22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Beckett, in spite of Castle's concern, made a weekly trek to the prison where Hal Lockwood was being held to ask the gunman who had hired him. After the discoveries made during the Raglan case, which had led them to Lockwood, she was drawn to her mother's case again; and Castle helped her work with what they had, while convincing her not to expand her more visible efforts beyond her visits to Lockwood. It caused some tension between them that was gradually building into occasional arguments. Since they had mutually decided not to make Martha and Alexis privy to their disagreement, they had their arguments behind closed doors; but now and then Martha or Alexis could hear heated discussions.

A new case came up later, looking like nothing more than the murder of a taxi driver but escalating to terrorism and a dirty bomb. By the time it ended, Castle and Beckett and their team at the twelfth, working with an agent from Homeland Security, had been responsible for saving the city from a dirty bomb; but the couple had lived through two more near death experiences as a result. Martha and Alexis weren't sure exactly what had happened, and because of the nature of the case, Castle and Beckett couldn't tell them; but both women could see that it must have been bad. It had taken a toll on both of their loved ones. The couple had sent Alexis and Martha to the Hamptons while the situation was in progress and asked Jim to go with them; so when they returned, Jim had seen the aftermath, too.

Kate backed away from her mother's case for a while after that, more aware of the importance of living her life and being thankful for what she still had. Castle felt the same way, with the additional feeling of relief that his wife wasn't so focused on her mother's killer. She became even more active in the family, spending more time with Martha and Alexis. She found herself thinking of Alexis more often now as their daughter, and Castle encouraged it when he caught glimpses. When Alexis preferred to talk to her, Kate advised her, or sat with Castle when the teenager seemed to prefer both opinions. However, the detective steadfastly refused to give up her weekly visits to the prison.

One night, Alexis spoke to both of them about one of her friends trying to undermine their friendship as well as her relationship with Ashley…for no good reason that she could see. Getting advice from both perspectives and temporarily feeling a bit better, she hugged Kate before she went to bed.

"Thanks, Kate. It's nice to feel like I have two parents. I know you aren't my mom, but having you here is better. I can count on you. You don't disappear without warning, and you keep your promises…make me feel like I matter."

"Any time you need me," Kate assured her, holding her tight. "I like having you, too."

"See you tomorrow. 'Night, Dad."

"'Night, Honey." He turned to Kate with an easy soft, teasing smile and said softly, "I like having you, too. Some of the same reasons…plus the smoking hot sex."

"Way to ruin a moment, Rick." She turned toward him with a sheen of tears in her eyes. "I think I hate Meredith. A child shouldn't have to feel that she doesn't matter to her mother."

"Meredith is what matters to Meredith. It's who she is, and there's no help for it. She loves Alexis as much as she knows how to love anybody but herself, but it isn't enough. Alexis has you now, though, and she's seeing what it's like to have someone she can count on. I'll be forever in your debt for that."

"It's honestly my pleasure. No debt involved. I don't know what I'd do without all of you."

"And I don't want you to find out.

"Me, either."

xxxxx

Spring brought changes for the family. Alexis was suddenly much more aware that she would soon enter her last year of high school, and she was looking at colleges, bouncing ideas around with both Kate and her father.

Martha was using the money Chet had willed her when he died to fund her new acting school, and she was quite enthusiastic about it. It would take much more, but she was laying the groundwork. Castle initially wondered if the school was going to be a passing fancy; but time only seemed to increase his mother's intent to make it work, and he was proud of her.

The tension between Castle and Kate had settled, mounting briefly only after her visits with Lockwood and settling again in a day or so, but Alexis had noticed.

"Grams, is everything okay with Dad and Kate?"

Martha looked up from the script she was studying and answered, "As far as I know. Why?"

"It seems a little tense between them sometimes."

"Katherine has a stressful job, and your father is working with her a lot of the time. That leaves them together day and night sometimes, and that's bound to cause a little tension now and then."

"Maybe that's it."

"Don't let it worry you, Darling. I've never seen two people any more in love than those two."

"I hope I end up with somebody who loves me as much as Dad loves her."

"So do I, Dear. I just hope that when you find him he has a less dangerous job than hers."

Alexis smiled and kissed her grandmother's cheek. "Gotta do my homework," she said as she walked to the stairs.

xxxxx

Beckett kept her mind mostly on the cases at hand, but as the months passed, she began to sneak glances at her notes on the newest information on her mother's murder. At first she did it when Castle wasn't there, then she would ask him a question now and then, theorizing. He didn't mind talking, as long as that's all it was; but he started to worry again. He knew the siren call of working that case wasn't far away for her, and he dreaded the impetus that would set it off again…as well as the confrontation between the two of them that he knew was likely to follow.

That impetus came on her next visit to Lockwood. Hal Lockwood had somehow been released from administrative segregation into the general population at the prison, something that had to have been the responsibility of an insider. She and the guards reached Lockwood seconds after he had killed Gary McAllister, and it wasn't long before the entire team at the twelfth could see the feral look returning to her eyes.

Castle had a meeting that morning but was at the precinct when Kate returned with the news.

After expressing his own surprise at what had happened, he told Beckett, "I'm sorry."

"For what?" she asked with a steely calm that Castle found unsettling.

"He's cutting off all avenues of your investigation."

"Castle, he's not cutting them off. He's giving me new ones. I've been going to that prison every week for the last four months to have a staring contest with the devil…and the devil just blinked. It's exactly what I've been looking for."

Getting the news that the release document had been forged, Beckett began listing things for Ryan and Esposito check on. Then, as she grabbed her keys and kept moving, she told Castle, "See? Now we have a trail."

Following along as always, he asked, "So where are we going?"

"To Lockwood's arraignment. I want to see if we can rattle his cage."

"Lockwood doesn't seem like the rattling type."

"Not Lockwood. Whoever is holding his leash."

Castle's blood ran cold. She was talking about playing chicken with a man who was responsible for serial murders for hire over a period of nearly twenty years. They were sure of six. Heaven only knew how many they didn't know about.

To say that Lockwood's arraignment didn't go as planned would be a spectacular understatement. Three fake cops threw a flash bang to wreak havoc in the courtroom and hustled Lockwood out during the commotion. Beckett chased them to the roof only to see them flying off in a helicopter. And Lockwood was in the wind again. All she could do was empty her gun at the helicopter…and watch as it disappeared with her prey.

Ryan found, through recorded phone calls from the prison, that Lockwood had placed weekly, collect calls to the same burner phone. He reported that all of them had gone unaccepted…until four days ago. Through Esposito's past connection with the military, they realized the brief, recent conversation meant "Continue mission."

When asked what mission and who was left, Beckett answered, "Me."

Castle suggested that the third cop, the one they hadn't identified, must be the next target, that they were tying up another loose end.

"Put a detail on her," Montgomery told the boys when Beckett walked away to take a phone call. He then ordered them to take Lockwood down if they saw him.

His theory of the third cop being the next target made Castle feel better for a while. But when they were at the hangar after the helicopter was found and Beckett vaguely hinted at another possibility, and seemed distant and distracted, evasive, he suspected he was wrong. She either knew or suspected what she was getting into.

At closing time, Beckett insisted on staying at the precinct, in spite of Castle's protests that she needed some rest. Once he was at home, Alexis caught him going through Johanna Beckett's case file and stopped to talk, sympathizing with Beckett's situation...solving murders for other families while not being able to solve her mother's. Not long after that, Jim Beckett was at his door.

"Jim. Come on in."

"Can we talk for a minute…about my daughter? I won't keep you long."

It seems Beckett had talked to her father about the new developments, and Jim had done some reading between the lines. After a short conversation, he got to the point.

"This man she's chasing…how dangerous is he?"

"He's a trained killer."

"What happens after she finds him?" There was a look of pain in his eyes when he told Castle, "I've already lost my wife to this. I've made my peace with that. But Katie? She won't listen to me, and she won't back down. Not unless somebody can convince her that her life is worth more than her mother's death." Standing and looking almost apologetic at the request, he said, "I know she loves you, Rick, and I know you love her. Don't let her throw her life away."

That doubled the responsibility Castle already felt as her husband to get Kate to at least take a step back and think about consequences. He waited up for her, even though she got home pretty late. Meeting her at the door with a gentle kiss, he offered to get her something to eat.

"No thanks," she answered, leaning into his embrace.

He held her for a long moment before he ventured, "Can we talk?"

"Not now, Castle. Can we talk in the morning? I need a shower and some sleep. I'm exhausted."

He could tell that she was, so he asked, "Promise?"

"Yeah. We can talk tomorrow."

The following morning, Castle went to get his coffee and found his daughter in the kitchen.

"Where's Kate?" Alexis asked.

"She left a note saying she was going in early this morning. She's really focused on this case. It's related to her mother's."

"That's why you were looking at it last night?"

"Yeah. Trying to see something new…something that might help."

Hesitating before saying anything, she finally asked, "Are you and Kate having problems? I've noticed some arguments lately."

"Kate and I are fine. We disagree on something, and that's the source of the arguments. We're still in love. Go to school and don't worry about us," he assured her.

She breathed a sigh of relief and picked up her books. "Bye, Dad. See you tonight."

Arriving at the precinct with coffee, Castle made a beeline to Beckett's desk. "Kate, we really need to talk."

She took her coffee from his hand just as, to Castle's chagrin, Ryan interrupted with news that Riker, one of the prison guards, had forged the document that was used to move Lockwood into the prison's general population.

When they checked his apartment, they found that Riker was dead, and that he had made several calls to the same burner phone Lockwood had called – establishing a connection between the three. Financials showed that the $50,000 wire transfer that Riker had received had reached his account by way of the Dubai branch of a Swiss bank, with a side trip through the United Arab Emirates.

"Who the hell are these guys?" Castle asked.

"Whoever they are, they've been two steps ahead of us this whole time, Beckett answered.

"You don't go through this kind of trouble to cover up a couple of rogue cops kidnapping mobsters in some back alley."

"No. This is about something else, something bigger."

At the precinct later, every lead they had ended with nothing more to go on. Beckett's small, frustrated rant ended with, "Everywhere I look, it's just a bunch of dead ends."

After bouncing ideas around, they did make one new discovery that added to the idea of someone in authority being in charge. Castle floated the idea that the third cop was the next target and probably in charge of Lockwood's involvement. Beckett ran with that idea, and gave Ryan and Esposito harsh orders to go over material they had already checked thoroughly…and she had angry responses to their protests and attempts at reason. She was losing her grip. They could all see it.

Castle tried again to talk to her, but to no avail; so he joined Ryan and Esposito in the records hunt she had ordered.

Esposito asked Castle, "How is she?"

"She hasn't returned my calls. She just grabbed those case files and ran out of here.

"Are you going after her?"

"Not yet. I can see where this is going, and it's going to turn into an argument, probably a big one. I'll give her some space for a little while."

She's getting lost. She's an inch away from the rabbit hole," Esposito ventured.

"Not surprised."

"Man, I don't envy you that conversation," Ryan sympathized.

Castle, Esposito and Ryan went through records and found that a name on three arrest reports had been altered, so they called Montgomery in to show him.

While the boys were checking into who was manning the records desk at that time, Castle asked Montgomery, "Continue mission? Who's the mission?"

"I put a protective detail on her," the captain told him. "Plain clothes. These guys are good."

"Good enough to stop Lockwood? She's not going to stop; and the next time he sees her, one of them is going to die. Take her off the case."

The captain gave Castle some background on how he met Beckett and why he had wanted her in homicide, ending with, "I cannot make Beckett stand down, Castle. I never could. And the way I figure, the only one who can is you."

Castle was left in the room feeling even more pressure than he did after talking to Beckett's father the night before. He picked up his phone and sent her a text."

"Are you ok?"

A couple of minutes later it was answered.

"I'm fine. Just needed some space for a little while."

"At the apartment?"

"You know me well."

"Have I given you enough space that you'll come home now? I'll order Chinese."

"Be there in twenty."

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

When Kate arrived, everyone was home, and they had dinner together. They made an effort at conversation, but the tension between Castle and Kate was obvious; and Martha and Alexis made themselves scarce as soon as they finished the meal.

When they were alone, Castle told his wife, "You're avoiding me, but we need to talk."

"Why, Castle?" she asked angrily. "So you can tell me what to do? You're my husband, not my keeper."

"I don't want to be your keeper. But I do want to continue to enjoy being your husband, and it's going to be hard to do that if you're dead."

"You don't know that will happen."

"But we both know he's likely to try. Do you think your mother would want you to die trying to find her killer?"

"Don't you dare use my mother as an argument," she shouted.

"Let's take this where we don't involve the whole family," he said, taking her arm and turning toward his office.

She snatched her arm away and stormed into the office. Castle closed the door behind them, walked through to the bedroom, and turned to wait for her; so she stalked in and slammed the door behind her.

Castle took a deep breath, trying to hold on to a sound of calm, common sense, even though he wanted to strike out like his wife.

"Beckett, everyone associated with this case is dead. Everyone. First your mom and her colleagues, then Raglan, then McAllister. Even Riker. Anybody who knows too much. You know they're coming for you next." He countered her argument about the protective detail saying it wasn't a match for professional killers. "I've been working with you for three years…you know me. I'm the guy who says we can move that rubber tree plant, but you know what, Beckett? I don't think we're gonna win this one."

"Castle, they killed my mother. What do you want me to do here?

"Walk away. They're gonna kill you, Kate. And if you don't care about that, at least think about how that's going to affect the people that love you. Do you really want to put your dad through that? And what about me…and Alexis and my mother. How do we live with losing you? I don't want to see you throw your life away."

Their voices were steadily getting louder and angrier.

"Yeah, well last time I checked it was my life, not your personal jungle gym."

"I don't deserve that. You know I don't deserve that. I don't try to control you. I'm just asking you to step back and think about what you're doing. You're on the edge…not seeing things clearly."

"I see plenty clearly. If we don't move on this, we lose momentum. This case is connected to why I became a cop."

His control finally shattered, and the volume of his voice escalated quickly as he answered her. "And why is that? To die trying to catch your mother's murderer before we have enough information to find him? What the hell would that accomplish? You still wouldn't have your answers, and your father wouldn't have anybody left except the rest of us who would be without you." He looked away briefly and calmed for a moment. "I'd like to think I'd never do to my child what he did to you; but I've got to tell you, when I found out you were going away with Demming and I'd probably lost my last chance with you…" He paused and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. "I came home, talked to my daughter, called Gina about the book… But even knowing I'd have company for the weekend, I still closed myself in my room with a brand new bottle of scotch and drank myself into oblivion so I could sleep." As his anger returned, the volume of his voice was building again. "I don't know what I'd do if I had to face the rest of my life without you now. And I don't want to have to save your father from drowning in a bottle again. Do you want to hurt my mother? Do you want Lanie to have to see you on a slab in the morgue? Do you want me to have to see you with a fatal bullet wound or with a knife in you…like the pictures of your mother?"

"Castle! Stop it!" she screamed, turning away. "Stop!"

He was shouting, too, by then. "Do you want Ryan and Esposito and Montgomery to try not to shed tears when they have to carry your casket? Do you want to leave Alexis behind to go through the same thing you did when you were that age? She loves you, Kate, she depends on you, and she's younger than you were. Would you want her to fall into the same kind of rabbit hole you're in right now…and walk right into a sniper's bullet to catch your killer?" At an absolute bellow, he closed with, "Would that be enough for you?"

"That's a low blow, Castle," she snapped back, looking absolutely livid.

"Then, for God's sake, stop and think."

She snatched the bedroom door open and moved through the study and into loft, shouting over her shoulder, "I can't stay here right now. I can't even look at you!"

Castle walked angrily into his study, shakily poured himself a drink, drained it in one long gulp, growled loudly, and threw the glass at the framed Heat Wave poster in his office. The sound of the slamming front door and the breaking glass resounded through the loft; and Martha and Alexis, who were already at the top of the stairs, well aware of the argument, rapidly came down and into the study. Alexis had tears streaking her face, and she flung herself into her father's arms.

"What the hell is going on here?" Martha asked, looking shocked.

"I'm sorry." He added absently, "Stay away from the glass."

"Is Kate leaving us? Are you getting a divorce?" Alexis sobbed into his chest.

"Divorce? No. It was an argument. There's no divorce."

"Well thank goodness for that," Martha answered. "Are you going to tell us what happened?"

"Sit down. You both have a right to know." He sat in a large arm chair, with Martha in the one facing him, and cuddled his tearful daughter in his lap the way he did when she was small. "The case we've been working on is related to her mother's murder, and she's wanted to solve that for so long…" He took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, trying to stay in control for Alexis. "When she sees any kind of progress, she…she kind of goes off the rails…forgets that everybody connected to the case has been killed. We have a huge difference of opinion about that. She thinks I'm too worried about it, and I think she isn't worried enough. We argued our points, and I said some harsh things that she didn't want to hear but needed to think about. Her self-defense mechanism in these situations has always been to lash out and then run in the opposite direction. That hasn't happened in a long time, but we haven't had to face her mother's murder case in a long time, either. Right now, she needs her own space to think…pull all the pieces back into some kind of order. That's where we are right now." He kissed Alexis on her head and assured her, "She'll be back. Maybe not tonight, but she'll be back. We still own her old apartment, and she may stay there long enough to cool off so we can talk more calmly. We still love each other, Honey. I'm just afraid for her. I might be shouting at you or Mother if I saw you doing the same thing, and you know I love both of you, right?"

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure. Now go back to bed and try to get some sleep. You have school tomorrow. And I'm sorry we made such a fuss that it worried you. She loves all of us. You know that, don't you?"

Alexis nodded and sniffled, and he kissed her head again. She kissed his cheek and went back upstairs; and after they heard her door close, Martha moved forward in her chair and asked quietly, "So how bad is it? The real story?"

"It's bad. There's a hired killer who broke out of prison. He's killed three people that we know of in the last four months, all related to Johanna Beckett's murder; and it's likely that he's going to come after Kate. She wants answers badly enough that she's willing to take too many chances; and when she's like this, she seems to think she's bulletproof. Her father stopped by last night to ask me to find a way to stop her. Captain Montgomery told me I was the only one who could, but I don't know if I accomplished anything at all. Mother, if anything happened to her… "

He stopped then, shedding his own tears, and Martha moved to sit on the arm of his chair to hold her son.

xxxxx

Beckett went to her apartment and paced back and forth in anger for a while, talking to herself and picking up things she could slam down on tables or the kitchen counter. Then she cried for a while. Making a conscious effort to pull herself together, she did some deep breathing, waited until her face wasn't so red or her eyes so puffy and went back to the precinct.

The captain was still there, just leaving for home. They had talked briefly, and trying to reach her reasonable side, he told her, "We speak for the dead. That's the job. We are all they've got once the wicked rob them of their voices. We owe them that…but we don't owe them our lives"

"Castle said that we can't win this."

"He's right. I've spent most of my life walking behind this badge, and I can tell you this for a fact. There are no victories, there's only the battle. And the best you can hope for is that you find some place where you can make your stand. If this is your spot, I will stand with you."

Kate nodded, and they both left soon after their conversation.

xxxxx

Beckett left the precinct, but Kate entered the door of the loft. Castle heard the front door open and went to meet her, arms open. A sleepless Alexis heard it, too, and slipped quietly to the top of the stairs to see what would happen.

Kate went straight into his arms, and he kissed her as if it might be his last chance…Kate returning it eagerly. They held each other as tightly as they could, silent for the moment, savoring the return to the loving husband and wife that they were.

Alexis was uncomfortable watching the intensity of the kiss, but she needed the reassurance of seeing that her father was being honest with her. As they held each other, she quietly went back to bed; and this time she slept.

"Can we talk about it tomorrow?" Kate asked.

"Yeah. Just come to bed with me. I need you close."

"I need you, too."

They walked together to their room, closing the door behind them…gently this time, the way they made love.