Close Encounters 16
"What do you think it means?" Kate nudged him. "Charlie One and your being sick as a kid."
Castle gripped her hand and tucked it into his back pocket, pulled out their subway cards from his wallet. She wriggled her fingers in his pocket, smirking at him, and then he gave her the card, took her hand back.
She took it from him, swiped through the turnstile and waited for him on the other side, their arms stretched across the distance.
"Castle."
"I don't know what it means," he answered finally. He pocketed both cards once more and followed her down to the platform. "I don't remember being that sick."
"Everything the guys at Stone Farm have been saying made me think the regimen is what - what messed up your blood, right? But if you were sick all that time without it..."
"Kate, we can't possibly know that one has to do with the other."
She was silent and he knew it was a thinking silence, that she wasn't upset with him, but he still felt the need to reassure her that he was listening. He wasn't shutting her down.
"Maybe my father knew I'd need it," he offered. "Maybe - you saw those files from the installation in the Congo. The program had been going on for years. There are references in those pages to MKULTRA. You know what that was."
"I know - human experiments done by the CIA. But that was disbanded in the seventies."
"That was, yes. But obviously there was some cross over. I mean, my father's subjects were being experimented on. Whose to say I wasn't too?"
"You were," she said sharply. "Being experimented on."
"No, I know. I mean, before I was five."
A train passed by them on the platform, rushing with noise and displacing their conversation. When it had disgorged passengers and reloaded, it pushed out of the station once more and Kate turned to him.
"Before you were five would mean from inception, Castle. And I just don't see how he could have done that. Your mother - she wasn't some lab experiment. He had a fling, a one night stand, as impossible as that sounds. She's talked about it. He's talked about it. Remember?"
"He always said it was a mistake."
Kate sighed and cupped his neck, brushed a kissed against his lips. "You were definitely not a mistake. Best thing to ever happen to me."
He gave her a crooked grin and glanced into her eyes, swimming with love for him. "Hey. I'm good with it, Kate. I was just agreeing with you. I don't think he could've planned that, me. What happened. But once he knew I existed, he could have been trying to drug me the whole time."
She bit her lip and sighed, leaned her head into him for a moment. "That makes me sad."
"Don't be sad," he murmured, rubbing her back. "Look what I have. It all brought me here. To you. I'm the one who gets to have you."
"You do," she whispered. "You have me. I'm so lucky you're here."
"I blinked," she sighed.
Castle rolled over in bed and grabbed his phone, turned off the alarm with a slide of his finger across the cool screen. He dropped back onto the mattress and reached out to slide his other arm under her neck, roll her into him.
She grunted and curled tighter, hiding her face from the light that streamed in on his side of the bed.
"You blinked?" he asked. His voice was rough with sleep.
"I blinked and missed it. The weekend. I'm still tired and I don't want to get up."
He smiled and pulled the covers up over their heads, faster than she could protest, and he heard her laughing against him. He glanced down at her inside their dark cocoon and she lifted her head to put her chin on his shoulder.
"We can't stay here," she said, but she didn't sound convinced.
"We have work to do," he admitted. The cocoon was a little suffocating, and he had to hold the covers taut so he could see her. "But you looked beautiful this morning when you opened your eyes, and I want to keep it."
She pressed her lips to his chest, a soft sigh of her breath, and she slid upwards to then give his mouth the same. The dark flavor of sleep rested between her lips and he dropped the covers to wrap his arms around her.
"Time to get up," she murmured.
Kate shifted on top of him and pushed the covers back, rising up with her knees bracketing his ribs. She lifted her arms over her head and stretched, her spine arching and her shirt riding up. He palmed her thighs and skimmed his knuckles along that exposed stretch of skin; she shivered and dropped her arms with a laugh.
"Shower?" she asked.
"We'll be late," he warned her.
"Is that a promise?"
"Well, now it is," he grinned. Castle sat up, catching her before she could fall, and he wrapped his arm under her ass and carried her into the bathroom.
Just another day.
"I'm meeting Agent McCord in Midtown in an hour," she said hurriedly. "I have to go. I have to go."
Castle released her with a sigh, but he heard Malone chuckling behind them. He turned in the lobby and the computer programmer was coming from the direction of the parking garage entrance. "You going too?"
"No," Malone shook his head. "I'm cataloging digital recordings of all phone calls made from Bracken's burner cell to the strip club. Yay."
Kate laughed and Castle shook his head in sympathy. They'd just finished their lunch break - Kate had dragged him out for Chinese, sitting on a bench in Central Park and messing around - and now he was reluctant to let her go.
He pouted in her direction and she rolled her eyes, reached out to grab him by his ears. Her kiss was a little brutal in retaliation for his clinging, but when she released him, the tenderness in her eyes was unmistakable.
"I said I'd walk you back to the Office, and I've done my duty," she said. "Now I seriously have to go."
This time, Beckett was the one who didn't seem to want to let go; her fingers trailed along his forearm and finally down.
"Hey, I almost forgot," Malone said, nearly past them and turning around now to speak to Beckett. "You know that transcript with the alternate spelling? Can you ask McCord about that?"
"Oh, I'm glad you reminded me," Kate said. She pulled her phone out and checked it, started making a note, and Castle realized the conversation had gone on to details beyond him. He chuckled and leaned in, kissed Kate's cheek.
"See you tonight, sweetheart."
"Yeah," she said easily. Her kiss missed him but she was heading for Malone. "Okay, so the alternate spelling was one. What about the testimony from Bout? Did we decide one way or another?"
Castle left them to conference in the lobby and he went on to the elevators alone. He had meetings of his own, including a brief on the search for Black, and the results of his team working on the New York organized crime angle.
Beckett was just coming out of the subway station when her phone vibrated in her hand. She was running late to the meeting with McCord, and she was tempted to let it go to voicemail, but when she glanced at the ID, she saw it was Dr Boyd.
She answered.
"Kate?" he said. "This is Dr Boyd at Stone Farm."
She gave a choked laugh. "Yeah, Dr Boyd, I think I know who you are by now."
The man laughed on the other end, and he sounded completely fine. None of that cautious and careful tone to his voice that he'd had when he told her Castle was most likely dying.
"Is this about Castle's check-up?" she prompted.
"Oh, no. It's about yours."
"Mine?"
"I thought it might be the case. After all, you did talk with me about it back when we first looked at the regimen, but I wanted to be sure-"
"Is it the anemia?"
"No, no, your iron levels are actually - well, yes, in a manner of speaking. I'm writing you a prescription for some vitamins you'll need, but I wanted to check with you first since you might not what me calling it in to the Office."
"Why not?" she said, totally confused by Dr Boyd's eagerness. "What's wrong with the pills?"
"Oh, nothing. Nothing. But they're prenatal vitamins. Kate, you're pregnant."
She dropped her phone.
It slipped right out of her fingers. It was only instinct and reflex that made her grab for it, grabbing it in mid-air, and she flushed bright red, pushing it back to her ear as she stepped out of the flow of traffic on the sidewalk. "I'm what? I'm pregnant."
"Yes, yes you are. This is good news? Well, I wanted to tell you immediately. Give you the chance to figure out where I should send this prescription."
Oh no, no. She did not want the Office to know; no one could know but her and Castle. "Thank you for thinking of that. I'll - Castle will call and let you know a safe place."
A drug store entirely out of their normal radius. And then - no credit card purchases, no doctor's visits on record...
"You're about three weeks along, based on these results; it's very early. But you should make a doctor's appointment soon. Somehow. I'd love to treat you, Kate, but alongside an actual OB, since I don't have recent experience in that department."
Kate laughed, still stunned. "Yeah, yeah, we'll find someone we can trust," she rasped.
"Congratulations to you both, Kate."
"Thank you," she breathed out, suddenly hit with it.
She was pregnant.
The call ended and she stared down at her phone, putting her back to the skyscraper and trying to fathom it. How was she supposed to sit in a meeting now? She wanted to rush back to the Office and find Castle and tell him, see his face when he heard the news.
She opened her contacts to call, but she stopped, couldn't. She couldn't. She wanted to do it in person, wanted to see, wanted to know, to give him this. She'd tell him tonight, make it special, dinner together and something - she'd have to figure out some way to give him the news - maybe her detective's notebook or that beautiful story about the baby elephant.
She was pregnant. The potato cakes and being so tired all weekend but so buzzing with energy, how everything had felt so good, so good, and-
oh, Castle was going to be a daddy.
At one o'clock, Castle sat down with the analyst in charge of researching the repercussions of Bracken's fall from grace within the organized crime section of New York. The man, Ken Walker, was young and a little too slick for Castle's liking, but he came with all his facts.
The presentation was fast, the report detailed, and the numbers were sobering.
The city was going to take a hit. A big one. Revenue was revenue, whether it was legal or not, and a big organization like Bracken's going down meant the money would dry up for a while. Which meant, conversely, crime would be up.
This wasn't usually the CIA's call, but it was part of the Joint Task Force's effort to investigate all the various members.
"Agent Castle?"
He glanced up from the report and the man was hesitating at the table, his hands in fists. "What do you need, Walker?"
"I just thought you should know. While I was culling information on this man, Finn Rourke, a few things stood out."
Finn Rourke. "This is the leader of the Westies?"
"He's on Bracken's payroll. His crew are enforcers."
"That doesn't make sense." Dick Coonan's brother had been one of the Westies, and Dick had murdered him when he'd started sniffing around the drug trade. "Finn Rourke despised Coonan for killing one of his own. Why would he turn around and partner with the man who ordered that hit?"
"Exactly," Walker said, letting out a long breath. "I thought so too. I wanted to bring it up because it makes no sense at all. I've been turning it over in my mind, trying to figure out how in the world Finn Rourke would ever agree to enforce for Bracken's group."
"And what did you come up with?"
"A common enemy," Walker said. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Castle's heart stuttered. "Us. We're the common enemy."
"Yes, sir," Walker nodded. "That's the only thing I can figure out. But how did they know there was an enemy to team up against? How did Bracken find out we were investigating? I'm afraid.. there might be a leak."
Castle rubbed a hand down his face. A leak, sure. But Castle was betting it was Black. His father had told the right people to get it back to Bracken that there was an open investigation, all in a bid to fuck Castle over once again.
No, not Castle. Kate.
He lifted his head and pinned Walker with a sharp glance. "Actually, Agent Walker, I need you to look into this for me on the Westies side of things. What they know, what their plans might be. Okay? I'll take care of the leak."
Walker nodded and stood up straight. "Yes, sir. I'll get right on that."
The moment he was out the door, Castle called Kate.
Beckett rolled her neck on her shoulders and stepped out of the building's front door. McCord was still up in an endless meeting with the prosecutor, but Malone was coming down here to meet her with the copies of the files they needed for the next stage of the grand jury testimony, so she had a few minutes to herself.
The sunlight felt good on her face. Shit, it could be a miserable cloudy day and she'd feel this good anyway. She made a fist and pressed her knuckles into her belly button, smiling, carrying around a secret. Three weeks. Three weeks was...
Holy shit, the Congo.
No.
She laughed and tilted her head back to the sun, closed her eyes. How ridiculous, how them. Maybe the worst thing she'd ever done to him and the most hopeful, yet hopeless she'd ever felt. The regimen within their reach but Castle so far.
That one time in the tent. Before the river and the hippo. One time in a tent, she thought, and that was what had done it. Forgiveness and a blessing both.
She wanted to call him. She wanted to hear his voice and have him know what was coming, know this amazing thing they'd done.
Remember when we landed in the Congo and hiked through a rain forest? Well...
"Beckett."
She startled and sighed at herself for not paying better attention. Malone was hustling up the street, his tie flapping in the breeze. He was giving her a funny look - probably because of the stupid one on her face - and he was clutching the satchel of files against his side.
"Beckett," he said, a little breathless. "I've got it all here."
And then her phone rang, sharp and strident in the warm day. She pulled it out with two fingers - it was Castle; she knew by the ring tone Nobody Does It Better - and she laughed. It was just - so true - especially now, and she answered it, holding a finger up to Malone.
"Hey, there, baby," she smiled.
"Beckett, you - hey. You sound... good."
"I'm good. What's up?" Malone came to her side now, opened up the satchel to show her. There was one of those heavy-duty diplomat cases inside, the kind with major locks, and she rolled her eyes at Malone's zealousness. "Malone just got here with the stuff we need. We're good."
"No, I'm not calling about that. I'm calling because that guy I had on the crime organizations - Walker?"
Walker. "Oh, right. Yeah. What about that?" She was having a hard time concentrating, so caught up in how she knew how much he wanted this, how much it meant to him, and now here it was. But she swallowed it back and scanned the sidewalk where they stood, determined to be professional.
"He said Finn Rourke is working enforcer for Bracken's group."
"What? No. That - no. That makes no sense." Beckett put her back to the office building and sharpened her gaze on the street. Malone had distracted her, caught her attention; she should have been watching. The sidewalk was so empty, all of the sudden; she saw four people far down the block, and what she thought was the reflection of police lights on the cross street.
"No sense at all. If Rourke is doing jobs for him, then it means they're closing ranks, defending themselves."
"Against us," she breathed. "Shit. Who told? Who let it out that we were investigating? The grand jury isn't exactly Fort Knox, but for Bracken to have an established relationship with the Westies means they've known for a long time."
"That was my thought too."
And now there was no one in sight on the sidewalk. She and Malone were the only two on the block, and the hair rose on the back of her neck. "Castle. Castle, I have a bad feeling-"
The black SUV roared out of nowhere and came for them, engine gunning. She shouted and Malone dived her direction, but the front grill clipped his leg and he came down hard on one knee. Kate scrambled for her weapon, ditching her phone to get at it, and she crouched at Mal's side, got her shoulder under his armpit to help him up.
She heard another car screeching up behind them, but the shot came before she could even move. Malone's shirt bloomed like a rose. His mouth opened, closed, and he sagged in her grip.
"Castle. Malone is shot," she shouted towards the phone, dropping beside Malone and hunching over his body. She saw the doors opening on the SUV and took aim at the windows, firing four rounds. Her phone was on the sidewalk, but she couldn't get to it; she had to believe Castle could hear the gunshots over the speaker.
"Beckett," Malone wheezed, eyes wide, staring past her.
"Mal, stay with me-"
She was yanked off her knees by two men, coming from behind her, not even the guys in the SUV. An arm came around her throat and she brought her gun back, fired into someone's knee. A shout of pain and they both fell back, but the other one grabbed her wrist and brought his knee into her forearm.
Her fingers instantly went numb and the weapon clattered out of her hand; she didn't stop to lunge after it, she just went for her assailant's face. She shattered his nose with an elbow driven straight back, but now guys were pouring out of the front SUV and descending on them.
The butt of a rifle came towards her face and Beckett wrenched out of their grip, twisted violently so that it only glanced off her shoulder. But that was bad enough; stars of pain bloomed bright across her eyes and she jerked out of one man's hands only to be caught by another. She staggered into him, used her momentum to throw him off-balance, and then she was running.
She sprinted for the next block, trying to stagger her run so that she was a smaller target, her shoes echoing awfully on the concrete. She saw the blue lights of the cop car and swerved that direction, making for the police officer already approaching her.
"FBI," she called. "FBI. I'm-"
He reached forward and caught her around the waist, lifted her off her feet, and she knew.
He wasn't a cop.
And then he slammed her against the car and her head crunched against the door frame and everything exploded with black.
Castle was in the parking garage running for his car before the first gunshots went quiet. He cradled the phone against his ear and launched himself inside the vehicle, Mitchell shouting for him to wait the fuck for us. Esposito was right on his six, weapon already in hand.
Castle could hear her fighting. On the phone. He could hear her fighting for her life.
The engine gunned and roared in the echoing garage, and Castle jerked it into gear and floored it out of the narrow space. Mitchell got his door shut right before he could clip the car beside him, and he was on the phone with tactical, barking out orders.
Castle barreled down the exit drive and busted straight through the security arm, but he had to wait at the garage door for it to register his official chip. Espo in the back was cursing, a long string of Spanish that made Castle's heart beat hard in time to every punctuated fuck. His ID badge got him through and he was scraping the roof of the Land Rover on the bottom of the half-raised door as he barreled straight out into the street.
He ignored the horns and zipped around afternoon traffic with the blue lights running on the dashboard. Mitchell was gripping the handhold at the top of the door frame, none of them had seat belts on, but he couldn't care. He concentrated on traffic and getting to midtown. Getting to Kate.
"Castle." He heard his name but he didn't hear it, didn't hear anything.
He took the next left and squealed around the corner, not slowing a second, and then Mitchell was snatching the phone from his tight grip on the steering wheel.
"Castle, listen. Listen."
Mitch put his phone on speaker - the IT guys in the Office had taken Beckett's line and piped it through their channels, so everyone was listening. And then he heard it. The man's voice - their friend's voice.
"Mal?" he called tightly. "Mal-"
"Castle. Gone."
"Mal?"
"S-sorry."
"Don't be sorry, Malone," he shouted, as if the force of his volume could will Malone into staying with them. "Don't be sorry, just hang in there."
"Took it. 'S gone. Took it."
"They took it?" he choked. Was Kate-
"Took it. Files." Mal took a sharp breath that popped on the speakers, sounded like something in his lungs had broken.
"They took the files?" The silence to his question was crackling on the line, too much ambient noise and not enough of Malone. "Mal. Come on. Talk to me. Stay with me. Mal? We're almost there. We're so close."
A sound of breathing, or last breaths, he couldn't tell, and the white noise on the line hissed with so much meaningless nothing that Castle slammed his hand into the steering wheel and gave it more gas.
He was going 110 mph now and they were so close. Just down the block, just right there.
They weren't close enough.
He could see the form on the ground now, the dark shape in the sunlight. Malone. No Kate.
He slammed up onto the curb right beside the man's body and already Esposito was out with his weapon, rolling to the sidewalk before Castle could put it in park. He left the engine on and ran to Malone's side. He could hear the ambulance sirens in the distance.
The blood was soaked through Malone's shirt, staining the sidewalk. Espo was crouched over him with a hand to the wound, futile as it was, and his weapon at the ready.
Castle dropped beside him and Mal's eyes turned slowly to his. "Sorry. I'm - so sorry. Kate."
"Where - what happened to her?" he gruffed, taking the hand as it fumbled at his pant leg. "Malone. You're gonna be fine. We'll get you paramedics. You're going to be fine. What happened to Kate? Was she shot?"
"Kate's... gone."
"Gone."
"Took it all," Malone whispered. His eyes fixed and didn't move, breath gone. Gone.
"Mal. Malone. Come on, man, don't-"
Mitchell shoved him away, started doing chest compressions, but Malone wasn't - he was gone. Castle got slowly to his feet, his body heavy like lead, lungs collapsing in.
They'd taken Kate.