Close Encounters 5

The dream shook him, pitched him forward until the body that was curled up into his actually stopped him. Woke him.

"Kate," he rasped.

He could - almost - see her. Her face. Her beautiful face. Almost.

Her eyes were closed.

"Kate."

He drew in an agony of breath, let it out into the swirling, frozen air. He bent his elbow and dragged his hand up to cup her cheek. But he could only manage to stumble at her shoulder.

His body drifted, his mind.

He leaned against the icy side of the boxcar. The relief trembled like snowflakes through his muscles and banked the last of his energy out into nothing.

Kate.

She was stiff against him. She was breaking with cold in his arms and he couldn't even lift his hand to touch her face. One last - one last time, Kate.

This was wrong. A blanket of darkness layered down over him.

But he could do nothing to stop it.

He woke with a pounding rush of adrenaline and jerked upright; hands pushed him back down.

"Don't move. You've got a case of hypothermia. Sir, please, stay where you are."

The world resolved slowly, pieces fitting back together, and he felt the throbbing in his hands and feet, the ache in his chest.

"Kate. Where's Kate?" And then he remembered and cleared his throat, realized his training had kicked in automatically. He was speaking French; they were speaking French as well. He hadn't - until just this moment - realized what was going on.

"Sir, you need to lie down."

Cover. They had a cover. Stick to the cover.

"I'm a police officer. My-" What was the word? "-informant. Where is she?"

"The woman. Yes. She's in the ambulance next-"

He jerked upright again, pulled the IV out of his arm. "She's under my protection."

A new face was at the back of the ambulance, blocking his way. "You have some ID, sir?"

He groaned and he pushed a hand to his head, pretended he was too rough to immediately respond. He felt for his weapon and realized it'd been confiscated, probably hers as well. The IDs, where. . .

"Here," he grunted, got to his feet on the back bumper of the ambulance. He reached slowly into his inside coat pocket, left his other hand up in surrender. "I'm reaching for my ID. I'm an undercover police officer and the woman is in my protection."

The man at the foot of the ambulance moved back; Castle saw his hand twitch on his weapon, but he didn't draw, didn't seem to be that trigger-happy either. He found the false ID and handed it over.

The man looked at it carefully, inspected it with a detail-oriented eye. Castle let his face reveal nothing, but made a show of looking for the other ambulance.

It wasn't entirely for show. He wanted to get to Kate.

"Seems to be in order," the man hesitated.

"I need to go. I have to get her out of here. She's not safe - neither of us are safe staying here."

"You need medical attention," the paramedic said, reaching forward.

Castle side-stepped him and focused his attention on the officer before him. Regular clothes, scruffy looking, so he'd been called out of bed for this or perhaps had been at the police station for entirely too long.

"I have to get her out of here," he said evenly. "My cover was blown and she helped hide me, protect me. I owe her."

That seemed to do it. The concept of owing a debt struck a chord and the man nodded, let him move past.

Castle felt the catch in his bones as his feet jarred to the pavement. The man fell into step with him. "You guys saw the guns?" Castle asked.

The man gave a cautious nod.

"Drugs too?" he said, trying to be low key in his delivery, not arouse suspicion. Just a good cop reporting what he'd discovered.

The man nodded again, gestured towards the ambulance parked a block down. "She's there. I'd like to ask you a question. Before you go."

Castle paused, his eyes on that ambulance. "Ask away."

"When we found you. . .You are lovers? You love this woman and she loves you and you are both getting out of the undercover business?"

His heart flipped and he turned to look at the man. A romantic then, a French police detective who was a romantic at heart, looking to help out two lovers.

"Yes," he said gravely. It was true - to what extent it could be true at all. They would get out before something got them. They would.

The man nodded. "I can't give you back your weapons. But you are free to go with her. You might want to find a sympathetic doctor at a clinic just opening for the morning. You both have frostbite; you need to massage your toes and fingers, keep the blood flowing. You understand?"

"I understand," he said quietly.

This man thought he'd turned - flipped to the other side when he'd fallen in love with the beautiful informant - that she'd come to his aid despite that and yet they had been caught. . .

And it made such a nice story, that Castle let him continue to believe it.

He opened the back door of the ambulance and there she was.

She rocked forward but held herself back at the last moment, her eyes burning at the sight of him, her fingers clutching the emergency blanket around her shoulders. But Castle dragged her into his arms and crushed her against his chest and it was okay.

"You're alive," she gasped into his neck. He clutched her tighter and she pulled back only far enough to find his mouth with hers. She was relentless, cupping his face in her miserably-cold hands and shivering as she pushed her tongue inside his mouth.

Graceless, not clever, awkward, but she didn't care. They were alive. She couldn't not touch him; she ached all over and his mouth was doing the job of thawing her out.

He pushed her back with his hands at her blanket-draped shoulders, his mouth slack and his eyes glittering. She felt her body curling towards his, but she straightened up, forced herself to be a professional. Her leather jacket was gone - probably still on the floor of that refrigerated container - and the cold was down in her bones despite the blanket the paramedic had wrapped her in.

He said something in French that she didn't have the wherewithal to catch, let alone translate mentally, but he only drew her down and off the back of the ambulance.

An official-looking man was there and he nodded to her, said something about love or lovers, and she shot a startled look to Castle.

This time when he spoke, her brain kicked in with an adequate translation.

"It's okay," he said simply. "He knows. We're okay."

And then Castle laced their fingers together and she let out a little breath of relief almost automatically, even though she had no idea what story he'd told the detective.

"He's letting us go," Castle said again, his French brisk and colloquial and she was having to strain to follow.

Hypothermia, had to be. She was usually better than this.

She stayed at his side, clutching the blanket crookedly over her shoulders, their hands clasped because it seemed to be expected - whatever story he'd told - and the detective led them past the cordon and back to the sidewalk where scanty onlookers had paused.

A few people looked at them, but Kate kept her eyes down as she and Castle walked away, realized she was still shivering and couldn't stop - might never be warm again, the way it felt.

When they'd gone a few blocks, Castle moved to release her hand, but she wouldn't let go. "I'm cold," she explained. "Can't stop shivering. My fingers are killing me."

"Mine too," he grimaced. "It feels like my bones are made of broken icicles. Sharp and pointy."

"So poetic," she murmured, felt the laugh bubble up in her like hysteria. She clamped her lips shut and Castle pushed her hand into his coat pocket. She wasn't sure she'd make it back to their little apartment with just the emergency blanket; the night wind was brutal and managed to crawl inside her clothes.

"I went with the cover we talked about," he said quietly. "And the detective was suspicious."

"The ID you had didn't-"

"No, it worked. But he couldn't seem to make sense of how we'd gotten locked in that freezer."

She shivered again, her muscles quivering at the joints of her bones. She could feel her teeth chattering still. It was damn cold and she knew half of it was still just in her head, but it didn't seem to make a difference to the ice that enclosed her.

"He asked me if we were going to get out, hide out together. He thought we had to be lovers, and I could tell by the way he carefully didn't say things that he thought I'd betrayed my training when I'd met you."

Beckett let out a long breath, felt the laugh skitter in her lungs. "That's not entirely wrong, is it?" she asked, glancing over at him.

His mouth dropped open in surprise, and then he closed it, shaking his head. But it was true.

She squeezed his hand. "Okay. So he thinks we fell in love inside this criminal organization, and we've escaped now and we're riding off into the sunset?"

He did laugh then, a dry chuckle that made her realize his throat was still raw. She could feel the scrape of his skin at the back of his hand inside his coat pocket. He had damage from the cold then too; they needed to get inside quickly.

"Sounds about right," Castle said then, shrugging. "I don't know about you, but I don't care what he thinks about my loyalties. I just want to crawl into bed with you and be warm again."

"Me too," she said quietly.

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and turned to her, his eyes showing her everything, churning with it like drowning. She knew they were both barely keeping their heads above water.

He wrapped his free arm around her neck and crushed her against him once more. She went, burrowing closer, and tried to erase all memory of the last few hours.

"We're going back to Cyprus," he said gruffly. "It's warm there and I have the villa for another few days. We need a break."

She nodded into his embrace and battled back the sudden urge to cry. "Get me home, Castle."

He couldn't help it; he felt like his hands were stiff and his bones were brittle with it.

"I'm not a clingy person usually," she said suddenly. Her whole body was draped over his in the hot tub, her knees at his ribs, her cheek rubbing against his. She turned her head and pushed her face into his neck once more, her breathing slow and steady.

"Me either," he sighed. "But I'm - I don't think I can let you go."

He realized she was shivering despite the boiling heat of the water and the sun that pressed down over the back patio. The villa had been a welcome sight this morning when they'd arrived in Cyprus, still in their coats and layers, fingers tangled together as they stood in the doorway. He'd suggested the hot tub and they hadn't moved since.

"This might be dangerous," she murmured.

"It's only been forty minutes," he said back, clutching her a little tighter. But she was right. It couldn't be good for them to stay in the hot tub for much longer. "Okay, let's - I don't know. What's a good motivation to get us out of here?"

"Sex."

He barked a laugh and felt her smiling against him; he trailed his palm up her back and into her hair, kissed her cheek. She shifted and met his mouth, teased her tongue inside, a soft and slow stroke that had him slowly sitting up.

She hooked her ankles at his back and wrapped her arms around his neck, leaned away to look at him. "Castle, I don't know what to say."

"Who needs words?"

She huffed and shook her head at him, the water bubbling around them, the sunlight framing her damp hair and making it shine golden. She pressed her palms against his chest and leaned in to kiss him softly again.

"Kate?"

"It's a lot, Castle. It's just a lot." She pressed her lips together and slid her leg off his lap, stood up in the hot tub. Goose bumps crawled up her skin but she reached for one of the towels at the side and clutched it to her chest as she got out of the tub.

He watched her for a moment, gathering his courage to leave the heated water, and then he followed her out.

"Hey, Kate?" He called after her, rubbing the towel across his chest and shutting the sliding glass door behind him. The sunlight made the whole villa look bright and white and clean, but he felt cold still.

She turned at the stairs with the towel shrugged over her shoulders, the wet ends of her hair curling at her skin. "Rick, I just - I made a lot of mistakes and I'm to blame for how that ended up-"

"I was the idiot who retreated to a refrigerated boxcar," he muttered, wadding the towel up in one hand.

She shook her head. "But you wanted to kill them. I'm the one that can't do this, Rick. I can't - I just can't do this."

He felt it clutch at him, a fist around his lungs, and as she turned to leave for the bedroom, he reached out and grabbed her. "Kate. Please."

"I'm supposed to have your back but I nearly got us killed. We were dead, we were frozen-"

He hooked his arm around her neck and dragged her against him, skin to skin, wet and cold now, but he couldn't let her go. "You didn't, Kate. Not your fault. Your plan worked, it was working, and I should've thought to keep better track of our targets. They shouldn't have sneaked up on us like that."

She shook her head against him like she was going to argue it, but he squeezed her tighter.

"You think my plan would've been any better, Kate? You were there in Copenhagen. Shit happens. It doesn't work like we plan, so we make a new plan."

"Copenhagen nearly killed me," she groaned.

He stiffened and she squeezed his biceps, a strangled laugh coming out of her mouth.

"No, no. I'm sorry. Not - well, yes, literally. But I meant, it was brutal. I thought it couldn't get any worse, those men dying and I keep hearing them scream, the smell of burned flesh, and I just wanted it to be different this time. I just wanted it to be different, Rick."

He let out a breath. "I know. I know, Kate. There's - this is just - this isn't the life I wanted for you."

She stepped back, her eyes dark on his. "I don't know what my life is anymore. I can't be a cop until this thing with Bracken is over, and I make a lousy agent."

He stared at her and she shook her head, pressed a hand into her eye as she turned for the stairs.

He clenched his fists and fought back the urge to grab her again. "Are you - leaving?"

She turned at the top of the stairs, tilting her head at him. "Leaving?"

He hurried up after her, shoved down the irrational need to touch her. "Nothing. Nothing. I just - we're working on Bracken. I swear. This won't be forever, Kate, and I like having you with me. I feel safer when you have my back."

"Even getting us locked into a boxcar?" she muttered.

He couldn't help himself; he had to close his fingers around her wrist for just that one vital connection, feel her pulse pounding under her skin. "We'll figure it out. Go back to doing milk runs."

She shook her head. "Your father said you-"

"Screw him. We can take a break from the intense stuff, the stuff you can't handle."

Her eyes flashed at him. "I'm not saying I can't handle it. I'm saying it's wrong, Castle. It's wrong to go from upholding the law to flagrantly violating it. Like there are no rules at all, no values. My parents taught me that the ends don't always justify the means."

He grit his teeth. "Obviously, mine didn't."

She shivered and stepped away from him. "Look. I'm freezing. Let me get dressed before we fight."

He followed her back to the bedroom. "I don't want to fight with you."

She yanked a pair of sweatpants out of the bag, grabbed a clean tshirt after it. He watched for a moment, but she didn't seem to want to talk to him any further. So Castle pulled out his own clothes and stripped out of his trunks, dressed quickly in the silence.

Beckett slid into bed and he stared at her. It was still daylight; it wasn't even-

"Crawl in with me, Rick."

His feet hastened to obey before he could even think about it, one way or another. He was curling in behind her and pressing his body close, and she took his arms and pulled them around her, burrowed back into him.

"I'm just cold," she said finally. "Bone deep. Soul deep cold. I just need a day or so to get warm. And then I'll be fine. I'll be fine. I can handle it. I promise."

He nudged her neck with his nose and drew his legs up behind hers, closed his eyes.

He just wanted to have her. He wouldn't ask for anything more; she could go back to New York or she could demand that he never kill another target again. Whatever she wanted. He just wanted her.

She stroked his forearm and stayed silent until she felt him finally fall asleep at her back. She didn't move though, because she knew for sure it would wake him. But she relaxed a little more and brought his arm in tighter against her chest.

It wasn't that she didn't love him. That would never be the problem.

It was the cold-blooded assassination of a group of people she knew absolutely nothing about. Supposed terrorists, allegedly in league with this arms dealer Foley whom Castle had put away. And it wasn't that she didn't believe him when he said they were bad people, it was just-

She was trained to think differently.

Her parents - her own mother was a defense lawyer who'd been murdered trying to give an admittedly bad guy the chance to have a fair hearing for the crime he'd been wrongfully found guilty of. Pulgatti had been a mobster - no one denied that - but the thing that sent him to jail wasn't something he'd actually done.

And it wasn't right; it wasn't justice. It meant the real criminal went free, and the system had become cheapened by the way it'd been subverted for someone else's profit. It was supposed to serve the people - all people.

But espionage wasn't serving people. It was setting out blind and in the dark to do the bidding of some master plotter, himself being run by politicians. There wasn't a code or a set of laws, really. There was just murky shadows and sinister, unformed threats that had to be dealt with immediately.

She didn't know if she could do this.

She could handle it; that wasn't it. She could handle whatever they threw at her. She wasn't weak; she wasn't scared or stupid or panicked. She had the intelligence and the capabilities and the fortitude to do what needed to be done.

She just wasn't proud of it. She wasn't settled in it.

None of it sat right with her, and honestly, she was surprised that Castle had given it so little thought before now, so little thought even when they'd entered that building.

He'd gone into spy mode and his eyes had been flat and lifeless and it had squeezed a fist around her heart.

That was the real cold. That was why she couldn't get warm.

And even as he slept at her back, a heavy heat that flushed through her skin, she still didn't know what to do about the ice in her soul that wouldn't crack, wouldn't thaw, no matter how warm she was.

There was no honor in being a spy.

Kate sighed and turned in his embrace so she could see him, trace her fingers at his cheeks, softly, lightly, carefully. He was a beautiful man, deep down as well as handsome. He loved so passionately, had such capacity for tenderness and mercy, gave his love with abandon and joy and selflessness.

She wanted more for him than this.

She wanted him to quit.

Kate buried her face against his shoulder to keep the tears from squeezing out, breathed in raggedly even as her cheeks burned and her throat closed up with it.

She wanted him to stop being a spy and come home with her. For good.

He woke to an empty bed, a strange noise somewhere at his back, and Beckett shoving on his shoulder.

"Esposito," she said and he jerked upright, realized she'd answered his phone.

She was sitting down now at his hip, her eyes narrowed as she looked at him, like this was his fault. Whatever this was.

"No, he's right here. But why don't you tell me first?" she gritted out.

Ohhhh, ok. So he'd somehow hijacked her boys, her team. Yeah, that was his fault. What could he say? The CIA gadgets and his natural charm had won them over.

Her mouth dropped open and her body stiffened, her hand in a claw at his shoulder. "No. Oh, God. Is he okay?"

Castle's mouth tightened, but Kate pressed her hand over her forehead and hid her eyes from him.

"He - okay. But he's - right. Espo, get a unit on his hospital room, a protective-"

She stopped again and Castle leaned in, pushed his head up next to hers so he could hear. She tilted the phone out towards him and he barely caught Espo's next words.

"Smith's not saying anything. And Gates has to approve everything around here; every piece of paper goes by her desk. There's no way I can get that done."

Castle grabbed for the phone, but Kate pushed him away, held him off with her hand and a shake of her head. "They found Smith at his place - he'd been worked over. He's in the hospital. But it doesn't look good."

He growled. "We're going home then. Right now. Get a move on. Espo," he called out, snatching the phone from Kate before she could put him off. "Espo, call in to Black - Ryan has the number. Give-"

"Dude. Ryan's in the hospital."

"What?" he snarled, jerking his eyes back to Kate. She had her arms wrapped around her torso.

"He came in on whoever it was doing the interrogation. Put up a fight, and I was only five minutes behind. I came in, scared the guy off."

"How is Ryan?" Castle said, his stomach churning at the look on Kate's face.

"He'll make it. Face is banged up. A few broken ribs. Holding him for observation."

"Beckett and I will be there in fifteen hours," he said, already moving towards the suitcase and throwing clothes inside. "Fifteen hours, Espo. Keep watch on Smith yourself, got me?"

"Ryan-"

"Ryan will live. You stay outside Smith's door. You Special Forces guys can do fifteen hour stints, can't you?"

He heard Espo growl and nodded to himself.

"Esposito, don't let it be for nothing. We don't get answers out of Smith, then we lose the progress we've made."

"I got it," Esposito said. "I'm on it."

Castle hung up the phone and turned, waited until Kate met his eyes, and then he tossed it towards her. "Call the CIA help desk. We need a flight."

"But aren't you supposed to do that?"

"Yes. But I don't really care. I have to get this place clean - no trace of we were ever here - and you're my partner. Call and get us a direct flight home."

She had a pinched set to her eyes that he didn't like, but she nodded and entered the number from heart.

He grabbed a ratty tshirt and began wiping down all the flat surfaces, erasing their existence from the villa.

Kate realized she was clenching her fists so tightly that her nails were making half-moon impressions in her palms. The sting of blood made her gasp and open her fingers to see the damage.

Castle's hand came over hers, his thumb soothing, and the bump of turbulence made him crowd into her for a moment. She gave in to the feeling and pressed her cheek to his shoulder, let him cradle her hand.

This wasn't how she'd wanted to get him home, not at the cost of Ryan's-

"Hey," he murmured. "We're close. We're really close, Kate. It's nearly over."

She wanted to believe that was true, but she wasn't sure she could keep getting her hopes up. She wanted her life back; she wanted her desk at the 12th and her boys following her orders and not doing CIA spywork and getting put in the hospital for it. She wanted to go home at the end of a long day and take a bath and not have to worry about who had followed her or what fingerprints she'd left or if there were cameras watching her even then.

She wanted Castle in her bed and not out here making questionable moral decisions.

But at what price?

Ryan was in the hospital with broken ribs and Smith was near death. There was a file out there somewhere that might have the evidence they needed to take Bracken out once and for all, but she could already sense that the cost would be high.

The cost might be too much for her to bear.

"Kate, I swear. We will get him," he murmured then, his mouth at her temple. "I'll get him. He'll pay for all of this. I promise you."

It wasn't enough, wasn't nearly good enough. She clutched his jacket and pressed her face into his shoulder, closed her eyes.

"But I love you," she said finally. "I just love you."

And that had to be enough.

so ends Close Encounters 5: The World Is Not Enough

stay tuned for Close Encounters 6: You Only Live Twice

The construction site was covered mostly in thick plastic sheeting to keep out the elements; looters had been through at one point and stripped out the copper wiring, leaving gaping holes in the sheetrock. They'd lost their funding midway through the project, if Beckett remembered correctly, and now it languished.

She, Castle and the boys stepped carefully into the remains of the ground floor, mindful of debris, and she pulled the weapon Castle had given her from his own stash. Her service weapon was still in the 12th's safe, but she liked the feel of this one.

Ahead of her, his own Glock drawn, Castle paused and held up his fist for them to stop. She halted at his back and felt her team do the same. Castle jerked his head towards the open doorway and pointed to his eyes and then back to the space beyond.

She nodded and Castle crept forward while her team was in ready. He eased to the doorway and then widened his eyes and held up one finger.

A man. One man.

Beckett turned to her team and they followed at her command; she brought Espo and Ryan into the shadow at Castle's side and they waited for his signal.

Castle framed the door next to her, while her boys were across from them. The hallway led over onto a former ground floor apartment. Beckett sneaked a look, gave it a quick study, and closed her eyes as she pulled back, memorizing the layout.

The man had been kneeling on the floor; he looked familiar - so damn familiar. She wasn't sure from where, but she thought she'd seen him. Either as a suspect in Castle's long briefing when they'd arrived stateside this morning, or attached to Bracken as some kind of security detail.

But either way - there was no doubt he was Bracken's man.

"They bug the hospital room?" Castle murmured in her ear.

She shook her head and shrugged. No way of knowing how this guy had gotten here ahead of them. "Most likely," she mouthed.

He set a grim line and then he held up a hand to the boys - both Esposito and Ryan looked like they were chomping at the bit, but Beckett figured they could let this guy do all the work, nail him when he came out.

Suddenly Castle stiffened and she heard the sound - telltale clicking, like a connection being made - and Castle was hurtling himself towards her.

The explosion punched them both back; Castle landed on top of her with a grunt and his eyes closed, his forehead smashing into her chin. She gripped his shirt even as debris rained down on them. Through the smoke and haze, she saw confetti.

Bright, brilliant lines of numbers and letters and photographs in tiny, parade-like pieces, drifting down over them like snow.

The file.

Close Encounters 6 - coming to an alert near you