Doppelgänger 12
Kate had enjoyed their little date. True to Rick's suggestion they had gone window shopping after their movie and then had stayed in town to have dinner. She had really wanted to kiss him, yet she hadn't come up with a plan where her kisses wouldn't hurt him. Fortunately Castle hadn't tried to kiss her.
It didn't stop her from pressing herself into his chest and letting him hug her. It felt so good that she really didn't want to leave him.
She came downstairs already dressed for her morning run but didn't find Castle in the kitchen. She took a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and headed for the beach to get started.
Rick had just reached the stairs when he heard her close the door. He hustled downstairs to see her running toward the beach. He thought that she'd be gone for at least an hour so he summoned his machine. He was going to connect to Rick's memories to try and find out why Kate wanted to go slow after they had made love to each other.
What Kate didn't see was the man dressed in beachwear but not actually on the beach watching her leave and following her with his eyes as she ran. He watched the house while she got farther and farther out.
"She takes a morning run leaving him inside." He took out an 8-1/2 x 11 inch sheet of paper that had a floor plan on it. "Question: where does he go while she is gone?" He looked over the floor plan. "If he sleeps in, master bedroom. If he starts writing, likely this room. If he's the cook he would be in the kitchen just as she steps inside. She would be upstairs in the shower."
That gave him his best scenario. Kill him in the kitchen and wait for her to come downstairs after taking a shower where he'll kill her. A quick look told him that she was far away which meant he had to wait for her to come back. It gave him time to move to a blind spot where any neighbors couldn't possibly spot him yet allow him to see her come home.
Rick took the time to go into the office and look at what he had written so far since coming out here. After a quick study of it he opened a new page and started all over again. "How do you do this?" He didn't have the touch that much was obvious. It did give him an idea, though. He placed the unit on the desk, attached the terminal to his temple, grimacing at the pain. Then he put his fingers on the keyboard and tried not to think of anything himself.
Kate was breathing heavily as she made it to the back door. Her run had gone well and she actually felt better after each time she did it. Stepping inside she didn't see Castle. Kate called out to tell him she was back. Surely he was out of bed by now.
She didn't see him so she went to his office thinking maybe he was writing like he should be. She didn't want this Gina to get in the way. She stopped at the doorway and saw him sitting there staring out into space yet he was typing. As strange as she thought that was he had a wire leading to the side of his head that was connected to something sitting on the desk.
She stood there trying to figure it out. "Is he listening to something?" Kate tried to understand itsince it looked to be attached to his head and not in his ear. "What is he doing?"
Kate searched the memories Kate Beckett had given her. However, after just a couple of minutes she had nothing. He was clearly typing like he was supposed to be. She watched him for another minute and nothing changed.
She was stinky and sweaty and needed a shower so she left him to whatever he was doing. "I don't get it." It didn't make sense to her. She thought about it on the way to her room to strip for her shower, trying to understand it but without any luck.
Rick was lost and nothing around him registered. But something flashing got through to him. He blinked and stopped typing. It took him a moment to understand what was going on. Seeing the warning in one eye, he yanked off the terminal; he flinched at the pain, then quickly stood.
Using his left wristband he pulled up another device and used it to scan the whole house. He swept the device around. "Kate's in her room, so who are you?" Rick saw him by the back door, moving toward the kitchen. "You're armed, interesting." His weapon was simple though the barrel was a little long.
Being a hunter had its advantages so Rick knew just what to do. He stepped just this side of the edge of the office doorway, pulled out his weapon of choice, and let it scan the intruder.
As much as Rick would love to question him, he was betting he was a pro. To treat him otherwise would be underestimating his opponent and doing something that stupid might get him killed.
Using his right wristband he summoned his weapon of choice and started loading it with ammunition. He pointed his weapon where he knew the intruder was and waited a fraction of a second for the scanner to transfer the location to the round and fired. His round knew exactly where to go and adjusted its fins to change its direction. The target was his forehead. Rick had chosen it to keep the possibility of blood splatter down.
His target never saw a thing; he did feel pain for a fraction of a second then fell to the floor. Rick watched it all on his scanner then used it to search the house once more. Seeing no one else, he moved out of the office doorway and ran into the kitchen.
Once there he retracted both his scanner and his weapon. He knelt and started searching him. His weapon was first. "Their idea of a silencer I'm guessing." Rick put it inside his right wristband. "Primitive." He was not impressed since all of his weapons were silenced and it didn't affect the length of the barrel.
A few short moments later he had everything off the body, including its clothing and shoes, and had placed everything inside his left wristband. He would study it all later. First he had to get rid of the corpse before Kate came downstairs. He withdrew a vial from his left wristband and poured it over the body. In only seconds it was gone; all that remained was a small amount of water on the floor. He had that cleaned up in no time.
Rick was thinking of retreating to his office to study what the man had had on him when Kate came downstairs dressed in only a bikini and carrying a towel. "No breakfast? Should I go back upstairs and change so we can go into town to eat?" she asked.
"NO!" He definitely didn't want her to put on more clothes. He liked her just as she was. "I mean just give me a little time and I'll have something for you. Have a seat." He patted a chair, moved farther into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. "Big breakfast this time or something simple?"
"Surprise me," Kate said with a smile. She actually was a little hungry after her run. Rick turned on the coffeemaker and got busy cooking.
"Tea, please." She felt like drinking something else this morning.
"Coffee for me, tea for the lady. Hot tea or cold?"
"Cold, please. If you don't mind I can take it with me out to the pool." She had decided to try the pool they'd kept talking about all weekend. "Dammit, I forgot my bag." She got up, ran upstairs, came back down, and dropped the bag onto the stool next to her.
Rick had his back turned to her most of the time but couldn't resist turning to look at her. He couldn't refrain from looking between her eyes and her breasts which were only hidden by a small amount of cloth.
"Breakfast for the lady." He set her plate on the counter in front of her with a flourish, then added a small glass of juice and a larger glass of iced tea. "Enjoy." He started to leave the kitchen.
"Where are you going?" He didn't want to join her?
"I need to shower then change into swim trunks. I plan on joining you in the pool." Kate made for a very good distraction instead of trying to find out who their uninvited guest was. She was a cop but something told him not to tell her just yet. Not until he had more information.
That made her both happy and worried. She had yet to come up with a plan on how not to hurt him when she kissed him.
Kate was floating in the pool and enjoying it when something caused her to open her eyes. She watched as Castle came poolside wearing nothing but his swim trunks. She really did like what she saw. He dropped his towel and jumped in, swamping her with a wave of water. "CASTLE!" He could have found a better way to enter the water. He surfaced right next to her.
"You look gorgeous when wet." Rick looked directly into her eyes.
"You're not so bad yourself." She was losing herself in his eyes. She could see his lips getting closer and closer and so wanted to kiss him. Kate gently touched her fingers to his lips. "Please don't. I don't want to hurt you." She could feel the start of tears.
"I don't understand." He really didn't. Not what he knew or what this world's Rick knew.
"I know you don't and I'm sorry. I do want to kiss you, I really do… And I'm sorry." Kate struggled to reach the edge of the pool and climbed out. From there she ran to her room leaving behind her bag.
Rick was quite perplexed as to what was going on. None of it made any sense – not between what she was doing and what his memories told him. He wondered if their uninvited guest had anything to do with it.
Kate crashed onto her bed after slamming the door closed. Kate Beckett loved him, really loved him and she couldn't even kiss him. It wasn't fair, so not fair. She was lying face down and crying into her pillow. Kate Beckett loved him and her memories told her that she loved him. She really did want to love him. She wanted someone in her life and Kate Beckett had let him in.
She didn't know how long it had been but her tears were gone. She had an idea. She searched her suitcase and pulled out her book. Kate hesitated. What if the book had an answer? But what if it didn't?
Kate asked her question, her heart pounding. She wanted an answer and yet she also feared it. "Where is there a way that I can kiss Castle and not drain him of his life?"
A section inside the book started glowing and she turned the pages as fast as she could. There was an answer!
What she turned to wasn't anyplace she had seen in the book before. And what she saw was amazing. It was a row of houses along a beach with an ocean beyond. One of the houses look really familiar. "Where is this?" she inquired and watched a word start to form.
THE HAMPTONS
"Here! The answer's here?" It wasn't possible, simply not possible. "Where, show me exactly where." Did she have to search the entire house? All she got was the glow of the house. "NO! Please show me where. I need to know where!" If she found it she could kiss Rick. She could love him. Love him like Kate Beckett had loved him. She had promised and she needed to keep this life.
Still all she got was the glow of the house. This house. "But it's here, it's here somewhere." She had roughly a week and a half to find it.
She pulled out another book, the one with the crystal figures inside it. None of them would take her to what she needed but the Crystal Owl could be used to keep an eye on the house. Maybe it would see it, if she could just recognize what it was. Kate went out onto the small balcony to activate and release him. She even pointed to the highest place she could see that would overlook most of the house except the back.
Meanwhile Rick was still in the pool. He'd come out here with the intention of using Kate's sunscreen since he was still red. So he got up and out of the pool, searching her bag for the tube of sunscreen.
He stuck his hand in the bag and felt something that shocked him – a knife. Why did she have a knife? Then he took it out. "What in the world…" He held it up to look at. It was a knife unlike any other he had ever seen. The handle looked to be made of gold and the blade appeared to be one solid ruby that had been knapped like obsidian or flint to be the blade.
"What are you?" He pulled a scanner out of his left wristband and scanned it.
"Solid 18K gold, correction it is hollow. The blade is a single ruby." The size of the ruby alone was amazing. He knew worlds where this thing was worth enough to buy an entire planet.
"Hollow." He looked it over and scanned the ruby pommel on the end of the handle. "How do you get this thing open?" He began trying to figure out how to remove the smaller ruby.
He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. He just couldn't find a way to remove the ruby without destroying that part of the knife. "How and why do you have this thing?" Rick was now extremely curious. Curious as to what this was and why Kate had it.
"Did she steal it and that's why we had an uninvited visitor? But why did he come armed and ready to kill? A silencer on this world might mean professional. Those types are hired by someone… So who sent him and why?" He was full of questions and somehow Kate seemed to be involved.
He wondered what to do now.
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There was a man far away who was staring at his burner phone willing it to ring. He needed information. The man he had sent was supposed to be good. But was he good enough to take out one cop and her writer friend? It was getting late and he had to make a decision without his phone call.
He had underestimated both her and her writer twice now. Doing so a third time was not an option.
He hated spending the money but he had plans and he just had to sell a little more than normal to make up the difference. Or maybe get a deal on something else.
He was still mad that the contractor he'd hired to find out what they both knew and then kill them hadn't done his job. Worse yet, he had disappeared and that just couldn't happen.
He dialed a number. "Put out a contract on Hal Lockwood. He's most likely no longer in New York and since he's smart enough he'll have changed his name. Make it $500,000.
Next have Maddox assemble a team, get them out to the Hamptons, and kill both of them. This time get rid of the bodies. Make sure no one ever finds them. Offer him double his normal amount. Dump them out to sea or burn them when he burns the house down." He ended the call.
He couldn't believe any of this. There was only one person who was still involved at all. He dialed his phone again. "Pick up Roy's family and take them somewhere safe." He wanted to have a little talk with them. Roy might have thought he had something, but now it was time to clean the mess up.
He made another phone call. "Get someone to gather a team and have Roy meet them. He has a choice – either give me the papers he has or lose his family." He hung up the phone.
One way or another he was ending all of his problems this week. He had plans and an announcement to make and he didn't need to give the press something to delve into. Politicians were expected to look clean no matter how dirty they really were. The American public could be duped into believing almost anything, but even the stupidest of them wouldn't vote for a murderer or drug king. Even if he could prove otherwise.
He needed to be in a public place during all of this. Someplace where no one could believe that he was in any way involved in this. He pressed a button. "Sarah, bring me a list of this week's legislation that's up for debate." He lifted his finger. One method was to stand in the senate and talk for hour after hour. It would be part of a very public record. His talking for hours would draw attention and even TV coverage.