" She waited for him to respond, but he stayed silent. "When did you take your last pain killer?"
"I was not hallucinating."
"C'mon, Castle. You're here with a broken leg, binoculars, seeing a Rear Window scenario playing across the way. I mean, what are the odds?"
Her heart twisted a bit at his low, dejected tone as he muttered, "Astronomical."
She'd pushed him far enough. "All right. I'm going to make us some dinner and then get you to bed."
He didn't move an inch, didn't reciprocate or look as she pressed a kiss to the crown of his head, squeezing his shoulders before stepping back into the kitchen. She dumped her empty coffee cup in the sink before pulling down a pan and filling it with water, setting it to boil on a high heat over the stove.
"You feel like macaroni, Castle?"
He grunted something unintelligible at her, sulking and flicking through channels on the TV – the switching too quick for him to actually be paying attention to what programmes were airing.
It took effort to force herself to focus on whipping up dinner rather than comforting him. All that stopped her from returning to the living room was the knowledge that eventually Castle was going to get his great surprise. She had a feeling that while he was brooding a few metres away, his mind was already trying to puzzle out what their neighbour had done with his girlfriend's body.
The macaroni cheese didn't take long and surprisingly by the time she'd served up a sizable portion for Rick – intended as comfort food – his mood already seemed to be lifting. It didn't take a genius to work out that he'd come up with some sort of plot.
After the hassle with the search across the street, by the time Kate had cleared away all the dishes into the washer and put the leftovers in the fridge, it was pretty late.
"Come on, let's go to bed," she said, hovering by Castle's side as she eased the remote out of his grip and turned off the TV.
"Sure," he replied, allowing her to roll him into his bedroom.
After two weeks he had long since got over his mortification over Kate having to help him into bed and found the silver lining in the fact that she didn't have to help him change his clothes since he spent all day in his pyjamas and robe anyway. Washing required them to be a little bit creative – but their showers had been that way for months anyway.
While she made her way through her nightly routine, removing her makeup with some wipes before a thorough exfoliating wash and towel-dry, Castle asked about her case.
"IRS agent was murdered outside her office."
"Mmhm. Anything more to this clearly fascinating tale?"
She scoffed as she pulled her t-shirt over her head.
"Whole thing was caught on CCTV, Castle."
"Oh, so you have the guy then?"
Sighing, Kate threw her discarded bra towards the laundry hamper and stalked towards the bed to retrieve her pyjamas from beneath her pillow. "Unfortunately not," she muttered, sitting down on the edge of the bed to poke her feet through the legs of her pyjama pants. Castle's arm stretched out over the covers, the tips of his fingers just grazing up and down what he could reach of Kate's back. "The guy was wearing some kind of torch on his head – you can hardly see anything on the footage."
"You'll get him," Castle assured her.
When she went into work, Esposito and Ryan were all too eager to hear how convincing their performance was, and how Castle had fallen for the whole thing hook, line and sinker. Espo's smirk at hearing about Castle's midnight peeping made her smile too until the three of them had to focus on their real murder investigation anyway.
She knew what Martha's schedule was, what Michael was meant to be doing while they knew Castle was going to be watching, but momentarily forgot while her mind was turned towards the interview with Dan Renner. At least until her iPhone began vibrating across the surface of her folder and pad of paper on the interrogation room desk. It couldn't hurt to let him stew a while over Michael washing blood off his hands. She had a job to do after all. While she loved Castle, the investigation of Claire DeWinter's murder had to come first. And that was why when he called one of the precinct phones, she had to deal with him without Esposito and Ryan's back up. Someone had to continue working the case.
After years of arguing and pretending not to like him, telling Castle he was wrong was all too easy. Keeping him on a rein was a lot more difficult though. And the moody way they left things made her wish that Alexis didn't have classes that afternoon. Unfortunately, she just had to hope, as she told Esposito, that he wouldn't do anything stupid, at least until the following morning when he would have his daughter's supervision.
But then when Alexis was watching him, she had no clue what was going on. He was still mad at her after her insinuation that his sleep-deprived and drug-addled mind was imagining things and her later suggestion that he was making the murder up for her attention. With her working hours and his insistence on maintaining a watch over the neighbour, they'd hardly spoken.
But as Esposito had said, he'd call when he was ready. He'd call when he found the invoice for the storage hire.
And call he did. Right in the middle of another one of her interviews. She was beginning to think a simple treasure hunt would have been a better way to entertain her boyfriend while he was pretty much trapped in the loft. The look of excitement on his and Alexis' faces when they told her they had evidence though changed her mind.
"Remind me again why I'm doing this," Kate muttered as she drove Castle to the storage facility. Her phone flashed in her pocket – a reply from Lanie she was sure.
The second she had managed to get Castle away from the window, she had typed out a quick message to her best friend to let her know she was okay to start moving people and party paraphernalia into the apartment across the street, though as far as her partner knew, she was catching up on Ryan and Esposito's progress.
Checking the storage room was fun, almost like they were working a real case together again. And the look on Castle's face at Martha's double bluff with the wig stowed in one of the rubbish bags had been priceless.
Getting chewed out by Gates though…not so much – even if the Captain had let them both off far lighter than she would have had she not been aware of the plan. Beckett didn't miss the gleam of delight in Gates' eyes as she got to ream out Castle. Perhaps that was why she had been so accepting of the idea in the first place.
"I'll meet you down by the car," Castle muttered, clearly fed up of the ribbing from Esposito and Ryan.
Her stomach wasn't quite a mess of nerves as she left the precinct with Castle under the pretence of getting ready for their dinner date, but there were some definite butterflies flapping around inside her ribcage.
The boys knew to expect Castle's call. Lanie had already sent a text her way saying she and Martha had managed to get the apartment ready. Emily and Brent, along with the other party goers were safely hidden away in the bedroom where the closed blinds meant that Castle had no idea; despite the fact he was still looking through those stupid binoculars at Michael, watching him grab lukewarm soda from one of the cupboards.
Dropping the hint was easy. It only took a slight inflection of her voice, no insistence that he drink something before they leave, and he had taken the bait. Once she was out of the apartment, heading down to the street and crossing it for the building on the other side, she just had to hope that Castle would do the sensible thing and call Espo or Ryan rather than 911.
A/N: I'm not too sure about this chapter. Finding a balance between putting in episode scenes and glossing over them to stop the chapter getting too long was a bit difficult. If you guys could give me your thoughts – even if you didn't like it – I would be eternally grateful.