Close Encounters 17

Castle leaned back against the geometric-print comforter, glanced around their 'room' in the cover apartment. With Kate asleep beside him, finally, he was noticing things he hadn't before.

The windows were blocked by dark-stained bamboo blinds, completely obscuring anyone's view from the street below. Two large photographic prints dominated the other wall, the kind of things that stared back, dangerous beasts of the wild, and he would actually like them better if he hadn't gone through so many experiences of his own.

Though he'd never tangled with a polar bear. Thank God.

Kate sighed in her sleep and he resumed massaging her scalp, combing his finger through her hair and arranging it over the pillow. She was hunched on her side like it hurt, even asleep, and he leaned in to kiss the bare skin at her sloped shoulder.

He skimmed his fingers in at her waist, lightly moving over the bruises at her ribs, smoothing her shirt out and feeling vulnerable.

No panic room in this apartment. It might be secured with CIA surveillance equipment and Esposito right next door, but it felt unprotected and exposed. He wanted to disappear inside a bank vault with her and not come out again until his pulse stopped jumping every time someone moved too fast.

He was discovering that he had an excellent and often overworked imagination, and while that had given him hope before - all the visions of their future - now it was showing whole feature films starring death itself.

He laid a kiss against her neck to feel her pulse beating slowly under her skin and it helped. What he wanted to do was grab her and never let go, but her bruised ribs made it impossible to cling as tightly as he craved.

He'd never thought of himself as clingy before, though maybe she'd say he was. He just - the hair on the back of his neck stood up all the time now, so that he never felt like they were truly safe, or over it, or past the trouble. He figured this thing with Bracken had been, somehow, his father's doing, but now that the senator hadn't managed to kill her, Castle was sure Black would try again.

There was a slight case to be made for mutually assured destruction, though he sometimes he thought his father would welcome the violence of his own death if it meant getting Beckett out of his son's life.

Castle shivered and crept closer, drawing the blanket up over them. Sasha nosed out from under it, giving him a baleful look, and he petted her between the ears to make up for it.

"Sorry," he whispered. "Stay. Mommy needs you to stay."

Kate shifted under his arm, her body leaning back into his, her eyes flaring open. "Oh, shit, you called me mommy. That is so weird, Castle."

He laughed, surprised she was awake, surprised he could - at all - still laugh. His chest felt like it was going to collapse from the strain of it. "But true," he added.

She hummed and wriggled her shoulder, brought his arm up around her. "You're thinking too much back there. Did you find me a doctor?"

"I thought maybe I could ask Carrie for help."

"Hmm, why?" Kate rolled to her back, now half under him, and she reached up to rub her finger over his chin. "Thought we weren't telling people."

"She'd know civilians," Castle admitted. "I can do a google search all day long but I don't want connections back to the CIA and I don't want to be somehow 'led' to a doctor by... by anyone wanting to..."

"Hurt us," she murmured. "Okay. But if we tell Carrie we need an OB, she'd know. And then I'd have to - I want to tell my dad."

He caught her fingers with his teeth, nipped them, and then had to lean in and kiss her mouth softly. "You want to tell your dad or you have to?"

"Want to," she sighed. Her hand rubbed flat against his cheek and he realized he hadn't shaved for a couple days now. "Since I'm under house arrest, I can't go to him - I can't even go see a doctor either. I'm stuck here. So can they come to me?"

"Yeah," he said gruffly. He wasn't happy about them staying in an exposed, on-the-record apartment, but it was the compromise with the Director - stay in their covers, stay in CIA custody.

"Should it be - won't it be hard to keep an OB's visit secret when the CIA is all over this place?" she whispered.

"Not if we say the doctor is your usual GP. We can hide that fairly easily."

"Yeah?" she murmured. Her fingers came again to his cheek, scratched through his scruff. "Okay, then ask Carrie. Find someone non-CIA. A woman."

"I'll ask her. And what about - if you - do you want to call your father?"

"Not just yet," she said softly. "I want to have you close. You look - Rick - you look like you need..."

"You," he supplied, laying his head down at her shoulder, sighing out slowly. "I should be working with Mitchell to figure out where the leak is coming from. I should be checking in with Esposito. I should be calling Carrie and getting you a damn doctor, but instead I can't move out of this bed. Am I hurting your ribs?"

She curled her fingers around his cheek. "No. Not yet. I'll tell you."

He didn't even need to ask her again, to make her promise, because he knew she really would tell him. "I just want to know you're okay," he admitted. "That it won't be like this. That I won't regret not killing him the hundreds of times I've had the chance."

She was stroking the nape of his neck, around his jaw, her fingers kissing his skin. "I'm really okay. It won't be like this. No one should ever have to kill his own father."

He sighed and curled in around her, jostling the dog and making the wolf get up. Sasha stepped gingerly over Kate's knees and came to lie behind him instead, and he laughed and lifted up on one elbow to ruffle her fur.

"She knows that now you need it," Kate murmured. "Stay there, Sasha. Stay right there for Daddy."

He grunted and flicked the end of her hair off her shoulder. "Yeah, it does sound weird."

"Bad weird or good weird?"

He grinned and leaned in to dust a kiss along her nose. "Good weird. Strange weird. Scary weird. But not bad."

She snaked her arm up around his neck and tugged on him; he let himself drape over her uninjured side again, his head at her shoulder.

"Tell me if I hurt your hip."

"I'll tell you."

He stroked his fingers at her abs and felt the dog lean in against his knees and they were all close, clingy, giving him what he needed but hadn't known how to ask for.

As soon as she fell asleep, he'd call Carrie and ask about doctors. They had a long road ahead of them and there was still an allegation hanging over their happiness, still the chance that Black's plan would work, but right now he could keep her close.

It would have to hold him for now.

Kate drifted back to awareness with the dull ache in her hip and the sound of his voice around her somewhere. She felt his knee under her cheek and wondered when she'd gotten transitioned to his lap, but it was nice and his calf was drawn up like a pillow under her neck.

But her ribs felt compressed.

She shifted and rolled to get a hand under her, pushed up slowly. Castle's fingers trailed at her shoulder as if offering his help but she managed it. She sat up against the headboard with him, wincing as she probed her ribs with her fingers. He cradled the phone against his ear with his shoulder and snagged her hand, squeezing, but not doing much else.

Apparently he just wanted to touch.

She cautiously leaned her shoulder against him and even though it hurt, what didn't? He looked pleased with it, and he nestled in closer to her, that listening face masking his eyes.

"Okay," he said into the phone. "I got it."

"Who?" she whispered.

He winced. Carrie, he mouthed.

Kate grinned and held her hand out for the phone, wriggled her fingers into the crook of his shoulder to take it away from him. "Carrie?"

Her friend didn't squeal - totally not Carrie's style - but there was a rush of excitement on the other end. "Oh, Kate. I'm so - this is amazing. I know you guys have wanted this for a long time."

"Did Rick tell you we're looking for a non-Agency doctor?"

"Yes, yeah, he did. And I actually have a friend from college who lives close to me out here. She'd be great - she'd come here to my house and see you, so it would look innocent enough, if that's how you want to play it."

Kate caught Rick's eye, saw the plea on his face. He wanted this. "How do you know she'd make house calls?"

"She's into this homeopathic stuff. Doulas and water births and - ug, gross - all that. I'm not - just the idea of giving birth is making my skin crawl. Sorry, Kate. I can't talk about this."

Kate laughed, felt her ribs aching even as she did. "But you raise your own chickens. And you had to help that cat that got dropped off give birth like last month."

"Those are animals. People are - people. People I know. Stop, stop, no more talking about it. But I'll call her for you? Rick said-"

"Yes, call her for us," she gave, squeezing his fingers in reassurance. His smile widened and he dropped a kiss to her cheek, like a little boy, bashful and happy.

"Okay, well, all I was doing was giving Rick a hard time for letting you get arrested."

Kate groaned. "Carrie."

"You got arrested, Kate. That's ridiculous."

"I know. We know." And now she knew why Castle had been saying the same thing to Carrie when she'd woken up. "We'll let you know how that goes as well. Do you think your friend could see me here - at our apartment."

"At your apart-" Carrie cut herself off. "Right. Apartment. Yes. I'll ask her. I'm sure she would. And it's first aid, right? Rick said you got kicked in the ribs. You just need first aid." Kate had to give Carrie props for not even sounding like someone trying to use code.

"Yeah," she told her friend honestly. "It hurts. But I'm okay. Just wanted to be - sure." For Castle. Because he needed to take care of her and she could do that; she knew how to cede gracefully now.

"Okay, I'll let you go. I know I'm hard on him, so you be sweet."

"That's probably not going to happen," Kate laughed.

"True. Who needs sweet? Tease him mercilessly."

Carrie hung up and Kate gave him back his phone, softly kissed his frowning mouth.

"I know you were talking about me," he said.

"Of course we were. You're irresistible."

"You know it." He did smile then, a little crooked and a little piecemeal, but she thought he was getting there. She just needed to help him out, give him the chance to care for her.

"I'm hungry," she told him. "You think our jailer would let us order pizza?"

He warned Esposito ahead of time, worked it all out so that when the pizza delivery came, it was Jim Beckett who brought it up.

Kate was floored. Castle grinned and kissed her forehead. "Stay," he murmured. "I got dinner. Talk to your dad."

"With you," she said quickly, catching his hand. "Together."

Their news. "Of course. But stay on the couch and let me get our pizza and drinks."

They'd been on the couch with Sasha watching stupid television shows that the DVR had recorded - stuff they never watched, never recorded themselves - but they were trying to make it look more normal, lived in, and there wasn't much else to do.

Jim handed over the pizza and patted Castle on the shoulder. "She okay?"

"She's-"

"I'm right here," Kate huffed. "Not deaf. Dad get over here."

Castle nodded and Jim gave up on the interrogation, but he looked worried; he knew the FBI's investigation was serious and he knew they'd called him over for a reason. Kate was already grabbing her father's hand and dragging him towards the couch, so Castle went on into the kitchen, hunting for the plates.

First cabinet he opened - there they were. Arranged in the same places as their dishes at home, and that was encouraging. Someone had been paying attention; he knew that Malone had been the one to oversee the cover apartment back when Kate's old place gone up in the bomb, but he hadn't realized how meticulous Mal had been.

And now Malone was dead.

Castle settled the plates on the counter beside the two boxes of pizza, pressed his fists into the granite top. He took a deeper breath and let that sink in, let it hit him finally.

Malone had been shot by these guys, Bracken's guys. And his father had orchestrated it. Black was going to have to answer for it.

Mitchell had been right; there had to be justice for their friend, a man of integrity and hard work and diligence. He'd protected Castle and Kate in this - their cover apartment - down to the last detail, and his locked case had bought Kate enough time to survive Bracken's hit squad.

He'd been so focused on Kate in all of this that he'd lost sight of what else had been taken from them.

This was for Malone too.

"Hurry up, Rick," she called from the living room. "I'm starving. Ouch, it hurts to yell."

He laughed and finished putting pizza slices on plates, slid them along his arm to carry it all out to the living room. "This place could use a few stains, so be liberal about it."

Kate narrowed her eyes at him. "This couch is gorgeous. We're taking it with us and replacing the Ugly couch. So no - no stains."

Jim chuckled and took his plate. "No stains. Got it. You've got a nice place. I'm supposed to be familiar with it?"

Kate was grinning, and the bruise on her cheekbone highlighted the light in her eyes.

Shit. She was amazing; he had to quit looking at her like this.

Castle went back for their drinks, letting Kate fill in her father about their cover. There was milk in the fridge and he couldn't help pouring them all glasses, since her father didn't drink anyway and Kate couldn't.

Kate couldn't.

Wow, it was just rolling over him at the strangest times. How close he'd been to losing all of it, how little it had seemed to matter that she was pregnant if he couldn't save her, if it meant risking her life for some nebulous future.

Castle sighed and brought their glasses of milk into the living room as well, set everything down on the storage ottoman that held their arsenal. Kate smiled at him, that soft thing that meant either her ribs were hurting her or she found him amusing, and she reached out to grip his shirt, tugging a little.

"Sit."

"Milk?" Jim said, giving them a salute with his glass. The pizza was the good stuff from their favorite place, one margarita and one loaded with the veggies Kate loved, but it did all look rather healthy and trying too hard.

Castle sat down with her and her fingers brushed over his thigh, her excitement so evident in her whole body that he could see Jim giving her a thoughtful look.

"Everything okay?" her father asked.

He was worried. Castle should have - of course Jim was worried. They were usually filled with some kind of mission tension when they came to him like this.

"Everything's great," Kate said quickly, turning her head to look at her father now. "Everything's - yeah. Okay. So being arrested and then abducted from FBI custody after nearly being assassinated by a US senator is not really great. But. It's all kind of relative."

"You're alive and under house arrest," her father said easily. "You're right. All kind of relative."

Kate let out a little laugh and then groaned, pressing her thumb against her sternum as if that would minimize the pain. "Ow. I really shouldn't laugh."

"You need more tylenol?" Castle murmured.

"You should take another muscle relaxer," her father cut in. "You seem a little too aware and with it for the last one to still be in your system."

"No," Kate said, and her laugh came out again, another grunt. "No, I can't."

"Don't be stubborn, Katie," her father sighed, sitting forward to brace his elbows on his knees. "I know you hate pills and doctors and all of that, but think of Rick, at least. Every time you wince, he looks like he's been run through."

"No, it's not that," Castle hurriedly reassured. "It's not Kate." Well, it was actually. But. "It's - uh..."

He gave up and turned to her, figured this should be her news, her way of telling him.

Kate was grinning and she slid her foot from the edge of the couch to push on her father's knee, rocking his serious posture. "It's not that I won't. It's that I can't. It's milk for dinner and Castle looking like he's been run through."

"I do not look like that," he grumbled. "Or not because of that."

She smiled at him and curled her hand around his thigh, and then she turned back to her father. "It's only three weeks, Dad, and it's early - we know it's too early to be getting everyone's hopes up - but I'm-"

"You're pregnant," Jim said, sitting back in the chair. "Oh my God. You're - really - I'm..."

"You're going to be a grandpa?" she offered. "We hope."

"Three weeks?" he rasped. "Katie. Oh, Kate, how beautiful."

Castle felt it burst inside his chest like that, the same way, how it swallowed that darkness and dread that seemed to reside permanently in his ribs lately like a hulking vulture. He was so grateful that neither Carrie nor her father had looked at them and asked how they possibly thought they could raise a child as spies, that neither of them even mentioned it, that they had only been happy and excited.

Kate shifted forward to stand and meet her father's embrace, a gentle clasp as he avoided her ribs, and Castle watched, realizing now for the first time that this was happening, had happened; they had made this happen.

"Come here, son," Jim rumbled, gesturing towards him.

Castle got up and joined them, realized that Jim had needed someone he could squeeze tightly, tighter than Kate's ribs would allow, and maybe Castle had too.

"Congratulations," Jim said. "I'm so - I can't wait to meet my grandchild."

Of course, she thought, beautiful couldn't last.

First it was the cutting ache in her ribs that wouldn't quite dull even with the tylenol she was taking. And then it was the trouble brewing in her husband's eyes, that icy fury that made him deadly, that built up behind whatever else was going on.

Her father said good-night with a kiss to her forehead and his hand gentle at the top of her head. "Take care of yourself," he murmured. "And him too. He looks like he needs it."

She smiled up at him from the couch and watched Castle lead her father to the door. The fact that Jim could see what was going on with Rick meant that it was bad. Usually her father just gently prodded in the right direction; he didn't outright speak of it.

"Rick," she said when he shut the door.

"Yeah." Not an answer, but he came back into the living room, his hands in fists. His jaw worked under his skin and he wasn't sitting down with her.

"What's going on?" she said.

"Nothing. Everything."

"Talk to me," she urged. "Even if you have to pace. I'll just close my eyes and listen so I don't get seasick."

He grunted and she was grateful to pull even that out of him. Though she'd never call it a laugh.

"Talk," she insisted. "Baby likes the sound of your voice."

"Baby doesn't have ears yet," he muttered. But he came to sit on the couch, putting her feet in his lap.

She grinned. "Who cares? I've just figured out that I can blackmail you to do anything if I mention it's for the baby."

He shot her a look as if to see if she meant that, and maybe she did, but he shook his head at her. "You've had me wrapped around your finger from day one, Beckett. Don't need a baby to get you anything."

She forgot about her ribs and shifted forward to just - just get at him - but the sharp yank backwards by her bruised torso made her falter. She knew he could see it too, see what the movement towards him had cost her.

"I know," she said instead. And then she carefully slid closer, drawing her knees to her chest and settling her head at his shoulder. "So talk to me."

"Maine," he spat out.

"Is he dead?"

"No. Secret Service has him in custody. Esposito says the FBI is chomping at the bit to get their hands on him - since he infiltrated their ranks so easily. But we want him too. I want him."

She pressed her hand to his thigh to settle the hard jangle of his nerves. He was growling like the dog did, low in his throat, angry, a warning. "Anyone ask him what his plan was? Because there was definitely a plan."

Castle's arm came around her shoulders and squeezed a little too tightly, left her breathless. "What did he say to you?"

"Mostly shut up and sit down. He was threatening something like I don't care what he said to make it look like."

"To - to kill you?"

"Yes?"

"Was Black coming here?" Castle whispered.

She palmed his cheek and nudged closer. "Baby, I don't know. I don't know. I'm sorry."

"We have to find out what the plan was. If Black was - or is - here for... for that. If Maine was supposed to meet up with him after taking you, but he never showed, then what did Black do next? These are questions I want to beat him to death with."

Kate sighed. "Castle."

"No. You don't - no. I will use whatever tool is necessary to get him talking, and I will enjoy it."

"No, you won't," she said quietly. "You won't enjoy it, even if you did it. Which you won't, Rick, because that's not how we do this job."

"I used to," he growled.

"No, you didn't. Sweetheart, I know all your secrets. And you've never tortured a man like that."

He gave a growling noise and his face turned into her hair, hanging on a little too tightly as well. She let him have the moment, pressed close together, and then she lifted her shoulder to make him ease up.

He let go and tilted his head back to the couch. "We need Maine in our custody."

"I'm not saying you can't do some sleep deprivation," she said quickly. "Good old-fashioned enhanced interrogation techniques."

Castle grunted and the sound reverberated through his chest and along her ribs. Everything ached; she was so damn tired of hurting in every position.

"How are we going to get custody of him?" she asked.

"Access will do for now. I should..."

"You should?"

"I've left it up to Mitch but it's my job. And I need to know - we have to know what the damn plan was. If Black is in the States again. What the idea was there."

"Obviously, he's Black's man," Kate started, ticking points off on her fingers. "And he was there to kill me. Why did he choose that time to do it?"

"We'd outed him to the FBI. We ID'd him and the Director sent that information over when he asked for you to be placed under house arrest. Demanded it, actually. Made his job a lot more difficult. You know it's hard to hide those big secrets - like the fact that you're not an NYPD detective working undercover but a spy."

She grinned. It still felt - there was still this thrill that raced through her when she heard him say it like that. "Yeah. So Maine hears going to be detained and he arranges to abduct me instead."

"Yeah, pretty last minute it seems because he didn't cut the security cameras and he just shot out of there like a bat out of hell. I mean - not planned at all. Otherwise."

"I'd be dead," she said calmly. Her bruised ribs from earlier and nearly being shot in the head by Bracken just made this episode with Maine all the more ridiculous - and hard to fathom. She had been fighting for her life but she'd really just been rolling her eyes and trying to work past her own body's pain to get a damn handcuff key and a weapon.

"You'd - yeah. So that part wasn't in the plan. Which makes me wonder, what was the plan? And now that it's fucked, what happens to Black. To you. Kate, I can't help thinking we've just been lucky and that won't hold."

"Okay. So we interrogate Maine. Not beat him to death - I didn't say that - but we get the truth. He's going to want a deal, Castle. I mean, he's not stupid. We play him. We let him think you've lost it, that you've got the green light to completely-"

"Brutalize him-"

"-go against procedure," she inserted, casting him a withering look, "and do your own thing. And then I go in and offer him the deal."

"You're not going anywhere," he growled.

She opened her mouth to protest and Rick went soft, hands gentle around her face, his body shifting into hers, foreheads touching.

"I mean - Kate, love, you can't. You're under arrest. You can't go with me to torture him."

"Please stop using the word torture," she said tightly.

"Beat him."

"Castle."

"Severely dislocate every joint in his body?"

"Rick."

"Okay, okay. Let's hold off on labels. We'll leave it nebulous-"

"No. No wiggle room for any of that," she growled. "You think I don't hate him? He tortured Reynolds for days."

"And he tried to kill you. Because my father sent him."

"But I'm better than that, better than Maine. And I'm better than your damn father," she said heatedly, unable to stop it, unable to hide it from him. "I hate him. I despise him - what he's done to you, to us, and I won't let this be another thing-"

"Okay," he whispered, his cheek brushing hers. "It won't. Won't be another thing."

"You promise me? You do this right."

"I - I promise to use acceptable methods of interrogation, limit it mostly to psychological warfare."

She swallowed hard and shifted into his lap despite the protest from her ribs. She didn't care. She wanted him to feel what this meant to her. "We're not them. We're better than them. We love. We love."

"Yes," he murmured, still cradling her face.

"We love," she repeated.

"Love," he answered.

She wasn't sure if it was agreement or just him calling for her, but it worked either way.

"Then let's work on getting custody of our prisoner."