467. Chapter 467

After A Deadly Game, Part Five

Episode 2.24

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: In case there's anyone who is not aware of this, I don't own Castle. Rating: K Time: See above.

Kate didn't miss her bedtime by much. Tory had some colleagues who she wanted to help her tweak the facial recognition software, but they couldn't be there until tomorrow. The Arabic translator could probably be there tomorrow, but perhaps not. The calls to the CIA and the military had been answered by bored voices who had promised that someone would get back to them.

After the excitement of finding something, anything, that related to Castle's disappearance, Kate felt deflated.

She felt Martha's arm go around her shoulder. "Come on, Kiddo. We'll get dinner, have a glass or two of wine and get a good night's sleep. We'll get them tomorrow, okay?"

Kate nodded sadly and let Martha lead her to the elevator and out of the precinct. Everyone else was knocking off for the night as well.

Once at the loft, Kate ate silently, as did Martha and Alexis.

"He's coming back, Kate." Martha said suddenly. "I know it. He's coming back to us."

"He's coming back to you." She replied softly.

"No, dear. He cares very deeply for you. He's coming back for us. For you. Don't you ever think he isn't."

After dinner, Kate crawled into Castle's bed. This time she wrapped her arms around his pillow and held it. If only I could be holding him instead of the pillow. Why did I wait so long? But she knew why she had waited. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Tory Ellis and her colleagues were hard at work when Kate got to the precinct. Although Kate had a fair understanding of computers and facial recognition software, she was pretty lost listening to the geek talk. After a couple of hours, though, one thing was clear. They were getting nowhere.

Tory looked glum as she spoke to Kate. "We've tweaked the software dozens of different ways and we've even used some entirely different software. Sometimes we do better than a fifty percent match and sometimes we do worse, but it's all close to fifty percent. And that's not anywhere near close enough to say it's Castle. Oh, and the GPS data from the video was scrubbed."

Kate nodded. "Thanks. I really appreciate this. I'd really like to thank…"

Tory held up her hand. "Wait, we're not done. We're running facial recognition on the other two non-Saudis and on all of the Saudis. We're also doing voice recognition on the narrator. And, we're working on anything that might tell us where or who these people are. The Saudis do have what look like name tapes and unit insignias on their uniforms. We hope that the translator can help with those. One of the guys knows a professor at Hudson who's an expert on Arab militaries. We're asking him to help. Don't give up, Detective. We aren't done yet."

The translator, when she showed up later that afternoon, was able to help. She said that the Arabic accent of the narrator was definitely Saudi and was able to translate the name tapes, although most were fairly common surnames. She described the narration as pretty standard propaganda: "Our noble forces are bravely standing guard over our beloved nation, protecting it from the hordes of heretics that would ravage our land." It's so generic that it could be used for any branch the military."

"One other thing, Detective Beckett, the geography. The area in the video is rather mountainous. Southern Iraq, Kuwait, eastern Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States are pretty flat. But, Oman, Yemen and western Saudi Arabia are mountainous." She shrugged. "It might help."

Both the CIA and the Department of Defense told them that they would neither confirm nor deny any reports of operations. The Saudi Embassy was more polite, but insisted on referring everything back to the capital, Riyadh. And Riyadh never replied.

So, in spite of all of the work and all of the experts, Kate still had idea what had happened to Rick. She found herself sitting in Mayor Bob Weldon's office explaining what she had found.

"Can you help me find Castle?" She finished.

Weldon nodded slowly. "I can try. I know a lot of people in DC, including a couple of people on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence."

Kate sat in his office for hours while Weldon chatted with politicians, staff members, bureaucrats, think tank members and people whose function wasn't stated. In the end, it was all fruitless. Either no one knew anything, or no one was telling what they knew.

Weldon put his hand on her shoulder as she left. "Detective Beckett, if there's anything else I can do for you, let me know."

Almost in tears, Kate thanked him and left.

Kate called Special Agent Jordan Shaw, who remembered her and called a number of her contacts, but when she called Kate back, she had no further information.

Two days after that, Kate and Espo met with a friend of Espo's, a retired Special Forces warrant officer named Charles Grant, who had worked recently with the Saudis. He confirmed the information they had from the video and was able to provide just one more piece of information.

"I know that one." He said, pointing to a Saudi in the video. Raif Badawi, a Bedouin and a member of the Saudi Special Forces. I worked with him just before I retired. He's a good man. Bedouins right out of the desert usually do well."

"Can you get in touch with him?" Kate asked quickly.

Grant shrugged and pulled out his phone. He made an international call and spoke in Arabic. "No go. I spoke with his brother. He told me Raif is on operations. I asked when he would be back and all it got was insh Allah, God willing. In other words, he doesn't know."

"Or won't say." Espo said bitterly.

That evening, Kate went back to the loft earlier than usual, ate quietly and went to bed. She curled up with Castle's pillow and tried to sleep. There are so many things I should have said to Castle. So much I should have done. And so much I shouldn't have said and shouldn't have done. When he comes back I'll change. I'll treat him differently. The first thing I'll do is kiss him senseless and then I'll tell how I feel about him. Hugging his pillow she drifted off to sleep.

For the next two weeks Kate went through the motions of reviewing Castle's case, but her heart wasn't in it. She had gone over the files repeatedly. There was nothing new to find. She found herself looking at Castle's chair and looking up at about the time he would have brought her coffee. She found herself wondering if Castle would have thought the latest murder was a mob hit or the assassination of a spy? A zombie killer? A cyborg?

She was woken very early one morning by someone trying to climb into bed with her. She tried to turn over to face whoever it was, but got tangled in the sheets.

"Pumpkin? Are you in my bed?"

"Castle?" She screamed.

"Beckett? What are you doing here? What do you want?"

The light came on and she saw Castle standing there, sunburned, bearded, and thinner than when she had last seen him, but it was Castle. She knew exactly what to do.

"You. I want you." She pushed the sheets aside, put both her arms around his neck and kissed him. They were still kissing when she heard Martha and Alexis coming, screaming, "Richard?" "Dad?"

Kate found herself in a group hug and all three women were talking at once.

Finally, Castle turned to her. "What are you doing here?"

"I want my partner."

"Shouldn't you be looking in Robbery?"

I deserved that. She thought. She shook her head vigorously. "I broke up with Demming so I could go to the Hamptons with you. But you never came back and I was so mad at you and then Martha called and I was worried and then we saw you being taken away by four men and I was scared and I've been terrified for the last two months and…." In a great rush, words spilled out of Kate's mouth. All of the things she'd wanted to tell him she finally said.

Finally she started repeating herself and Castle put his finger over her lips.

"Richard, where have you been?" Martha, who had been ecstatic at her son's return a few minutes before was now angry that he'd tried to sneak into the loft without anyone knowing.

"I can't tell you."

"Richard!" She said angrily.

"It's for your own safety. Now, I'm worn out and exhausted. Since Beckett is in my bed, I'll sleep in the guest room." He started to get up, but Kate was holding onto him too tightly.

"No. You'll stay here with me." She said determinedly.

"Beckett…" He began, but saw he wouldn't win the argument.

"We should let these two get some sleep, Alexis." Martha led her granddaughter off.

"We don't have to do anything." Kate said. "I just want to be with you."

"I'm so worn out I couldn't do anything anyway. I'll just sleep on top of the covers."

Before he could say any more, Kate was pulling off his shoes and socks, then undid his belt and pulled his pants off and then his shirt.

She snuggled up against him, so he put his arms around her and held her. His last thought before falling asleep was, I will never understand Kate Beckett.

He woke up the next morning to find her staring at him. "Good morning." She whispered, kissing him lightly.

"This is not how I expected to spend a night in bed with you." He teased.

"We can get to that later. Now, tell me what happened to you."

"Beckett, I can't."

"You can. You said Martha and Alexis may be in danger, so how will I protect them if you don't tell me?"

Castle sighed and looked at the woman he was falling in love with. "Okay, you win. But no one else can know about this."

Kate quickly told him about the video tape and the information they had gathered. Castle just nodded. "Okay. I'll just tell everyone else that I can't talk about it. Espo will understand as will Captain Montgomery. Ryan will go along with Espo and my family will bitch, but accept what I tell them."

Kate leaned her head on his chest. "Talk."

"In 2004 I did some research for Derrick Storm. I talked to a guy….I can't tell you his real name, so call him Mr. Hussein. He was a very wealthy Lebanese Sunni Muslim, and very westernized. He was educated in France and England and had business interests all over the world. He knew everyone and everything about the Middle East. I was with him in Beirut for about a week. Fast forward to 2008. The British raided a terrorist safe house and found evidence that Mr. Hussein was Al Qaeda's main money man. He was long gone from the UK by then, hiding…Well, no one knew where. When Western intelligence agencies looked for pictures, fingerprints and such, all they found was stuff that was thirty or forty years old from when he was a student, but with no fingerprints. Apparently he mostly traveled on phony passports. They asked Lebanon for their records on Hussein, but they had mysteriously disappeared."

"Somebody was paid off?" Kate asked.

"Or something. Anyway, I spent some time with the CIA, learning about the agency for Derrick Storm and someone remembered I was the last, more or less, trustworthy person to see him. They came and got me."

"And you went with them just like that?" Kate was trying not to be angry at Castle for leaving her.

Castle nodded. "They can be very persuasive. Very, very persuasive. And, it was supposed to take no longer than a day or two. They had captured a guy they were sure was Hussein and just needed me to ID him. It was the wrong guy, but he knew where Hussein was, sort of. He was in Yemen, but they didn't know exactly where. To make a long story short, I spent a lot of time in a very luxurious suite on a Saudi military base where I finished Naked Heat. I went on a couple of unsuccessful raids into Yemen with two guys who called themselves Smith and Jones who never told me a damned thing, that's when the video was shot. We finally caught Hussein and I identified him. The Saudis kept Hussein and were going to try to turn him, you know, de-radicalize him."

"Does that work?" Kate asked.

"Sometimes. But Hussein never saw me, so if he does go back to his old ways, we need to keep my part in this very quiet."

"I promise." Kate gave him a quick kiss. "And all of the nonsense about Mr. Abu Bakir and those Russians in Africa?"

"Just standard CIA disinformation, to make everyone look at everyone but them."

"I do not like the CIA." She grumped.

"Now that the trivia is out of the way, you wanted to go to the Hamptons with me?"

"Of course."

"When are you off next?"

"I have to work this weekend, but I'm off on Tuesday and Wednesday."

"So, would you like to go to the Hamptons with me?"

"Castle, you'll do anything to see me in a swimsuit, won't you?" She waited a beat and added. "It won't work. I'll skinny dip."