Ephemeris, Ch. 14-A post-For Better or Worse (6 x 23) Caskett multi-chap WIP
Title: Ephemeris, Ch. 14
WC: ~2800 this chapter, ~34,000 total
Summary: "It's too familiar, despite the crowd she can just see out of the corner of her eye. Despite the noise and the scent of smoke on salt air. The shadows and the tell-tale metallic click are too familiar. That stupid baseball cap pulled low and the barest glint of blue eyes. She wonders how many things she missed this time. How many different ways she should have seen this coming."
It's too familiar, despite the crowd she can just see out of the corner of her eye. Despite the noise and the scent of smoke on salt air. The shadows and the tell-tale metallic click are too familiar. That stupid baseball cap pulled low and the barest glint of blue eyes. She wonders how many things she missed this time. How many different ways she should have seen this coming.
She's curious. Detached and strangely calm about the whole thing. Not strangely, maybe. She remembers her words to Martha. More than just a soothing fiction: Hurting her gets him nothing.
She's about to ask what should have given it away, but Cross pins her to the rough brick on one side of the narrow passage with an arm across her throat. Apparently he doesn't want to talk this time. She idly wonders what that means.
He disarms her in short order and deprives her of her phone. Phones, actually. He slams her everyday smartphone into the wall next to her head, hardly checking to make sure the screen's gone completely dark before he pockets the remains.
He finds the burner-without hesitation or so much as patting her down-in the zipper pocket at the small of her back, a strange feature of the fitted tank she never imagined any use for until today. He's been watching. Closely. It's no surprise, or it shouldn't be, but the wordless intimacy bothers her. His hands on her.
He flips the phone open and closed, thumbing one of the side buttons experimentally before it joins the other. He hardly spares her a further once over before he lets his arm drop.
"Move," he grunts. He jerks her off the wall and shoves her forward, further along the dim corridor. Further from the still-teeming main street and Esposito and Ryan, somewhere in the crowd.
She thinks about yelling. More on general principle than any real hope that the boys might hear her. There's zero chance anyone will pick her cries out above the din, even if they're listening for them. It might annoy him, though. She's torn on whether or not that's worth it. Whether or not this is the time.
He keeps the gun low at her kidney and steers with the occasional shoulder check. He has them following a circuitous path, keeping between buildings for the most part, and hustling across the occasional stretch of open space. She wonders what the point is. Certainly no one's paying them any attention, and between the noise, the sinking sun, and the smell, it's trivial to keep track of where they are.
It's habit, she supposes. All-encompassing paranoia on his part, and she knows-suddenly and certainly-that it was him. The photo. Too ordinary not to stand out, and it doesn't look much like Castle at all. It wasn't Cross tripping up or even just letting himself be seen. It goes beyond the possibilities they'd considered.
He orchestrated all of it. The post and the picture. The house conveniently in the background and now the fire besides. A distraction to separate her from Ryan and Esposito, which means he wants her for something. Her alone. She almost says it out loud. The words are on her tongue. It was you . . . But why?
She laughs instead. She tips her head back and thinks of him. Of Castle and what he'd have to say about her side of the most clichéd dialogue in potboiler literature. If it weren't for you meddling kids . . . She laughs.
Cross either mistakes it for a distraction-an attempt to break away-or he doesn't appreciate the meta-commentary on their situation. The gun digs hard enough into her floating rib that she jerks around to glare.
They're just passing under a tin-shaded bulb at the back door of some business. The light is bad and the cap throws harsh shadows, but it's the first real look she gets at him. That she's gotten since he could barely hold himself upright, thanks to a gunshot. Or so they thought, anyway.
He looks worse now. He's easily twenty pounds lighter than he was, a loss exacerbated by ill-fitting clothes. A khaki photographer's vest over a loud, patterned club shirt that gapes at the neck. Pants that pool near his ankles in the way that suggests they're loose in the waist. He's going for casual. Affluent and maybe a little eccentric. He's missing by a lot on both counts.
The change in him is striking enough that she can't stop staring. He doesn't seem to appreciate that, either. He jabs the gun up and in again. He gets them moving without a word.
It's an act. Another ploy so she'll underestimate him. That what she thinks at first, but as she takes in the details, she's not so sure. The clothes could be theater, certainly. The uneven stubble underscoring the gaunt, colorless planes of his face in the alley light. That could all be put on to make her think he's desperate.
But there's more to it than that. There's a stiffness to his gait, and he's too rough when he leads with a shoulder knocking into hers. Like he's not sure of his strength, but he wants her to be. Even the gun is overkill, far beyond the conversational click of the safety in her ear.
This isn't the man whose oily familiarity rolled over her in a New York high rise. He's not even the shadowy figure trying to menace her from the back seat of her car.
He's old. The thought hits her forcibly. She twists around to look at him again and stumbles on uneven pavement. He catches her arm hard enough to bruise, but they both almost go down. She catches herself on the wall. The heel of her hand scrapes over brick and her fingers snag at a coarse stone sill. It's the only thing that keeps them upright.
She knows in that moment it's not an act. Wherever he's been, whatever he's been doing, he's aged almost immeasurably in just a few weeks. Since the diner. Since the accident, most likely, if not before. Since Gemini and whatever hell that brought down on his head. She doesn't know what it means. What he can possibly have been up to and what it means for Castle.
She doesn't know what it means for her, right now. That's what she should be worried about. Staying central enough to give Ryan and Esposito a chance to catch up. Keeping herself where she can make noise. Draw attention. Se's lost track, though. The sun is all but gone, and she thinks the glow she spies between fences and buildings and stalls might be fire instead. She's disoriented, and the wind whips scent all around her.
She digs in her heels at last. She stops. Turns on him and backs away to spill out of the mouth of the narrow gap they've been moving through. He can shoot her if he wants, but she's damned well going to fall out into the open, screaming bloody murder all the while. If he's not going to shoot her, he's going to tell her where the hell they're going. What he could possibly want from her.
Where the hell Castle is.
He faces her, the gun at his side, hidden in the loose folds of his clothing. It's more out of habit than real caution, she thinks. He takes a step closer, but he's in no hurry to have his hands on her at the moment. She backs further away still, wondering at this. The total lack of interest in controlling her. The fact that he suddenly doesn't seem to care who sees them.
She looks around as he pushes past her. The fact that there's no one around might have something to do with his waning concern. He's managed, somehow, to bring them around to dead space away from businesses and their foot traffic, on the very fringes of the residential area with its sprawling lawns and privacy hedges.
Cross steps up to a tall cyclone fence. It's eight feet at least, and the links are filled in with the dark green plastic slats typical of a construction site. He fishes in one of the pockets on his vest for a key that he fits into a padlock on the gate. Something more serious than a standard bolt cutter could handle, she notes, and she doesn't miss the rapid series of careful gestures that come next. Some kind of early warning system she thinks. Something crude. But before she can really look, he's manhandling her through and locking the gate behind them.
She turns quickly in place. They're at the back of a wide, squat building that's seen better days. There are no entrances on the side she can see, and there's not much of a perimeter between its footprint and the fence. A garage, she thinks, though it's oddly tall for that.
She looks up. She listens hard and tries to get her bearings. There are sirens now. The burble of voices rises above, but she thinks she knows which way the water is at least. She faces the other way. Back toward the village center unless she's still completely turned around. She might be. There's only one thing visible when she tips her head back to clear the high fence. One house.
The first house.
Cross drags her around the side of the building to a small entrance with another complicated set of locks. He negotiates them with the familiarity of long acquaintance. Here. He's been here the whole time. She pictures the dates on the construction permits. The back-and-forth deeds to the house and the property. It goes back so much further than the wedding. The accident.
He watches. She remembers Castle's face as he ran down the litany of pictures from Paris. Alexis going all the way back almost to her birth. Places and moments in the heart of their lives. He's been watching for far longer than she's been in the picture.
"Did you buy it from him? A little summer place so you could watch them?"
Cross ignores her. He muscles her inside as she leans back, not making it easy. Alone with him in a secluded space-one he knows and she doesn't-is not where she wants to be. Esposito and Ryan will think of the house, but not right away. Not in time, maybe. They'll look for her in the village first.
She needs to draw this out. Her mind is spinning, and she needs it back on track. She pulls her focus back to her surroundings. To what comes next and how the hell she deals with him and whatever it is he wants.
The door closes with a heavy echo. The sound bounces around for a second or more, telling her the place is empty or nearly so. That's . . . alarming. It would be if she left herself time to consider what that and this broken down version of him might mean, but she moves on, willing her eyes to adjust faster to the darkness.
There's row of long, squat windows high above what must have been a bank of roll-up doors at some point. The space is lightless otherwise, but the last of the sun shows her outlines where lighter mortar gives way to dark. Once, twice, three times. Main entrances, bricked over now. That and the ancient scent of gasoline and motor oil tells her she guessed right: It's a three-car garage, or it was at one point.
He shoves her forward again, gripping her by one arm at the elbow. She gets the feeling he's enjoying this now-his own sure footedness in the dim light and her halting steps. She sets her teeth and takes a breath to clear her head. She's determined not to give him any satisfaction at all, but she shrinks back the next second when he makes a sudden move, reaching across her body with his other hand.
His gun hand. It's all she can think as she curls in on herself, pushing down with her forearms and trying to twist away. He grates out a laugh, though, as his palm-his empty palm-sweeps along the wall beyond her to find a seam. He flips up a small panel and shoulders open a door. This one's not locked. Just a crude lever under the panel, but she's pretty sure she'd never have seen it, even in full light.
There's a steep staircase not even a stride ahead. Cross propels her onward and up, rougher than ever now, like he's feeding on her brief flicker of fear. She wants to kick herself. She wants to kick him. A full-color fantasy plays out in her mind. Surround sound of his body caroming from side to side as he falls away. It's satisfying enough that she goes cold inside. Her heart slows and it's only he sudden contrast-the abrupt calm-that tells her it was racing only seconds ago.
"Mother-in-law apartment?"
She asks like it's a social call. Polite curiosity about the place he's brought her to, and she's proud of her level tone. It gives her courage. Stupid courage. She widens her stride as she asks, taking the next few stairs two at a time.
It breaks his hold on her easily. He has to heave himself forward to keep up. He's breathing hard as she hits a cramped landing and a ninety-degree turn. She's needling him. Exhilarated by the fury she feels rolling off him, but it's more than that. The minute she hits the turn, it's more than that.
There's nothing but a short few stairs left and a a solid-looking door at the top. There's light bleeding underneath. Just a sliver, but it has weight. Significance. She turns inward. Pays attention. It smells different up here. The echo of her footsteps is dampened like it's lived in, whatever's beyond the door. It feels lived in, and her stomach is suddenly in knots.
Cross glares at her from the landing. It's too dim to see much, but she feels it. The air crackling with sudden meaning, and it's like the diner parking lot all over. Her eyes cut from him to the door and back again. To that sliver of light.
Cross lifts one foot, then the other. Heavy, deliberate steps now as he brushes by her. There's the music of metal on metal. Keys dangling from his fingers and the scrape of one as he takes his time fitting it it in the lock. He pushes the door open and the light inside is bright enough to hurt her eyes after the last . . . however long it's been.
"After you."
He sweeps an arm upward, calm now. In control, though he was seething three seconds ago. But that's gone. Whatever edge she imagined she had is gone. He's smiling.
Everything tumbles down inside her. Hope that hardly kindled long enough to call it that. Nothing she wants is through that door. Nothing.
She looks up at Cross and thinks of Martha. She studies his smile, now that there's finally some light. He's trying. He's back to Anderson Cross and the affable dismissal of a powerful man. He slips it on like a bespoke suit and thinks he's pulling it off.
It's broken, though. He's broken. Terribly and finally and long before she came into the picture, but she thinks of Martha. She studies him and sees how that smile must have been charming once upon a time. There's just the right touch of danger in it, coiled up at the corners. He must have been different then, even if it only for one night. Martha must have seen something in him. Sparked it and brought it to life.
She thinks of Castle. She sees the resemblance now. Something in the gallantry of the gesture. His arm raised to usher her through. The way he's holding himself. The nonchalant tone. It calls up echoes of Castle at last, and she doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. She doesn't know whether to scream at Cross or run.
She does the only thing she can in the end. She drags herself up the last few steps anyway. One foot after the other, because there's no other choice, though she knows before she gets there. Before she ducks under the low sill of the door and steps into the empty room.
"He's not here, Kate. No one here but you and me."
A/N: Sorry for the delay. One more chapter and an epilogue. Tentatively, a separate one shot as a bookend after that. Thank you for reading.