55. 56: Saturday

56

They travel together in a cab that is mostly a gutted out - get this - Crown Vic (oh the irony), Kate on Castle's lap and Martha in the middle with Alexis squeezed into the far right. The front passenger seat is gone, the driver smiles too much, and Kate feels completely not safe.

Rick's arms are around her like a seatbelt but there are no seatbelts, so it doesn't do them any good. Kate is hunched over and pressed into the door - what is no longer a door, really, but just the metal frame. No handle. She swears she can see the dirt road beneath Castle's feet.

He grips her tighter and they carom off the corners rather than actually turn them. Kate braces her forearm against the driver's seat and the door, closes her eyes so she can't see the end coming.

When the lurch to a stop, she stays there for a moment, just breathing.

Castle squeezes her middle, his mouth at her shoulder blade. "We're here. Get off me."

She scrambles out after Martha and Alexis, all of them having to climb over the non-existent front passenger seat to exit the vehicle, and then Kate stands, blinking in the sunlight as she looks at the airport.

San Pedro's airport is a grassy strip, some gravel, a trailer painted purple, and a deck painted turquoise.

Has she so quickly forgotten their forty-five minute trip from Belize City to San Pedro? She must have blacked it out, because the airport - the landing strip - bewilders her all over again.

Martha grabs the handle of her rolling suitcase which their taxi driver has unloaded and tromps toward the covered deck. Castle follows while Kate and Alexis watch on in real consternation.

"I don't think it's safe," Alexis sighs. "But we did come in here."

"It's got to be safe," Kate replies, but she's not sure she believes it herself.

Martha and another American couple are the only ones on the nine-passenger plane when it takes off. Martha is waving from the cockpit where she has been allowed to sit with the pilot - no kidding - and Castle drops his hand to Kate's shoulder when the wings dip and turn out of their sight.

"I thought they were going to crash into the ocean," Alexis shivers. "Did you see the way it kept struggling to get up?"

"And only four people in it," Kate adds, still watching the sky. Maybe for an explosion. She's not sure.

Castle claps his hands and rubs them together. "Well now. Gram's gone back to New York. So what's on for the rest of our day?"

Alexis crosses her arms over her chest. "I'm actually really tired. I could use a siesta."

"Boring," he protests, hooking his arm through Kate's and then Alexis's. "Mom's away; the mice will play."

"That doesn't make any sense, Castle," Kate sighs, but she lets him tug her back towards their waiting cab.

For another ride of her life.

They rent boogey boards and body surf for four hours, slapping into the waves until their bodies are red with it and their fingers and toes are burning from churning sand.

Castle is surprised by how much Kate seems to abandon herself to the waves, surprised by the parts of her he's never seen before but knew had to exist. She's not riding a bike in tight black leather, but surfing on a boogey board is close enough, her smile brighter than the sunlight beaming down around them.

After that it really is time for a nap, and they trudge back inside, everyone laughing, telling stories on him (no, he didn't think that was a shark, no matter what they say). Kate's fingers trail at his side as she moves into the kitchen, grabs a glass and fills it with water, drinks it down in a couple gulps.

Alexis is heading straight back to her bedroom, unraveling her hair from its wet braid, and Kate puts her glass on the counter even as he watches her, still surprised by her.

By the things he doesn't know but which keep showing up.

She pats his shoulder as she moves past him towards their bedroom; he lets her go. He's not tired really, and she is, he knows that, can see it in the lines around her eyes. So he doesn't follow her back there.

He gets out his laptop and he opens one of the Nikki Heat documents and sits there, staring at it.

But for the first time in a long time, everything is too good, too right, for words to come.

Castle watches the white expanse of the page, lets it snow blind him for a minute or more, lets it work its way into his mind and blank out everything else as well.

And then he closes his laptop and gets up, heads for their room.

And Kate.

The only thing he wants.