"We have to go," he murmurs against the crown of her head.
"'Kay," she breathes, more a deep sigh than an actual word.
He runs a hand through her hair. "Kate," he says, trying to muster the energy, the urgency.
"One more minute," she slurs, shifting further into him.
They're slumped together on the floor of the barn, twined into an embrace that should be awkward - their bodies facing opposite directions, their hips jarring, her cheek pressed against his shoulder - but instead is only comforting.
After he'd made sure that Maddox was dead, he'd managed to unlock her cuffs and pull them off her wrist before they both tacitly gave in, stopped fighting their trembling muscles for a moment and allowed their bodies pool bonelessly onto the ground.
They're maybe a foot away from Maddox's dead body.
If his last phone call was any indication of the state of things, someone will be expecting him to check in. Someone will be expecting him to check in soon.
How long have they been sitting here, now? Three minutes? Four?
"Okay. Okay, come on," he says, pushing away from her, steadying himself with a hand on her shoulder as he forces his feet underneath him, rolls up into an unsteady crouch and turns so that he's facing her.
She blinks blearily at him, the past few hours, the past few days too present in her eyes.
"I know," he sighs, maneuvering his palms under her elbows, taking so much care to avoid touching her left hand, the hand that has stayed cradled protectively against her stomach ever since she got herself out of the cuffs.
She hums lightly in the back of her throat, leans forward at him, into him, her eyes unfocused, her gaze drifting hazily around the room.
"Beckett," he growls, tugging up at her elbows. "It's not safe here. You gotta get up." He briefly considers leaning over, wrapping his arms around her, picking her up and carrying her out, but his legs are still shaking and his shoulders and arms and wrists are still on fire and the graze on his bicep has set up a pounding, pulsing rhythm that radiates through his whole body.
"Not safe anywhere," she murmurs, her eyes slowly drifting shut. "Coonan, Lockwood, Maddox – they'll just keep coming. Always do."
He swallows against the meaning of her words – Might as well stay here. Might as well give up.
No.
"I'm about to carry you out of here, and I'm not going to lie, Beckett, it might end in my dropping you," he says, pulling up more firmly on her elbows.
She blinks, blinks again, shakes her head slightly as her eyes finally focus on his face. "Like I would let you carry me," she rasps, gathering her legs underneath her body.
They stumble up together and then pause, just standing and breathing. The barn spins violently, the refracting golden light and the sharp lines of rafters and the dark slump of the body on the floor beside them, but the woman tucked at the front of his chin remains steady, his constant through the vertigo.
He feels her hand come up, brush along his forehead. "If you throw up on me, we're over, Castle."
He doesn't want to know what he looks like to make her say that. "After all we've been through?" The room finally settles, the ground lurching into something that he thinks he'll be able to walk on. He turns her, wraps his left arm over her shoulder and curls it around her waist.
"I draw the line at vomit on my body. Stop trying to sneak a snuggle," she says, voice hoarse. Her head is too heavy on his shoulder. She's still shaking.
He starts to walk them toward the door on heavy, disconnected feet. "I'm just using you for support, here, Beckett. You don't want to see me try to move by myself right now."
She's silent, but her right hand comes up, her fingers hooking over the waistband of his jeans as they edge through the door to blink into the blinding sunlight.
Somehow, impossibly, it is still morning.
A jet-black Escalade sits tucked just behind the barn. When he sees it he stumbles to a halt, tugs Beckett more firmly against his side. One of the headlights is smashed. The front bumper is crumpled slightly inward.
He turns them in a slow, slow circle. All around them is land – long, level stretches of fields, the kind of green that's flat and hopeless in the almost-midday sun. One long, dusty dirt road stretches away from the barn.
"Could be tracked," Beckett murmurs.
He blinks, shakes his head, licks his lips. God, his mouth is dry. How has it taken him so long to notice how thirsty he is?
Right. The car.
"I don't see a lot of options here, Beckett."
"Yeah. Okay." She pulls them toward it.
"We'll ditch it. Soon."
Or – shit. They have nothing. No money. No phone. No IDs. No guns.
And her hand -
He sucks a deep breath into lungs that suddenly feel too small, unable to meet the demands of the expanse of land and sky around them.
It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter if the car is tracked. Doesn't matter if they have nothing. They can't stay here.
They stop at the crumpled hood. Her hand is still curled against the waistband of his jeans, his arm is still wrapped around her body, and for some reason, he can't seem to even imagine letting go.
"We should just…" he trails off, wrenching himself away from her in an abrupt move that has them both staggering, but he can still feel the magnetic pull of her, the way his body is already canting back toward her. He settles her gently back so that she's leaning against the hood. "Just let me check it out."
She murmurs something tired and halfhearted about his treating her like she's incapable, but he's fairly certain that at this point it's just for show. He scoots around the car, opening doors, peering inside. It's unlocked. The keys are in the ignition. There's water, granola bars in the back, a handgun and a sniper rifle in the trunk. Some sort of high-tech radio that he grabs and dumps on the ground.
When he comes back around to the front of the car, clutching a bottle of water, she's leaning back, her breathing deep, her eyes closed, her face tilted toward the sun. If she's noticed him standing there, she hasn't given any indication. He takes the moment, shuffles closer and bends down, stares at the hand that's still tucked up just beneath her ribcage. He hasn't looked at it, yet – he's been trying so hard not to see.
It's horribly swollen and already purpling, a deep black starting to spindle over the fluid-filled flesh. Her thumb is twisted around, curled in on itself horribly, her pinkie juts out at an awkward angle, her fourth finger is puffed around the rings, enough that they'll need to get them cut off her. Her whole hand seems to be locked in a tense kind of spasm.
She needs – he thinks there was a first aid kit in the trunk, maybe an ace bandage, and he might be able to find something to splint it if –
No.
She needs a hospital. She needs doctors to set her fingers and she needs about ten night's sleep and she needs –
"I know what you're doing," she rumbles, her eyes still closed, her body still slack against the hood of the car.
He snaps straight, feels a wave of dizziness pulse through his head at the sudden motion. "Hmm?" he asks, trying for his best innocent hum.
"'S a long way from my heart," she murmurs.
He swallows harshly, the burn in his throat worsening. "Tactless, Beckett."
She blinks her eyes open, stares at him distantly. "Sorry," she whispers, and he can see her gradually dragging the world back into focus yet again. "Car okay?"
"Seems good. Found some water," he says, twisting the cap off. It appears to have been sealed, and he's not really sure why Maddox would be carrying around poisoned bottled water, but he takes a sip, swirls it around in his mouth before passing it the bottle to Beckett. She takes a short drink, throat working greedily, before she passes it off to him. "There's more in the back," he says, nudging the bottle back at her. "Granola bars, too, if you're hungry."
"No," she says immediately.
He swallows the reflexive words about how she needs to eat. They both do, but the empty, hollow nausea still churns in his own stomach, and all he wants, now, is to leave this place. He watches her for an indulgent instant, the bright sunlight on her pale cheeks, the delicate lines of her throat as she tilts her head back to drink, the drying blood slicked along her wrists.
"Okay," she says, lowering the water bottle, pushing off the hood of the car. She steps toward the passenger side, then jerks to a pause. "Are you okay to –" She trails off, teeth sliding over her lower lip.
He won't let it hurt. He won't. "Kate Beckett, are you asking me to drive?"
She smiles, but she can't quite hide the exhausted tremble of her body. "Just don't get used to it."
He drives for three hours.
His vision's greying, fading and tunneling around the edges, but it's still not as bad as those first three miles of dirt road, when the car lurched over every bump no matter how slowly he went and Beckett's jaw was clenched and her face was bloodless and her hand was cradled to her chest and every time the car jolted, a tiny, nearly-inaudible hum of anguish would vibrate in the back of her throat.
She's sleeping now, closer to passed out, maybe, as the car glides over the smooth pavement. Her face is still bloodless and her hand is even more swollen. It's a wonder he hasn't crashed yet, dividing his attention between her and the rearview mirror and the sides of the road, sure that at any moment her steady breathing will somehow cease, sure that at any moment there will be another crack and crumple of the car frame, that they'll be drawn back down into the nightmare from which they've just barely escaped.
He drives for three hours because that's how long it takes to find a payphone.
He hesitates but leaves Beckett sleeping in the locked car, gets out, calls the number to Esposito's burner phone.
"Beckett?" the man says quickly, voice sharp, panicked.
"It's me," Castle murmurs.
"Tell me you're both okay," Esposito snaps.
He swallows harshly in the silence, tries to gather the words.
"Castle," Esposito rasps, voice suddenly hoarse, and he realizes how it must sound, his calling a day early from a payphone, Beckett not on the line, his sudden silence.
"Sorry, sorry – I'm okay. She's alive." He can hear Esposito's soft curse of relief through the phone. "But –" he swallows again, but there's nothing for it, this is it, rock bottom, the end of their rope. "We need help. We need to come home, or –" his mind stumbles, trips over it – "somewhere safe. A doctor."
He can't be making enough sense. His mind is muzzy, spinning. He can't remember his last full night of sleep – three nights ago? Four? He can't remember a time when worry and pain weren't constantly nudging the edges of his consciousness.
Esposito's said something, he thinks, but now the line is crackling with silence. "What?" Castle asks, blinking hard to clear the fog. He needs to concentrate. This – this is Beckett's life.
"What. Happened," Esposito growls, biting out the words, demanding his attention.
"Maddox," Castle says, but the words for what happened in the ramshackle, light-strewn barn keep slipping away from him. "He's dead, now."
He hears Esposito talking in the background, the far away, harsh snap of a command, and then his voice, low and firm, echoes back through the line. "Okay. We've got a trace on this phone. The FBI's gonna be there in twenty-five with a chopper."
For a moment, the words hang there, incomprehensible, in the heat of the phone booth. "What?"
He hears the beat of hesitation all too clearly, hears Esposito carefully weighing every word. "Just stay put for twenty-five minutes." A sharp, uneasy breath, and then, just before the phone clicks off – "We got him."