Close Encounters 6
Castle knew he owed her. He'd made the wrong decision when he'd agreed to his father's plan and she'd paid the price for his mistake. He'd hurt her.
Shit, that was the understatement of the year.
He'd gutted her open. And while she needed to know what it was for, what it was culminating to, he also wanted to know what to do. With his father's motivations not being entirely above board for this assignment, Castle wasn't certain any more that eliminating Bracken was the right thing. Black's machinations were legendary, and Castle didn't like playing into his hand, but he couldn't see any other option.
Bracken had to die.
So he took Seaside Avenue south to Cove Island Park, parked the Range Rover in the lot with a few others, and got out. The salt and the Connecticut wind were a brutal combination against his already stinging eyes, and Kate shivered as she came to his side.
"Let's walk down to the pavilion," he said quietly, taking her by the hand.
She was quiet as they skirted the water's edge, the trees lacy with new green shoots, a dappling of pink against the gray clouds. The sun broke open the sky and limned her cheeks and chin with white, but she was stiff with foreboding and this was too serious to enjoy the moment.
The cove rounded into sandy lines of straggling grass, and Castle pulled her under the wide picnic structure, sat her down at a bench and put his back to the table so that he could see out over the water. She settled in close - at least she was close - and he skimmed his fingers inside the sweatshirt jacket, found the warmth of her far hip and couldn't help tunneling up to touch skin.
She shivered and brought her hand over his, drew his arm tighter around her waist until their joined fingers rested over her stomach. He nudged his thumb under her shirt and stroked around her belly button.
Side by side, not having to look at the resolution in her eyes, the black and white way she saw the world. . .he could do this.
He could admit to what they were doing.
"I'm going to kill Bracken."
She sucked in a breath and went still.
He rushed to fill the emptiness. "I know you said - I know. But he planted a bomb in your apartment, and if I hadn't gotten home early, Kate. If I hadn't been there, you'd have died."
"You don't know that."
"Your oven has those manual dials. I did them wrong. I turned them wrong. I went for the temperature first, forgot to push the other dial to bake. Saved my life. I opened the oven door because it wasn't working-"
"I remember," she whispered.
Right. He'd been on the phone with her. "I saw it then."
"The tub," she said, jumping ahead in the story. Maybe she didn't want to hear it, didn't want to picture it.
"The tub," he repeated. "Black came and locked down the scene, coordinated the fire department. We had seconds to decide how to play it. I think when he heard about the bomb, he already knew how he wanted it to go. He had everything in place in moments. Body from the forensic farm - a bomb victim-"
"I thought it was you," she rasped.
He clutched her hand tighter, tried not to apologize again. "You were supposed to think that."
"I looked at those bones and-"
"You what?" She wasn't supposed to - that was why he'd- "I left the ring. So you wouldn't - Kate, you weren't supposed to ID the body. I didn't want you to-"
"You think I could leave it at that? Not see it with my own eyes? Not ever know?"
He swallowed hard and hung his head, struggled to breathe through the vivid image of her on his kitchen floor, broken and bleeding, because she'd seen those bones, that scrap of burnt tissue and the black husk of a body. Not even a body, just pieces.
"Kate," he groaned.
"So you - planned it. You played dead because. . .why?"
"I had hoped that with me out of the way, Bracken would leave you alone. And if you were - mourning - then it would be, you would be - I don't know. I thought it would keep the attention off of you. And with me dead, I'd have a certain freedom of movement."
The tree branches along the water's edge were stark, as if the wind had stripped whatever new growth made the attempt. He waited for Beckett to find her voice, kept his hand at her stomach, her body close to his side. If he could somehow keep her here. . .
Her voice rasped when it came. "Freedom. To murder Bracken."
He gritted his teeth. "Yes." His father had seen the opportunities immediately. "And I think - also? Freedom from prosecution. My father intended for me to stay dead, I believe. In this incarnation. I'd no longer be Richard Castle, no longer be able to approach you. I don't think he ever intended to let me come back to you."
"He wants us kept apart. He thinks I'm a liability to you. He'll do anything-"
"I see that now," he admitted. "I didn't - yes. I was - that was the wrong choice to make. To let him. . ."
"Let's move on, Castle."
But he lifted his head, glanced over at her. "I need to say this, Kate. And have you hear me."
She turned slowly to him, her eyes so vividly green in the March light. She looked like she was bracing herself. Against him, against what he might say.
"I want us." And when that didn't make sense, didn't sound even close to what he meant, he tried again. "What I did. . .the choice I made. . .I thought I was doing it for us. Black was going to pull his support; we'd have no protection to combat four million dollars worth of determination. I did what I had to do, Kate, and while - while it breaks me to see what I did to you, I can't-"
"Stop."
"It's not an apology," he ground out, not letting himself avoid her eyes. "It's just the truth. Because I'm not sorry for making that choice. I think - I still think our only option is killing the senator and ending his reign over your life, Kate."
She stared at him and then she untangled her fingers from his and stood up, stalking away from him.
There it was. The impasse.
She wanted a noble end to her quest, to this thing she'd built to epic proportions in her head, through her whole adult life, and he wanted only to cut it off at the source, end it.
But he was afraid she was too entwined with the story she'd told herself; he was afraid that killing the beast would kill her as well.
She walked until she couldn't feel her fingers, until the wind had ruined her hair and scraped her cheeks, and then she walked farther.
Was she seriously considering it?
God help her, she was.
Tantalizing and just within her reach. She didn't even have to do anything, she didn't have to actively participate, only sit back and let it happen.
Let her boyfriend kill the man who'd murdered her mother.
Husband.
Partner.
Father of her children?
She closed her eyes and stopped, heard the whistling echo of birds and the moan of the wind. The water pushed against the rocky shoreline, curled in at the sand and made tide pools.
She didn't even know when - but it was a when now, where it had only been a fantastic and unrealistic dream before. It was an option, or it seemed like an option, having a family with him, and she could never - the father of her children couldn't murder a US senator.
What he'd done in his job, what he'd done to save her life in Copenhagen, what he'd done in service to his country's security - she could understand and respect him for. But not if he murdered Bracken. Not for her.
She took a deep breath of the clean salt air and turned back around.
He was still sitting at the bench in the pavilion, his eyes no doubt tracking her, his hands clasped together between his knees as he bent forward.
She loved him. And he wasn't killing a man for her.
He stood as she came closer, realized with some sense of pleased surprise that his anxiety had never been over whether or not she'd eventually make her way back. Only over her decision.
And he could tell by her face he wasn't going to agree.
"No."
He sighed and crossed his arms over his chest, watched her as she did the same, leaning back against a wooden support post. She raised an eyebrow as if in invitation and he geared up to defend his position.
"I don't know what else we can do," he said finally.
"Not that."
"There's nothing else for it, Kate."
"I won't have you murdering a man just because we can't think creatively."
He growled and scraped a hand down his face. "It's not a failure of imagination. It's about your life-"
"And yours," she said quietly.
"And mine," he added. "We're both threatened by this man."
"I meant. . .morally? I'm talking about preserving our future together, Castle." She uncrossed her arms and pushed forward to come for him, gripping him by the biceps and loosening his tight stance. "What lies between us."
"I don't understand. You'll stop loving me if I do this?"
She sighed. "No, Rick. I'm saying that if you do this, it's between us. It will always be there - how our life together was paid for in blood."
He clamped his mouth shut and glared down at her; she was so much shorter than him like this, without her heels or boots, just her flat feet and her body so thin under an ill-fitting outfit from Wal-Mart.
And yet such presence. He rarely noticed how slight she was, how angular the bones of her face or how narrow her waist when she exuded such power and held such steel in her body.
Like now.
He didn't like her strict adherance to mere ethics in the face of an enemy like Bracken, but he understood it. He even admired it, though he didn't think they had the luxury.
"Don't you think that all our lives, the future of this country, are paid for in blood?" he said finally.
"I know that," she murmured, and her thumbs squeezed over his biceps. "But our future - our family - that can't be bought. You and I will work for it."
Their family.
He'd had a dream on a flight back to the States one time, a dream about a boy, and his face was still so clear in Castle's mind that he flinched at the surfacing image, inwardly shrank back from the idea of explaining to son exactly what he'd done.
But he'd still do it.
"You won't, Castle. Give us time to think of a better way. Together. We do this together."
She shifted closer, her fingers kneading his biceps until his arms loosened and fell away, letting her up against his chest. She sighed and drew him into an embrace, grasping his forearm and pulling it around her waist until he caught the hint and wrapped himself around her.
They'd learned this lesson before; he knew that. And while he wasn't yet ready to let go of the certainty that Bracken had to die, he was willing to compromise if they came up with something together.
"Promise me, Rick."
"Together," he said easily. "We do it together."
After she showered and dressed again, put on make-up and slid her feet into the flat shoes they'd bought, she didn't feel any more ready for what they had to do next.
But she came to him in the room and swallowed it down. "I'm ready."
He stood from where he'd been working on his phone and she saw he was no more willing to go than she was. So she reached out and snagged his left hand, brought it up to her mouth to kiss the wedding band now back in its place on his finger.
He cupped her jaw and leaned in to claim a better kiss, though soft and understanding. She sighed as he ran his fingers along her jaw and back through her hair, nuzzled into his touch for a moment longer.
"Let's go," she said finally. And she broke away from him first.
He carried the lone bag and followed her down the stairs; he checked them out while she hid her hands in the sleeves of her sweatshirt jacket, her palms still raw. The woman at the desk smiled but didn't seem much interested, and they headed outside into the sunlight.
Castle drove, his sunglasses banded around his face and blocking her view of his eyes. She wished she had her gun, wished she knew what to say to make either of them feel better.
They had a long drive ahead of them and the silence was going to bury her.
"Should you call ahead?" she asked.
"No. Bad idea. He'd - no."
Okay.
"Kate, just a warning?"
Uh-oh. "Yeah?"
"Black will be looking for me."
"I figured. You kinda went off the reservation, Castle."
"Yes. But you don't know why."
"You said I. . ." Kate trailed off as it hit her. How could he have known what she'd done? "I guess you were watching me."
"You could say that," he muttered, and the self-deprecation, the bitterness in his voice made her breath catch.
"What - how exactly? Why exactly?" she said quickly.
"You went to my place," he muttered. "I didn't know, but Black has been - has kept tabs on me. It was wired for lights and sound."
"It was. . ." Shock dragged through her and scooped her guts out. "Oh, shit. Even when we - with - oh shit, Castle."
"Yeah."
"He watched us?"
"I don't - I didn't ask. But I - I watched you, Kate. I saw - everything."
He had watched her. . .fall apart. Grieve. Deconstruct. She pressed a hand over her eyes and winced at the pull of her broken skin. She stared at the livid marks.
"You saw me drunk. And breaking a glass - I broke a glass. It fell. And then. . ."
"You drowned."
"I what?"
"You went under in the bath."
"I don't remember. . ." Oh, wait. Shit. She did. The pressure on her chest, the sense of her limbs floating up even as her body sank down. Opening her mouth to the intrusive, ever present water.
"You took a breath. It looked - purposeful."
"No," she refuted, shaking her head. It didn't stir any memory of that though. "No. I wouldn't - it wouldn't have been - no."
"You fell in the broken glass."
She flexed her hands and could feel, even still, the throb of the cuts on her knees. "I - fell? Is that a nice way of saying I crawled through broken glass, Castle?"
He grunted and she knew it wasn't right to joke about it, but she didn't remember being - she remembered grief and darkness and the desolation of not having him. That was all too clear.
"I didn't try to kill myself," she said quietly.
"Okay."
Would he ever believe her? This was between them now too, not just Bracken and Black and the mess of things, but the weight of his responsibility towards her.
And she wasn't sure she could feel sorry for that.
"Your apartment had video. And what else?"
"A team was following you. They sent updates to me. Here." He shifted in the seat and she watched him pull out his phone again, use a thumb to unlock it and call up an app. She watched and then he handed it over, so she took it.
It was a status update, a constant feed. "They're going crazy. Can't find either of us," she murmured as she read. A host of input, the short-character updates and abbreviations she didn't know, but she could tell that the CIA task force was a flurry of activity.
"Yeah. They're - I made them look bad. But I. . .Kate, I can't say that I'm sorry I watched you. It helped to be able to see you and to know, to know the price for what I'd done - the price you were paying."
"I didn't ask for an apology," she said quickly. "I'm not. . .pleased that you - that I was - it's mortifying, really. But Castle, you've seen me at my worst. And so - now you know. Now I know. How much I really can't. . .how bad it gets. What I do."
She felt his hand reaching for hers and she took it, surprised by how much she'd needed that - a touch, a comfort, something to hold her up.
"It's something I'll have to work on," she said then. "I've been thinking. . .I need to see someone."
"Before we go back?" he asked, and the confusion in his voice was adorable. Really, it was.
"A professional, Rick," she chuckled. "I need to go back to therapy. I had a few months with Dr King at Stone Farm, but I need something like that again. I need to work on me."
"I can get Dr King," he said quietly. She darted a look at him and saw the fierce line of his jaw.
"You can?"
"I can."
"That would be. . .a good idea."
"Then I'll do that."
When they were ten miles out, he warned her again. "We won't make it another mile."
"Oh?"
And at that moment it happened: the roar of helicopter blades and the fierce light, the whine of nearly-silent engines in those ubiquitous black SUVs, then the loud command to pull over and turn off the vehicle.
Castle obeyed without hesitation, put both hands on the wheel. "Keep your hands on the dashboard."
Kate did as he said and the doors were all opened simultaneously, their exits covered by a phalanx of agents with guns.
At least Castle knew them all.
"Beckett is bringing me in," he said. "We stay together."
Agent Fitzhenry pushed to the front; he was gritting his teeth. "Sir."
"Fitz. Don't worry about it."
"If you both could step out of the vehicle."
"Kate stays with me."
"Yes, sir. Beckett stays with you."
Castle released the wheel and climbed down from the Range Rover, saw Beckett doing the same on her side. He shook his head at Fitz and stayed pressed against the car until Kate was led around the front and brought to his side.
"All right. My weapon is in the holster on my hip," Castle said.
Fitz took it cleanly, though they both knew it would never have happened unless Castle had allowed it. Fitz patted him down and then gave him a nod and gestured for the middle SUV. "If you'll come with us, sir."
Castle reached back and took Kate's hand in his, and she was the one to lead the way.
He was grateful. He didn't want to do this at all, but it'd been her idea to go back.
"I hope you know what you're doing," he murmured to her.
She climbed into the back seat and gave him a look. "I have no idea. I just know we can't run from the CIA, Rick."
That didn't make him feel better.
Beckett sat stiffly in the receiving room chair. Receiving room, right. She didn't need to see the furious and tense look on Castle's face to know it was a repurposed interrogation suite. The one way mirror and the not-at-all-subtle handcuff mount in the floor was enough to tell her that.
She kept her hands in her lap with Castle close at her side, both of them in light plastic chairs, while he put his palms flat on the blank table, stared boldly at the mirror. And, she assumed, Black behind it.
They didn't speak to each other, but she didn't need the words. She knew what this was, and she'd known going into it that turning themselves in would be complicated.
She was ready for it now.
The door opened and Agent Black himself came inside, meandering to the far wall with a manila folder tucked under one arm, his eyes devoid of light.
Kate studied him, cleared out everything she knew and had experienced with this man before, and approached the interview like the trained detective she was.
Black's nonchalant lean into the corner nonwithstanding, he was a man riddled with disappointment and frustration. Beyond the disgust he so casually dropped her way was a latent distrust - maybe even fear - that she'd never noticed before.
Her first meeting with him, she'd stood up to him and he'd acquiesced. He'd left her interrogation room even though he'd clearly disdained her and her precinct. Castle had backed her up - in what she now realized was a move completely unlike himself, not at all characteristic of his usual interactions.
That Castle had been so far held under her sway must have irritated Black to no end, she mused. She'd been brave that day, because she'd been ignorant of his methods and his reach, and because Castle had backed her up.
She had his support now, but she knew he didn't agree with her. When it came to it, she'd have to fight for her voice to be heard above the silent stonewall of the two men. Better start now.
"Agent Black," she said formally. She refused to stand, just as she had not stood in the conference room when she'd confronted him about trying to hijack her suspect interrogation. "So you weren't being merely cruel when you told me there would be no CIA service for him."
An actual smile flickered the edge of the man's mouth, pride and pleasure that he quickly shut down. But she'd seen it. He'd taken such joy in her grief, her borderline hysterical demands for information.
At her side, Castle growled and stood up. She refused.
"Rick," she said quietly in warning. But he crossed his arms and remained on his feet and she pressed her lips together to keep Black from seeing how proud that made her.
Castle was his own man; Black could at least see that. It was part of the plan she and Castle had hatched in the car on the way. The plan to break his father's hold.
"There was no such service," Black finally answered, the smirk curling up the corners of his lips again. His wide shoulders and thick hands, his craggy face and the mud of his eyes made him look like an unmoving mountain. On Castle, the width and breadth of him made him look strong and capable rather than inflexible and cold.
Martha was the difference between the two, and Kate absolutely needed the time and patience out of Rick to show him that, to let him see that he wasn't his father, that he was already a man apart.
Black might be aiming for the Director's chair, Black might be scheming and plotting to get that power, including murdering a senator, but Castle didn't have to be anywhere near it. Castle wasn't his father's man. He was his own.
"We know what you're trying to do," she said into the silence.
She waited for that telltale hardening of the skin around the man's eyes, the way his finger crooked against the manila folder - they gave him away. She let the deeper truth, the dirtier secret go for now, and she focused instead on the immediate problem.
"I know you think I'm the worst thing that's ever happened to him," she continued. "You wanted to break us. Break me. Break my hold on him. I think you know now that will never happen."
Black crossed his arms over his chest and the imposing stance was back, the looming sense of authority and control. "I see."
"I won't be bullied by you," Castle said then. "But you don't have to worry. The agent you made of me isn't in peril - she doesn't put me in jeopardy or cause me to slack off in my duties. But the job will go differently from now."
"Oh, really?" Black said, a lift of his eyebrow.
Kate kept her gaze straight on the man, didn't flinch. "Really."
Castle took a step closer, his hand coming to the back of his empty chair. "Beckett is my motivation to make the world right, to keep fighting these endless wars. Espionage has the highest rate of turnover - you know that. But I do it for her. I've always done it for her; I just didn't know she was what I'd been looking for."
"Sentiment."
Kate tilted her head. "No," she said quietly. "It's just how it works. How he works. How I work. There has to be a point, a reason to get up in the morning and put on the gun and the badge and offer yourself up to the chance that you might not come home."
Black's gaze shifted ever so subtly to her. She pressed on.
"What we have - that's the reason. And we're not asking for your blessing or your permission. We're just explaining how it will be."
Black's face soured and he opened his mouth to debate her, but Castle was straightening up and interrupting.
"She makes it worth it. All of this - the assignments, the training, the long weeks away, the never having a home, the threat of death or enemy capture - coming back to Kate makes it worth it. Knowing she lives, knowing she's free and happy and doing what she does to serve and protect people and that I can join that, we can do that together - that keeps me here, Agent Black. And that is the best you're going to get."
Black was back to the unflinching stoic, and his eyes were so lifeless that it was beginning to get to her.
But she wouldn't back down; she couldn't. She stood up finally and touched the table with the tips of her fingers, kept her eyes on his father.
"You're lucky," she said firmly. "You're lucky that the best you get from him happens to be tangled up in protecting us. Me. He knows that doing his job as a CIA agent means keeping me safe, keeping our life safe. And so you're going to get one of the most dedicated and determined men out in the field."
She took a long breath and Castle finished it for them.
"For her sake, I am the best agent you've got."