Close Encounters 6

I'm sorry, but the party you are trying to reach is not available.

God. What did that even mean?

Beckett tried again, her hand shaking so hard that the empty leash rattled; she had to pull it together, had to fucking man up. "Sasha," she called once more. "Sasha, come. Sasha."

Please. She had to - something had happened to him. She needed the damn dog to come now. She walked around the tree and inspected the bushes, redialed. Fuck, same stupid recording.

I'm sorry, but the-

She ended the call and yelled for the damn dog again. "Sasha! Right now!"

The wolf bounded out of the bushes and came to sit at her side, evidently responding to the touch of hysteria in Kate's voice.

"Good dog," she soothed, leaning over and clipping on the leash, but her voice cracked.

Sasha came immediately to her feet with her ears attentive, her teeth bared.

"Yes, I think so," she murmured, a churning in her guts like a hand was scraping out her insides. "Let's run. Let's - we have to get home."

Castle. Whatever that was - whatever -

It had sounded like fire.

Agent Black stared in at the burnt out husk of Beckett's kitchen, nothing showing on his face but for a small tic that started in his jaw. "Listen. You do exactly as I say."

Castle turned his head away from his father and took a shallow breath of ash-choked air. "How did you get the fire department to-"

"We don't have time for this, Richard. Listen to me. We have to act now."

"He fucking blew up Beckett's apartment. It would've been Kate who - it would've been Kate." Castle's fingers felt numb; he didn't know why, just. . .everything was strangely removed.

"Exactly," Black said coldly. "And thank God you have some ounce of training still left in your body, or else Beckett would be ID'ing your damn body."

"Fuck," he moaned, scraped a hand down his face with his heart pounding. "I was on the phone with her. I was - she'll know something's - give me your phone."

"No."

"What?" he hissed, rounding on Black.

"You listen to me. This is the perfect opportunity. You died, Richard. You're dead. We'll get a body in here, let the NYFD back in, the PD with be all over this. But you are dead."

"What? You're telling me to run?"

"He has a contract out on your lives. He is not above placing a bomb in your damn girlfriend's apartment, Richard. Best chance for her is that you die right here, right now."

"She has no chance if I can't be here to protect her. What the hell-"

"If you're dead, then you have an open playing field, Richard. You fake your death and you can finally do your damn job and take Bracken down. Bracken dies, she lives."

Castle stared into the soot-smeared remains of her apartment. How close it'd been. A localized charge in the oven that set it off when he'd turned it on to bake. But he'd set the temperature first and that had given him the moment he needed, the pause to glance inside the window and see the sudden bulk.

He'd dived into her claw foot bathtub and the place had nearly come down on top of him. And now Black wanted to. . .

"Fake my death."

"Best chance Beckett has."

"Wait a minute, I need to think about this."

"We have no time. No time. Listen, this is the only way. I'm still your superior officer, and this is what we're doing." Black was already pulling out his phone and Castle had a sudden sense of what happened next - so clear, so perfect an image. Kate coming back to the fire trucks and the NYPD on scene and stepping into this wreck of an apartment to identify some blackened corpse just like - just like Copenhagen - her seeing the bodies in those flames all over again.

"No," Castle yelled, jerking the phone from his father's hands and ending the call. He couldn't breathe. "No. I won't. Beckett-"

"Beckett has to think you're dead. If Bracken is convinced he got you, he'll think he's free and clear. And you have the opportunity to finally get him and take him down."

"Beckett. She'll - she won't be safe. I have to-"

"We'll put her on 24 hour guard. She'll know she's a target but she won't know you're alive; I'll run her like a field operative whose cover has been blown while you go after Bracken."

A fist squeezed around his heart. "I can't - can't do that to her. You don't understand. I can't-"

"Either you die in this explosion, Richard, or I pull all security from you both. Do you hear me? How long can you hold off a whole army?"

"Fuck you," he growled, his hand closing around his father's phone as if he could squeeze the life out of him. "You bastard. You can't pull the protective duty."

"She gets nothing if you don't do this."

"You fucking-"

"And you know you can't control her," Black said smoothly, a glint of triumph to his eyes that Castle loathed. "You can't make her stay under security, make her stay safe. Bracken will get her, one way or another. He rigged her apartment, Richard. He can get to her anywhere."

He sucked in a ragged breath and turned his back on the man. He'd never thought, never knew Black could be so - could be -

"I love her."

"Then do what's right for her. Give me my phone; I'll call it in to the team and you'll disappear."

Castle clenched his fists, felt the phone dig into his palm. He couldn't do it to her.

"It's either save her life or spare her feelings. Should be no contest."

And it was clear what he had to do.

Castle turned and gave Black his phone, watched the older man call it in.

"You promise there're guards on her 24/7," Castle said hoarsely, the ash sticking in his throat.

Black nodded. "24/7. I control her, then I control you. It's in my best interest to keep her alive while you - you, Agent Castle - stay dead. And we will eliminate Senator Bracken."

And then Black was turning away, issuing sharp commands into his phone, and Castle dropped to his knees in the fire-damaged living room, felt the great wrenching sobs dragged up in his chest-

but no tears would come.

He was already dead.

"Kate! Thank God, oh thank God."

Beckett found herself caught up in Lanie's too-tight grip, but her eyes were stuck on the scene in front of her apartment building. Fire trucks, police, the boys rushing over, the bleak night and the whine of the dog still on her leash and straining.

"Oh, God," she moaned. "Castle-"

She dropped the leash and shoved hard on Lanie, struggled to get past, get through, get inside. She had to get to him, she had to find him-

"No, no, Kate. Katie, no. Please," Lanie begged, grabbing her by the shoulders. "Espo, Ryan, I need your help!"

"No," Kate gasped, pushing them aside. "No, let me-"

"It's already over," Esposito said harshly in her ear, his arms banding around her. "It's over, Beckett."

"Castle, God-"

"Castle is supposed to be at Mick's," Ryan added, but she elbowed him to get away and he grunted in pain.

"Fuck. Your ribs, God. Sorry, Ryan - but he's - he called me. He called me; he was on the phone with me when it - when it - he was home."

"We found a body, Kate."

She stumbled to a stop halfway down the sidewalk and turned slowly back to Lanie, the blood draining out of her so fast she swayed. The dog pushed a nose into her slack hand.

"Lanie, no."

"I thought it was you," Lanie said, eyes brimming.

"No."

"There was a chain. It looked like the chain with your mom's ring-"

"You saw - saw-"

Oh God. No. No, no, no-

"In the ME's van now, Kate."

"No," she moaned, sinking to the concrete as if in slow motion. None of them touched her; she couldn't bear to - she couldn't-

"I have the chain," Lanie said suddenly. Kate lifted her head, on her hands and knees on the sidewalk, the dog whining at her neck, the wail of blue lights flashing across her face, and she saw her friend pull an evidence bag out of her pocket.

It unfolded and swung between them, the chain inside. The ring.

Castle's wedding band.

Oh God.

"He was in an explosion. So it's. . ."

She nodded tersely and chafed at the edge of the ME's van. The dog was howling now, back at the tape line with Ryan, who could barely move thanks to Beckett's elbow in the ribs.

She bit her bottom lip and turned her head to Lanie. "Let me in."

"Kate, honey, I really don't think you want to see this."

She tightened her fists but she couldn't make her mouth move for a second. And then it broke free. "I need to look. To know. I need to know."

"You don't," Lanie said firmly, taking her by the shoulders. "Let me explain this to you, Kate Beckett. Would you ever let a victim's family see a body like that?"

Her resolve trembled; her knees ran weak. She'd seen corpses - she knew bodies. But his, God. "It can't be him. It's not him, Lanie. It's not-"

"It is," Lanie said quietly. "His chain was found near-"

Near. Near? "It's - there's not - what is the - the condition. . ." Her throat closed up and her eyes slammed shut, but all she saw behind her lids was the flaming wick of those men in Copenhagen, how they had form and substance for long, terrible minutes, voice to scream but not breath, how the burning of their flesh stuck in Beckett's lungs and squeezed.

"He was in an explosion. And it burned pretty hot. There's - only a few remains, Kate. Just - there's fragments."

There were. . .fragments. His - his hands? God, his hands were so beautiful and wide and firm, and the way his mouth-

"I can't - can't not see him," she moaned, pressing the heels of her palm into her eyes and bowing her head. "Please, Lanie. I'm falling apart here. Please."

"This isn't something you want to carry with you."

"I already am. Already - I already am."

The men in Copenhagen, the wick of their bodies in flames.

Lanie sighed and opened the doors of the van. Kate balked for one moment then put a foot up on the runner and hauled herself inside.

It wasn't even a body bag.

It wasn't even a body.

"Beckett, I can take you-"

"No."

"Kate, honey, just let Esposito take you to your father's. Or come home with me-"

"You're supposed to be doing the - the - autopsy." She clutched the leash and wrapped it tighter and tighter around her hand, stared down into the dog's liquid eyes.

"It's just cataloging. Perlmutter can-"

"No," she barked fiercely, jerked her head up to stare at the woman. "It has to be you. Only you. Bracken did this. I know he did this. I have to - he has to - Castle-"

"Okay," Lanie whispered, interrupting to throw her arms around Kate. "Okay."

Beckett shuddered and pulled back, the taste of smoke and ash in her mouth. Burned flesh and melting adipose tissue. Bones turned black.

Only the curve of his clavicle, the wing of his scapula.

"Let me drive you," Esposito said again. "Or let Ryan take the damn dog; she won't shut up."

Even now, the wolf whined low in her throat and rubbed the side of her muzzle against Beckett's knee, her body so close that her paws stepped on Kate's feet.

"No."

"Let me drive-"

"No, I need to - be not - I need to. . ." She felt the tears pushing up suddenly, the traitorous, riotous tears, and she bit on the inside of her lip until the pain cleared out her throat again. "I'll take a cab eventually. But I need to walk. I have to - there's - I'm not at a good place."

"No, shit," Esposito growled and the force of his words, the shock of them, jerked her head up with a strangled breath.

"Uneloquent and insensitive an ass as that man is," Lanie sneered back. "He is right. You should not be alone. We won't let you."

Kate gripped the leash tighter and let her eyes burn dark and void on the medical examiner's. "If you guys keep - touching me - I'm going to break. I'm going to fucking break apart, Lanie, and I will not be able to get it back together."

All three were stunned into silence. Beckett waited a moment and then wrapped the leash tighter around her fist, the pressure of that nylon holding her together.

"I will get a cab when I can't walk any farther. I have to - I need to go. Call me if - when you - call me."

"Let us at least call your cab," Ryan said quietly, and he'd been the only one this whole time who hadn't tried to tell her what to do. The only one who'd looked at her with such heartrending sympathy that she hadn't been able to look back.

She wound the leash tighter. "Okay. Call me a cab."

The dog whined and pressed her nose into Kate's hand, the vibrations of her anxiety carrying up into Kate's heart and cracking it.

She had to get out of here.

The thought of going to her father at the cabin made the bile rise in her throat and burn in her nasal passages.

She swayed in the back of the cab and gulped down the insistent sickness, counted her breath to be certain she was, still, breathing. He'd sat on the end of the dock and smiled at her and the sun had come in golden around his hair and his skin was alight-

Alight. In golden flames. Flaming - God, she couldn't-

Beckett choked on a sob and shivered, but the dog pressed in tighter, ever tighter, and for some reason, some impulse, Beckett wrapped her arm around the wolf's neck and held on.

"Can you - different address. I need to-" She stopped and took a deep breath and then she gave the cab driver the address to Castle's old apartment.

Sasha whined and licked at her cheeks, and Beckett sat like a stone as the cab turned around.

She roamed his apartment and the dog followed after her, both of them restless.

She skimmed her fingers over the dust on top of his dresser, opened the mostly empty drawers, unseeing. She wandered around the bed and looked out the window, sightlessly, moved back to haunt the hallway before winding up in the kitchen.

He said, the oven. The oven was what?

She fumbled for her phone and dialled Ryan, breathing through the knot in her chest.

"Beckett?" he answered. "Hey. What. . ."

"Did the fire inspector check the oven?" she said without preamble, glad that her voice didn't crack.

Yet.

"Beckett."

"Did they check? Because we were on the phone and he - he said it was - not working. But I-"

"Beckett, they got it covered."

She nodded and ended the call, realized how she sounded, how - how desperate. But this wasn't - it wasn't-

She called Lanie.

"Kate, where are you?"

"Where - wait. Did you - are you doing the - are you looking - I mean. Is there DNA? Because I just-"

"Kate, honey. He was a spy. I'm not likely to find a match."

She heard the whine and glanced to the dog, but fuck, it wasn't the dog, it was herself. It was just her own grief breaking out. "Right. No dental records either. But wait. He lives with me - his DNA is all over-"

She broke down, the vision of him in her apartment, brushing his teeth at her sink with that little boy smile - now blasted away by the blackened interior of her kitchen, the ruined and water-logged furniture of her living room, the two bones. The two bones of him and a handful of ash and the smell of death and his ring on a chain.

"Kate. Kate, honey. Kate. Talk to me. You gotta talk to me. Where are you? Let me come-"

"I'm fine," she gritted out, sank to her haunches in the hallway. "I'm okay."

"You are not okay. You just lost your husband-"

Oh, God. "He - how did you know?"

"Honey, you're wearing his ring. And the one on the chain?"

She reached up and gripped the wedding band hanging around her neck, felt the harsh catch of each link abrading her skin. "Yes. We - in Rome. Just. A surprise."

"A surprise," Lanie said softly.

"I can't - don't make me talk," she rasped, closing her eyes and bringing the ring to her lips. It tasted like oil and ash and she gagged, pitching forward onto her hands and knees.

"Kate! Kate, talk to me. Or don't talk to me. Let me know where you are, Kate. Please?"

She found the phone and tilted her head back against the wall, felt the dog nudging into the sharp angle of her hip. She glanced over at Sasha and saw the wolf's tall, attentive ears and her strange, too-human eyes.

Kate put her hand on the dog's head and took in a breath. "I'm at - I'm not at my dad's."

"I know. I called him. He's worried about you."

"I'll call him. Lanie, I have to go. I can't - I can't do this."

She ended the call and saw Sasha, the whine rumbling up in the dog's throat, and Kate turned into the big body and buried her face in Sasha's fur, trying to keep it together.

"What do you mean you lost her?" Castle roared.

Deleware was typing furiously at the keyboard in front of him in the command center, and Castle reached around to snag him by the shoulders, haul his bony ass in front of him.

"Define lost."

"Momentarily, I swear. Agent Castle, it's only momentarily. The cab didn't go to her father's cabin. The second it disappeared from the route, we immediately started emergency procedures."

"Which is what?" he snarled, but Deleware was wriggling out of his grip.

"Sir, if you'll just let me get back to the computer, I'll have it for you. The cab's route is logged via GPS. We'll know exactly where he let her out."

The door opened into the command center and Castle spun around to confront his father, waltzing inside like nothing was wrong. Castle had taken a five minute break from the mission brief only to discover that the elite, 24/7 protective team had fucking lost his wife.

Basically his wife.

Even if he had left his ring caught up in some poor bastard's clavicle a few hours ago, completing the ultimate abandonment, he was still her husband. Even if she never forgave him for this, Kate Beckett was his wife.

"He lost Beckett," Castle ground out, glaring at his father. "You said twenty-four-seven. What the fuck is this?"

"What did you do?" Black sighed, his eyes on Deleware.

"I've got it now," Del squeaked. "Just one minor glitch. And we're back. I got her. She's at. . .oh, shit. She's at your place, Agent Castle."

At his-

"The CIA safe house?" Black murmured.

"Yes, sir."

Black crossed his arms over his chest, looking entirely too pleased. Castle was not. At all. Pleased.

"We can't get in there," Castle said heatedly. "Her father's cabin - no problem. This is the damn CIA safe house. We can't get in there to watch her, protect her, when it-"

"Actually, we're already in."

Already in.

Castle rocked back on his heels and stared at Black, but his father was moving to a terminal and calling up a workstation screen, logging in. And then in the next moment, the bank of monitors was displaying five different camera angles positioned strategically through Castle's own damn apartment.

"Holy shit," he groaned, sinking into the office chair at the back.

And then he saw her. Kate.

Curled up in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall, her arms around the dog, and her face turned away from the camera, buried in the wolf's fur as her hair spilled around her.

Her shoulders were shaking.

Oh, baby. Oh, Kate.

Later it occurred to him that he should've been pissed that his father had been surveilling him for who knew how long. He should have asked how long and what the man had seen of his and Beckett's personal life, but at the time, and even now, he couldn't care less.

He'd had the video feeds sent directly to his phone and all he had to do was call up the app and watch. He felt wretched for it, but he couldn't not.

Even in the middle of his mission briefing, as he sat with Black and one other elimination specialist, hashing out the details of their final procedure, trying to decide which venue offered the best exit strategies and which method required the least amount of clean up afterwards, even then he watched Kate.

Everyone had just agreed on poisoning - the senator had a mild allergy to peanuts that could be enhanced with blowfish toxins in a seafood buffet - when Castle happened to look down at his phone and see her.

Kate was passing from the hallway into the kitchen, her fingers trailing the walls like she was blind and lost, feeling her way. At the beginning of their relationship, they'd spent a whole week holed up in his apartment, eating only waffles (he'd had a ton of waffle mix for some reason and not much else) and making love and laughing. She'd convinced him of the merits of maple syrup and he'd had to throw out his sheets - couldn't get the stickiness out.

She knew his apartment; she knew the place well. And he was strangely comforted that she was there, that she had his meager things surrounding her, while also horrified by the idea that this apartment was all she had left of him. Most of his belongings had been at her place - damaged in the bomb or just gone.

He saw her curl her fingers at her chest, and he had flashes of memory - seeing her drawing out her mother's ring and showing it to him, telling him the story - but now it was his. It was his wedding band, the one he'd never even gotten a chance to wear on his finger in public, in front of her friends, in a real life. She held it tightly in her fist and then she opened his cabinet and pulled out the vodka.

Oh, Kate. Please, love. Please, don't.

She poured three fingers' worth into a plastic cup and downed it, put the bottle away, and wandered back towards the bedroom. The dog was at her heels, and when Kate sank into the mattress and laid down, Sasha bounded up onto the bed beside her, nudging into her face.

Kate curled around the dog and closed her eyes.

"Richard."

He jerked his head up and saw Black watching him.

"Are you ready to join us, Agent?"

The elimination specialist was giving Castle a hard look and he knew he had to get his head in the game. The sooner they voided Bracken, the sooner he could get back to Kate.

Not long, baby. Not long now. I promise.

She laid there staring into the darkness, but it was too alive. She had to get up and turn the bathroom light on and then crawl back into bed with the dog and breathe.

She had to breathe.

Sasha whined in her throat until Kate settled, and then the dog put her muzzle on her paws and watched Beckett try.

And fail.

Sleep wasn't going to happen, but she wanted so very badly to fall asleep. She had this feeling in her heart like sleep was the only cure, the only way to reset everything and go back to last night when he'd called her from Mick's workroom and chuckled over the phone and made her crazy with just the sound of his voice and the story he told.

And her damn body ached for him, traitorous and treacherous thing, with the smell of him in the sheets he hadn't been back to in months, a whole year of living at her apartment and yet his bed smelled intimately of him.

Kate rolled her face into the pillow and inhaled, closed her eyes only to open them again, flames licking at the darkness of her memory.

She gave up and got back out of bed, headed into the kitchen again. One more, just to make her tired, to make her eyes droop and her body relax. Vodka made her sleepy, and if she could just take it in one swallow, then it might hit her hard enough to drag her under.

Beckett pulled the bottle back out from the cabinet under the counter, poured a little more than usual into the plastic cup still sitting by the sink. Her eye caught the gleaming, stainless steel oven and she poured just a little more.

She twisted the cap on the bottle and replaced it, took the cup from the counter and stared down into its clear, pristine depths.

Kate knocked it back and choked as the burn rose up the back of her throat and into her sinuses, coughed when it exploded in a burst of numbness across her body. She swayed on her feet, but it couldn't really have affected her yet, could it?

She'd had nothing to eat all day and she'd just drank vodka like it was water, so maybe. Maybe. . .

Beckett dragged back to bed and laid on top of the comforter, realized the dog had followed her in and out and was now nesting beside her. Kate turned her back on the wolf and curled her arms around his pillow, put her face into the fabric and inhaled him, deep and rich.

And passed out.