Close Encounters 23: Nobody Lives For Ever

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

-'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,' Wallace Stevens

Previously on Win, Lose or Die:

Castle didn't say anything; he couldn't compete with the raucous noise of the alarm blaring out in the hallway. He just pressed his fists into the thin mattress of the cot and slid his arms under her neck and thighs, lifted her easily up.

She clutched the weapon with both hands, cradling it in the angle her body made. Her forehead pressed to his neck and she lifted her chin.

"I got your back," she said. Quiet, but loud enough that he knew.

Black reached out for the heart monitor on its little support stand, folded it up into its case, snapped it closed. He had all the bags now, and Castle had her. Not how he'd wanted this to go, not how he'd fought his father for it to go, but Black was going to do his own damn thing just to prove he could.

Fine. They had to get out of here. No time to protest; just go.

The fire alarms were screaming. It was so loud in the hallway, so piercing, that Kate felt it in her teeth, burrowing into her ears and clawing at her brain. She couldn't even lift her hands to press them over her ears because the gun was so heavy.

Along with Black, Castle had dutifully joined the procession of apartment dwellers evacuating the building, going single file, no one panicking, though they were drawing attention, Kate being carried as if she were a victim of the alleged fire.

She could see Black behind them like a carrion bird, dark and dangerous, seeking his chance to scavenge her remains. His eyes were dark in the emergency lighting, but she kept catching flickers of grey, like the worst storms in October when the wind kicked up and the leaves gusted against the windows. She saw that whirlwind in him, the skitter of night animals, his hunched shoulders like heavy black wings.

Castle's arms flexed hard under her thighs and at her back, reminding her of his presence. She saw Black but she felt Castle, how strong he was, super in a way he'd been avoiding for the last year or more. His arms were like cords, steel wire that held her to him despite every jolting step down the stairs; he wouldn't let her fall.

Kate couldn't hide her face in his neck; she couldn't. She had the gun and he was trusting her, and maybe she didn't have the strength to even raise the thing, but having it gave her a sense of security that she knew transmitted to him as well.

If they needed it, it was here.

But, shit, she felt bad. She felt so bad. The catheter itched; the closed IV port in her elbow was a permanent bruise that ached down to her joint. Her whole body felt bruised, run over, like she'd fallen off a cliff. She didn't want to even move her head to look, but she tried to at least keep aware.

Black followed behind them with the medical equipment. She kept catching glimpses of him, his eyes on her, studying, assessing, evaluating.

She couldn't bury her face in Castle's neck. They couldn't afford her weakness right now.

She was miserable; she felt miserable. She had the cold weapon so heavy in her lap, her fingers frozen solid to the flashy chrome. A drug dealer's gun, he'd said. She was having trouble swallowing, her throat was dry.

She was too much upright. Dizziness was tearing at the edges of her vision, threading her through with darkness. She tried to hang on, she was trying, but her cheek hit his shoulder and stayed, unable to be raised.

His head turned into her, a quick brush of his lips as if in forgiveness.

I'm sorry, she thought. So sorry.

They got to the third floor landing and the crowd of people thickened; someone jolted her foot and she gasped, feeling it up into her body, making her bones clatter together. Castle gripped her tighter, and that hurt too, his fingers digging into her neck and thigh where he carried her.

She sucked in a breath that felt too thin, closed her eyes for just a second. She didn't know how long that second lasted, but Castle clutched her harder.

"Coming through," he called urgently. "Coming through. She needs medical attention. Please, let us through."

She let her eyes stay closed, figuring he could use her wretchedness to his advantage, but the fire alarm was piercing, her heart was thudding out of control - she really couldn't open her eyes if she had to. She was gasping, she realized, her heart rate making her hyperventilate, and Castle wasn't lying.

"Move aside," he yelled. "Let us through. Let us get down-"

People were moving, she saw, people were actually pressing against the walls of the stairwell, and even calling ahead in French and German, gripping shoulders and elbows and pulling family members aside. Kate gasped when Castle jolted down a step, her movement turning her head so that she saw a boy holding his mother's hand, his gaze solemn and scared. She felt like shit, felt worse for seeing the kid still on the stairs as Castle pushed past them.

She was not going to cry. She was going to grit her teeth and suck in air and she wasn't going to lose it, not just going down the damn stairs.

There wasn't really a fire. There was no fire. These people were going to be fine.

Castle was saying something now, right against her temple so that she could feel the vibration of his voice, but the fire alarm was so loud, so strident, she could hear nothing but its clawing sound.

She was afraid she was going to drop the gun.

Outside the apartment building was an inferno of emergency lights, first responders, milling occupants, and confused voices. It was easy to push through the crowd and out past the cadre of vehicles, but once they got to the perimeter, Castle had to take pains to avoid the emergency personnel who might want to take Kate off his hands, thinking she was a victim of the 'fire.'

His father kept glancing at his phone and leading them resolutely towards some unknown point. His contact must be giving him directions, or there was a GPS map available, but Castle was growing less and less certain that any resource of Black's was something they should be using.

At least Beckett had their weapon in her lap, available, ready, even if she couldn't exactly keep it steady. Better than nothing, better than defenseless when they met up with this other individual.

The night strobed with red light, catching her face at odd angles so that he had to stop looking down at her. Just keep his eyes on the street ahead of them, push out of the crowd.

In the general din, Castle saw the cluttered jumble of cars and fire engines, ambulances and wandering people. Red Cross volunteers were trying to get things organized, or maybe that was some kind of city response team, but it forced Castle and Black to wind their way through the mess so they wouldn't be snagged by a well-meaning official.

Behind them, the sirens still whined, the fire alarm blared, police on bullhorns called out in French and German to evacuate the building, to stay behind the cordoned area, to please contact personnel for organization. But out of the haze of smoke ahead of them, suddenly a man appeared, coming down the street.

He was familiar.

"That's him," Black said, his voice a husk in the thick air. "Hunt."

"Hunt?" Castle hissed. He had just recognized the man, the lean, broad-shouldered figure, the air of condescension even in the uniform of a paramedic's heavy jacket. Hunt came on them in moments but he stumbled at the sight of the woman in Castle's arms.

"Beckett," he gaped. "Is she shot? I don't have equipment for-"

"Not shot," Castle growled. "Move. Move. We don't have time for you to gawk."

"She looks like hell." Hunt couldn't seem to take his eyes off of her.

"I don't need any comments from you," Castle snapped. "Go."

"Do as he says," Black added, as if he were in charge.

But he was, wasn't he? Castle didn't have much of a choice.

Hunt flashed Castle a nasty look, like two opposing fans at a football match in London, but Hunt turned first and jogged back into the relative darkness beyond. Black went after him and Castle followed, viciously pleased that he could move so quickly, that her weight was nothing at all to his augmented self. He had this. He could do whatever was necessary.

There was a damn good reason to be on the regimen; hell yes there was. He wasn't ever going to quit it, not when it could do this, when it could save her life. He'd learned his lesson; he had her - no one else - he would always come through for her.

Hunt led the way to an ambulance parked on the next block over, engine running. People still moved around them, heading toward the smoking building, but no one gave them another look. Hunt opened the back doors wide and made a move to grab the gurney. But Castle got a foot on the bumper and hauled both himself and Kate into the back, ignoring Hunt entirely.

"Fucking show off," Hunt muttered.

"You have shotgun, Black," Castle called. He turned a baleful look on Hunt. "Get in the front and drive."

Hunt saluted, smart-aleck, and moved around to the driver's door. Castle laid Beckett onto the gurney, checked her heart rate with his fingers just to be sure. She had passed out sometime before they hit the ground floor, and she hadn't regained consciousness yet. But her pulse was steady.

He took the gun from the cradle of her thighs and gripped it carefully, checked the safety before he went back to Kate. He arranged her arms against the stretcher, made sure the IV port was clear, and then he locked the wheels into place in the divots on the floor, just in case.

When he had her strapped in, and he heard the engine shift into gear, Castle glanced in bewilderment to the back doors and saw his father still struggling with the medical equipment. Black lifted his head, breathing heavily as he shoved the last bag into place, and Castle let the moment go on without offering help. Too long, maybe, long enough that Black knew - could make no mistake - who held the power here.

And then Castle leaned forward and wrapped his hand around his father's arm, hauled him up into the back of the ambulance with them. The vehicle began to move, things slid, but Castle calmly tugged the doors shut with a resounding bang.

When he turned back around, Black was in the corner, carefully avoiding even touching the gurney, his hands clutching the metal seat in a white-knuckled grip.

"You can go that way." Castle nodded to the division between the front seat and the back bay of the ambulance. "Get up front with him. There's no room back here."

His father gave the divider a despairing look, but Castle offered no mercy.

Black turned to the front and worked on getting his wrecked body over the divider and into the passenger seat.

Castle was satisfied.

For now. Best he could do.

Plus, he had the feeling that Black was physically capable of a lot more than he liked to pretend.

Kate woke, shoved by pain into awareness. Light was harsh, pushing out a black that pressed against the windows. Two windows. Small and high, and then her eyes dipped and followed the lines of metal and chrome to a wall of compartments labeled in German.

A rattle jolted her hard, and she realized she was in the back of an ambulance. They'd made it then, or at least things were going according to plan. Black's plan, but better that than the Collective getting their hands on Castle all because she couldn't even stand up on her own.

She felt better? She wasn't sure. She ached, but she felt more with it than she had in days - since that day on the park bench. With the light overhead, the back of the bus seemed empty and spacious compared to where she'd been before. She titled her head to one side and caught sight of Castle's knee.

She had the energy to lift her arm, drop her hand to the rough material of his jeans, tug.

Castle was immediately turning to her, bracing a fist beside her head on the gurney, hovering there as he studied her. "Hey there," he said, tension beginning to slide off of him as their eyes met. "You're looking better, Kate."

"Feel better," she answered. Her fingers crawled up the side of his leg and rested on his knee. He caught her hand, squeezed before putting her fingers to his lips and kissing them. She closed her eyes to gather herself, opened them again. "Where're we?"

"In an ambulance, mostly driving south. Our contact is someone you know."

"Oh?" The ride was startlingly smooth, but she figured they were traveling on the interstate now. She felt dizzy lying down like this, backwards. "I need to sit up."

His face twisted; he darted his eyes towards the front where presumably their contact and Black were, but she closed her hand tighter around his, trying to prove herself, prove she could do it.

Finally, Castle gave a brisk nod and leaned in, caught the back of the gurney as he manipulated the metal workings somewhere below. She felt it crank and then the whooshing slide of sensation in her guts as her body was levered upright.

She closed her eyes to block it out, settle her stomach, and then slowly peeled her eyelids apart, bracing herself.

But it was okay. It wasn't... wasn't good, but she could survive.

"How's that?" Castle said. He was perched on the edge of a metal bench seat, fiddling with the loose grey strap that held her to the gurney. His body didn't even move an inch as the ambulance swayed with speed. "Port and cath - they feel okay?"

"Everything's - normal, for now," she said. She had to be honest, clear with him, if she wanted him to make rational decisions about her. It was all compromise - she admitted when she felt bad, and he gave in and let her push what she could.

"Good," he breathed.

"You said I knew our contact," she prompted.

"It's Colin Hunt," he sighed.

"Damn," she muttered, leaning her head back against the raised gurney. "Are you serious? So he had to have been in the area, and Black called him - relied on him."

"He was there at the embassy when we went in after Threkeld," Castle reminded her. "So Black has been calling on him. And I wouldn't doubt that our first meeting with him in London was set up."

"Black giving him a chance to get close to us?" Kate said, idle question, really. But then something a little more insidious came to mind.

Hunt had been quite... persuasively aggressive with her. She hadn't - of course she hadn't - given him any indication that she was willing to take him up on it, and Castle had most assuredly proved she wasn't available, but that hadn't stopped Hunt. Hands on her during that dance, pushing her professionally to do something that had turned out to be questionable at best.

Probably, she thought now, he'd been on orders from Black. See if she could have been compromised. See if she could've been persuaded to release her claws.

It had been a test.

But she didn't tell Castle that. There was attraction, of course, the kind from like-minded people, but on her part it was such a dim flicker on her radar that she hadn't realized quite how aggressive Hunt had been. Not until the night they'd freed Threkeld, the night of the embassy with those strange touches, inappropriate, confusing, nearly humiliating. She'd been pregnant. If anything should say hands off...

Still trying to compromise her on orders from Black?

Or something else.

"We're headed for the border," Castle told her quietly. It brought her straight back to here and now, to an ambulance rushing through the late evening darkness. "We can't cross in an ambulance, even with the borders so open in the EU; there'd have to be papers for patient transfer. So that's out."

"Yeah," she agreed. "And damn conspicuous. If the Collective really is out there, closing in on us - won't take them too long to figure out we've slipped the net."

"But we do have a head start," he asserted. "We just have to find a way to keep it."

"You said it before," she told him. Her head was starting to swim, dizziness wanting to claim her even as she sat up. She didn't want to lie back down; she hated being flat out and defenseless. "We don't want to give them a clear trail. They can't find the ambulance, can't know where we cross the border either."

"We'll stop before then," he promised. "But how do we cross?"

"Give me a couple days," she insisted. "Let's hole up in some border town, Rick, and let me just - sleep it off - and then I can sit up in a car to cross and they won't look at us twice."

He frowned. "Sleep it off. This is a little more serious than a hangover, Beckett. I want you in a hospital - at home - soon as possible. Not holed up in a border town."

She studied the tangle of their fingers together, worked to adjust her mindset. He was right; she couldn't pretend otherwise. She had to help him, not hinder him. They worked best together and if he thought she was being reckless with her health, he was going to stop listening to her altogether.

"You're right about that," she said quietly. "This is serious. For all of us, not just me. We're going to have to weigh the risks on either side."

"There's only you," he rasped, bringing her hand up with his as he pressed his fingers to his eyes. He looked ready to fall apart, and she'd done that, pushed him there.

Kate curled her hand at his nose where her fingers were tangled with his, tried to do what she could. "There's all of us," she insisted softly. "You, me, our son. My father. The boys and Lanie and Jenny and that little girl-"

"Stop," he husked.

"Babe, I know, I'm sorry. But this is where we are. We - we need help, Castle, and this is what we've got. We're not all alone out here - not in the danger and the risks, but that also means we're not far from help. Even Hunt is - an asset."

"He's a fucking asshole is what he is."

She tugged on his fingers and he dropped his hand, still holding on to hers. She gave him a stern face. "Don't estrange Hunt by being possessive and belligerent; we need someone on our side. Because God knows Black isn't."

Castle rocked back, face blank for a moment before he slowly nodded, like he was gathering himself together, iron strand by iron strand, composing himself. "Okay. Point taken."

She let out a breath and studied his face to be sure. He might be a man on the edge, but he wasn't going to break apart. She could trust that. "We have resources," she insisted. "We have people. People we can trust, people who aren't your father."

"You think we can trust Hunt?"

"Not as far as I can throw him," she muttered. "Which is nowhere at all, considering I'm strapped into the back of an ambulance."

Castle gave a hollow laugh, catching her eyes as he shook his head at her. "Babe."

"True," she shrugged. "But we work for the CIA, Castle. Let's think of options. Come up with a plan. We can't keep making defensive moves - that's what Black is relying on."

"Proactive," he said, nodding. "You're right. That was my thought earlier too, but then he just sprang this shit on us, the fire alarm going off, rushing out. That's what he intended, and I know that, but it didn't give us any choice in it."

"But now we do," she insisted, fighting back another wave of breath-stealing dizziness. She stopped to concentrate, focus on the next breath, and she had to squeeze his hand. "Castle, I'm - sorry - sorry, but I think I'm gonna pass out."

He cursed and she felt him jerking into action, felt the thump of the bed lowering and her body going flat, but the sensation of swimming didn't leave her, sucked down by a current. She squeezed Castle's fingers, fought it off, fought to stay with him.

A plan. They needed a plan; he needed her. He looked sick with fear over her and that couldn't be their default right now. Fuck, she wasn't going to be able to stay.

"Call someone," she said, her mouth like rubber around the words. "Call for help."

"You need help? God-"

"No," she groaned, tried to clutch his hand. "No, no. The plan, the plan, Castle."

"The plan."

"Call Mitch," she breathed out. "Mitch can meet us. Mitch can - can get it all set up."

"Mitchell is head of security on our son."

"Mitch," she repeated, but she was afraid she was losing it, losing the threads of everything. Why Mitch? Why had she thought...

"Kate?"

Oh, it was no good. She was falling.

Don't alienate Hunt. Don't be belligerent.

Right.

Beckett couldn't possibly think Castle could do that. Last time they'd met, the man had felt up his pregnant wife. Belligerence was pretty much the only thing Castle was capable of, since outright strangling the asshole wouldn't be a good idea.

Kate was unconscious, but now that her head was down and she was lying flat, he could see her lashes fluttering as she came around again. Only five minutes that time, which meant she was actually better, recovering, or at least that she was holding her own, not giving ground.

He had connected the heart monitor again, and the little green numbers were reassuring.

Make a plan. Call someone. She'd said Mitch, but Mitch had a team on their son in New York and he couldn't pull him off of that. He wanted to say Mason was a better option. Mason had called them with the fake emergency that had gotten them out of the office last Thursday; Mason could be relied on in an operation like this.

But Mason didn't have full knowledge here, and Mason had a wife. Castle had been forced to let him in on a few things, but it wasn't fair of them to put the burden of Black on anyone else. There was a Catch/Kill order out on John Black and keeping back location information was treasonous.

Mitchell wasn't CIA any longer. Mitchell could get here without having to ask permission, without needing a made-up reason or presidential approval. Mitchell wasn't married.

Damn, Kate was right. Mitchell was pretty much the only one they could rope into this and not burn bridges, not ruin careers. Reynolds - no, they couldn't. Too much had been taken from Reynolds, and he was their man in the Office right now. Her boys? They had changed careers for Beckett, followed her to the CIA, and he wouldn't ruin that by dragging them overseas.

Esposito was going to absolutely murder him, though. He could hear it now.

But Beckett would murder him worse if he called Espo to be their back-up. Shit. She would not be happy with that, and his life was fucking forfeit if he did that.

Mitchell had his own security company, Mitchell had the field training and tactical skills to pull this off, Mitchell knew what he'd be walking into with Castle's father, and it could be argued that Mitchell was already culpable where Black was concerned. Damn.

Mitchell.

Damn it.

Mitchell had good people working the security detail on their son. Mitchell had even gotten Walker to work the alarm systems and outfit them with the latest shit, top of the line, cutting edge stuff. Jim Beckett had to have a thumbprint and voice passcode just to get in the damn front gate of his own cabin upstate.

Castle slid his phone out of his pocket and hovered his thumb over the message app. He wasn't even touching it, but the screen sensed his body heat and opened it without his say, waiting.

Fuck, she was right. They needed help, they had to make a plan, and relying on Black's operatives and contacts was not a good idea.

Castle touched the text field and the keyboard slid onscreen.

Mitch, need your help to border-cross. Can you get here?

He hit send, watched it go, the little vibration in his hand when it was delivered. He lifted his head and stared forward, saw his father and Hunt talking softly in the front seat.

Yeah, Kate was right. Black had just made it two against two, and that wasn't good. Castle needed to bring their own resources to bear on this. They might be reliant on Black's medical knowledge of the regimen and the advanced chelation, but they weren't reliant on his methods.

Castle had to get out in front of this thing, make it his own again.