Close Encounters 14: A View To A Kill

for Jessie

all the Black your heart desires

Kate Beckett pushed her shoulder blades to the back of the chair and kept as still as she could make herself. It had been three hours since Castle had hung up on her, and although part of her was terrified he wouldn't come - she deserved nothing less - mostly she was sick at heart knowing he would.

He always would.

Black sat in the canteen across from her, his presence filling the room. She had a tray in front of her with the usual processed and freeze dried food, but Black ate as if it were the height of cuisine.

She didn't think she could swallow.

"Come now, Kate," Black said suddenly. His eyes were startling when he looked at her, as if he knew every secret. Deleware and another main in camo gear were at the door, probably as a guard, but she didn't know for whom. To keep her here or to keep her from doing damage to John Black?

"I'm not hungry," she said tightly.

"Of course not. That's your usual m.o., isn't it? Self-destructive and self-sabotaging to the end. How do you think I got you here? You will always do what's least beneficial for yourself."

"I'm sorry, but is this a therapy session?"

"Free of charge," Black smiled.

Her skin crawled. "I have a therapist, thanks. And we're doing quite well."

"In four years, I sincerely hope you've made progress. But here's what I know. You're going to wreck yourself in a bid for pity or attention so that when my son arrives, he either lashes out at me for your state or he comes crawling straight to you in some misguided messiah complex he has when it comes to you. Forget the sins of the world, he will crucify himself trying to get to a broken, fallen Kate Beckett."

She sucked in a breath past the stab of it in her lungs, but Black had never told her anything other than the truth. Slanted, yes; a truth that was skewed heavily in his favor, but the kernel remained accurate.

She did this to herself. She did it to him. She'd done it again.

"Whatever," she sighed, feigning indifference. "Hate me, despise me, belittle and humiliate me. So long as you give him the regimen, what he needs to live, then I'll fucking crucify myself for you. You don't even need the hammer and nails, Black. You just need me."

"Truer words," he sighed, an actual smile sliding across his face. He quickly smothered it, as if it was both odious and distasteful to him to take pleasure in this. And she supposed - for him - it really was. He wanted only to maintain his machine, get it back in good working order, and Beckett was a serious obstacle. That Black should take any pleasure at all in removing the obstacle was obscene.

Deleware remained impassive at the door and her cheekbone still ached with the bruise of the bullet's passage. She'd gotten a look at her reflection in the shiny side of the canteen's serving window, and Castle was going to freak if he saw this.

"I need to go to the bathroom," she said numbly.

"Eat first."

"I can't eat when I have to pee," she spat out.

"What the fuck do I care about the order?" Black said. His words were quick but in control. "Eat."

She fisted her hand around the fork and shoved the damn eggs into her mouth, those made-from-powder things that tasted more like cardboard and pencil shavings. She hated eggs. She never wanted to see eggs again.

"Very good. When you've cleaned your plate, Deleware or Maine will take you to the bathroom. No bullets this time, Del, do you understand?"

"Yes, sir. I understand perfectly."

Kate glanced up at him and the ice in his eyes and the way perfectly curled on his tongue, she knew it would be some other horror awaiting her when he got her alone.

Holy shit, she really hadn't thought this through. She'd never expected to have to survive any of this.

Beckett made slow work of her eggs and tried to think of a plan.

"Castle, Castle - come on, man, no. This is not the way."

He paced the length of the room, shaking Mitchell off as the man tried to hold him back. "Then what is the damn way, Mitchell? Because my wife is out there-"

"I know that. I know. But you think walking into Black's trap is going to save either of your lives?"

Mitch had called him two seconds after he'd hung up with Kate, and even though he'd answered, he knew he hadn't been making any sense. Mitchell had double-parked in front of the house and overrode the alarm system from his phone, all the while pounding on the door and calling Castle's name.

He'd been numb when Mitch had gotten the safety locks to disengage, numb when Mitch had found him in the empty - God, so empty - extra bedroom. Even now, he paced the living room because nothing was registering, nothing seemed to make it through.

"I can be out there in - what did the Air France website say?"

"No flights until tomorrow morning."

"That's twenty-four hours," he said, stopping dead at the far wall. "I can't - she can't be with him another damn day-"

"Castle. Listen to me. You can't go flying out there-"

"Like hell I'm-"

"Will you sit the fuck down? You're giving me motion sickness. Sit down. Sit. Down." Mitchell's grip was either suddenly a hundred times more forceful than Castle had ever known the man to possess, or the numbness was affecting his balance.

He sank onto the Ugly Couch and buried his head in his hands. "I have to. He said - I have to. She won't... she said she wasn't under duress."

"She use the all-clear code?"

"Yes," he whispered, grief making a run at the numbness and lancing through his chest. "Yes. She did."

"Shit," Mitchell said softly. "She's choosing to stay with him."

He groaned and dug his fingers through his hair, gripping hard enough to send ripples of pain along his scalp. "She's choosing... yes. Because of the damn regimen. She thinks she can get Black to just hand it over."

"Then we need a plan. More than ever. You hear me, Rick? I know you want to haul ass over there, but we have to think this through."

"I don't know how we could possibly-"

"You said there was another way. You keep saying that. Well, listen to your own damn advice. How do you expect her to find another way when it comes to saving your ass if you can't do the same?"

Castle rocked back into the couch, the ache threatening to crack the ice around him. "What other way?" he pleaded. "Tell me. Anything. I'll do anything. Just - just-"

"We cover all our bases. We assemble a damn strike team, Castle. We go in after her, we clear the building. This is search and rescue, you hear me? We won't leave her behind."

Search and rescue. Search and rescue. "O-kay," he grounded out. "Okay. And-"

"If we take Black alive, fine. If not. We don't."

The regimen. Fuck, even as he wanted only to get Beckett away from his father, there was a stabbing reminder that he needed those damn pills - that she needed him to have those damn pills. And if it wasn't now, today, then it'd be next week she was doing some other fucking insane suicidal mission to get them.

"We'll try to take him alive," Castle said. "We have to try to... salvage this. Damn it, I want to kill her myself."

"She's ballsy as hell, I'll tell you that."

Castle pressed his fists into his eyes. "I can't believe she did this. I can't... does she have so little respect for her own life?"

"Pot, meet kettle," Mitchell muttered. Castle felt the sting of the man's punch into his shoulder and then Mitch was gripping the collar of his shirt, hard, hauling him up. "Now get on your damn feet and stop grieving for her. She's not dead yet."

Oh, God, if she died for this. If she died for this-

Kate pressed her hands to her thighs to keep them from trembling as she walked just in front of Deleware down the hall. She expected, at any moment, retaliation for her groin kick on the boat. Behind her, the other man, Maine, kept a gun on her.

Actually, she expected retaliation for whatever consequences Deleware had gotten for shooting at her and bloodying her face. Because that Black was actually displeased with, and after that conversation over cardboard eggs, she realized it was only because Black thought it would make Castle sympathetic towards her.

When he might not otherwise be - that was the unspoken idea.

Black had no clue; he couldn't possibly understand how it was between her and Castle. How much more it was than some cheap womanly wiles or whatever Black assumed she'd used to seduce his son. A long time ago, Black had shed whatever emotions were required for a potential relationship with Castle's mother and he'd never looked back.

So Black would never get it. What she was willing to do for Castle. What Castle was willing to do for her.

And even as that was their weakness, it was also their greatest strength. And that she could use.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a hell of a lot available to her right now.

So she marched behind Deleware and turned when he did, trying to memorize the lay of the land. She'd studied the station maps before she'd flown into Tunisia; she'd learned the tides and reefs surrounding the island, knew the place like she knew her own home.

Deleware paused and gestured her ahead of him. "Left through the door," he commanded.

The facility was set up like an old Ottoman villa. She knew there was a women's side to the house which connected to the front hall by one locked door, and she assumed it was that harem side she was in right now. It had been where the sultan's girls were locked in at night, so it was the easiest part of the villa to control.

She imagined the door at the end of the hall connected to the court yard and the fountain in the center that she'd spied before. The plans had showed an orange tree growing beside the fountain and an ornate bench below it, but she had no way of knowing if it was still there. If so, there might be cover under its branches. If not, the court yard should be avoided at all costs.

Snipers were most likely positioned in the second floor balcony. She couldn't believe Black didn't have heavy manpower with him, even if she hadn't seen it yet.

"Here," Deleware said. She startled when she felt his hand curl in the back of her shirt and jerk her to a stop. Her heart tripped and fell.

She opened the door before her and saw the bare toilet, the pedestal sink. A kind of shower had been installed at the far end, a circular ring above it suggesting the idea of a curtain at one time. She shuffled inside and glanced at the mirror to check out the wound.

Maine stayed outside, but Deleware came inside with her and shut the door.

She stared at him.

"Do your business."

"Not with you in here," she demanded.

"Do what you need to do or let's go."

Holy shit.

"Fine," he said dispassionately. "We go." HE reached for her arm to haul her outside.

"No," she back-pedaled, tugging hard. "No. I - I have to go."

She didn't; she'd wanted the time to think, plan, wash her face and tend to the gap of flesh in her ear that still burned from the alcohol. But now it occurred to her that she might not get another chance to go, and she wasn't entirely sure that Black would care one way or another.

"Turn around," she told Deleware.

"Sweetheart," he mimicked, a cruel smile twisting his mouth. "I've seen you a lot worse than naked. All those surveillance videos."

"Turn around."

"Who the fuck has the weapon here?"

She stood, mute and furious in front of him, and then she realized she was going to have to do it. This was his retaliation for that kick in the groin since he couldn't leave a mark.

Kate could leave. Technically, she wasn't a prisoner here - or so Black had said. She'd chosen to stay of her own free will because Black had the regimen and he wanted Castle face-to-face. They only way he'd get that was if Beckett's was the face her husband saw first.

She could walk out right now.

But she wouldn't get the regimen. And all of this would be for absolutely nothing. She wasn't even sure Castle was ever going to forgive her for this, wasn't sure that love could surmount a betrayal so deep, and if burning to ashes the best thing that had ever happened to her - if killing the beautiful and good thing between them was for nothing, she might as well be dead.

Beckett growled and unbuttoned her jeans, yanking them down her hips and taking her underwear with it.

"You know," Deleware said, his eyes on her. "That noise you just made. You do that when he goes down on you."

She closed her eyes and concentrated on the toilet, the water, the pinch in her bladder.

"My favorite part? The way your whole body rises up from the bed the very first time he touches you, when his fingers-"

Oh, God. "Shut up."

"You think he'll ever want to touch you again if you moan like that for me?"

Her eyes snapped open and she straightened up, didn't even bother with her pants, nothing. She stared him straight in the eye and she made her words very clear.

"You so much as touch me, and I will tear your dick off."

Deleware smiled.

Castle's heart sank when he saw the caller ID on his phone. In the middle of the Office at nine at night, trying to get logistics together, this was the last thing he wanted to do, the last person he wanted to have to face.

But he gestured for Mitchell to keep moving forward with the strike team, and he took the call, slipping outside into the hallway for the silence.

"Jim," he answered, his throat tight.

"Ah, shit," Jim sighed. "I thought so."

"Thought...?"

"It's been bothering me. It's been weighing on my mind all weekend, and I should have called you sooner. But I never thought I'd have to check up on her. Not now that she has you."

Castle felt that gaping bleakness opening its mouth for him again, that sense that nothing was ever going to be good again. "Check up on her."

"She gave me Sasha for the weekend and told me she was leaving to help you."

Castle dropped his chin into his chest and tried to keep from battering at the wall with his fist. Wouldn't help. "Technically," he grit out. "I guess she was."

"Is she there?"

"No," he admitted. "No, she-"

Whatever he'd meant to say wouldn't come, wouldn't get out past the chokehold of grief around his throat.

"If she's not there, where is she?" Jim asked. "She was headed to the airport but of course, she didn't tell me where. Is she in trouble?"

Castle's breath rattled in his lungs with every gulp of air. "I - she - yes. She went to Black. She went to Black because I..."

"She did what?" Jim's voice pitched deeper when he was grief-stricken and it was tenored so deeply now that Castle felt his knees weakening at the sound of his own fear echoed back to him. "She chased down Black?"

"Yes," he rasped. He'd promised to tell Jim Beckett the truth, to never keep him in the dark when it mattered. And now Kate had put him in this position, of having to tell her father that she was a captive of his father.

"Voluntarily?" Jim pressed. "Are you sure he didn't - no offense, son - but maybe he coerced her or she's being blackmailed or-"

"She went of her own free will. She took - she went," he finished. "But she thinks she's saving my life doing it."

"I don't understand," Jim blurted out. "That doesn't make sense."

"The regimen. It's my father's - his - when I got sick, they used the last of what we had to make me better and now it's... there've been some issues. And she went to get more."

"Oh, God."

Castle hunched inward, absorbing the wash of horror in Jim's voice. "I'm going to get her back, Jim. I promise. I'm not - I'm going to kill him if I have to, but he won't touch her. He won't touch her."

He wanted it to be true; he needed it to be true. His father liked fucking with him though and he couldn't - even as he made the promise, he was afraid that showing up in Tunisia at his father's summons was only inviting her execution.

"Son."

"Yeah?" he husked. He bent over at the waist, needing to breathe, needing not to throw up, needing.

"I..." Jim couldn't finish it, whatever it was, but Castle knew. He knew. God, he knew.

And this time the promise wouldn't come, hollow and tinny as it was; the words wouldn't leave his mouth.

"Call me the moment you... know anything," Jim said finally, his voice laid over with raw places. He ended the call and Castle squeezed his phone, hands braced on his knees, gulping air as he fought it, fought it.

The grief crushed him, ground him into nothing so that the tears were numb and his lungs were a vacuum. He heard himself as if from far off, the brutality of desperation pulverizing whatever effort he might have made to hold himself together.

And then he gripped the rubber case around his phone and hurtled it down the hallway, the sound of it bouncing doing nothing at all to relieve the terrible ache swallowing him whole. Castle drove his fist into the wall, again, again, beating his flesh into gristle against the cinder block, the bones grinding and crunching.

Fucking hell, God damn it, Beckett.

What was he fucking planning for? A strike team wouldn't get within a hundred miles of the place without setting off alarms in Blacks' damn loyalist network. The CIA was riddled with spies - and not spies on Castle's side - and fuck, he was trying to be sensible about this?

No. Fuck, no.

It was time to go. He was getting her back and then he was going to throttle her himself.

Beckett haunted the hallways of the women's side of the villa, scoured through the rooms for possible weapons. Either Deleware or Maine followed her - depending on some schedule she couldn't fathom - and though the hours clawed along, she didn't have a better plan.

Sometimes, though, neither of them followed her.

No weapons, obviously, left lying around, though she discovered two austere cells with army cots in them, unmade and bare, and another canteen. The boxes of food had recent delivery dates on their sides, and the packaged, freeze-dried food wouldn't expire for another two years.

If the station keeper - Reynolds - was alive, he'd been maintaining his CIA credentials. If he wasn't, then Black had taken over very recently. Probably when she'd messaged him to say that Castle wouldn't meet with him.

This could be all her fault.

Beckett ignored the food and opened the drawers in the canteen, her heart stumbling when she saw the utensils. Spoons, ladles, spatulas, tongs-

Serving forks. Beckett grabbed the two large forks and gripped them against her thigh, darting a look towards the door. Deleware wasn't in sight - she'd chosen the canteen last, waiting for a time when he wasn't skulking nearby - and it had paid off.

She'd hide the forks somewhere that she could get to them later.

Beckett rifled carefully through the other three drawers, searching in silence, barely daring to breathe. It would be just her luck that Deleware came looking for her now, his gun held so deceptively casually, his perusing smile. She knew he was doing it to mess with her, knew he wanted her off-balanced so she'd be less of a threat.

How little he knew. Fuck with her head and she'd stab him with a knife. Or well - a serving fork.

She discovered two other utensils that might work if she needed them, and she slid the forks and butter knife and egg spoon into the front waistband of her jeans, let her shirt fall over them. The metal was cold against her skin, but she kept her abs tight and eased out of the canteen.

Beckett couldn't get near to the main door that led out onto the courtyard without Deleware intercepting her - she must be walking into view of security cameras. She needed to hide the utensils before she got that far, and maybe keep one of the knives and see if she might slip out into the courtyard itself.

A lip over a door was the first place. The second was one of the bare cots in a narrow room near the back. In another room on the far side, the windows had bars that hid one of the knives.

They hadn't assigned her 'quarters' though she figured she could always go back to the cot Black had cuffed her to - his old holding cell. She worked the maze of corridors and found the room again, but when she stepped inside, it occurred to her that the place would be wired for surveillance.

Kate ran her fingers over the bedframe anyway, searched for loose screws or broken metal cross pieces. She found a bent spring and worked at it with her fingers, her eyes sliding over the walls and corners of the room, wondering if she was being watched.

Sure enough, Deleware showed up. He cocked an eyebrow at her, staring at her ass as she bent over in her blood-stained jeans, but she ignored him.

"Stand up," he sighed.

She did and he came forward, slid his hand over her hip too innocently as he took the spring from her fingers.

"Naughty, naughty," he murmured.

She ignored him, kept her stomach in, her shirt loose over the last knife. Deleware gave her a cocky little smile and stepped out of the room again; she knew she was supposed to follow, so she did.

"No, this way," he called to her.

She turned after him, saw him guiding her towards the main door. He opened it with a theatrical flourish, the asshole smiling at her the whole time, and then he gestured her to go first.

His hand brushed her ass she went, and she was tempted to stick the knife in his ribs and twist. End it right here.

But she swallowed it down and took her first steps out into the brightly-lit courtyard.

"It's morning," she said dumbly.

"Barely," he sneered. "Move it, Beckett."

When she crossed the cream and blue patterned tile, she found Black waiting for her at a low table, breakfast laid out over its top.

Castle zipped up the bag and shouldered it, slamming shut the door to his Range Rover and jogging towards the electric fence surrounding the private airfield. His phone buzzed angrily in his pocket but he was done listening to Mitchell try and stop him.

No more planning, no more delays.

The sound of airplanes screaming overhead made his shoulders hunch, but he met the guard at the gate with his weapon.

The man froze.

"I know what you do here," Castle said quietly. "I know what this place is. And I need a plane."

"I... can't-" The man's gaze darted to the side and Castle slammed the butt of his weapon into the guard's face, heard the satisfying crunch of bone. The man slumped and Castle caught him, dragged him back inside the concrete guardhouse.

He pilfered the man's pockets, taking his side weapon and the automatic, grabbing the extra magazine and the cell phone. He pulled his backpack snug against his shoulders and slung the automatic over his shoulder, crept from the little concrete room.

The airfield was often used by drug cartels and crime bosses, but Castle hadn't personally flown out of here before. He didn't know the terrain or the air currents, but they had a plane that could make the overseas crossing.

The next commercial flight on Air France wasn't scheduled until nine, and he'd already wasted too much time delaying. The nine hour flight would put him in Tunis at six that night, but he'd discovered that jumping military convoys and cargo planes wouldn't get him there any faster.

So steal a plane it was.

Castle kept his finger on the trigger guard of the automatic, but unsheathed his knife from the strap around his thigh. He crept through the darkness towards the Quonset hut that served as a hangar, hoping to steer clear of patrols or late-night mechanics. When he arrived at the corrugated metal door, Castle avoided opening it in favor of scanning the terrain he'd just covered.

The control tower had a light on, of course, but looked to be operating as normal. He didn't see any more guards, and the Quonset hut at his back was silent. If he had to open the big door for the plane and start the engine inside the hangar, he'd lose the element of surprise. He needed a faster getaway.

Castle took a slow slide out from the shadows of the Quonset hut, daring to step into the light of the security lamp so he could see the far side of the airfield.

Ah, there was a plane on the last runway.

Castle took off at a jog across the tarmac.