Doppelgänger 18
They had a lot to do and Rick feared they had no time to do it. He'd picked up the man Snohbal had been kissing out in the middle of their back lawn. He'd just finished putting him down on the sofa. Next he pulled out one of his devices and attached the terminal to the man's temple.
"This will download a lot of his memories. I need you to ask him questions. Even if he doesn't answer them, his mind will go to the answers and we can look them over later," Rick said then went over to the two dead men in this room not counting the one at the bottom of the stairs.
"What are you going to be doing?" She wondered why couldn't he ask the questions.
"Getting rid of the bodies. Someone had to have noticed that dragon and reported it." The dragon, the boat, or the man firing a gun at their house.
Kate was too intrigued to do anything, watching Castle strip the first man then pour a liquid over his body. The man slowly disintegrated. By the time he had the second man naked, the first one was gone. "Questions, Kate," Rick prodded as he walked over to the man at the bottom of the stairs.
Rick was walking toward the back door after getting rid of the last man who was at the pool. He had started with the two men out front when he heard the siren. "Time's up." He hoped Kate had asked him a lot of questions.
Rick removed the terminal from dead man's temple and returned the device to his wristband. He was stripping him naked. "Clothes, Kate," Rick suggested to the naked succubus that was standing there watching him work.
"OH!" Snohbal turned back into Kate and ran upstairs.
Rick was just finished stuffing the man's clothes under the cushions of the sofa – most of all the other clothes were out in the garage – just as the front door bell rang. He stopped in the kitchen to wash his hands then looked in a mirror near the front door. He quickly ran a hand through his hair before opening it. "Officer."
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Kate collapsed onto the sofa next to Castle. "Do you think he believed us?" she asked tiredly.
Sheriff Brady had asked a lot of questions, some of which they made up answers for on the fly. Like, "Why they hadn't called 911?"
"He'll be back. He'll probably send an entire team to take pictures of all the damage to the outside of the house for one. Then comb the beach for what's left of the boat for another. And do a more complete search of the grounds." Rick knew they weren't out of the woods yet.
"Which reminds me, we have work to do. You clean up the bedrooms where they were staying while I search for their shell casings in the backyard." He got up and moved toward the door.
"Did you have to get rid of Gina, too?" Kate asked before he went outside. She'd seen him get rid of her using the same method as he had used on the men. There was nothing left of her save for her clothes and what she came here in.
"And where's her car?" It hadn't been out front. "She drove here in one."
That question stopped Rick dead at the door. "We must have missed seeing them move it. We were kind of preoccupied with picking up Alexis, my mother, and your dad."
Kate wasn't done yet. "What about cars? The men's cars have to be around here somewhere. Does your dissolving liquid work on cars?" If they hurried they could disintegrate them, too.
"Just flesh," he answered. It was why he stripped everything off of the bodies, after all.
"Let's take care of what we can. You clean the two bedrooms while I police the yard." He opened the door and continued outside.
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It took a couple of hours but soon people were swarming all over their house while Sheriff Brady asked them the same questions all over again along with some new ones. That kept them so busy that they had no time to review what they had gotten off of the last man.
It wasn't until late in the day that they finally found themselves alone. Kate fell onto the sofa next to Castle and let out a heavy sigh. "Well they didn't arrest us." She counted that as a win.
"They didn't have anything on us. Someone they can't find shot at our house. The boat's in tiny pieces as is whoever was on it. About the story that someone saw a giant dragon… Who's going to believe that, and where is it now?" Rick was thinking they were in the clear.
"They're going to find all those cars eventually." Kate still saw trouble.
"None of which are on this property, including Gina's car." Not that he had any idea where it was.
"It's probably in the news by now," Kate said, meaning their element of surprise with who sent them was likely gone.
"Let's find out who our man is and who sent him," Rick suggested and pulled the device out of his left wristband.
Together they read the display. "Cole Maddox, ex-special forces, highly skilled, and highly trained. Looks like he's now a hired killer. So the big question, does he know who sent him?" Rick and Kate kept reading.
Kate read the name. "Senator William H. Bracken." Rick was immediately up and off the sofa. "Where are you going?"
"To get my laptop. I want to find out who this man is and where he is," Rick replied and went into his office.
"Let's see, Senator William H. Bracken." He spoke the name as he typed. "That explains why your book focused on that senate building. He was in it at the time. That doesn't explain why he wants us dead, though." He and Kate were still in the dark about that.
Rick tried to reason it out. "Okay, what's the one thing we both have in common?" Kate grinned. He popped her bubble. "Besides that."
Kate lost her grin and tried to think. "My mom?" She knew Kate Beckett was fixated on who had killed her.
"Okay, I'll bite. But how does your mother fit into the life of a senator?" He didn't see the connection.
"He wasn't always a senator and she was killed years ago. She found something, did something, knew something," Kate mused.
Rick wasn't sure how he could help. "I'm a hunter, not a detective."
"You don't need to hunt someone down by searching for where he or she is? That's a detective," she countered.
He refuted her thinking. "To kill them or capture them, yes. But they're wanted already. It's not up to me to determine why. I just hunt them then deal with them. You know," he continued, "we could just hunt him down and kill him. He's obviously guilty. He hired and sent killers to kill us. He even doubled this Maddox's normal fee. Kill him, dissolve him, and we live our lives free of him continuing to try," Rick suggested.
Kate thought about it. Snohbal had a small problem with it since she never thought of herself as evil. Kate Beckett was a cop and not a killer. She shook her head. "I can't."
He sighed heavily and fell back against the sofa. They couldn't just kill him and they couldn't ignore him. Bracken would continue to hire more people till he finally succeeded.
"We need a plan, Kate. Alexis, my mother, and your dad can't stay in hiding forever. They have lives to live. They're not going to stay in hiding for long," he warned. "It'll drive them crazy."
"Can we at least try and think of something before you kill him?" Kate understood that her Richard Castle was different. But that was part and parcel of what helped her to love him. She wasn't in love with him just because of Kate Beckett. Snohbal loved him, too.
"We still have about a week left of our suspension. We have all of the things they came here with. If we think of something we can maybe put their cell phones to use," Rick proposed.
"What did you do with it all, including their weapons?" Kate queried and smiled when Rick lifted his right wristband. She grinned smugly, "Let's see anyone find them now."
Kate thought for a moment then posed a question. "Can we make him panic in some way? One of us uses one of the cell phones and calls him before he finds out his man failed… again."
Rick considered it. "He's located in another state so he might not have heard anything yet."
They were interrupted when Kate's cell phone began to ring; she scrambled to find it. Looking at it, she sighed. "It's Esposito." She closed her eyes for a moment then answered it. "Hey, Espo."
"Beckett… what the hell's going on out there? You and Castle are all over the news. Something about weapons fire and a dragon." Weapons fire he could believe. After all it was Beckett they were talking about. But a dragon?
"Someone sprayed the house with a weapon. As for a dragon… Don't believe everything you hear, Espo. There are no such things." Kate covered the phone with her hand. "There are no such things in this world, right?" Castle shook his head.
"Leave it to you to turn a two week suspension into an adventure. One that's playing out all over the news here. Unless you two want to be trapped there for the next week I suggest you hightail it out of there. There are going to be news crews from the city out there soon," Espo warned.
Kate looked at Castle in shock. The media showing up was something they hadn't thought of. "Tell him we're leaving now. You'll call him back," Castle told her. He actually left her to go upstairs and pack for a couple of days.
"We're leaving now, Espo, gotta go… and thanks." Kate ended the call and ran up the stairs to get her things together.
The only problem was their car. It was still a few houses down so they crossed the same lawns as before, only this time carrying a couple suitcases. By the time they could see their car the first news van with a satellite dish on top drive by headed for their house. "Just keep walking," Rick advised.
He'd barely pulled out onto the road and turned the car back toward the city when two more went by. "Thank you, Espo," Kate whispered.
"It's time we made Senator Bracken nervous." Rick took out the cell phone they got off of Maddox and handed it to Kate. "Think of something." Then he offered an idea of what to say. "Tell him his men are dead and the press is going to be all over him in a minute after they trace Maddox back to him."
Kate stared at the phone. "But there aren't any bodies." Castle had gotten rid of them.
"Yeah, but he doesn't know that. We want him nervous, maybe even panicking. Those kinds of people tend to make mistakes. Mistakes that come back to bite them," Rick countered. He concentrated on driving, seeing more and more cars headed the other direction, along with another two news vans.
Kate took a deep breath. Opening the phone she dialed the only number listed.
"Report," the male voice on the other end ordered.
"Your men are dead, Senator Bracken, and all the information the local police found on Maddox is going to lead straight to you. You made a mistake."
"Detective Beckett." He truly was shocked to hear her voice. However, he knew Maddox would have nothing about him on him; he recognized a bluff when he heard one. "I've underestimated you.
Kate knew that tone of voice and raised the stakes. "You think I'm bluffing? You're sitting in your office in DC inside the Russel Senate Building making secret phone calls to have people killed. You have a lot of blood on your hands, Bracken. More than you can ever wash off, no matter how hard you try." She ended the call and glanced at Castle.
"Throw it out the window and onto the road, we don't need it anymore." He watched her roll down the window and toss it behind them. It landed on the other side of the road and was instantly run over by the first car. Followed soon after by another, then another.
"Where are we going?" The loft was out, the Hamptons was gone.
"Only one place to go. The Russel Senate Building. We're going to put a little more pressure on Senator Bracken." Kate stared at him like he had lost his mind. Rick tried to calm any fears she might have. "Not to worry, Kate. I'm not going to kill him. We're just going to shake him up a little," he grinned wickedly.
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Kate took a quick peek at Castle. He was curled up against the passenger door, sleeping. Even in his sleep he was so cute. She could see his eyelids moving wildly and his lips looked to be moving a little. Whatever the dream was he was reacting to it.
He had taken something out of his bag in the back seat, wadded it up, and was using it as a pillow. Shifting her attention back to the road, she saw a sign. They were just outside of Baltimore. Interstate 295 had turned into Interstate 95. Castle had driven till they reached Wilmington where she convinced him to let her take over and let him rest.
The traffic through Baltimore had been hell. They barely moved while Castle slept. Her growling stomach had gotten her attention but she hated the idea of getting off and finding something. Getting back on the Interstate might be even worse so she kept driving. Well, crawling actually.
She was approaching an off ramp for Interstate 495 and the blue signs on the side of the road said there was gas. That, they definitely needed. There was also food. Chevys Fresh Mex, TGI Friday's, and IHOP looked to be the best choices.
Kate found that getting to Chevys was a little more of a challenge than she'd anticipated. It was right next to the IHOP, though, and out in front of Greenway Center. It was anchored by a Safeway. "Ooo, a Starbucks." Part of her craved to go there while part of her had no idea why. "Castle." She poked him. Nothing. "Castle." She poked him again and watched him slowly wake up.
"I'm starving so I stopped at a Chevys Fresh Mex. Is that okay? They have a Starbucks just over there, we can get coffee before we get back on the road."
Rick was awake by the time they were walking to the front door of Chevys. "I have to pee, be right back." Kate hurried off and Castle followed her, only he went in the men's room.
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"I hope the house in the Hamptons is still there," Rick remarked quietly.
"Me too, I liked that place." It started her blood boiling. Bracken and his killers had ruined their two week suspension. Even worse she and Rick hadn't had sex for at least 24 hours. "When do you need to take another shot?" Kate was hoping to get really close to him soon.
"Tomorrow if I remember correctly. Missing my talented fingers already?" he teased.
"Shut-up, yes… and your lips," she confessed and leaned over the table to get closer. "I want you."
"We'll find a hotel in DC somewhere." Rick smiled broadly and Kate stuck her tongue out at him which had him chuckling softly.
He took out one of his credit cards to pay for the bill, only to have Kate stop him. "They can trace your credit card activity. Pay with cash. We're also going to need gas soon." She dug through her wallet to see how much cash she had on hand. Castle, it turned out, had an even $2,000 in cash on him. "You carry $2,000 in cash?" She didn't have anywhere near that much.
"Why wouldn't I?" Rick replied. "We're going to need more, though. If we find a bank maybe I can make a withdrawal and not use a card." He was hoping it would be harder to trace.
Kate was sipping her coffee and started to moan at the taste as Rick drove. A quick question had directed them to Rick's nearest bank branch so that he could access his account without having to use a card.
"See anything you like yet?" He was driving down one of the downtown streets of DC and had already passed a few hotels. Glancing at her he saw she was shaking her head slowly.
He made a turn that must have been the right one. Kate was pointing. "Castle, what about that one?" Homewood Suites by Hilton, Washington DC Convention Center
Rick pulled up next to it. It was certainly the biggest building in the area. "Why?" Not that he hated it. It certainly looked modern and nice enough.
"Suites suggests it has a kitchen so we can cook and it looks nice but not so expensive that we'll use up the cash that we have," Kate answered, trying her best to be practical.
It made sense to him so they went inside. The lobby had really light wood floors, high ceilings, a light blue sofa, and white and cream chairs with a blue rug. There was a lone African American man at the desk.
A quick look around before going over to him showed them that it had a restaurant with lots of seating. There were coffee pots next to a large fireplace with a cheery fire burning. Rick studied it. "Gas or some type of burning liquid."
The place was nice but not fancy. The clerk was pleasant, efficient, and took their money for their two night stay. Twice the amount got him to overlook the need for a credit card. He told them when breakfast was ready, what amenities the hotel had.
They selected a one bedroom unit and yes, it came with a mini kitchen complete with everything they would need. The room and the kitchen were cleaned daily.
They found themselves on the 8th floor. Just inside the door was a small dining table for two. Beyond that was a sofa with a cabinet that had a TV on it. Across the room were two mauve chairs in front of a wall of windows. Floor to ceiling windows. It gave them a perfect view of the street below and the building across the street.
To the right was a small kitchen: refrigerator, microwave, two burner electric cooktop, dishwasher, sink, toaster, coffee maker, cabinets, and drawers. Opening everything showed them it did indeed have everything they would need to cook a meal. Along with detergent for the dishwasher.
The bedroom had just the one big bed. There was an accent wall of dusty eggplant, a very large padded headboard, bedside tables, white linens, and a comforter.
The bathroom was simple enough, nothing like the bathrooms in the house in the Hamptons, but it would do.
They dropped their bags on the bed. "What's first?" Kate inquired since he was the hunter and had she didn't know how many gadgets he had in his wristbands.
"We walk. We need to scout the area and know how to get around. We'll go visit the Russel Senate Building and set up our spies." Like Kate, Rick had pulled in all of his spies that were at the Hamptons.
"Yours can go across the street and watch our hotel. Mine can watch the Senate Building. We need to see him come and go, hopefully." He also had another plan but kept it to himself since it was highly likely she wasn't going to like it.