Fearless

Season 9, Episode 22

SEASON FINALE

Written by acertainzest and encantadaa

This is a work of fiction by writers with no professional connection to ABC network's Castle. Recognizable characters are the property of Andrew Marlowe and ABC. Names, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Susan stepped off the elevator on the maternity floor of the hospital, mentally reviewing the list of patients for the day. She just needed to pick up a couple of files and then head to the office to begin her day.

As she turned toward the nurses' station, she noticed another woman fiddling with the door of the former supply closet beside the elevator. The woman was wearing nurse's scrubs almost identical to Susan's, but she didn't look familiar.

"Excuse me?" Susan said, stepping closer. "You can't go in there. That room's under renovation."

Truth be told, she didn't actually know what the maintenance folks were doing in there, but a few weeks ago the supplies had all been relocated to a different closet, and the CLOSED - DO NOT ENTER sign had gone up on this door, and the nurses had all just shrugged and accepted it. Hospital management never bothered to tell them anything, anyway.

"Oh," the other woman said, turning away from the door. "Uh, I didn't know." She blinked rapidly, glancing at Susan and then quickly away.

"That's okay. If you need supplies, they're all in the other closet, around the corner," Susan said, pointing. "Are you new on this floor, uh..."

She squinted at the other woman's nametag, and her eyes widened in surprise. "Hey, that's my old ID badge. I lost it a while ago." She straightened up to look at the other woman, her lips parting on the beginning of a question, but the naked hostility in the other woman's eyes stopped the breath in her throat.

"You weren't supposed to be here today," the interloper hissed, and before Susan could react, the other woman's arm flashed out, seizing her. The door to the storage room opened and the stranger yanked Susan inside so quickly that she didn't even have time to cry out before the door slammed shut again.

"Stupid, stupid. This wasn't the plan," the woman growled fiercely. Susan struggled, grunting with effort, but the other woman was surprisingly strong and subdued her with ease, wrestling her across the small space and pushing her down onto a gurney. It was equipped with restraints for the arms and legs, and Susan struggled harder when she saw them, but to no avail.

"The door is soundproofed," the attacker said as she quickly fastened the restraints, strapping Susan down firmly. "You can scream all you want. No one will hear."

She removed the new ID badge from around Susan's neck and hung it around her own neck, beside the old one. Then she paused, straightening her spine, staring down at Susan with a strange gleam in her eye.

"I haven't had time to learn your secrets," she said cryptically, "and I don't have time for it now. So this will have to do."

"What do you mean?" Susan gasped, finding her voice at last. "Who are you? Please, just let me go. I promise I won't-"

"Promises are meaningless!" the other woman spat. She turned away, toward a small wheeled table in the corner of the room. "Spare me, Susan. Just don't even bother."

When she turned back around, Susan saw the syringe in her hand. She didn't know what was in it, but it didn't really matter, did it? She screamed.

Her attacker had been right. No one outside the supply closet heard her screams. And then they stopped.

"Good morning, Kate, Rick," said Dr. Kowalewski, stepping out into the small waiting room of her practice. "Please, come on in to exam room."

"How are you today, Doctor?" Castle asked with a friendly smile as they followed the obstetrician down the short hallway.

"Oh, fine, thank you. Right in here."

"Where's Susan?" Beckett asked curiously, looking around. It was usually the nurse, not Dr. Kowalewski herself, who collected them from the waiting room and brought them back.

"Oh." The doctor frowned, her usual smile dropping away. "Susan not arrive this morning. Very unusual, not like her." Her normally subtle Ukrainian accent seemed more pronounced, her tone tinged with worry. "She was supposed to be here two hours ago, but not here, and not answering her phone."

"That is strange," Castle commented. "Did you call the police?"

"No, no." Dr. Kowalewski waved that off, but her eyes were still concerned. "No need to make trouble. Probably fine."

"Still, I could have someone go to her apartment and check on her, if you want," Kate offered.

The doctor hesitated, clearly torn. "Well..."

"It's no trouble," Kate assured her. "Do you have Susan's address?"

A few minutes later, after Beckett had texted the address to Ryan and asked him to send a uniform over, she was sitting on the exam table while Dr. Kowalewski checked her vital signs.

"All looks good," the doctor announced. "Baby is active, yes?"

"Oh, yes," Castle chuckled, sharing a smile with his wife. "She moves around like crazy, even now that she's running out of room in there."

"Good, good." The doctor nodded, her hands moving gently over Kate's belly. "Any contractions?"

"Not really," Kate answered. "Just the Braxton-Hicks a few times a day."

"Mm. And how are you feeling otherwise, Kate? Sleep okay?"

"It's getting harder to sleep," Kate admitted. "I just can't get comfortable."

"Yes, yes, normal," Dr. Kowalewski agreed, nodding again. "Sleep sitting up, if you must. Will be fine. Now," she went on, straightening up, "as we discussed before, Kate, you are high-risk because of your age and medical history."

"Right," Kate said, and Castle nodded also.

"However, pregnancy is going very well," the doctor continued. "Mom healthy, baby healthy. All looks good. So, we are now one week past due date, and we give you one more week, then we think about inducing labor, yes?"

"Yeah." Kate grimaced. "I still hope that won't be necessary, though. I don't know if I can take another week of this."

"Well, we'll see." The doctor smiled at her. "A lot can happen in a week. Is definitely possible labor starts on its own, maybe even today. Who knows? Babies have minds of their own."

The exam concluded, Castle chatted with the doctor in the hallway while Kate fixed her clothing, and then the three of them walked back out to the waiting room together.

"Now, you speak to receptionist and make appointment for same time next week," Dr. Kowalewski told them, "but I think I will be seeing you again before then. My gut tells me this."

"Well, from what I hear, your gut is rarely wrong," Castle joked, and he and the doctor exchanged grins as the outer door opened and a new arrival walked in.

"Kyle?" Kate exclaimed, bringing Castle's head around. They were both startled to see Officer Hernandez entering the waiting room.

"Oh," Kyle said, looking just as surprised to see them as they were to see him. "Captain Beckett, I didn't know you'd be here. I was just sent over by dispatch."

"Why?" Kate asked, the back of her neck prickling with a sudden uncomfortable feeling that she wasn't going to like whatever her officer had to say.

"I'm supposed to talk to a Doctor..." Kyle paused to take out his little notebook, "...Kowalewski? About an incident at the hospital this morning."

"I am Dr. Kowalewski," the obstetrician told him. "What incident?"

"Uh, something to do with a nurse who works here." Kyle consulted his notes again. "A Susan Murphy?"

Castle and Beckett exchanged a look. "What about Susan?" Beckett asked. "Oh, hold on." She reached into her purse and pulled out her phone to check her texts.

Unis found nothing at Susan Murphy's apartment, read the message from Ryan. No one home, no sign of anything amiss. What do you want us to do?

"What are we even doing, bro?" Esposito asked as he and Ryan strode down the hospital corridor. "This seems like a major waste of our time."

"Well, it's not like we were doing much with our time back at the precinct," his partner shrugged. "There's no murder case, and between the two of us we've got Beckett's captain duties pretty well handled."

"Yeah, I guess," Espo agreed. "And Beckett seemed pretty worried about this missing nurse situation. It's probably nothing, though."

"Yeah, but do you want to be the one to tell her that?" Ryan replied, shaking his head. "The way she's been lately, since she had to go on maternity leave?"

"No way," Espo said, giving an exaggerated shudder. Ryan grinned. Not for the first time, he and his partner were in complete agreement.

"Anyway, it's not a big deal, doing a favor for our captain. Shouldn't take long," he commented. "Here we are." He knocked on a door marked HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATION.

The door opened almost immediately, revealing an older man wearing a doctor's coat and a worried expression.

"Doctor Sutherland? I'm Detective Ryan from the 12th Precinct," said Ryan. "This is my partner, Detective Esposito."

"Yes, thank you for coming so quickly, detectives," the doctor replied, shaking their hands. "Please, come into my office."

"We understand there was some kind of incident involving a nurse this morning," Esposito said as they all stepped inside and closed the door.

"Yes," Dr. Sutherland confirmed, "very upsetting." He gestured for them to sit in the guest chairs facing his desk, while he himself moved around to sit in the desk chair. "A family was leaving the hospital with their new baby, when this nurse ran up and tried to snatch the baby from the mother."

"A kidnapping attempt?" Esposito said incredulously, his eyebrows going up. "Right there in front of everyone?"

"Apparently so," the administrator said, frowning. "I understand she was yelling about 'you don't deserve her, she deserves better,' something like that, but the parents insist they don't know this woman. Never saw her before in their lives."

"Was hospital security able to detain her?" Ryan asked, although he felt pretty sure he already knew the answer. The doctor's frustrated huff and head-shake confirmed his suspicion.

"No, unfortunately, in the confusion she managed to slip away. But her ID badge tore off her lanyard and was left behind, which is how we knew that she was Susan Murphy from Dr. Kowalewski's office."

Ryan exchanged a glance with his partner. He could see that Esposito was thinking the same thing he was: this was suddenly not looking as trivial as they had thought.

"I have the security footage here, if you'd like to see it," Dr. Sutherland said, and both detectives nodded, leaning forward in their chairs.

"Yes, please."

The doctor turned his monitor toward them so they could see the video he had cued up. There was no audio, so they watched in silence as the display showed a busy hospital corridor, people coming and going. After a few seconds, the family appeared: the mother in a wheelchair holding her baby, the father pushing the wheelchair, with grandparents and two older children surrounding them as they moved toward the exit.

Suddenly, a tall figure in nurse's scrubs came into the shot, exactly as Dr. Sutherland had described. The detectives watched in amazement as she shoved the family members out of her way and grappled with the mother, attempting to wrestle the baby out of the mother's arms. The father yelled soundlessly and grabbed at the attacker's shoulder. In another moment the grandparents and several bystanders had joined the struggle, all tugging on the assailant from different angles.

At last, the woman gave up and released her hold on the baby, falling to the floor as the others grasped at her clothing. She immediately scrambled back onto her feet and dashed away, disappearing off the edge of the screen.

Ryan's skin had gone cold, his mouth dry. He stared at the screen, transfixed, barely hearing the doctor's next words - something about security guards and pursuit and escape.

When Esposito spoke, his voice was as unsteady as Ryan felt, and a glance sideways showed Ryan that his partner was gripping the armrests of his chair so hard his knuckles were white. "Can you rewind that?" Espo asked tightly. "The part where it showed her face?"

"Oh - yes, of course," the doctor said, and reached for his computer mouse. "Here, it's just the last few seconds." He replayed the recording, hitting the pause button as the escaping nurse's face filled the screen.

"Son of a..." Espo muttered.

Dr. Sutherland looked from one detective to the other, confused by their sudden distress. "Is something wrong? Have you seen Susan Murphy before?"

"That's not Susan Murphy," Ryan said slowly, forcing words out past the tight knot of dread in his throat. "And yes, we've seen her before. Her name is Megan Bailey."