"Still no word from Castle?" asked Esposito. Startled that she'd been caught staring at the empty chair—his chair—Kate looked up with wide eyes. "You try callin' him?"
"No."
"Why not?"
Kate hated that look of his, the one that flat out told her that she was a terrible person. How could Esposito judge her when she wasn't sure what the problem was? She bristled in response to his gaze, but waved her hand dismissively through the air, as though she could fool him with such a simple gesture. "C'mon, Espo—he's probably just catching up on sleep. If there was something wrong, he'd call." Unless he's been kidnapped, came the errant thought. She shook those thoughts from her head and checked her phone again. The sinking feeling in her gut inclined her to agree with her fellow detective.
Esposito saw it all: the concern, crippled by her unwillingness to act on her feelings lest she appear weak. "You so sure about that?"
Her eyes flickered to his as she tapped at the screen. "Huh?"
"I'm just sayin', he didn't look right yesterday. If something's up and he didn't already tell you about it, are you so sure he'll call?"
Kate dropped her guard and blurted out the first thought that came to mind. "What do you mean he didn't look right?"
"You didn't notice?"
"No, I just…But there's no reason he wouldn't call…" She trailed off again, staring at her empty inbox. No text, no message, no email. Not a missed call notification. The clues didn't add up. Normally when he skipped out on her, it was because he was on a roll and didn't want to lose the writing streak. To the best of her knowledge he hadn't started work on a new story any time lately, so it was unlikely that he was busy writing. If he'd had a meeting with his publisher or someone, he would have been complaining about it the past few days, and then he would have called her before the meeting to ask for an excuse to bail. "It's probably just a personal thing."
Esposito inclined his head in her direction. "My money's on you."
His words didn't fully register with her and soon she was distracted by Ryan's entrance. He walked in carrying a few files and a donut. Upon taking note of the tense atmosphere he shoved the donut into his mouth before he could be asked to comment. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled apologetically at his partner, who pointed a finger towards the glaringly empty chair next to their boss's desk. Kate's chin tilted upwards as though she would find the answer written on the ceiling. "Yeah, Martha probably needed him to –"
"No, Beckett. I meant that I'm betting his beef is with YOU."
"Mmhmm," sputtered Ryan.
She blinked before staring both men down. "I'm sorry—is there something going on that I should know about?"
At that moment Captain Gates peeked her head through the door. She made eye contact with Kate and ducked back into the room for a moment before emerging with a digital recorder. "Detective Beckett, I'd like to have word with you and your team before you go home, if I may." Ryan and Esposito circled in behind Kate's desk to face their eerily silent captain. The woman quirked an eyebrow and wielded the device in her hand. "Beckett, I just went over this recording from the other day. Bobby Lopez?" Kate nodded, wondering if she was being called out for being too rough on the guy. That would be a first. "I have to say that I was a little disturbed by what I heard."
"Sir, I—" Gates hit the play button and the air was filled with the words from the argument. Her breath caught when she heard her words shouted back to her: I remember every second of it. So, this is what she was in trouble for. Gates stopped the recording. "Well?"
Only Ryan showed any sign of surprise. "Wait, but I thought you—you really remember?"
Kate couldn't find a friendly face in the room. Ryan was clearly hurt, Gates disapproving, and Esposito…he probably knew more than the rest of them, but it was clear he was upset by her behavior as well. She took a deep breath and took on her familiar academy airs, the ones that she hid behind when she didn't know what to say.
When the detective said nothing, Gates lost her temper. "Detective Beckett, your incident report says that you have no recollection of the shooting, that you passed out. Are you telling me that you've been lying this whole time?"
"No, sir."
"Oh really? Because to me it looks like you falsified your report to withhold evidence." Kate felt the guys shift behind her, probably antsy about the information they actually were withholding about their former captain. Gates noticed. "You two wouldn't happen to know anything more about this, would you?"
"No, sir. She told us she didn't remember anything, either." Ryan's voice was steady, though she could still hear the emotion behind the words.
"Esposito?"
"No, sir. I knew that she was still shaken up about the shooting and I had my suspicions, but she never told me anything different." There was that look again.
"Do you have anything to say for yourself, Detective Beckett?"
Kate studied her hands while she regained her composure. Taking a deep breath, she met her captain's gaze. "Sir, I know that I shouldn't have lied in my report, but I passed my psych eval without any problems, and I continued seeing the psychologist afterwards as a precaution. If he'd felt that I wasn't fit for duty, he would have said something to you."
Gates waited a beat before nodding. "Mark my words—you pull something like this again and you won't be able to get a cup of coffee without so much as notifying me first. Am I understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Now go home. All of you." Gates searched Kate's face until she was satisfied the detective had heard her, then she grabbed the recorder and headed back to her office.
Ryan let out a breath once their boss was out of sight. "Seriously, Beckett?"
She whipped around in her chair. "God, guys—it's not that big a deal! I'm sorry I didn't tell you the truth before, but I don't understand why everyone's overreacting like this. It's not like I—What, Javi?"
"Look, I get it. You needed time to deal with it and you didn't want us to baby you. But we," he gestured between himself and Ryan, "are on your team, and you can't just keep that kinda stuff from us like that."
"Yeah," quipped Ryan. "Even under those circumstances, you should know better."
They were right, of course. Kate opened her mouth, ready to grovel if she had to, but Esposito cut her off and nodded towards the still-empty chair next to her desk. "As much as you need to make it up to us, we aren't the one that you need to suck up to. Damn, I can't believe he didn't say anything to us."
Kate froze, but the guys didn't seem to notice. Instead, Ryan was too curious about this new info. "Wait—Castle knew?"
"Yeah. He showed up the other day asking for Beckett right after we brought Bobby in. He was in the observation room during the interrogation. He heard it all live."
"No wonder he was acting weird yesterday."
"You noticed it, too?"
"Of course I did—he didn't smile all day! But I can't believe he didn't tell us."
Seemingly forgotten, Kate barely heard their conversation. She thought back over the past few days, recalling acerbic comments and the caustic looks he'd shot her way. At the time they hadn't made any sense to her and she'd chalked it up to a lack of sleep on both their parts.
But if he'd been observing the interrogation, then he knew she'd lied about the shooting.
He knew she remembered what he'd told her.
"Listen, it's 3:30 in the morning. I'll see you guys tomorrow."
As they watched her leave, Ryan whispered to Esposito, "She better be goin' to Castle's place."
"Dude, it's the middle of the night."
"Yeah, and if something had to wake you up in the middle of the night, wouldn't you want that?"
"Bekcett?"
Ryan's eyes widened as he realized the implication. "What? No! I meant, you know, the woman you love showing up on your doorstep kinda thing." Esposito nodded, but the smirk wouldn't leave his face. "Stop it—I love Jenny. I married Jenny. Jen-ny."
"And I still have no idea what she sees in you."
"I didn't mean it like that!"
"Right, right…" The two men continued arguing as they left the building, each hoping that their friends would be able to patch things up on their own at this hour. Castle wouldn't actually throw Beckett out, would he?
