Close Encounters 6
The ringing of her phone startled her so badly that she bit her tongue, still curled up on his bed.
Kate groaned and checked the ID but blinked dumbly at the display before she realized it had to be one of the boys. 12th Precinct calling.
"Beckett," she rasped.
"It's Esposito. Beckett? You don't sound good."
"What have you got?" she said instead, sucking in shallow breaths to keep it together.
"Word came down that the bomb was part of contract fulfillment."
"What?" she gasped. "A contract. A hit."
"Bracken, we're pretty sure. Someone in his organization put it out."
"Oh my God."
"Two million for you. Two million for him."
She moaned and dropped her head into her hand. "There been a payout yet?" she said, and she heard her words as if they came from a distance.
"No. But don't worry. The CIA learned about it before us; they're working with the NYPD on security for you, Beckett."
"What do I care about security?" she growled. "You have to be on top of that payout."
His stunned silence made her press her lips together and take in a breath. She meant - she'd meant not - what had she meant?
"They've already - Castle is dead. What does it even matter what. . ."
"Beckett."
"I'm okay," she said quickly. "I'm fine. A protective detail?"
"CIA. They're already outside."
"How do they know where I a-"
She stopped, swallowed down a stupid question.
"All right. Espo. Thank you."
"You might want to call Lanie. She's pissed that I knew where you were before she did."
Right. Lanie.
But to do that, she wanted to read one of Castle's letters first.
Castle jerked when his phone vibrated with an alert. He thumbed the display on and read that the NYPD had been informed of the contracts out on their lives. Castle frowned when he realized that, once again, the update hadn't come from Deleware.
Okay, really. What was the man doing?
He put aside the tactical schematics of the mayor's home where the charity even would be, and he called up the ghosting program he and Eastman had written on a whim a few years ago. They'd wanted to snoop on the computers of a couple of assholes two pay-grades above them, and it'd worked scarily well.
Castle knew that his father was off-site for a meeting - most likely with a DC power player who Black was wheeling and dealing - but it came to him that Black might be doing more than just maintaining their black ops status with the politicians. Black might actually be working on deposing Bracken.
What the hell was Deleware doing?
When Castle called up the ghosting program and peeked in at Deleware's station, he was lost.
Code. Lines of code. He was building a program, but for what?
"Honey, I don't know what to tell you. I'm so sorry."
"Where did - did they say what they were doing with it?" Kate asked, heard the brokenness in her voice and couldn't even care.
"No," Lanie said quietly. "They just flashed their badges and took everything."
The fucking CIA had his remains. "Everything," she got out slowly.
Everything but the wedding band on its chain that Beckett held now against her chest. Her thumb fit through the ring and curled around it, so much space, loose and flopping back and forth over her knuckle.
"But, Kate. . .I - look. I don't know what to tell you, but last night after you called me. . ."
"Lanie, what?"
"I took a sample. I was supposed to wait. Agent SOB was very firm about leaving it untouched until his guys could come 'assist' me - you see how their assistance turned out, taking my remains and-"
Kate sucked in a tight breath and Lanie seemed to realize she'd gotten off track.
"I took a bone fragment and sent it to a friend with a lab at the Natural History museum."
"You did what?"
"She did some testing last night. Kate, honey. Those bones. . .my friend is telling me they look like - preliminary testing, is all - but they don't appear to be the bones of a forty year old spy in excellent health."
Beckett's hand dropped from the ring.
"What are you telling me?"
"I don't know what it means, Beckett. But don't - don't take this as - it's not proof. It's not anything. But Javier said I had to tell you. I had to - you had to know everything."
Not the bones of a forty year old man.
"He was a spy, Kate. He had a hard life. My friend said that could account for the way it looks."
A hard life. "He did. He was - all over the place. Tortured. Beaten." She closed her eyes. Not the bones of a forty year old man. "But he was - so fit. He was. . ."
Beautiful. Hers. Her spy.
He had been. He was no longer. He was ash and the bitter grief in her chest. He was those letters still unread in a notebook in her hand.
"Kate. You're at his place? Let me come over and spend the night."
"You know I can't."
"Let me anyway."
"I really can't."
"Then let me call you-"
"I won't pick up, Lanie. I can't. You don't even know what this is costing me right now. I'm - it makes me break apart."
"I know," he friend sighed. "Still hate not being there."
"I know. You and everyone else."
"Don't drown in this, Kate Beckett. You are the strongest woman I know."
Not tonight she wasn't.
Maybe not for the rest of her life.
Castle cradled the phone close to him and traced his fingertips over the outline of her form, curled in on herself in the kitchen. She was sitting with the notebook, the dog's head in her lap, her eyes tightly closed.
Tears streamed down her cheeks like she'd given up on stopping them.
Castle leaned over until his forehead rested against the workstation, took deep breaths as his eyes caressed her. If she could - he just wished so badly this wasn't how it had to be done.
Her eyes fluttered open and she was staring into the distance. Castle sat up, his breath catching, and he couldn't help pressing his finger to the line of her face, remembering how it felt to cup her cheek and guide her mouth to his, how she smiled that closed-lipped smile that spread against his skin as her hands sought his hips and brought him close.
On the video, Kate tilted her head as if leaning into his touch and her eyes drifted closed.
"Agent Castle?"
He jerked upright and glanced over the monitor to see Deleware standing nervously at attention.
"You wanted to see me, sir?"
He pushed his phone into his pocket and stood, gesturing to the empty desk chair beside his. "Sit."
Del looked flustered for an instant, but he sank down beside Castle's work station, fiddling with his tie.
Castle studied him for a long moment, let it stretch out, let the discomfort grow until he sat down as well and leaned in.
"You wrote a program for my father," he said quietly. "And I know what it does. You want to explain what's going on here?"
Deleware opened his eyes too wide, that nervous tell that meant he was about to lie, and then he nodded. "Sir, it's just a snoop. We'll put it into place on the senator's blackberry to ensure that he goes where his schedule says. So when you do your thing, we know exactly where he is."
Except Castle had already put the code through its paces and that wasn't all the GPS tracker was going to do.
"You wrote it for Agent Black. You give it to him already?" he asked, eyebrow lifted.
"Yes, sir."
Castle nodded; that was the truth. "Then that's all. And thanks for the updates on Beckett."
Deleware gave a huge sigh of relief and nodded too quickly, getting to his feet once more and hurrying out.
The little bug would give them an accurate positioning on Bracken, yes. But it was also programmed to cull information from the Senator's personal emails and secure web browsing. There were portions of the code that Castle couldn't understand, where his knowledge hit its limit, but he'd gotten the idea that it was command language that would hijack the contents of a certain app.
What app, Castle had no idea. And why his father wanted the information - still had no clue. That his father was using the elimination assignment as a cover for some secret purpose - Castle had no doubt.
And that meant - what?
His father wanted something from Bracken and he was using Castle's 'death' to get it.
But what did that mean for Castle?
And for Beckett.
It wouldn't leave her.
The sense that there was - more. That something swirled just past her comprehension, or just under the eddies of her grief.
Sasha came to heel at her side and Kate ran a hand through the dog's fur, tried to let her body and mind relax enough to have it rise to the surface. It stayed stubbornly out of her reach though.
The body was gone. The - it wasn't even a body. Was that it? Kate couldn't feel like anything was real when the pieces she'd seen were just fragments. The charred remnants of clavicle and scapula. And even though her mind wrapped muscle and memory over those bones and fleshed him out, she couldn't complete it.
She couldn't let him go.
She felt him with her even here, standing stupidly in the middle of his kitchen with the overhead light making her eyes hurt so that she just - swayed. Lost.
Her fingers skimmed the dog's ear and she glanced down. The two of them, paired in grief. That was all this was - grief. It wasn't reality; he wasn't here. There were bones, there was the ring she still couldn't let go of.
There was no DNA to test against-
Oh. No.
He had lived here.
Right? Beckett tripped over the dog as she turned, stumbled against the counter and bruised her hip with a wince. She was damn worthless right now and she didn't even know what she could possibly be thinking except-
Except - what if-
No. Stop. Just stop. God, please.
What if?
Bathroom. She trembled at the edge of the kitchen for a moment and then headed down the hallway and entered the bedroom. The light coming in through the window hit the clump of covers in the bed and for one brutal, breathless instant - it was him. It was Castle laid out in bed and she was knocked back by a wave of desolation so fierce that it flattened her.
She clutched at the doorway and bent over at the waist, closing her eyes to push it back. Not yet, not yet. She had to - toothbrush or hair. Something. Do this first. Do this.
Beckett forced her way inside the bathroom, stood shaking at the sink and refused to look at herself in the mirror. She had - there was no toothbrush but the one she'd ripped from the package this morning. She yanked open the drawers and found an electric razor.
Her breath caught but - she was trying to think. No root, no DNA. Damn it.
She leaned against the counter with her palms pressed flat, tried to breathe. This couldn't be - she could not pin her hopes on this. There was no hope, Beckett. As Espo had told her yesterday, it was already done.
Comb, brush-
Bathroom floor? The shower drain. Holy shit - the shower drain.
Kate jerked open the opaque door and kneeled down on the tile, got her fingers under the drain as she pried at it. Water drops soaked through the knees of her jeans, the sound of her breathing echoed harshly in the shower.
She just - she had to know. The bones of an old man or just a spy whose body had been abused for years?
She just had to know.
She called Lanie even as she wiped sweat from her forehead.
"Beckett? Honey, what's-"
"I have a hair. I mean - there's hair for DNA testing. From the shower. Can you-"
"Oh, God, Kate. I can't - the samples I took. It's not even - it's nothing. There's no way to do DNA from what I got - not now. The testing ruins them."
Kate felt it claw up her throat and clamor to get out. She squeezed her eyes shut and felt the throb in her fingers from where she'd pried up the drain. "Lanie."
"I never meant to make you think it could - oh, Kate. Kate."
"I just. I thought it would. . .help."
Her friend was silent on the other end and she sucked in another breath, opened her hand to look at her raw fingers. Blood was caked under her nails where the edge of the drain had sliced deep, and her knuckles were already bruising up. She closed her eyes and tried to regain some control.
"I'll let you go, Lanie."
She ended the call and breathed again, opened her eyes.
The dog stood before her, head cocked to look at her, and Kate heard that low whine in her throat again, wondered whose it was coming from - the dog or Beckett?
She should - there should be something. A list. She'd made a list. Shower, food, call her father, get it together.
Instead, she pushed her mangled hand into the pocket of her sweatshirt and pulled out the notebook. She hadn't realized how much he'd written; she hadn't really seen it since he'd backwards proposed to her in it, since he'd asked her to make it real.
Oh, Castle. Rick, it was always real. It was never anything less than everything.
She opened the notebook and read blindly the first thing that came to meet her eye.
When I came up the stairs in that house in Copenhagen and the fire - when I saw the flames between us, Kate. Kate, I nearly - I would have walked through the fire to be with you on the other side. I would have gone straight in. But you were smarter than me; you kept me from it. You made me leave you there and go around outside. You made me leave you. And if you hadn't, we'd have both died. Because you made me leave you, because I did not go through that fire, we both survived. We can survive anything together, even if - for a moment - we're apart.
He told himself he couldn't keep watching; he couldn't do it. It wasn't helping their situation for him to pine after her, his phone held close to his chest and everything aching.
And when she'd finished off that last glass of wine and gathered her coat and keys and the leash, the dog's tail swishing, something had eased in him.
She wasn't staying cooped up in the fading light of his apartment; she wasn't closing herself off. At least not entirely.
He couldn't keep watching, checking obsessively for updates. He had a real job to do and now that the elimination assignment had been put into play, now that he and Jones were researching the best possible outcomes, he had work that needed to be done.
But first he called up his own father's service record and started searching.
For what, he was't exactly sure. He just had a feeling that this thing with Bracken had gone so far beyond just Beckett's mother's murder. Beyond even a case being made against a corrupt senator.
There was something else here. Something he couldn't see yet.
But he'd find it.
It'd taken three glasses of wine to have the courage to say fuck it and come out here, do this. She had to do this. She couldn't sit still if she didn't know.
She figured - establish the timeline.
That's always how she found answers. Just put it all down, figure out what had happened and when.
Sasha pulled at the leash, and Kate realized she'd stopped still in front of the 12th, that her legs just wouldn't carry her inside. She pulled out her phone and guided the dog out of the flow of traffic, leaned against the building and waited until Ryan picked up.
"Ry," she said quickly. "Look, I need a favor."
"What do you need? Where are you, Beckett?"
"Actually, I'm downstairs. Outside. I've got the dog with me, so I won't go in, but can you-"
"Yes, of course, I'm on my way out anyway. Be there in five."
She hung up and pressed her back against the concrete facade of the 12th, realized she knew most of these people, that they were regarding her carefully and with no small amount of pity.
Thank goodness for that third glass. She'd tried to eat with it, but-
Sasha stood and wound around her ankles once and then came back to her side, sat back on her haunches, looking restless. Kate dipped her knees to brush the dog's fur, grateful for the way the wolf seemed to anchor her here.
"Beckett!"
She glanced up and Ryan was coming out of the front doors, looking somehow both anxious and relieved. She allowed the grip of his hand around her arm and the half-hug, but the dog had gotten between them and kept Ryan from doing more damage to her shaky self-control.
"Hey, boss. How are you. . .what do you need?"
She swallowed and gripped the leash a little tighter. "I just wanted to see how the investigation was going. Where are you guys at - I assume the fire department's inspector has been by to-"
"Beckett," he said suddenly, and his hand was on her arm again. "Beckett. I don't think-"
"No, Ryan, I'm okay. I promise. I just - you know me. I can't be out of it. I have to know the details."
But he was shaking his head, his eyebrows drawn in tight. "No, that's not the problem. The CIA took over our investigation, Beckett. They took everything with them. The forensics, the tapes I pulled from your lobby - which were blank anyway, so it's not like they got anything from them, but-"
"They were - what?" she said, something thick rising up in her throat. The CIA had the investigation. Well, of course they did. One of their own had been - the explosion was - it was all their case anyway, wasn't it? Castle had appropriated her mother's case and now this - this was what she was left with.
"The tapes were blank," Ryan said slowly.
"You didn't get - there was nothing to indicate who set that bomb in my apartment?"
"No, but - more than that. It was digital video from lobby security - which, honestly, Beckett, that place sucks. You have got to move-"
Ryan stopped with a sucked in breath and his eyes snapped to hers with something like horror.
She tried for gallows humor anyway. "I think I will, Ry. Kitchen needs too much work done."
He cleared his throat, nodding up and down, and he looked so uncomfortable that Kate reached out and smoothed the flap of his collar over his sweater.
"I'm okay, Ryan."
He nodded again, glanced up at her once more. "I - the video was black from the approximate time the bomb had to have been set until fifteen minutes after the first responders."
Fifteen minutes after? After the first responders? "You're saying our bomber stuck around and watched?"
Ryan shrugged. "I'm saying the digital video was just gone. About an hour's worth of information. Gone."
Had the CIA done that? Scrubbed it clean to protect. . .who? What? What could those tapes have shown except-
something they didn't want anyone to see.
"Beckett, what are you going to do?"
She turned her eyes to his and tried to let that easy, floating feeling the wine had given her finally drift back and fill her gaze.
"Nothing, Ry. I'm - there's nothing to do," she answered.
And then she walked away. He didn't seem to know how to follow her.
She walked away but there was a lot to do. There were questions now - and there shouldn't be questions. Not about this. There should be no questions.
She was going to find the answers.