Unexpected Appearance Chapter 40

Kate slams the door behind her when Rick lets her into the loft. "Bad breakup?" he inquires.

"No," Kate grits out. "Easiest one I've ever had."

"So what… You're mad!" Rick realizes. "Why are you mad? What happened?"

"All this time that I've been waiting – we've been waiting – while I was trying to do the right thing, that sonofabitch was getting it on with some nurse!"

"A nurse in Haiti?"

"Yeah, they were working together in an improvised surgical facility in a refugee encampment."

"Beckett, under challenging conditions like that, things happen. It must be the plot of at least 25% of movies ever made, not to mention endless novels."

"Castle, are you taking his side?" Kate demands.

Rick draws her into the warmth of his body. "No. Of course not. I'm on your side, come hell or high water, always. I'm just saying that it's not an unusual thing to happen. And from our point of view, it's also a good thing. We can be together without Josh coming around trying to get you back. So, Castle and Beckett, side by side, forging ahead." Rick leans in for a kiss. "Right?"

Stretching upward, Kate presses her lips to his. "Sure. Right."

Rick grins. "And while you were bidding adieu to Dr. Motorcycle Boy, I was forging ahead with our case. I looked into Alan Slayton. And what I found wasn't what we expected – at least not what I expected."

"What do you mean, Castle?"

"I thought I'd find that Slayton got the money to start his hedge fund by tying in with Bracken's evil machinations."

"And he didn't?"

"No. Remember that Cartland and Slayton went to school together at Bronx Science?"

"Yeah. It, Brooklyn Tech, and Stuyvesant, where I went, are the public tech high schools. They would have had a similar curriculum to mine."

"Except that they were both math nerds. That's how they became friends. They were on the math team together. And even before he got to high school, Slayton started studying the math of investments. His parents helped him out with investing what money he could pick up from tutoring and such. He got a free ride to MIT as far as tuition goes, but he had accumulated more than enough funds to pay his expenses. And he kept on investing – very successfully. He ran for Congress to get a close-up view of the relationship between legislation and the markets and to find out how foreign affairs impacted investment returns. That's why he was on the Foreign Affairs Committee and traveled with Bracken. I imagine that Cartland's helicopter may have come up in conversation, but as far as I can tell, Slayton was never involved with Bracken's criminal enterprises."

"But Castle, even if Slayton wasn't criminally working with Bracken, he might have picked up on some of his relationships, especially with Russians."

"My thoughts exactly. So I gave Cartland a call to see if he could set up a meeting with Slayton for us – casual, not an interrogation. If you're up for it, we're going to get together at Song of Acapulco at seven tonight."

"Song of Acapulco? Not Le Cirque or some celebrity chef's restaurant?"

"According to Cartland, Slayton loves Mexican food, and Song of Acapulco is his favorite spot to enjoy it. Interested in consuming a taco or two?"

Rumbling deep in her throat, Kate grinds against Rick. "Actually, I like burritos better."

His brows dance above his eyes. "Well, now there's nothing to stop you from indulging that preference, is there?"

"No, there isn't."

"And we have at least a couple of hours before we have to take off for Song of Acapulco. Whatever shall we do with them?"

Grabbing onto Rick's belt, Kate starts pulling him towards his bedroom. "We'll figure out something."

Grasping a vodka tonic, Zussman slips into a chair at a back table at Gary's Bar and Grill. A pale man lowers himself into a seat across from him. "We have a problem," Zussman says.

"I'm sorry to hear that," his companion responds, his vowels almost imperceptibly deepened by a trace of a Russian accent. "But I assume you can take care of it."

Zussman takes a swallow of his drink, wincing at the bitterness. "It's not that easy. The NYPD is aware of Simmons' new outlet, Nick. They have him under surveillance."

"Which could lead them into the woods," Nick realizes. "We have to take him out of the picture."

"You'll attend to it?" Zussman queries.

"With extreme prejudice."

Kate stretches, her bare toes just touching sheets and a comforter kicked away as desires so long suppressed exploded. Reaching toward the floor, she pulls her phone from the pocket of her pants to check the time. "Castle, it's after six o'clock. We need to get moving if we're going to make our meeting with Slayton."

Rick slowly opens his eyes. "I could reschedule."

"No, you can't. We need to learn everything we can about Bracken's relationships with the Russians and any of his other activities overseas. As soon as Krumholtz verifies Bracken's voice, our case against him will be breaking wide open. We need to be prepared with everything we can, not just to prove his previous murders but what he's still doing. Anything Slayton can tell us could help. So come on!"

"Only if you agree that we can come back later to pick up where we left off."

"I thought you said Alexis was staying at school for a while to work on a project. Won't she be home later?"

"Yeah, she will." Rick sits up, throwing his legs over the side of the bed. "And Mother might wander in as well. We'll have to work on our scheduling."

"That's not all we'll have to work on, but right now, it's Slayton," Kate reminds him.

"Yeah. I hope the fajitas at Song of Acapulco have some sizzle. But – they could never come close to you."

"You're not so bad yourself, Castle."

"I was with Bracken on a fact-finding tour covering most of the former Soviet Union," Slayton explains. "I was most interested in how the Russians were exploiting their oil and gas resources. That's the major part of the Russian economy. But Bracken took as many meetings as he could with the Russian Oligarchs – kleptocrats really – and their various lieutenants."

"Was there anyone that Bracken seemed particularly interested in or close to?" Kate inquires.

"As a matter of fact, there was," Slayton recalls, "a man named Nicholas Kasparov who spoke English with almost no accent. Bracken said they were working on stimulating U.S.-Russian trade."

"Trade in what?" Rick questions.

"That was pretty nebulous. They talked about building a better U.S. distribution network for products that Nick, as Bracken called him, would oversee. But they never went into detail – at least not in my presence."

"Could they have been talking about drugs?" Kate queries.

"It's possible," Slayton acknowledges. "Bracken said he already had a distribution network set up in New York. But a lot of cargo comes through New York, and it has a large Russian community. He could have been talking about anything from herring to samovars."

"They'd have no reason to avoid being explicit about herring or samovars," Rick points out.

"No, they wouldn't," Slayton agrees.

"Did you hear any other names come up, perhaps of a distributor?" Kate asks.

"I thought I heard Nick mention the name Simmons once. But he got kind of a look from Bracken, and he never mentioned it again."

A smile tugs at the corners of Kate's lips. "That's all right. Once was enough."