Close Encounters 16: Skyfall
He narrowed his eyes. "Frank. Check her wrists and ankles. Here." He tossed the roll of duct tape towards the ape closest to her, and this was it.
This was the only chance she'd get.
Make her move now, or die.
Beckett lunged for Frank, one hand catching his wrist and wrapping her other arm around his neck in a choke hold. She pushed the gun away and Frank pumped out two reflexive gunshots; one clipped Bracken as he shot back.
She felt the impact of the bullet in Frank's chest; he immediately sagged in her grip but kept fighting her. His feet were tangling with hers, he was screaming something and trying to get at her, but she curled tightly at his back and used him as a shield, tried to drag him back towards the trees.
Another shot caught the base of his throat, and it missed her arm by a breath.
Frank gurgled blood through the wound and his grip on the weapon slacked enough for her to shove her finger into the trigger guard. She shot two more guys before one of them - Eddie - quit trying to be nice and simply unloaded his weapon into Frank, jerking them both backwards, her dizziness and agony making her stumble.
She fell, Frank on top of her, and her head hit the ground with a burst of white light. Frank's body groaned and toppled off of her, a screen between her and the rest of them.
It saved her life. Bracken's bullet went low and blew out Frank's brains, spattering grey matter against her cheek and ear, pieces of skull stinging her forehead. She gritted her teeth, mouth closed, and rolled fast away from the dead man, into winter grass and careful green shoots, thumping hard against a tree at the line of the woods.
More bullets now, more than seemed right for six guys, but there'd been three SUVs and maybe she'd never even had a chance.
Beckett curled compactly into the space at the base of the tree, crawled around its trunk for some measure of protection. She had Frank's weapon by some fucking miracle, and she raised up against the tree to fire back.
Bracken was nearly on top of her.
Beckett shouted in a gut-punch of fear, stumbling backwards even as Bracken raised his weapon and aimed.
But she pulled the trigger first.
His body listed back and then the boom of gunpowder rattled in her head as her gunshot registered on her senses. Bracken tipped to one side and his face twisted; she didn't hesitate this time. She pressed her hips to the tree for stability, protection, and she braced the weapon as straight as she could manage, and she fired.
She fired until the rounds stopped filling the chamber. Until the senator's body was crumpled on the earth and staining it black-red. She fired until the spitting rain obscured her vision as it clumped in her lashes.
She fired until her knees gave way.
The rain made it impossible to see; the clouds had dampened the sun and the day was dark. Castle pushed the Land Rover over the access road, ignoring potholes and tree roots, plowing his way through the shadows and deeper into the woods.
"Not too close," Ryan said grimly. "We need the element of surprise, Castle. I know you want to ride in like the cavalry."
He eased up on the accelerator and tried to keep a grip on the reins of his self-control. "Walker, how much farther?"
"With Esposito's GPS coordinates, it looks like... a hundred yards."
Castle slammed on the brakes and they all pitched forward. "Shit," he breathed. "Too close. We go on foot. Fast. Ryan, grab the GPS; you're with me. Walker, stay in the car."
Castle jumped down from the Rover and grabbed the automatic shotgun, reached into his shoulder holster for the Sig. With a weapon in each hand, he met Ryan at the hood of the car and they started forward into the trees.
He crept heel-toe through the dry underbrush, scattered remnants of winter and signs of spring. The trees were close together and shadowed, the woods smelled of animal urine and pheromones.
"Ry," he said quietly, "I made you a promise. You'd be the guy to stay in the car. I told your wife that - to her face. And now I'm breaking that promise. And I can't even be sorry about it."
"You're not breaking it. I am - because Beckett is my partner too, no matter the CIA. Jenny wouldn't want me if it was any other way."
Castle glanced over at the man and nodded tightly, trekking deeper into the woods. The trees seemed to reach for them, impede their progress, the roots catching at their feet. Ryan called out soft instructions as he stared down at the GPS on his tablet, indicating with a word when they needed to change direction.
"Almost," Ry said. "Nearly. Head west-southwest. Your eight o'clock."
Castles stalked between the trees, weapons at the ready, and then he heard the explosive chatter of gunfire.
Ignoring all stealth, they broke out into a run, Ryan shouting directions that Castle no longer even needed. He traced the sound of weapons fire through the trees and came up behind two men firing towards a clearing as they moved for their vehicles.
SUVs. Like the ones that had taken Kate.
Castle aimed as he raced forward, shot one man in the back of the head, the other between the shoulders blades as he moved to get into the car. A wheel man popped open his door as Castle came running; the driver aimed, but Castle smashed his fisted weapon into the man's face and felt the solid crunch of a broken nose being shoved back into his brain. The driver dropped.
More were moving through the clearing and heading towards a line of trees. Castle raced forward, felt a bullet skim the air at his side, the burn of split skin, but Ryan was already taking the shooter out. Castle focused instead on the treeline where the men had been aiming, his gun braced before him in quick firing position, and he saw finally the black trench coat, the shine of gel in his hair, the senator.
He moved to shoot but at that moment, Bracken collapsed, a heap of bones, a puppet with strings cut. Just beyond him, Castle saw his wife and the weapon in her hand.
And then he saw his wife fall, pitching towards a tree.
"Kate!"
A man rose up between them, the side of his face blasted away, his body leaking blood, and Castle put two rounds in his chest and barreled right through him, knocking him back to the ground. He raced towards Beckett, caught the side of her neck as she slumped from the tree.
He fell with her, skidding on leaves and damp earth, her head cradled in the crook of his arm, his body hunched over hers. A bullet nicked the tree over his head and he huddled close, palming the side of her face and bringing his cheek down to her mouth to feel for breath.
And she was. She was breathing. "Kate," he croaked, running his fingers through the blood on the side of her face, crusted in her lashes. He heard the single shots of gunfire. "Kate."
She didn't open her eyes and finally there was silence and wind in the trees, there were groans and men dying.
He cautiously lifted his head. "Ryan!"
"We're clear!"
He glanced over his shoulder and saw Ryan, bloodied and sweating in the middle of a ring of dead men, double fisting two weapons. Castle had no idea where he'd gotten the second.
And then Esposito was coming down through the trees from an opposite path he and Ryan had taken, Mitchell at his heels. Esposito was furious. "You are fucking lucky I am a trained sniper. You are so damn lucky. You should be dead," he roared.
Mitchell yanked Espo back, but Castle had already turned to Kate, ignoring all of them. "Kate, Kate, come on. Come on, baby."
He skimmed his hands along her torso, feeling for gunshot wounds, and her body jerked in reaction, her eyes slamming open on a breath of a scream.
"Kate, Kate, it's me. It's me. Are you shot?"
She rattled out a breath that made her face twist, but she raised her hand to grip his neck. "Get me - up."
He obeyed, his heart tripping, stood up with her. She swayed and clutched at him tighter, her eyes closing. "I need - need an ambulance."
Oh, fuck. Oh, God. "Ryan-"
"On it's way, on it's way," he was already saying. Castle slid his arm around her waist and she cried out, jerking away from him, collapsing in on herself. He caught her again and she stiffened, pain masking her features.
"Oh, God," she cried. "Please. Please."
His heart was breaking. "I got you, Kate. I got you. Let me take you up to the access road. Ambulance is coming. The paramedics are coming - did you get shot? What happened, Kate?"
She let him draw close and this time her arm snaked around his neck, her face pressed against him. "Kicked in the ribs," she gasped out. "Broken, they're broken but-"
"Shit, holding you too tight," he muttered, easing his grip around her. She swayed as he walked her up out of the trees. "This okay?"
She moaned something but she pressed closer, her arm strangling him, and then he heard her, what she was saying.
"The baby, the baby, oh God, the baby, Castle-"
Castle wrapped his hands around her palm, dwarfing it, and brought her wrist to his mouth, settled there. She could feel the ambulance roaring down the country road, feel it in every bone.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she gasped. The paramedic probed her abdomen and she growled, her eyes darting to his in warning. "That fucking hurt."
He ignored her, and Castle pressed her hand to his chest. "I thought I'd lost you. I thought that was it. God, I thought I was too late."
"I'm sorry," she choked out. "I tried to - I didn't have any choice. I tried to keep from-"
"Shut up, Kate. Shut up, just - stop talking. You're making it worse." He lowered his forehead to the back of her hand, both of them rocking as the ambulance swayed taking a corner. He breathed out something across her skin that sounded to her like relief, and the paramedic pushed his fingers into the bruises on her ribs again.
"Fuck," she yelped. "What the hell?"
"I'm checking for internal bleeding. Stay still."
She pressed her lips together and felt the tears slip out of her eyes, roll back to her ears. Castle suddenly filled her sight and she gave him a watery smile, but it twisted and fell away.
"You're going to be okay," he said. "You're going to be fine."
She really couldn't care less. She really couldn't-
"Hey," he croaked. "Shit, don't cry. Beckett. Come on. You're gonna completely un-man me here."
She gasped out a laugh, choked on the tears that spilled out and stopped. She raised her hand to his neck, the blood on his skin, couldn't find words for what they both weren't saying.
"You're going to be fine," he said again. "You're alive. You hear me? It's all going to be okay, no matter what-"
She pressed her fingers to his mouth to stop him, closed her eyes. He stopped talking and leaned down into her, his forehead touching hers, their breaths sharp and fast and scared.
She was scared. She didn't know what happened if-
She wouldn't even think it.
The CIA cleared the whole wing.
Castle sat at the head of the gurney and pressed her hand to his chest as the trauma doctor they'd kidnapped from the Emergency Department did his assessment. Dr Rockney slapped the chest film up to the lighted board and traced his finger along the line of her ribs.
The ultrasound technician smeared gel across her ribs. "We don't usually do this, but sometimes we can get a clearer picture."
Dr Rockney turned back to them and Castle felt Kate's hand squeeze in his. He scooted the stool closer to the head of the bed and laced their fingers together, cradling her arm against his chest.
"I don't see broken ribs. The ultrasound may be unnecessary."
The technician adjusted the monitor and then pressed the round wand to Kate's ribs; she grunted and he held her hand tighter, his eyes on hers.
It took thirteen minutes for the doctor and the technician to be satisfied, the picture not at all clear to Castle. He watched Kate's face as she took it, the pain flickering in and out across her eyes, and he pressed his lips to her knuckles.
His side flared with a dull pain, and he realized he was bleeding.
"Well, what I can tell you is that there are no broken ribs. Your x-rays looked good too, no cracks, so I'm going to say bruised. Which can hurt like hell too. No internal bleeding. And... here's the little guy."
Here's what?
Castle jerked his attention to the monitor, staring at the jumble of grey that Dr Rockney was tapping with two fingers.
"All you can see at three weeks is if it's in the right place. Which it is. You'll need to make an appointment with your OB at four weeks and check back, of course. But it's still there."
"Oh," Kate breathed. "God."
He stared at the screen.
The doctor was talking. "Pay attention to your body. If you start spotting, call your OB. But let me reassure you, this guy is so small right now, barely the size of a seed, that he's pretty well cushioned. Kicks to the stomach do less damage to internal organs than you'd think. Of course, this is all hush-hush, top secret stuff, or so I'm told, but I'd suggest you avoid encounters like this in the future."
No shit.
Dr Rockney patted Kate's other hand and peeled off his gloves, disposed of them in the biohazard bin. Castle knew Esposito was waiting right outside the door to debrief the doctor and seize the medical chart, so he turned back to Kate.
The technician had cleaned her off and was shutting down the machine.
"Wait," he husked. "Is there - can you print that?"
Kate sucked in a breath and let it out with a little grunt; he helped her sit up as they both looked at the technician.
"I... not from here. But I'll freeze this image on my screen. Do either of you have a phone?"
Fuck. Kate looked blankly at him. He scrambled to try to remember. "Ryan has his?"
"Please," she murmured.
He left the room and ran into Mitchell outside, took comfort in the fact that their friends were looking out for them. Had their backs. Because Castle's brain had short-circuited; he was done. "Do you have your phone?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"I need it."
Mitchell handed it over and Castle hustled back inside the room; a nurse had come inside and was taping Kate's ribs even though Kate was growling at her that tape won't help. She was right, but he went to the technician with Mitch's phone.
She swung the monitor towards him and his throat closed up. He had no idea which part was what. "Where?"
She pointed and he raised the phone, navigated quickly to the camera app. He took a shaky one that came out blurry, tried again. The technician gave him an indulgent smile and he forwarded the photos to his off-book email, the dark one he'd set up for them in case they needed to communicate and were shut out of CIA resources.
Then he deleted the photos and slid Mitchell's phone into his pocket; he'd wipe the memory and the card, give Mitchell a new phone.
"Castle."
He glanced up and saw Kate perched on the edge of the bed, the nurse dabbing iodine over the cut on Kate's eyebrow. He came closer and she pried her fingers off the gurney, reached out for him.
He took her hand and squeezed, the words caught in his throat. The nurse finished and sealed it with a butterfly bandage, and then both the nurse and the technician left the room.
Castle came softly into Kate and cupped her face in his hands, felt it spilling out of him.
She chewed on her lip and lifted her eyes to his. "Hey, so tonight," she started, her voice dry and cracking. "Tonight I thought I would take you out to dinner. I had - um - I had something I wanted to tell you."
He choked on it, his laughter and the fresh relief, touched his mouth to hers in a kiss he hoped wouldn't drown them.
"Okay," he murmured. "Just no spaghetti."
"Darn," she sighed. "I wanted Italian."
"Pizza. Alfredo. That's fair game." He kissed her cheekbone, drifted to her temple to taste the drying tears. "Tell me tonight, then."
She skimmed her fingers along his arms, came to his sides, probably the farthest she could go without wincing. "We could-" She stopped abruptly and he felt it then, again, the flare in his side. "You're bleeding."
"I might have been shot," he said. "But not much."
She sucked in a breath and he kissed her, pushed his tongue into her mouth and - for just a moment - rejoiced. And then he let go of her and went to find that doctor again.
It might need more than a butterfly bandage.
Kate held herself stiffly at his side while Dr Rockney stitched him up. She appreciated the fact that Rockney had probed the bullet wound for a good long while, making sure it was clean, no fragments, no debris, really making Castle feel it. Maybe then he'd pay attention to himself for once.
Castle laid on his uninjured side with his hand stroking back and forth across the top of her thigh, over and over, his eyes closed as the stitches went in.
Her ribs hurt so much she could barely move; the best she could do was stand close, not falter, not step away, just be the thing he touched.
Esposito came into the room and gave her a quick head-nod; she slid her eyes to Rockney and Espo got the message, stayed silent. He came beside her and thumped her shoulder with his finger.
"How're the ribs?"
"Hurt," she admitted. "But only bruised."
"And the rest?"
"Where it's supposed to be," she answered.
Esposito nodded again; he seemed just as uncomfortable speaking about it as she was just standing there trying to breathe.
Dr Rockney lifted his head. "All done. I suppose you'll confiscate this chart too?"
"Yes, sir. Thank you," Espo said with a wide grin. He took the chart and Rockeny sighed, pulling off the sterile gloves and gathering everything up for the trash.
When he had left, Castle eyed Esposito. "Sit rep."
"William Bracken is dead. Eddie Rourke is dead. Three of Eddie's guys are dead, but one is on a respirator. He's already given a signed affidavit clearing Beckett of wrongdoing, saying explicitly that it was self-defense, that she'd been kidnapped off the street and taken to the woods behind the Animal Hospital to be tortured for information and then killed."
"Oh, fuck," Castle groaned, sitting up and moving for his shirt. "That - You have all the sensitivity of a morgue attendant."
"Hey now, don't let Lanie hear you say that," Espo shot back.
"Hey now, don't let Lanie hear you compare her to a mere attendant," Beckett injected.
Espo grinned at her; she grinned back, surprised to find the smile there.
"I'm just watching your backs," Espo said. "You can thank me later. I accept all forms of major credit card and badass CIA weapons' caches."
"Thanks, Javi," she said quietly. "And the rest of it? That goes nowhere."
"I know," he said, a quick glance of his eyes down to her stomach and back up again. "We're handling it - just us. Me, Ryan, Mitchell. We got it covered. Ryan is with the senator's body and McCord is down there, overseeing evidence collection. I think we can trust her on that, but she doesn't know either of you guys are up here."
"Good," she breathed carefully. Her ribs ached. Her head was killing her. "I do trust her with that. What about what happened on the street? What about - about Mal? Malone."
"He's dead," Castle said quietly. "I got to him before he - but he's dead, Kate."
She chewed the inside of her lip and nodded quickly.
Esposito filled in the gaps. "We've already collected statements from witnesses at the scene. Police cars blocked the intersections and diverted foot traffic; two SUVs came up on the sidewalk after you and Malone. We finally got footage - a guy in the apartment across the street took it with his cell phone. It's shitty quality but it's damning. Malone going down, you getting grabbed."
"You guys are covering all the angles," Castle said, sounding impressed. Kate watched him a moment longer - just to be sure that it was nothing more than stitches and a really awful day.
A really good day? She had an email picture of her baby right where it was supposed to be and they were alive.
She was hesitant to feel too much of that, to let it be hopeful, hesitant to start. "I need to see him."
"Malone?" Esposito said.
Castle watched her, sighing. "Bracken."
She nodded.
"I'll go down with you."
"Yes," she murmured. "But first. Can I get some scrubs? I really want to get out of these clothes."
Castle smiled, put his feet on the floor. "I'm always for that, getting you out of your clothes."
Espo groaned. "Not while I'm in the room."