Close Encounters 6
It was colder than Castle had expected and Kate was pressed into his back as he surveyed the front of the Met. Castle kept his eyes on the crowd at the wide, shallow steps of the museum, looking for Jones - and anyone else who might be tracking them.
He had to assume his father was having him followed.
Kate turned and came at his side, her arm to his, the sweatshirt jacket surely not doing enough to keep out the wind. "You okay?" he murmured.
She shivered but nodded. "Just cold. Nose is numb."
He reached for her elbow, tugged until her hand came out of her sweatshirt pocket, brought it into the warmth of his own coat. She wriggled her fingers against his and gave him a smile, cute and quick, so that all the shards of the past few days seemed finally to ease.
She didn't want to be here, she didn't want him doing this, but she wasn't against him. He needed that.
"Let me call Esposito again," she said, nudging closer.
"You just called him."
"But he might have something."
"He has our number, Beckett."
She huffed and knocked her shoulder into his side, and he laughed and cast a startled look her direction. She was glaring at him, somewhat amused, but behind it was a shimmer of desperation.
She really didn't want him to kill Bracken.
"Don't give up now," he murmured. Castle leaned over and dropped a kiss to that pressed-lip smile, seeing it for the mask it was. "Don't ever give up on me, Kate."
She made a noise against him and he felt the clutch of her hand, but at that moment, he saw Agent Jones coming up the steps. He released Kate's hand and moved towards the man, meeting him in the middle. Kate was at his back.
"Jones."
"Castle." A raised eyebrow as he took in Kate.
"This is Detective Beckett," he said briskly. "What's this about?"
Jones seemed to evaluate Beckett for a moment and then he widened his stance and crossed his arms. "The mayor's charity event. We've managed a spot on the catering crew - only one. And one of the lazy ass ex-cons I put away in a former life - he's the damn manager. So I can't do it."
"I can," Castle said without a moment's hesitation. He felt Beckett bristling at his side, but this wasn't negotiable. He was doing it.
"Fine, then you need me to brief you on delivery."
"I'm not going back to the Office," he said quickly. That too was non-negotiable. "I'm doing this one thing, and then I'm out."
"Out?" Kate said.
He shot her a look, shrugging her off with a later in his eyes, and she frowned at him.
Jones resumed the conversation. "Fine. Delivery method is simple. And it's tomorrow, you do realize?"
Tomorrow. He'd - how had he let the time get away from him? "Yes. I realize. Tomorrow. Mayor's charity event."
"You need to report to Apple Catering by three o'clock this afternoon, New Guy. You start the event with them, but you leave with us-"
"Me," Kate interrupted. "He leaves with me. I'll be there. I'll take him in to work and take up a position-"
"No," Castle said, giving her a swift look.
But Jones stopped him. "Actually, that'd be best. The bastard knows my face; I can't hang around. But Beckett can."
No. No, she was not-
"And should the delivery mechanism fail, Beckett can partner you in Plan B."
Ah, well. Beckett wasn't going to assist him in murdering the senator, no matter what. So Plan A had better work. That meant he was spending the rest of the day mastering the delivery system for the chemical agent.
"All right, Public Library for the lesson?" he asked.
"Actually, if you don't mind the cold, let's find a spot in Central Park."
Castle cupped his hands together and blew on his stiff fingers; the Park wasn't ideal, but he'd make it work. If he didn't get this right, then Bracken would live.
Because he knew that if he gave Beckett enough time - she'd figure out a way to get the man off the hook.
And Castle couldn't have that.
An IV of N-acetylcysteine, also known as NAC, was used as a treatment for paracetamol or acetaminophen overdoses.
But Castle planned to use it to induce an anaphylactoid reaction in Senator Bracken. With an NAC infusion, the fatal allergic reaction to the drug included abdominal pain, cramps, vomiting, swelling, and difficulty breathing. It was the closing off of the air passages that caused shock, unconsciousness, and then death.
They'd tested samples of Bracken's blood in small doses only twelve hours ago, searching for the perfect combination. NAC had been a stroke of good fortune, since anaphylaxis only occurred in a low percentage of the population.
The infusion required that Castle stay at the mayor's charity event all night long, slowly administering the NAC with every course of the dinner.
Kate sat on the park bench as Castle practiced the maneuver. The senator would feel a pinch as Castle administered the numbing agent first, but after that, the man would never be able to tell he was being slowly poisoned.
By the time the first symptoms arose, the dinner would be mostly over and the speeches would be on, the senator trying not to attract attention, his tie strangling him a little, his body breaking out into a sweat.
"Castle," she said quietly.
He palmed the needle and worked at getting the tip off with his fingers.
"Castle, you can't do this."
He focused on the needle and thumbed off the cap, pleased with his success.
"Castle, you can't inject him with poison. You'd never get close enough."
He turned to her, eyes narrowed. "I can do it."
"No," she hissed. "Listen to me. He knows your face. He will see you and he'll have you arrested."
"I can do this."
"Or worse - he'll just call his guys to get you. You can't do this, Castle."
"It's not a problem," he said calmly. "I'll change my appearance. Blend in. I've done it before."
"You're insane," she growled. "We can get him if we can put together that file. Just give me the time."
"That file is confetti. We don't have the time."
Agent Jones came back to the bench with a small case, popped it open. "Here's each injection. Smallest to largest," Jones said, touching the vials with his forefinger.
"Castle," she said urgently.
He took the case and placed the tip back on the needle. "Got it."
"The last one goes in at eight, not before."
"Got it," he said.
"Castle." She snagged his elbow and he glanced at her. "Just give me some time."
He wanted to; he really did. He'd do anything for her.
Except let this go on any longer.
"I'm sorry, Kate. I wish it could be different."
She argued with him in the drug store as he tried on black wire-framed glasses. He didn't answer her directly, continued to shrug her off, peering into the sliver of a mirror set into the display case.
"Castle, you're not Superman," she growled, snagging his arm when he refused to look at her.
"I know that," he said calmly. "But they change the shape of my face."
She'd never felt more panicked in her life. "Clark Kent wasn't fooling anyone. And neither will you. Up close and personal like that, he'll know you in a heartbeat."
"This is what has to be done."
"Get someone else to do it," she said on a whim. Her heart lifted. "That's it - just get someone else. It doesn't have to be you. Anyone on your team-"
"I can't ask someone else to do this. It's an act of treason, Beckett."
She groaned and pressed her hands hard into her eyes, tried to scrub out the frustration tightening around her like a noose. "Castle."
"Come on," he murmured. "I've got to buy these."
She felt the soft touch of his lips at her temple, like that would make it better, like that made it okay again.
And then he moved away.
He took the phone call from his father and she stood beside him on the sidewalk outside the drug store, listening intently even as her heart sank. But Castle was demanding autonomy from Black and reporting that he'd continue the mission tomorrow, as planned.
He had on those goofy black glasses, as if that was going to protect him. As if dressed as a catering staff waiter and wearing a pair of cheap black frames was going to keep Bracken from knowing exactly who he was.
"Come here," she muttered, even as he hung up the phone. She dragged him to the Range Rover and pushed him into the backseat and then she dug out the cosmetics she'd bought.
"What are you doing?" he muttered.
"Covering that fat bruise on your face," she sighed, untwisting the bottle of green concealer and squeezing some out.
"It's green, Beckett."
"Green hides red, Castle. Now let me do this. Can't go into that catering job looking like you got beat up. Nice normal people don't get punched in the face."
He was grinning at her, even though it had to hurt, and she just shook her head and applied the make-up, being careful around the worst of it. When he put the glasses on, it did actually help hide the touch-ups and discoloration. And the bruise made his face misshapen too, so maybe. . .
Beckett drove them to the address of Big Apple Catering and got out of the car even though she was parked in a tow away zone. She kissed him hard on the sidewalk, gripped his hand as if it might keep him.
But it wouldn't. He shook her off and disappeared inside the narrow doorway, walking away from her.
She felt sick, but she let him walk away from her. She wanted to run after him, but instead she got back into the Range Rover and drove the fifteen blocks south to meet the boys.
They'd pour over the file together and hopefully find something - anything - to make their case against Bracken.
Before Castle killed him tomorrow night. Before Castle got himself arrested for treason.
She had nothing. She had absolutely nothing.
"Come on, guys," she muttered, pacing the narrow length of the group study room. The public library had been their only recourse, and the file's confettied contents lay spread out over the wooden table.
Ryan picked at it with tweezers, a magnifying lens made out of reading glasses she'd bought at that corner drug store, while Esposito ran random items through search parameters on the laptop. It was Castle's laptop, and they were using his CIA resources to check, but so far they'd gotten nothing.
"What about those numbers?" she asked again.
"Beckett, I'm trying," Espo said hotly. "I'm searching every database he's got on here."
She paced back to the table and sank down, put her head in her hands. "He's going to try to kill him. Bracken knows exactly who he is; he's got no hope of pulling this off."
"Maybe the glasses will work," Ryan said hopefully.
Kate groaned. "And even if he does manage it, it's not like this is legal - at all. The CIA doesn't do ops on native soil. Black will have this to hang over his head for the rest of his life. I don't know why he doesn't see that."
They'd never be free of the man.
"We'll find something," Ryan said quietly. "We will. We'll find something in all of this."
Kate scraped a hand through her hair and picked another section of their puzzle, got back to work.
They had to find something. Anything.
She had to stop him.
Castle found himself with a thirty minute lunch break right before five o'clock. The paperwork was burning a hole in his pocket, but there wasn't enough time to call Beckett and have her pick him up.
So he did it alone.
He filed their marriage with the city clerk's office right before closing time and the woman behind the desk said the license would be in the mail. At the last minute, Castle had switched the mailing address to her father's, because with her apartment in ruins, and his not officially on the books, there was nowhere else to go.
They had to do something about that.
When this was finally over, they'd search for apartments and find a home, get a place they could both love, room to grow. Go get Sasha from Carrie's and really live their life together.
He called her phone on his way back to the catering company's offices, knowing he had two more hours of training left to go before they'd clear him to serve at the mayor's charity dinner tomorrow night. She answered in a rush, sounding distracted.
"I had a break," he started. "And I filed the paperwork."
"Oh," she said quietly. "For the marriage license."
"Yeah." Did she. . .not want him to?
"I thought you'd forgotten it," she said finally.
"Never."
He heard her slow exhale, like relief, and he'd thought she had understood what he had to do, but maybe she really didn't.
"Kate, when this is over? We can really be together. No more threats, no more running for our lives, no more hiding out. You'll be a detective again."
She sucked in a breath. "The cost is too high, Castle."
He shook his head and walked quickly through the last block. "No. It's not. I'll pay any cost to give us a real chance at this."
"Rick. Please."
He let out a frustrated breath and opened the door to the catering business. "I have to go. I can't - this is what has to be done."
He ended the call and shoved his phone back into his pocket; he had to put Kate out of his mind and concentrate on the mission.
"It's a bank account," Esposito called back.
Beckett snagged the chair right behind him and crowded in close to look at the laptop. "Okay, okay, finally. We're getting somewhere. Any info?"
"Nothing," he sighed.
Beckett scraped a hand through her hair and yanked on it. So close. They were so close. "What can we do about getting the name on that account?"
"Offshore, Beckett. We don't have-"
"But he does," she said quickly, reaching past Esposito for the computer. "Right? Castle has that access."
Ryan cleared his throat. "But we don't know how to do it. . .quietly. None of us are computer hackers."
"It's gotta be dummy proof though. Some kind of program." She started scrolling through the applications list, hoping it would stand out to her. Something labeled hack into offshore bank records or something.
"Beckett," Esposito warned.
She jerked her head up and stared him down. "You don't understand. If he goes to that charity dinner, Bracken will recognize him. He's dead. He's dead the moment he walks in there."
Ryan sighed loudly and plucked the computer out of her fingers. "I might know a way."
"Ryan," she choked out. She knew she sounded desperate. And she was. She was desperate. This had to work.
"If we can get the information," Ryan said quietly. "You know we can't do anything about it. It's not legal, so it won't hold up in court. We'd have to use this to connect him to something else, but we could never explain how, Beckett."
"I'll think of something," she promised.
But she didn't know what.
She had a terrible feeling that Bracken was beyond the reach of the law.
"Shit," Ryan barked.
"What?" Beckett jerked upright and leaned in over his shoulder.
"No, no. Nothing. I keep getting these alerts. The window pops up to tell me something that I guess is going to Castle's phone? It says redirect. I don't know. And every time it pops me off the program so I can address the alert, but it scares the shit out of me - makes me think I did something wrong."
"What are you talking about?" she said crossly, rubbing at her forehead.
"Mission alerts. I don't know. Like this last one, look."
He was hovering the mouse over the bubble at the bottom of the screen and she read Subject arrives at 5:46 pm. Fundraiser. Subject proceeds to Plaza Terrace.
Kate felt her breath catch. "Bracken. That's the subject."
"Oh, right. Makes sense," Ryan said. "He's getting field reports on Bracken's status."
"These government groups like to have everything planned down to the last detail," Esposito commented. He was still hunched over the file's pieces trying to come up with something else. "Like the military. So yeah, they're gonna know everything that happens to this guy."
But Beckett wasn't listening. Bracken was at the Plaza Hotel right now, a very public place, for a fundraiser. And Black had eyes on him, all over him apparently. Would it be any different at the charity dinner tomorrow?
Black would know and probably be recording every single move Castle made. She didn't like that at all; the power he held over them was too much, too great. It was evidence.
"Guys, I'm gonna head down the street. Get a snack. You mind?"
Esposito jerked his head up and studied her for a minute. "Naw. Go ahead."
"Get me some coffee?" Ryan asked, half turning from the laptop to look at her. They'd gotten only a couple layers down from the shell company that owned the bank account, and Ryan was going slowly.
"Coffee," she said with a nod.
And then she left.
Castle grunted when his phone buzzed in his pocket, held a finger up to the man trying to explain serving on the left and clearing on the right. The manager looked pissed but Castle had to take this; no doubt it would be Jones or his father with an update.
He stepped back and pulled out his phone, answered without looking. "Castle."
"Hey, man, it's Esposito."
"Espo," he said tightly. "I can't talk right now."
"Yeah, you can. Because Beckett is missing."
"What?" he barked. The wait staff who were rolling silverware into elegant cloth napkins all stared at him. "What do you mean she's missing?"
The manager raised an eyebrow and Castle turned his back on them.
"She stepped out for a minute. A break. Said she was getting coffee."
"And?" he prompted.
"And that was forty minutes ago."
"Forty minutes ago?" He was going to throttle Esposito. "There's still a contract out on her life, man. Bracken could've gotten to her. Why did you let her leave without one of you-"
"Listen man, I'm telling you now. We've looked up and down the block for her, but no one remembers her. She didn't buy anything at the convenience store."
"If he got her-"
"I don't think that's it," Espo said quickly. "I think she went after him herself."
His stomach dropped. "What do you mean?"
"Right before she said she needed a break, we were on your laptop. You keep getting these alerts on Bracken. She - she was interested."
Alerts on Bracken. The surveillance team's updates? "She saw those."
"Yeah. Plaza Hotel for a fundraiser. It's only-"
"I know where it is," he ground out. "Why would she do this?"
"We have some information, but it's not complete. Nothing to pin him with legally. It's starting to look like we won't get anything before your deadline."
"Would she. . .she wouldn't do it herself, would she?" Kill him.
There was an uncomfortable silence on the other end and Castle thought back to what he'd seen of Beckett when she was on this case, how determined, how it swallowed her up.
"She might do it," he sighed. "She'd do it. Shit. Beckett."
He called her and the phone went straight to voicemail. He'd ditched the catering service as quickly as possible, hoping to salvage the mission at a later date, but he wasn't sure. It might all be for nothing.
He still had the vials of NAC on him; if it came down to it, he could do it there, at the fundraiser. But the Plaza was pretty secure and the security guys on duty weren't agents that Castle's team had vetted. Still he might be able to pull something off.
Beckett could not, under any circumstances, do it herself.
The Plaza was at the south end of Central Park and he was at the north end, so he hailed a cab the moment one came up empty. He smacked his ID into the dividing window and asked the guy to get creative.
Beckett could not kill Bracken.
He called her again, and again it went to voicemail.
What the hell was she thinking?
When she got to the lobby of the Plaza, she recognized the NYPD officers who maintained the perimeter and her heart lifted. She stepped past the line waiting to go through the metal detectors and avoided the crowd.
"Hastings," she called out, nodding towards the cluster of reporters and hangers-on who where grouped around Bracken and following him back to the ballroom. "I need a word with the senator."
Hastings hesitated; she had to know that Beckett was no longer with the precinct.
"You know I've been working with the government. It's about a threat on his life," she added in a low undertone.
"Threat?" Hastings murmured, jerking her head back towards Bracken.
"Hastings, I need to talk to him."
"Of course, Detective Beckett," Hastings said and unhooked the rope to allow Kate through.
She strode purposefully across the lobby, the plush carpet eating up all sound of her approach, and when she arrived at the knot of people, she pushed right through and into the ballroom. Her hand was damp in her pocket as she made her way carefully, keeping her head down, and then she was right in the tightest group around the senator.
She was right there.
She slipped the burner phone into his pocket - the one she'd just bought at the convenience store down the block - and she kept on going, making it to the stairs and up to the balcony with her hands shaking. His security detail had never even seen her.
Beckett pulled out the CIA's secure phone, untraceable, and she called the number of the burner, watching Bracken as he made nice with the crowd.
He froze when the ringtone went off, that innocent trill that sounded like the jangle of a real phone, and then his hand went into the pocket of his suit jacket.
He stepped away from the crowd with a raised finger to his campaign manager.
"Hello?" The confusion, the apprehension in his voice was something she'd relish.
"This is Kate Beckett. The woman you tried to kill."
Bracken's head jerked up and his nostrils flared.
"I see you know the name," she said quietly.
He spun on his heel, scanning the crowd.
"That's right, senator. I'm watching you right now."
"I don't know what this is about," Bracken said icily. "But I am not interested in playing games."
"A contract out on my life, on a CIA agent's life - that's not a game to me either. And I'm not playing around. I have information that can destroy your career."
She saw him hunch his shoulders infinitesimally but he said nothing more.
"I will use that information, senator, and I will bury you. Unless you do exactly what I say."