She drives.
"Are you sure?" he'd asked her before she'd taken the keys. He still doesn't know what the past day has held for her, only that she almost died, only that she showed up at his door soaked and on the verge of tears. She'd simply nodded.
He taps at his American Airlines app, booking two tickets on the six am flight out to California. Now that Beckett and he are leaving town, he's fairly convinced it's an unnecessary precaution, but he'll never sleep thinking of Alexis and his mother in the loft, in Manhattan, on the East Coast.
The ticket confirmation goes through just as Beckett pulls up outside her apartment. She draws in a deep breath, her fingers clutching the smooth metal of the door handle. The reason for her hesitation curls suddenly, horribly in his stomach: she doesn't know when she'll be back here. They don't know when either of them will be back in the city.
When he'll see his daughter again.
He focuses his eyes on a hazy point down the street, breathes through the tight wash of pain. He's concentrating so hard on holding a steady pattern of inhales and exhales that he almost misses it.
She's starting to open the door, but he grabs the wrist that still lies on the center console, wraps his fingers hard around her bones. "Wait," he bites out.
Her eyes snap to him, then immediately start scanning the street. "What is it?"
"There," he says. "Half a block away." There's a tall man leaning casually against the building, blending into the shadows and the rain, several doors away from her apartment.
It could be anyone.
It's nearly impossible to see in the dark and the distance and the rain, but there's a sharpness to the angle of his shoulders, an air of restrained power in the tight lines of his arms.
Beckett's jerks her hand off the door handle. Before he can say a word, she's pulling away from his grip, twisting the key, slamming the car into drive, stepping on the accelerator.
"Where're we going?" he murmurs. Get her out, the text had read, but what does that mean? They need – God, he doesn't know, can't calculate where is safe, where is out.
She shrugs in response, her brow furrowed, jaw clenched.
"We could – we should call Gates. Or Ryan. Esposito." The dark look in her eyes doesn't change. "We could do a private detail." Get her out, but maybe just out of her apartment, out of the standard confines of her life, maybe not out of the Manhattan, out of New York. Maybe they don't actually have to upend everything.
"How would we know who to trust?" she asks, voice low, hollow. "The more people we pull in…"
"The more dangerous it is," he finishes. "But there – there are people we can trust. At the twelfth." He closes his eyes as soon as he hears the words from his mouth – the man she thought she could trust implicitly was so entangled in this mess; he can't, won't sit here and tell her there's anyone they can believe in unconditionally.
"Not worth the risk."
He hums in the back of his throat, agreeing. Not worth it, not worth the potential of another bullet brushing along the edge of her heart.
"To anyone," she adds. He flinches away from it, from the knowledge that it's not just her life. It's anyone willing to protect her. To stand with her.
She glances over at him darkly, but he won't, he can't; it's impossible for him to even consider leaving her. "So. Where to?" is all he can finally offer, hoping she won't fight him, hoping she'll leave it.
"North. For now. Call your family."
He calls his mother first, gives her the flight number, tells her he's emailing her the boarding pass. Asks her to watch out for Alexis.
"Richard, I don't understand," she says, a thin edge of dread sharp on her tone. "What have you gotten yourself into?"
He shakes his head, knowing she can't see him. "And I need you to call Andrew Hall over at Mellon. I don't care what he has to trade or liquidate, but I need a hundred thousand dollars in cash in Esposito's hands before you leave for California."
He hears Beckett's sharp inhalation beside him. His mother groans. "Richard," she says. "I don't know what you're doing, but don't. Just come home. Or come with us. We can all go together."
He ignores her. "Use the money in the account for whatever you need." He pauses, presses his fingers to his temple. "I have to call Alexis now. I love you."
She's going to say something else and his eyes are already burning, his heart already thumping hard against his sternum, so he thumbs the call off.
"Castle," Beckett says, her voice thick, but he shakes his head, can't do it, not when he's about to rip apart his daughter's post-graduate celebration, his daughter's world.
The phone rings and rings. He's not sure what to do if she doesn't answer. He can't leave Beckett. Can't bring Beckett near Alexis. Can't let Alexis stay in New York any longer. Panic curls in his chest. This will never be a choice he is equipped to make.
"Dad," she's suddenly saying into the phone, a little breathless, a little worried. He can hear the thump of a strong bass in the background, the hum and murmur and shout of her friends.
The words he needs to say lodge in his throat, snagging in a messy tangle in his larynx.
"Are you okay?" she asks. The background sounds get quieter. "I can come home. It's not a big deal at all, I can swing by the new Sprinkles, I think it's twenty-four hours now, and get us some cupcakes, and we can even watch those awful movies with all the blood you love so much."
"You have to go to California," he chokes out, shoving up the words up through his ever-closing throat. "You have to go home. Pack. Meet your grandmother."
"What?" she breathes, already confused, already hurt. "What do you mean?
"I'm going to be out of town for a while. You – I don't know how much longer I'll have my phone on me." A phone call could get them caught. A phone call could get Beckett killed.
"Dad, stop it," she says, the words across the start of a sob. "Stop it now. I don't know what you think you're doing, but you can't. You can't."
It's his earlier words to Beckett reflected back at him. He presses his palm against his mouth, tries to hold in, tries to press himself back together. He can see, out of the corner of his eye, Beckett's knuckles tight on the wheel, the blood drained out of them.
"Come home," Alexis gasps, frenetic, desperate.
There are no words he can say to her, nothing he can give her that will make this okay. In the end, he can only refract a jagged piece of her valedictorian speech back at her. "I'll be with you no matter what." He realizes, as he says it, how hollow it rings. Despite all his other faults, he's always been there for his daughter, a steady, dependable presence, and no matter what happens later, he's taking that particular always away.
The phone echoes with a pained, indrawn breath. "You don't get to do that," Alexis moans, and he can hear the darkness in her voice. He can't tell what Beckett can hear but it's something, because she's swinging the car to the side of the road, slamming on the breaks, her fingers still clenched tight around the steering wheel.
He glances at his partner. Her eyes are red-rimmed, shining. "Alexis," he says into the phone, "I love you. I'll call you later. I promise I'll be careful."
He hangs up, turns the phone off, grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes, suddenly unable to face Beckett, unable to face anything.
"It's not too late," he hears her whisper, her voice ricocheting quietly through the car.
He presses harder with his hands, creates starbursts of color at the edges of the darkness. "You know it is," he grits out. "Don't make me have this fight again, Beckett. Not now."
"Okay. I'm sorry. Okay." He shifts, curls in on himself as she pulls the car back out and starts driving quietly through the rain. He tries to tamp down on the grief, rollicking in waves through his body, not only for his mother and for Alexis but for her, for them, for the night they should have spent with their limbs tangled together, the morning they should have spent drinking coffee, wrapped in nothing but each other.
She drives in silence, checking her rearview constantly, zagging from highway to highway until exiting onto a back road. The rain lets up, melting away to a cool mist as she navigates over dark switchbacks before swerving into the lot of a nondescript motel where a ramshackle neon light announces vacancy.
He feels empty, hollowed out by grief. Alexis will be home by now, packing. Alexis will have been crying since he spoke to her on the phone. Alexis will be safe.
"Where are we?" he asks, the words scraped raw across his throat.
"Washingtonville," she murmurs, glancing at the letters beneath the lurid neon glow. "The Crazy 8."
This call will be easier, he tells himself, clicking his phone back on, but of course there's six voicemails waiting for him. He thumbs over to them, a stupid, frivolous hope catching in his chest – they just need one from Smith, telling them she's fine, she's safe, no need to flee. But there's two from his mother, four from Alexis. He inhales, exhales, dials Esposito's number, flicks the phone to speaker.
Esposito picks up on the first ring. "You gonna tell me why I haven't been able to reach you or Beckett and why your mother says she has a hundred thou in cash to give me ASAP?"
Castle ignores the first part of the question. "Can you bring it to the Crazy 8 Motel in Washingtonville after you get it?"
"What the hell?" Esposito barks. "Look, you know I have your back. What's going on?"
"We shouldn't stay on the line," Beckett says. He can hear Esposito's sharp, relieved exhale at the sound of her voice. "We also need a burner phone. Fakes IDs – passports, if you can swing 'em, but I know those are harder." And then her eyes, worried, assessing, flick over Castle's face. "And two guns."
"Beckett," Esposito breathes.
"It might be dangerous. If you see a tail, forget it." She pauses, swallows. "This isn't an obligation, Javi."
"Crazy 8 in Washingtonville. Got it."
"We owe you," she bites out.
"Stay safe and we'll call it even," he says.
"Be careful," she murmurs. She thumbs the phone off, drops it into Castle's lap like it burns her.
"Two guns," Castle says, flatly.
"Let's go." She jerks her car door open. He tries to swallow the frustration, the hurt and sadness sizzling through his muscles, but it coils tightly in him, has him throwing himself out of the car in time to see her knees buckle as she rises, her body tip forward. She grabs the roof of the sedan with one hand and the frame of the door with another, but he can see the strain in her muscles, the shocky tremble through her arms.
He sprints around the hood, hooks a hand under her elbow. She shivers, turns it into a shake to get his fingers off her, be he won't let go, not now, not again.
"What is it?" he breathes, crowding closer, turning her into him and settling her over, against the rear door of the sedan.
There's a sudden, desperate noise in the back of her throat, a shadow across her face, and oh, oh, her back slumped against a sedan and his body leaning over hers in the chilled dead of night, how stupid could he possibly be. He's not going to move her now, though, not when anything could be wrong with her, not when he's not sure she doesn't have a ruptured spleen, that she's not going to bleed out in front of him, quietly, this time, with not even the silent rush of crimson to show for it. Her eyes are closed.
"Kate, what is it?"
She shakes her head, breathes for a moment, finally opens her eyes. They're clearer, now. "Just a little sore," she says. "Some bruises. The usual."
"The usual," he says, too serious. He can't help her make fun of something that he doesn't know, can't know, because she hasn't told him.
"Just an interesting day followed by a long drive," she murmurs, flippant.
He stares, eyes locked to hers, his throat aching.
She must see it - she straightens up into him, gradually, carefully, brushes her hand over his shoulder in apology. "Come on," she says, "we'll talk inside."