Unexplained Appearance Chapter 23
"There! There!" Rick yells, pointing at a black van speeding down the road ahead.
Kate floors her accelerator, working up the speed to pull alongside the vehicle. "Nazihah, pull over! Pull over!"
As the van continues to race ahead, Kate maneuvers around it to block the way.
"No!" Nazihah screams. "They'll kill my baby!"
Kate runs up to the window of the van. "We have your baby. She's all right."
"Run! Go!" Rick urges the distraught woman. "Get as far away as you can."
Kate yanks open the back door of the van, revealing a shielded container wired to a timer counting down from a minute and 30 seconds. She grabs her radio. "Dispatch, this is One Lincoln Forty. We found the bomb on 55th and 11th."
"Bomb squad en route," crackles through the radio. "ETA three minutes."
Kate feels the blood drain from her face. "That's about two minutes too late. Castle!" She reaches for Rick's hand.
He closes his eyes, remembering Agent Turner's tutelage. CSU found traces of Semtex in the warehouse. That would make it the explosive intended to disperse the radioactive cobalt 60. Semtex is a stable plastic explosive that is safe to transport because it can only be set off by a detonator. One of the wires in front of him has to lead from the timer to the detonator and another from the detonator to the bomb. If he…. Reaching out with one hand, he pulls all the wires loose. His fingers still entwined with Beckett's, he squeezes his eyes shut again. As he hears sirens approaching from behind him, he opens them.
The timer is at zero, but the bomb is still intact – and so are he and Beckett. "We'd better get some distance," Rick says. "That bomb is still radioactive, and we've been nuked enough. Hand in hand, they walk silently for two blocks until instinctively falling into each other's arms. Kate stretches upward, her lips colliding with his. NYPD and feds' vehicles are wailing their approach, but she barely hears them.
"Castle," Kate queries when they finally return to her unit, "how did you know what to do?"
"I didn't, exactly," he confides. "I mean, no one can be a spy novelist worth his salt without studying up on at least the basics of bombs. And I figured that if Cochran trained for explosives disposal in Afghanistan, he would have been working on IEDs, which, as bombs go, are usually about as basic as you can get. So, if he had built the bomb, it wouldn't have been too complex. And I knew CSU found Semtex, which meant a wire to a detonator. I guessed that one of them had to be right. So from there, I pulled and prayed."
"Someone up there must have heard you," Kate says. "But you know, this is a story you're never going to be able to tell."
"I know," Rick acknowledges, reaching over to stroke her cheek. "But I think we may have started another one."
"Castle, when Josh took off for Haiti, we hadn't officially broken up."
"Josh? You mean Dr. Motorcycle Boy?"
"You know that's who I mean."
"So, is what just happened because you were caught up in the moment?"
"No, it isn't. It's been coming for a long time. I think we both knew that. But being that close to death made me realize that we never know how much time we have. We shouldn't waste it."
"No, we shouldn't. So, what are you going to do about Dr. Moto – Josh?"
"Even when I can get in touch with him, I can't just break up with him long distance, especially when he's in the middle of trying to save all those people."
"When's he coming back?"
"I don't know."
"And when he does?"
"I'll tell him. But until then, I think…."
"We should stay in a holding pattern," Rick fills in.
"Something like that."
"I've been in one since I met you, Kate. I guess I've got enough fuel in my tank to stay aloft a little longer. But I'll need to stay in close contact with air traffic control."
Kate squeezes his hand. "We can work that out."
One month later
The pain from the bullet in his leg shooting through his body, Mike Royce crawls over the filthy concrete in a garbage-strewn alley. If he can just make it behind the line of dumpsters, he could have a chance to hide, maybe even find something to use as a weapon. He hears the footsteps behind him before the dark shadow falls across his body. He stares up at his murderer. "You have no idea of the hell that's about to rain down on you."
With the muffled sound of a silencer, Mike Royce is dead.
The clatter of Kate's bootheels on the cement echoes through the alley. "Where is he?" she demands.
Roy Montgomery steps in front of her. "Turn around. Go back home, and let me handle this."
"Sir, I've seen dead bodies before," Kate protests.
"Not one you have this much history with," Montgomery returns.
Rick joins the captain. "Come on, Beckett, you don't want to see him like this."
"Castle, if it was me lying there, would you just walk away?" Kate pushes past him to Lanie.
"Honey, I'm so sorry," the ME says.
Kate gazes down at the broken remains of the training officer she couldn't help loving. "Just tell me what happened."
"He was shot in the leg, and judging from the blood trail, the bullet broke the bone. He didn't give up easily, Kate. It would have taken almost superhuman will to make it that far. But whoever shot him the first time must have caught up with him and finished the job." Lanie holds up a boarding pass. "I found this in his pocket. He just flew in from LA this morning."
"What was he doing in LA?" Rick asks.
"I heard he moved there after he lost his bounty hunter's license," Kate says. "I guess he was trying to make a new start."
Rick recalls the wrenching sadness Kate had tried to cover up when realizing the cop she had so worshipped had been seduced by greed. "When was the last time you spoke to him?"
Kate's teeth sink into her bottom lip. "When I arrested him." She looks down at the body again. "Lanie, could I?"
"Sure."
Kate crouches next to Royce. She runs her fingertips over his close-clipped graying hair before rising and turning away.
"Uh, Royce had something else in his pocket," Lanie says, handing Kate a folded sheet from a legal pad. It's addressed to you."
Kate opens the note and starts to read.
"About the case?" Rick asks.
Kate hurriedly refolds the paper and shoves it in her pocket. "No."
"Kate, let me take you home," Rick urges. "You were too attached to Mike to think straight right now – and you need time to grieve."
"I'm thinking straight enough, Castle. And I'll grieve by solving the case."
"You really think Montgomery is going to let you work on it?"
"I'm not going to give him a choice," Kate insists.
"No, I suppose you won't," Rick agrees. "Well, if you're determined to dive into it, I'll hit the water with you."
"Castle, anyone who could get the drop on Royce would have to be a very dangerous man."
"Beckett, after what we went through over the dirty bomb, any danger associated with a conventional murder will pale in comparison. At your side, all the way."
Kate bumps her hip against his. "I guess I can't stop you."