Unexpected Appearance Chapter 66
"Hey, Beckett, look at this!" Rick exclaims, pointing to a picture taped to the wall.
"What could she have to do with all of this?" Kate wonders.
Rick checks the attached note. "According to Blakely, everything. She's Pandora's linchpin. Kate, I have to call the agency. The characters on the emblem of her jacket look Chinese. We don't, the NYPD doesn't have the resources to search for some little girl who could be in China. The agency already has agents over there." Rick pulls out his phone. "We have no choice."
The cocking of a gun vibrates through the room. "Put the phone down," Thomas Gage orders.
Kate whirls around. "Gage?"
"Put the phone down now," Gage repeats. Rick shoves the phone and the photo in his pocket. "Now run!"
Kate stares at Gage. "What?"
"Run!" Gage yells as grenades smash through the window. He shoves Kate and Rick through the door and closes it just as the grenades explode, blowing it off its hinges. Gunfire roars in behind the grenades. Crouching, the three rush out of the apartment and into the hallway.
A confused Rick gazes at their rescuer. "I thought you were the bad guy."
"If I were the bad guy, you'd be dead by now. I would have killed you in the garage. Gage points toward a back stairway. "This way."
"My car's out front," Kate protests.
"They're watching your car. You go that way, you'll die," Gage warns.
"Who's out there? Who are they?" Rick demands.
"No time. You can have answers, or you can live," Gage offers. "Your choice."
Looking through a scope, a shooter decides they're gone and takes off.
Kate and Rick brace themselves in the back of Gage's van as he drives. "Stay down," he orders.
Rick reaches for his phone. "We need to call our CIA contact to tell them what's going on."
Gage points his gun at them. "No calls." He pulls into an underground garage.
"Where are we?" Kate questions.
"Someplace safe," Gage replies. "But we don't have much time. I've been on the grid. I've heard the chatter. Whatever this is, is going down tomorrow. So, who's the target?"
Eyes narrowing, Kate shakes her head. "Why did you kill Blakely and McGrath?"
"I didn't," Gage claims. Kate points her gun at him. "Oh, come on. Do you want me to take it away from you again? We don't have time."
"Make time," Rick retorts.
Gage sighs. "Look, as an asset, you develop an instinct to know something's wrong without knowing why. It can be a pop on your phone or a slight lag in authorizing your credit cards. I realized something was very wrong even before someone sent Harper after me. There aren't many people in the company I'm sure I can trust, but I trust the man who trained me. He actually has the country's and your best interests in mind. I'm betting that by now, you suspect Sophia Turner doesn't. She's using you to do her legwork and doesn't care if you get killed in the process. But she's not accomplishing the mission. Someone is trying to send the world spiraling toward war, and they want me to take the fall. Neither of those things is going to happen. Now, I need you to tell me what the name of the target is."
"We don't know," Castle admits. "We just found a picture, and we'll need all the help we can get to identify it. The agency has the tools, and Sophia is the closest one to the case. Let me call her."
"No," Gage insists. "Look, everything indicates that Pandora's being funded by military-industrial concerns linked to Eastern Europe."
"Harper spent time in Eastern Europe," Kate recalls.
"Exactly," Gage confirms. "Whoever is involved in this might have been working with him or running him. There's no way they could pull off this operation without help from the inside. Do you two get it? Someone in the agency is setting me up. They're not gonna stop until I'm dead because I'm the diversion. And if everyone is trying to stop me, then there's no one …."
"Trying to stop Pandora," Kate fills in.
The doors of the van open to reveal Sophia Turner flanked by armed agents. "Hello, Thomas."
"It's the oldest intelligence con job in the book," Martin Danberg says as images flit over screens in the CIA's tech cavern. "Create a crisis and ride in just in time to save the day."
"Gage was playing you," Sophia adds. "He wanted you to think he was the good guy. He needed your trust."
"Then why did he ask us who the linchpin is?" Kate wonders. "Shouldn't he have known?"
"He was protecting his op," Sophia claims. "He wanted to know how much you knew before he killed you."
"Well, if you're right and the attack was staged, then Gage can't be working alone," Rick asserts. "He must have had a partner. He said he was working with someone in the agency."
"Slipping in a little truth makes a lie more convincing," Danberg observes.
"If Gage has a partner, it's not over," Sophia notes.
A tech swivels from her monitor. "Fire crews were unable to contain the blaze in Blakely's apartment. All of his research is gone."
"No, it isn't," Rick says, pulling the photo of the little girl from his pocket. "According to Blakely's note, she's the linchpin."
Sophia stares at the photo. "Really, Rick? Are you sure?"
"I saw the note too," Kate says, putting her hand on Rick's arm. "But I didn't know Castle rescued the photo."
Sophia nods. "So, you did learn something, Rick." She hands the photo to the tech. "I want you to run this through every facial rec database we have. I want to know who she is, and I want to know how a young girl could be the first domino in the march toward war."
"Where's Gage?" Sophia asks Danberg.
"In the tank."
Muscles pop on Sophia's jaw. "I want to talk to him."
Rick stares through the glass as Sophia interrogates Gage. "Something is off, Beckett."
"Other than Gage being interrogated by the CIA instead of facing charges for murder? If his victim was a foreign agent, that could never be revealed in open court."
"No, not that. Gage said he was working with someone who trained him, someone who would have our best interests at heart."
"He was just lying, Castle."
"What if he wasn't? We know someone who works for the CIA who is old enough to have trained Gage and would have our best interests, or at least mine, at heart."
"Are you talking about your father?"
"Yeah. And if Gage is working with him, maybe Gage was telling the truth, and the CIA's bad guy was working with Harper, not with Gage."
"I don't know, Castle. I want to hear what Sophia can get out of Gage."
"You want to be in there asking the questions yourself, don't you?" Rick asks.
"Yeah," Kate admits. "But this is Sophia's shop. Hopefully, she knows what she's doing."
Sophia leans across a metal table toward Gage. "You know the guy you threw out a window, Harper? He was a friend of mine."
"Then you shouldn't have sent him for me," Gage responds. "There's only one, maybe two guys in the agency who could take me down on their own. One of them trained me, and I trained the other one. And we both know agents on that kind of assignment aren't supposed to have friends. It never works out well."
"No," Rick murmurs, "it doesn't."