128. Chapter 128

After After the Storm, Again.

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Do I have to say this again? Rating: K Time: See Above. (Okay, I don't own Castle.)

As soon as they walked into the loft, Kate put her arms around Rick and kissed him. "Thank you." She whispered in his ear.

"I love your thank yous, but what exactly did I do today? From where I was sitting, it looked like you did all of the work."

She shook her head while smiling up at him. "No, you've been helping me ever since we first met. You've done nothing but try to make me happy and keep me safe since our first case together. I know I didn't always appreciate it, and I certainly didn't let you know it, but I wouldn't trade one minute of the last three years with you for anything."

Castle looked at her and slowly shook his head. "I remember a few times, when I was with a woman, or maybe two, that I think you'd trade away in a second. I know I'd trade every second that I've been with other women for time with you."

"No. Even when I was jealous of you, and I was jealous of every woman you were with, horribly jealous, that told me that you were the one for me. I was just too afraid to act on that."

"Kate, I'm afraid I don't…"

She put a finger on his lips. "Shh! I don't want to argue with you right now. I' have something else in mind." Her hand started to wander from his shoulder to his belt.

"We need to talk."

She dropped her head to his chest." Talk? You want to talk?"

"Dr. Burke told you we need to talk, didn't he?"

"We could talk in bed." She said hopefully.

He shook his head. "We can't trust him. Bracken made the same deal with Smith as you forced on him today. And Bracken sent Maddox, or Marks, or whoever, after Smith and then you. He'll do the same to you. He has an endless supply of paid killers and plenty of money. Sooner or later he'll come after you. And I think it'll be sooner and not later."

"I know. Today I had the option of killing him or bluffing him. I can't kill him, Castle. Not in cold blood. That's just not the kind of person I am. And it's not what my mom would want. What I did today was buy time."

"Time is on his side. We have a few scraps of paper that don't add up to evidence of anything."

"But we do know who to look at. Where to look. We're a lot further along than we were a week ago." Kate frowned. "Damn! I need to update my murder board."

Castle took her hand and led her towards his office. "Let me show you something." He took her to the electronic board he had bought to plot the Nikki Heat novels and turned it on. The Nikki Heat data showed up. He tapped the screen and Kate's photo and all of the data on her mom's case came up. "I'm sorry. I deleted everything last night just before you came, but I managed to retrieve it all. I'm still sorry, Kate. I never should have walked out on you. I should have stayed no matter what."

"Castle…" She just reached up and kissed his cheek. "Don't worry about it. But this is so cool. You have an electronic murder board."

"No. You have an electronic murder board. It's yours. My first gift to you as my girlfriend, my lover, my Kate."

"No, Castle, we have a murder board. We're a couple now, right?" Kate began touching the icons on the board and checking the information. Then she spotted something. "Castle, I never developed any information on Jordan Norris, or his attorney, Bill Moss. How did this get here?"

"Smith told me that if you investigated your mom's murder, they'd come after you. No one said anything about me investigating. I also looked into the dead prison guard, Chuck Ryker. Unfortunately, I came up with nothing. Norris appears to be a model prisoner who gets a nice, untraceable check each month. His attorney is doing everything he can to get Norris out of prison. I'm afraid if I really go after either one of them, Norris will get shanked by some lifer, and Moss will have an "accident."

"As for Ryker, I've checked his family and friends and I can't find anything. They closed that avenue of when the murdered him."

Kate frowned as she looked at Castle. "You did illegal surveillance on them, didn't you?"

Rick did his very best to look shocked. "Illegal? Of course not. I would never, ever do anything like that."

"Castle, I'm not stupid, and I'm not buying any…" She stopped. "You're protecting me, aren't you?"

"Kate, if I was involved in anything illegal, which I most certainly am not, I would, of course, make sure that you would never have to lie about anything."

Kate's frown slowly turned to a smile. "I really should have slept with you after the Tisdale murder. We'd have been together for years by now."

He shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. I might not have noticed how remarkable you were and just thought of you as another conquest."

"Really? All you felt for me then was lust?"

He blushed. "No. I was fascinated with you from the time you came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. I would have followed you no matter what."

"Yes, but would you have signed my boobs?"

"Any time you want."

"I just may take you up on that." Kate looked through the rest of the murder board. There was nothing else there she didn't already know about. Then something occurred to her. "Rick! Bracken knows about you. He saw you today. If he's been keeping an eye on me, that means he knows about you and me. If he finds out we're together, you'll be in danger. I cannot allow you to…"

"You don't have a choice. I'm staying right by your side. And it won't do you any good to try to push me away because of Bracken."

"I'm not pushing you away. I want you as close as possible, but I want you alive. After all we've been through, I can't stand the thought of losing you. I can't. I'll do anything to make Bracken think we aren't a couple. Rick, we could…"

"Continue our lives as they are right now. Kate, Jordan Shaw, the FBI profiler, thought we were together when we weren't. So has just about everyone else. Nothing we can do, short of me moving to Deepest Tibet will convince Bracken we're not together. And even then, he'd go after me, too. He knows I care for you. And he knows I'm rich and I have a lot of connections. The kind of connections that could get him killed. He won't want to let me live if he can kill me. He's a cold blooded bastard and one more death won't mean anything to him. I'm afraid you're stuck with me."

"No. Whatever I am, I'm not "stuck" with you. Being stuck with someone doesn't feel this good."

"So, we should start taking Bracken down?"

"Not yet." She said. As her hand dipped toward his belt.