Castle 1. Prologue

**The Bennet Identity  
**

**Prologue**

January 9th 1999

Johanna Beckett realized just a few moments too late that she was being followed. She had detoured from her destination to meet Jim and Katie, because a potential witness to the murder of Robert Armen had called her office and asked to meet her in the alley behind the old Sons of Palermo club in Washington Heights. A woman named Sophia Turner, who used to be a waitress at the club had seen everything, but had kept quiet out of fear of reprisals. She felt a shooting pain in her lower back, and the voice of a man she had never met before whispered in her ear just before the whole world began to fade to black.

"You should have left well enough alone, Mrs. Beckett, I kill people for a living, you'll wish I had before this is all over."

The last word to slip from her lips before the shadows claimed her was "Katie..."

Sophia Turner nodded at Dick Coonan, who had played his part flawlessly. Johanna Beckett's wounds were entirely superficial. Sophia was being paid an obscene amount of money to help Senator Bracken clean up the little mess that had been made when he blackmailed three dirty cops nine years ago. He had a plan to get "Nemesis" off her back so she could finally go home. All she had to do was take care of this one small problem.

Until the operation was concluded, she was vulnerable, so she couldn't risk doing the job herself. But using Johanna Beckett to clean up the very can of worms she herself had opened had an elegance to it that only a former KGB operative, or someone as self deluded and egotistical as William Bracken could truly appreciate. Use one loose end to tie up another.

She nodded toward her people and they moved forward with a body bag and a duffel. That they had found a woman who's resemblance to Johanna Beckett was so striking on such short notice had been a matter of blind, dumb luck. Coonan had dispatched her not half an hour ago, and when her man in the ME's office was done with her, even her husband wouldn't recognize the difference.

"Get her clothes, jewelry and her purse, leave no traces." Sophia ordered, "As far as the world is concerned, Johanna Beckett dies tonight. Call Mr. Lockwood, let him know the operation is under way."

**One Month Later**  
**Walter Reed Army Medical Center**

She woke, unsettled by dreams involving a slender, kind looking man and a dark haired, green eyed girl who's names she could not remember and who's faces were unfamiliar enough to be disconcerting. She found herself in a hospital bed with an IV in her arm. When she moved to sit up, which she accomplished only with great difficulty, she felt something jangle around her neck. She pulled the simple metal chain from under her hospital gown to find a set of metal tags at the end with the name "Bennet, Jessica A." Stamped on them along with a serial number, her blood type and the word "Catholic" at the bottom.

"Good Morning, Captain Bennet. It's nice to see you among the living." The army nurse said cheerfully. "How is your memory doing today?"

"Where am I?" she asked.

"You're at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, you were in a really bad helicopter crash, you weren't seriously injured, but you had a really bad concussion. You were in a coma until about a week ago."

"My name is Jessica Bennet?" she asked, trying the name on for size.

"Why yes, Captain, it is." The young pretty nurse replied with a warm smile. "Don't worry too badly, after the head trauma you received, a certain amount of amnesia was anticipated. Your CO, Major Lockwood will be in shortly to help you pick up the pieces."


	2. First Blood

**Chapter One**

**First Blood**

It had taken Irina Derevko nearly a week to break her.

On some level Hal Lockwood understood that breaking someone for psychological conditioning was inherently not the same as torturing people for information. It had to be done slowly, carefully, methodically to prevent the subject from going insane. Though even she admitted that this process usually began with the subject's tacit approval. It was meant to prepare sleeper agents for long term deep cover.

He didn't know where Sophia Turner had found the woman, but she was good at her job. She knew exactly when, where, and for how long to poke and prod, and just how long to leave her in isolation in absolute darkness with no sound but her own heartbeat and the silence of her own mind. Johanna Beckett was a stubborn, prideful woman, but that was just one more tool in Irina's arsenal to use against her.

Breaking her, however was just the beginning. Once that had been accomplished, the identity of Jessica Bennet had to be firmly established with just enough of Johanna Beckett to keep her own mind from rejecting he new identity and giving her the right dosages of GHB to keep her from laying down memories of this period of indoctrination.

It was little wonder that Soviet sleeper agents were so hard to identify and bring to ground. With conditioning this thorough most of them likely still believed their cover story was genuine and were off somewhere in suburban America living their lives with absolutely no idea of whom they really were.

He knew that his part of her conditioning would soon begin. He would befriend her, gain her trust be seen as her lifeline back to "her previous life." It was important that she trust him completely so she would never doubt the information he provided. When her usefulness reached its end after this operation was concluded, he would be the one to put a bullet in her head and dump her lifeless body in the Hudson River.

He had wondered why all of this fuss and bother was necessary at first. Even going so far as to borrow methodology from the now defunct Project Archangel to suit their needs. How the mighty Richard Webb, now mired in CIA bureaucracy would sputter in impotent fury if he ever knew that his once unassailable organization was now being used as a cover for their own ends.

Why they were going to all this time and trouble simply to tie off some loose ends when it would be simpler to just hire Coonan to kill her associates and the city office file clerk then he could kill Coonan to tie up that loose end had escaped him. That was until he actually met Coonan.

The man was morally bankrupt. Trusting him with too much of the dirty work would put way too much power in his hands, power he could use to blackmail Senator Bracken at some future date should his burgeoning drug business put him in too much scrutiny with law enforcement.

This way may be time consuming and overly complicated but it would, if carried off correctly, not only tie up all of the loose ends that Johanna Beckett left behind leaving Bracken's hands clean. All of the evidence would lead back to either a dead woman, or the M.O. of Dick Coonan, sending him the message that he too might one day disappear, or have all of this laid around his neck if he became a loose end. William Bracken was the champion of the common man, the voice of the disenfranchised. A man of the people.

Who would seriously believe that the respected junior senator from New York would ever be tied up in such a thing?

**April 5th, 1999**

Jessica Bennet had spent the last six weeks retraining her body and her reflexes to get back to work. Hal had explained to her that she was a specialist for Project Archangel, a covert special ops group set up to deal with the types of internal security risks that the CIA was forbidden by law to handle and the FBI was simply not equipped to deal with in their law enforcement capacity. She was now tailing her first target, Scott Murray.

According to the dossier she had been told to memorize he was a sleeper agent, his cover as a document clerk was merely that, a cover. He likely didn't even know he was a sleeper agent, but her job was to clean house. There were far too many of these former Soviet era sleepers running around, and all it would take was somebody with the right information to "wake them up" and they could create untold havoc. The word had come down from the director himself. They had to be eliminated.

She followed him into the alley as he walked to the dumpster for his third floor walk up, garbage bag in hand, and when he opened the lid, she struck with the military issue K-bar knife with a twisting strike to his kidneys. After he slumped dying to the pavement, she followed the killing strike with several more shallow stabs to his back to make it look less like a professional hit and took his wallet and watch, before tossing three garbage bags on top of his corpse.

She slipped the knife into a plastic bag (wiping it at the scene is a rookie mistake) and followed it with the gloves she had on. After sealing the bag, she slipped it into her purse and left the alley, tossing his now empty wallet into the next dumpster over. The watch would go into the nearest storm drain. The police would consider it a mugging gone bad, case closed.

The shakes came several hours later, after she slipped into her tub to soak away the the effort of the day. Hal had told her to expect them, though he told her this wasn't her first kill, it would feel like it now, since her memory of that time was effectively gone, and it was like she was starting over.

She had only once asked Hal about the sad looking green eyed little girl that haunted her dreams, and he told her that she was her daughter. She had been killed, along with her husband, a deputy US Marshall in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 while she had been deployed in Germany. They had been well within the blast radius of the truck bomb and had been vaporized almost instantly.

It was why she had agreed to join Project Archangel, to stop people like that before they could ruin more lives. If one death could prevent a thousand, or even keep one family from feeling the loss she now felt, it would be well worth it.

Perhaps one day she would get her memories back, be able to remember her little girl's name and be able to mourn her properly. Until then, she had a job to do, she would simply trust Hal Lockwood would keep her best interests at heart.

* * *

*Author's note* Yes I know I'm taking the murders of Johanna Beckett's associates out of order, but it was necessary to keep with the central theme of this story. It simply made the most sense for the her first kill to be someone JB had little actual contact with and didn't know personally to make sure her "conditioning" had worked.


	3. Diversions and Manipulations

**Chapter Two**

**Diversions and Manipulations  
**

March 3rd, 2000

It had been nearly a year since she had killed the "enemy sleeper agent" disguised as a document clerk. Eliminating him had not been particularly difficult, especially with him bent over the dumpster putting out his garbage.

He had passed on a file to a woman named Johanna Beckett (no photo attached) while she was in the hospital, so another operative had dealt with her. She had likely been the go between for Murray and the KGB. The husband, according to the file, was most likely a beard for her activities.

It had subsequently been noted that he could now, more often than not, be found drinking heavily in any bar that wouldn't cut him off, lamenting the senseless, violent death of his wife to anyone who would listen. It was obvious that she had kept him in the dark about her double life.

Their daughter Katherine was finishing her freshman year at Stanford, but had filed the forms to transfer to NYU in time for the summer session with a change in major from law to criminal justice. Her sources were also able to determine that she had made inquiries about the entrance requirements to enroll in the NYPD training academy. James Beckett and his daughter were being watched but their threat assessment was considered relatively low.

Jessica actually found herself feeling sorry for the young woman, whom she saw as the true victim in this sad affair. She didn't know her mom had been an agent for the now defunct KGB. All she knew was that her mom had been stabbed to death in an alley, her body left out with the trash. She knew only that her father was also slowly abandoning her to drown his sorrows in the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

Jessica felt a certain kinship with the young woman. _"But for the grace of God go I,"_ she thought to herself. She was glad the girl seemed to want to contribute to society in a positive way instead of taking a more self destructive path. Just like she had.

She put those thoughts out of her head though, as she had operations to plan. The rest of Scott Murray's network needed to be rolled up. Preferably before the Russians decided to get frisky again and started activating the Soviet Union's old assets. Once she took care of Jennifer Stewart and Diane Cavanaugh this cell would be out of play permanently and she could take some down time before moving on to the next one.

If the Russians wanted to play the old game she would do her best to make sure they started from scratch. To that end, it was time to put her game face on and get with the program, she had work to do.

* * *

Washington DC  
That same day

William Bracken derived a certain satisfaction from the thought that the woman who had caused him so much trouble the last couple of years was now doing his dirty work, tying up the very loose ends that she herself had pulled on, with the very same tenacity she had put to trying to expose him not so long ago. All the while making it look like the work of someone else entirely. Her actions would insulate him from any kind of legal or political blow-back.

Unlike Raglan, McCallister and Montgomery, there was no direct link to him and his unsavory past. Unlike Coonan there was no paper trail or money to follow. Jessica Bennet was quite literally on the US government's dime as she had been slipped into the Army's payroll, even though she could not be found anywhere on its active duty roster.

He had long ago grown tired of running to dad or "Uncle Rick" like a recalcitrant schoolboy whenever he hit a wall. Although he knew dad would always be intentionally blind to his machinations, he knew that he couldn't keep Richard Webb in the dark forever. The old man had gotten too close to finding him out last year with Johanna Beckett and that FBI agent. It was the very thing he had shut down Project Archangel three years ago to avoid. He may need to find a way to throw him off the scent for a while. Something to keep him occupied.

Every dime he was quietly paying the disillusioned CIA operative, Sophia Turner was money well spent. If this experiment worked out, he just might keep Jessica Bennet around in some capacity. Killing her would be waste of time, money and resources and he was sure he would have other potential threats that might need to be eliminated by someone who could never be directly tied to him.

He knew that Miss Turner and Miss Derevko would object strenuously. They had explained to him that the nature of her conditioning was imperfect and likely temporary. Unlike the subjects Derevko usually dealt with, Johanna Beckett was not a willing participant in her re-education. Eventually her true identity might once again become dominant. Especially if she was exposed too often to people she knew from her previous life. With the training she had received to do what he needed done that would make her a very dangerous enemy to have.

However, he was the one with the money and the power, and the one who holds the power makes the rules. His grandfather had taught him that. When the business with her associates was done he would have to get her out of New York. Perhaps Washington DC or maybe Albany. He would simply have to keep Irina Derevko on the payroll to keep Jessica Bennet going. If Sophia Turner became a problem, he would deal with her...in the usual way.

* * *

Richard Webb's Office  
CIA Headquarters  
Langley, Virginia

Richard Webb had just finished his first full year as Director of Operations for the CIA. Since the disbanding of Project Archangel three years before, which he could scarcely believe had been championed by none other than the son of one of his oldest friends, William Bracken. A man he had bounced on his knee as a boy whom he had sometimes extracted from the occasional legal quagmire he had gotten himself embroiled in because he trusted the wrong people too easily.

Especially that nasty affair with the three cops who had been kidnapping mobsters for ransom which had lead to the death of an FBI agent. The ringleader for that whole affair had still managed to elude detection, and Billy had almost had the whole thing hung around his neck. The thin blue line had closed ranks around the cops in question and John had asked him to protect his son if he could, so he did what he could to keep his name out of it.

He had tried to work around the CIA red tape by backing Armen's partner when he was looking into it. Somehow the man had involved Johanna in the whole affair, and she had been killed. Jake Newstead had been reassigned to the FBI training center in Quantico, Virginia where he had inexplicably gone off the grid and he had no authority to investigate it on his own on US soil.

Not that he wouldn't try. Richard Alexander Webb was patient and he had a very long memory. Until he could find someone else he could trust to take the case, he would do what he could to look after his Project Archangel people. Some would be given generous retirement packages others would transition to civilian or military work. But a very special few he would very carefully place in CIA field offices around the world. There would come a time when Project Archangel would be needed again. When that happened he would not be starting from scratch. He had also drawn up a contingency plan (code named Instant Karma) for when this "dragon" showed his hand.

* * *

Tuesday, March 7th 2000

Jessica had been following Diane Cavanaugh for the better part of a week to get to know her patterns. She always stayed late at the Lincoln Center theater, as she had backstage access and enjoyed meeting the actors.

Martha Rodgers had been on stage that night performing a one woman revue of classic show tunes of American theater and the show had drawn quite a crowd. From what she could tell the aging Redheaded diva enjoyed the attention, and from most of the reviews she had read such attention was well deserved. The only negative review she could discern seemed to have been written by somebody with a personal ax to grind either with American Theater or the woman herself.

Due to the lateness of the hour, the subway access was practically deserted when she followed Diane Cavanaugh down the steps, shoved her roughly into the wall ad drove the knife into her back, rendering her unconscious nearly instantly. As before, she applied the more superficial stab wounds and left her bleeding to death at the bottom of the stairs, emptying her purse next to the body taking her cash and her wedding ring, bagged her knife and gloves and exfiltrated from the scene. Two blocks over she slipped the cash from Diane's purse into the cup of a homeless man and her jewelry into a storm drain. Mission accomplished.

Though she could not escape the overpowering sense of Deja vu. She just couldn't shake the thought that the woman she had just killed seemed...familiar somehow. It would haunt her dreams and her waking thoughts for weeks if she let it.

She had the number for her therapist, Dr. Irene Bristow. According to Hal, she had been seeing her as n since her family died in 1995. She would give her a call in the morning, she always felt so much better after a session with her. Sometimes to the point where she completely lost track of time during the session. She had a way of making everything simply make sense.

She would have to lay low for a few weeks, possibly even a month, while the police investigated Diane Cavanaugh's murder. The hardest kill would be Jennifer Stewart, since she and Cavanaugh both had a more than passing relationship with Johanna Beckett. Though she had been assured that measures had been taken to ensure the murders would not be connected she felt there was no reason to be sloppy.

There was plenty of time for a therapy session. Perhaps even follow it up with a mani-pedi and a spa day. All work and no play makes Jessica a dull girl. She just hoped she wouldn't dream about the green eyed little girl again. Whenever she had that dream, she tended to mope about her apartment in a depressed haze for days. This deep into an op it was the last thing she needed.


	4. Loose Threads

**Chapter Three  
Loose Threads**

May 21st, 2000

Jessica Bennet had spent the better part of three weeks following Jennifer Stewart. Originally the plan had been to wait another year before eliminating her to keep the NYPD from drawing any parallels between her death and her associate, Diane Cavanaugh, but fate had intervened. She had been informed by Hal that she had been contacted by an unknown operative from the Russian Consulate. The timetable had to be stepped up if the Russians were reaching out to their old contacts.

Every morning at just before dawn she would start her run through Central Park. It had taken her several days after finding where she entered the area after which she had spent several mornings shadowing her on her run to make certain it was consistent, all the while picking out the most advantageous locations where her blitz style ambush of the woman would go undetected.

Within half an hour she was rewarded by the quick, silent pounding of feet coming down the footpath as Jennifer Stewart approached. When she came into arms reach, she pulled a very realistic NYPD badge from her coat pocket and said,

"Excuse me miss, could I ask you a few questions?"

The woman stopped in place and stretched to keep her muscles for tightening up.

"What is this about, detective?" she replied.

"I'm working a homicide and I was wondering if you had scene any suspicious activity in the last few days." She said back

"None that I recall," Jennifer replied, "outside of the usual creeps that is."

"Thank you for your time miss..."

"Stewart, Jennifer Stewart." the woman offered.

Just as she turned to get back into her stride, Jessica struck, grabbing the woman's shoulder with her free hand and drove the K-bar directly into the younger woman's kidneys.

Her target twisted as she slid to the ground, guided by the hand that had gripped her shoulder so she wouldn't make too much noise on her way down. Her eyes going wide with...recognition?

"Johanna?" she pleaded as she slipped into shock, bleeding out on the ground, "Why..."

She never finished her anguished plea, as the shock to her kidneys caused her to slip away. For the first time she was looking right into her victim's eyes as the her confusion faded and the light in her eyes went out. Jessica finished the job almost by rote, applying the shallow postmortem stabs in a haze of confusion. She staggered back from the woman's body when she was done. She felt like she was going to be sick.

She couldn't get the thought out of her mind, a woman she had never laid eyes on before today looked her dead in the eye, called her by another woman's name as if she knew her. But she also could not shake the feeling that she did in fact recognize her, that she had met Jennifer Stewart before. Knew what foods she liked, what clothes she favored, mundane things that weren't found in a file.

Her thoughts were spiraling out of control as she slipped into a public restroom, changed in the stall and slid the business suit and heels along with the badge into the trash, buried under half a roll of paper towels before washing up in the sink in the running attire she had packed in her large purse.

She walked out of the public restroom and ran the remainder of the circuit, as fast has her legs could carry her. Wishing beyond reason that she could outrun the confusion in her mind. Outrun the visions of a life that seemed both alien and all too familiar. A life that was not her own. Could not be, because her family was dead, vaporized in Oklahoma City by a man bent on revenge. She was not Johanna Beckett, she was Jessica Bennet.

She felt like she was going crazy. Like there was another person in her head, fighting to get out, fighting for control. She needed help, she needed someone to make this nightmare stop.

She was on the phone with Dr. Bristow before she was even halfway home. Irene would help her make sense of all this, make the noise and confusion in her head go away.

She wanted this nightmare to end.

* * *

One hour later

Irina Derevko had warned Senator Bracken about this exact set of events. Johanna Beckett's psychological conditioning was fraying, allowing memories of her past life to surface. Her most recent target had recognized her before she died, she had called her by name. It had very nearly sent her into a fugue state this time. Thankfully she had built into her conditioning a deeply seated command to seek her out when she became confused or agitated.

The senator seemed to have the notion in his head that she simply waved a magic wand and Johanna Beckett was gone, replaced by Jessica Bennet. This process was meant to turn a trained agent into a quiet, unassuming member of society. Someone who led an unobtrusive life until called upon to act, not the opposite. He didn't seem to understand that. He didn't grasp the complexities of what was going on here.

Under the right circumstances, (or the wrong ones depending on who was asking) her true personality could come back with a vengeance. She had a contingency plan in place now if this came to pass, which was becoming more likely by the day. She knew her former husband was working deep cover for the CIA inside a group called SD-6. If all else failed she would turn herself over to him. She would likely spend the rest of her life in a CIA lock down facility, but it was better than the alternative.

If he intended to keep Jessica Bennet around as his personal enforcer or avenging angel, he had to get her out of New York, get her into an established routine when she wasn't active. The next time this happens she wasn't sure she would be able to put her back together again.

The consequences would be dire.


	5. Date With Destiny

**Chapter Four  
****Date With Destiny**

August 2001

After a brief sabbatical to work through the issues raised during her last mission in the field, Jessica Bennet had spent the bulk of the past year since the operation in Central Parkas a member of Senator William Bracken's private security detail. It was easy enough work and largely uneventful. It also had nowhere near the amount of moral ambiguity that wet work did.

It was as if there had been a concerted effort to throw easier work her way. Jessica was a stubborn, independent, strong willed woman, and part of her quietly seethed at the notion of being coddled, but given her reaction to the Jennifer Stewart sanction she could understand the need for lighter work.

As part of her job as Bracken's bodyguard, she had attended a public event on the senator's arm (with a 9mm baby Glock in her clutch and a headset in her ear concealed beneath her immaculately coiffed hair) disguised as his arm candy. The secret service agents who had been in attendance that night (one of several events that POTUS had been likely to "show up" unannounced to) had been every bit the professionals their reputation suggested, though she could detect from them a certain amount of disdain for her as the "hired gun" so to speak. She had never had such a thorough background check in her life, at least the parts of her life she could remember.

Washington DC, though still a major metropolitan area, was a completely different world from New York or Albany. She found the city and its history fascinating, but deep down she wanted nothing more than to go back home as soon as her duties permitted.

She had considered a run home on more than one occasion during her down time, but some issue always seemed to get in the way. Either some function for Senator Bracken's staff, a follow up visit with Dr. Bristow, or most often, her training sessions with Hal. He was a good friend, and she felt she could trust him with anything. He was probably one of the few people with whom she would be willing to share her doubts about her situation. He was always willing to listen.

* * *

November 18th, 2001

September 11th 2001 had changed everything. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had created a near total shift in priorities not only in American government and covert ops, but for Jessica Bennet, too. A terrorist attack had defined her past, made her what she was and now another had come and reshaped everything yet again to define her future. Like most Americans, she was angry. She had considered re-enlisting, but Hal talked her out of it. Her talents were needed elsewhere.

….

"Bracken, don't be a fool, send someone else." Irina Derevko hissed at him 'chertov idiot nekulʹturnykh_' _ she thought to herself. She had been a fool to get involved with this man, regardless of how much he was paying for her services, which had not come cheap.

"Everyone else I have is a blunt instrument, Irina, what this operation requires is a surgical scalpel." Bracken replied. "She's the only operative I have that can't be traced directly back to me."

"You still don't get it, do you?" Irina spat back, "I didn't simply create a new person out of thin air, she is still Johanna Beckett in all the ways that matter, right down to her core values. You're sending a caring mother figure out to murder a young child. There's no guarantee she will even be able to finish the job. Didn't you see what happened last time? That was just somebody she worked with from time to time in an office, this is an eight year old girl you're talking about!"

Bracken dismissed her with a wave of his hand and a roll of his eyes.

"I've made my decision and it's final, just get her ready." he stated flatly, making it clear this was his last word on the matter as he turned and left.

As soon as the door closed to her office, Irina Derevko began to spit curses at him, both Russian ones and a few she had picked up in her time in Amerika.

She picked up her phone and called a travel agent for a red-eye flight to Los Angeles, booked under her real name and passport. She knew she would be flagged before the plane was airborne and would be intercepted before she reached baggage claim at LAX. She knew Jack would find out and would come after her, he would not be able to resist.

She had nearly destroyed his career in the CIA, which had been part of her mission at the time, after all. This would not be a warm homecoming between her, Jack and their daughter, Sydney but least with her estranged (a word far too mild for the reality of their relationship) ex-husband she knew what to expect.

William Bracken was oreshki, and it was time, as the Amerikantsy say, to "get the hell out of Dodge."

* * *

December 27th, 2001  
New Jersey Turnpike  
5:00 PM

It was likely the strangest ops plan she had ever been given. She was to go to a specific hospital room at Cedar Sinai Medical Center and spike the IV of the single occupant with a time released overdose of a powerful muscle relaxant. Hal would meet her at her hotel in midtown to debrief her afterward. She had never performed a sanction with so little information on the target. Something didn't feel right about this operation and she didn't like it.

She steeled herself for this task for days beforehand, telling herself not to look at the occupant of the bed, simply spike the IV bag and get out. With Hal's help she even blocked the scenario as if she were studying lines for a school play. Just a simple press if her thumb onto the plunger of the syringe. Deep down inside some part of her still knew this was wrong.

What possible benefit could the death of a critically ill eight year old girl have for national security?

She was secretly at war with herself, with the dark haired, green eyed little girl that even now haunted her dreams and with her own conscience as well. A fight she wasn't sure she could win, and part of her was not sure she wanted to. A name bubbled up in her mind in Jennifer Stewart's voice, "Johanna."

Just as quickly, a wall of sorts slammed home. A compartmentalization of her mind that was both familiar and alien to her at the same time. With it came a voice of authority in her mind that told her that such questions were well above her pay grade. She had her orders, she wasn't required to like them, but she was required to do them. With that all the questions in her mind ceased. It was time get to work. For better or for worse, whomever Alexis Castle was, she now had a date with destiny.

She was also quite certain, that when tonight was over, it would be a very long time before she would have much in the way of respect for the woman looking back at her in the mirror.

* * *

Cedar Sinai Medical Center  
9:00 PM

It was obvious from the private room that the child she had been sent to murder. (she could not bring herself to call this a sanction, or any other euphemism for a righteous kill, taking the life of an innocent child would never be one...ever) her parents were quite wealthy. By the care with which the room was decorated, even for her short overnight stay and the stuffed animals in the bed with her that she was loved.

Jessica did her best not to notice any of this but it still seeped in, despite her compartmentalized mind and iron discipline. She did everything she could not to look at her, not to see her wan features and bright red hair too short for a little girl, nor did she read her chart to see what her state of health was. She woodenly crossed the room to the girl's IV bag and slid the needle into the port at the bottom, forcing her eyes not to look at her. Just before she set her thumb onto the plunger she heard the one thing able to stop her in her tracks.

"Mommy..." the little girl cried out quietly tears welling in her pale blue eyes.

Jessica stopped, frozen as if rooted to the spot. The plunger holding 10 cc's of certain eventual death clenched in her shaking hand. Her eyes betraying her by looking down at the little girl, now unable to look away. Her own eyes welling up with tears, finally able to put a name to the face of the little girl in her dreams. The one Hal told her had died years ago.

Katie, her name was Katie.

Tears were rolling Jessica's eyes as she yanked the needle out of the port. She couldn't do this monstrous thing. Legal terms to justify this act of insubordination sprang to her mind.

She had been ordered to commit an illegal, immoral, unjustifiable act. As such she has not only the right to disobey, but the responsibility to do so under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. She slipped the cap back onto the syringe and slid it back into her purse.

She could no more kill this child than she could kill her own. A child she was now absolutely certain was still alive.

"Close your eyes, baby." she whispered to the little girl as she ran a gentle hand through the little girl's close cropped red hair. "Go back to sleep."

"Not a baby...I'm eight." Alexis said in an almost petulant whisper.

When Alexis Castle curled up into a fetal position and her eyes drifted closed, then and only then did Jessica Bennet turn and quietly flee the room. She would have to work fast if this action was going to make much difference, otherwise whomever gave her the order would merely send somebody else to kill her.

She needed to talk to Hal. He would know what to do.


	6. Betrayal

**Chapter Five**

**Betrayal**

Twelve hours later  
Rest Stop on the New Jersey Turnpike

"He tried to kill me. Hal tried to kill me." Jessica Bennet whispered to herself over and over like a mantra to keep her feet moving as she fled the scene of what was supposed to be her exfiltration point.

Her mind was still awash with images in her head, thoughts that seemed familiar and yet still alien to her after she had left Alexis Castle's hospital room. She had gone to him for help, for advice. She needed someone to help her make sense of the conflicting emotions roiling within her. She trusted him with her life right up to the moment she heard his silenced 9mm pistol clear his waistband under his jacket and the click of the safety as he flicked it to the off position.

She had reacted without conscious thought, exactly like he had taught her. She swept his pistol arm aside with a sharp practiced motion and struck out with the only weapon she had in her possession, the syringe of muscle relaxant from her purse. The time release nodules in the syringe had already begun to decay and his gun arm went limp almost as soon as she pressed the plunger halfway before the needle broke. His gun fell from his now useless hand and Jessica struck him full force with roundhouse kick to his head, dropping him unconscious to the pavement.

She had rifled his pockets and now had his wallet, silenced pistol spare magazines as well as his car keys. She depressed the fob on the key chain for his rental car and the alarm sounded. She unlocked the door, got inside, adjusted the driver's seat seat and started it. It was good to know at least one thing about him wasn't a lie. He preferred to work alone unless circumstances warranted a team and he had obviously figured he could handle her alone. He thought wrong.

His betrayal hurt though. She trusted him, Trusted him more than anyone else. She flipped open her cell phone and speed dialed the number for Dr. Bristow's private line to hear a stranger on the other end urging her to come to the office. Irina always took her calls herself, so she knew it was a trap. Thirty seconds after she closed the line a text message alert sounded from her cell.

* * *

_Jessica  
You are in grave danger.  
DO NOT go back to DC it is a trap.  
Seek out Lt. Roy Montgomery  
12th Precinct NYPD. Trust no one else._

_Dr. Bristow_

* * *

Irina Derevko grinned wickedly as she hit send on her cell phone. The coded message she had sent would slowly over the next few days to a week unlock all of her memories as Johanna Beckett. Though she felt no particular allegiance to her or the alter ego she had created for her, Irina had come to the conclusion that she despised William Bracken just enough to teach him a lesson in the detriments of hubris, by unleashing his worst nightmare. A highly trained angry mother bear with nothing left to lose.

Her next text message to Jessica clued her in to the location of a dead drop with everything the woman would need to wait and plot her revenge, short of his identity that is. Money,identity papers, the keys to a car in long term storage and a one time KGB safe house that had managed to stay off the grid. That would keep things interesting.

Jessica took the next exit on the turnpike tore the e-z pass off the windshield and tossed it into the back of a pickup truck turning into the lane toward Washington DC. She turned back toward New York City received the toll card and headed back.

She had recognized the label on the iv bag attached to the girl's arm as a drug typically used in chemotherapy. She guessed that the poor child would be back for another overnight stay in about two weeks for her next dose, likely around January 7th or the 8th, taking the New Year's holiday into account.

It wasn't enough for her to simply decide not to murder a child. She would have to prevent her replacement from completing the mission or she might as well have done it herself and spared the little girl the pain and anguish.

It made her feel sick inside that such a sweet little child was being used in some powerful man's demented game of political brinkmanship. If she only knew who the man pulling the strings was, then she could take the fight to his doorstep, finish this once and for all. Barring that she would do what she could to prevent this travesty. Even if it meant camping out on their doorstep every time she went to chemo, silently standing guard.

* * *

January 8th, 2002  
7:30 PM

"Daddy can we go home now? I'm tired." Alexis Castle said quietly to her father.

"Of course we can, pumpkin, anything you want," Richard Castle replied with broad, sad smile and a kiss to the top of her knit cap covered head, "anything at all."

Jessica Bennet stopped short as she took in the scene. She spied Dick Coonan, the man she had spent the last three years framing for murder with his own M.O., who seemed inexplicably pleased with his handiwork. The man was truly scum, any feelings of remorse she might have harbored for framing him went out the window. His job was done. Killing him to avenge the little girl who had touched her heart so much in such a brief time would change nothing now. The mystery man behind all of this would simply hire someone else to do his dirty work.

She had been delayed on the other side of Manhattan by one of Lockwood's goons. (She would never again refer to him as Hal, he was the enemy now) It was as if this whole time, they had simply been seeking to delay her, like they knew what she was trying to do.

It had worked, she was too late. The time release nodules containing the powerful muscle relaxant were now flowing through the little girl's system. Alexis Castle was going to die within the next six hours and there was _nothing_ she could do about it.

Jessica Bennet had never felt so absolutely powerless in her entire life.

* * *

January 13th 2002  
Forest Hills Cemetery

Jessica Bennet stood over the grave marked Alexis Marie Rodgers. She noted the change in her middle and last names from the birth certificate she had researched. Richard Castle was a famous author, so it made sense, he didn't want some of his more deluded fans to know where both his little girl and his heart were buried.

She had watched the entire funeral from a discrete, respectful distance. Watched the redheaded woman who had to be Alexis' mother break down crying in a wretched heap over her stone. Her pitiful keening wailing could be heard even from where she had stood. The quiet desolation on Richard Castle's face as he bravely tried to hold himself together, but failed miserably. The quiet grace and dignity of his mother as she attempted to console her son as he fought back tears watching his little girl's small coffin being lowered into the ground. Standing vigil over her one final time. Her own tears had fallen unrestrained down her face.

This was the price of her failure. A dead child and a family in ruins.

The past five nights had been a roller coaster of extreme emotions. Her nights spent in the throes of nightmare after nightmare as the memories of her previous life as Johanna Beckett slammed into focus. Memories of her own daughter's life before she was removed from it, finally giving a name and a back story to the little girl in her dreams. To the kindly man she now knew had been her husband, replacing the lies and half truths that Lockwood had fed her for the last three years. Flashes of time spent in a dark room and a brightly lit one as well, hazy indistinct recollections of torment that shoved her screaming back into consciousness, bathed in sweat.

Her real name was Johanna Beckett. The photo missing from the file she had been shown had been her own. Her family thought she had died three years ago, and it was safer for them if she stayed that way for the time being. She could operate more easily as Jessica Bennet to do what needed to be done.

She was not the person they knew anymore. Not the wife, not the mother, not the tireless advocate in the courtroom for the downtrodden. She was none of those things now. She was a trained killer with the deaths of three innocent people on her conscience, their blood on her hands. Going back now would only cause them more pain and would also make them a target, if they weren't already.

It was almost fitting that the marker for her own grave was only a few paces closer to the entrance of the cemetery. Johanna Beckett would not return to the living before Jessica Bennet had her answers, before she could set this injustice right.

She would go and see this Roy Montgomery that Dr. Bristow had suggested. She had heard that he had recently been promoted to Captain and placed in command of the 12th Precinct. Her daughter, Katie had recently been accepted at the NYPD Police academy, and would need someone to watch over her. First she would have to get a measure of the man herself though.

It had begun to snow as Jessica knelt down over the small understated stone bearing the child's name and likely the last words her father had spoken to her before she fell asleep the night she died, words which were now her epitaph. She carefully placed the bouquet of silk lilies in front of the stone, running her fingers softly over the raised letters of the girl's name.

"I'm sorry, little one." she whispered, fresh tears breaking loose and running down her face. "I failed you and I'm so sorry. I swear by all that is holy that I will not rest until I have found the man who did this to you and make him pay. You _will_ be avenged."


	7. Tangled Webb

**Chapter Six  
Tangled Webb**

Jessica Bennet, (or was she really Johanna Beckett?) wasn't sure of anything she once thought she knew anymore, least of all who she really was. Two conflicting sets of memories were in her head, two conflicting identities were at war with each other just beneath the surface of her seemingly placid exterior. She knew she could not be both, but she would never again be entirely either of them. She would eventually have to find a way to balance Jessica and Johanna, but right now she wasn't certain how she was going to do that. She felt like she was slowly going insane.

Deep down she knew that "Dr. Bristow" was likely the person who had done this to her. Warped her mind, stole her memories and turned her into a murderer. Made her into the instrument of death for powerful evil men that she had become. That woman was the reason she now had blood on her hands and cold calculating vengeance in her heart. She felt little but hate and anger for the woman and had no reason to trust anything she told her, but this was the only straw she had to cling to in the storm of her turbulent emotions. The only shelter she could find, and the only hope to protect her family who were innocent pawns in all of this.

To this end she picked up one of the three burner phones she had bought at a local Radio Shack and dialed a number from memory.

"12th Precinct Detective Squad, Desk Sergeant Rivera speaking. How may I direct your call?"

"I need to speak to Captain Roy Montgomery, it's urgent." Jessica replied to the desk sergeant.

"He is...out of the building at the moment," the man replied, "would you like to leave a message?"

Jessica thought about it for a moment, took a few deep breaths as she decided how to reply.

"Tell him that Johanna Beckett, Attorney at Law called, and that I need to speak to him in person at his earliest convenience."

* * *

**Later that evening**

Richard Webb was not a happy man.

An attempt had been made on his son. When he'd taken his terminally ill daughter to the hospital for what had been her last chemo treatment before she succumbed to leukemia no less. He had procured a copy of the chief medical examiners report which confirmed she had died of natural causes. So Richard had to have been the target,if not of an actual attempt, then a bit of theater to get his attention.

His son was a bestselling mystery writer, there was no reason for anyone to target him or his family as their ties to him were a very carefully guarded secret, one he shared with no one else. Obviously somebody found out and decided to send him a discrete message. They obviously had no idea whom they were messing with.

In the background of the still photo taken from a hospital security camera was a known inactive assassin, Dick Coonan (code name: Rathborne) covertly slipping something into the purse of an unknown blonde woman who was staring intently at the car his son was getting into. Her face was only barely distinguishable and image enhancement had not been able to get enough pixels to get a clearer rendering.

He was going to find out what this was all about and this woman could have the answers he needs. She would tell him what he wanted to know or he would make an example out of her. He knew he had a scary reputation in both the CIA and the NSA. He had likely the largest confirmed kill count of anyone in the agency. Project Archangel or no, he intended to make it perfectly clear to whomever conceived this stunt that he was not a man to be trifled with.

Nemesis was going hunting.

* * *

William Bracken was pleased with his handiwork.

He had arranged everything to make it look like an attempt had been made on Richard Castle instead. He had no animosity toward Richard Castle or his daughter, whatsoever. In fact he had purposely insisted upon the most painless form of death possible to give the young girl as peaceful an exit as could be managed. He had been assured that she would simply fall asleep and never wake up.

His man in the Medical Examiner's office had doctored the results of all the blood tests and tox screens that the young, inexperienced Dr. Parrish had ordered, convincing her that Alexis Castle's death was from natural causes. That her small body simply couldn't handle the stress of chemo and she passed away in her sleep.

Since no evidence of foul play had been detected, an invasive autopsy had not been deemed necessary by her superiors. Though Dr. Parrish had weakly objected, it hadn't taken much pressure from to convince the young woman to move on to the next case. As a matter of fact her very next case had made her career. The body had been released to Richard Castle the very next day, and his sources confirmed that Dr. Parrish had attended the funeral, but had remained discreetly in the background.

Richard Castle's trauma, though lamentable, was necessary to keep Richard Webb off balance and thinking of his family instead of chasing him as he began cleaning house in his organization. There was the matter of a rogue FBI Agent named Jake Newstead who was also becoming a problem. His people in the FBI had had him re-assigned to a training position in Quantico, but there was the very real possibility that a more permanent solution may one day be necessary.

Laying all of this around the neck of Jessica Bennet would allow him to tie off a loose end without expending any more effort. Hal Lockwood had spent a three days in the hospital and a week in physical therapy to get full use of his right arm back and he didn't want to waste any more assets on her.

Letting Webb deal with her would be an exercise in irony.

* * *

**9:30 PM**  
**Johanna Beckett's**  
**Former Law Office**

Jessica Bennet had not been surprised when Captain Roy Montgomery had called her back. It was obvious that he didn't believe for a moment that she was who she said she was. For the last three years she had been dead. There had been a body in the morgue to prove it. He had obviously seen it with his own eyes, even though he knew that Detective Raglan had soft pedaled the investigation.

This must have been why Katie had transferred from Stanford to NYU. Why she had taken only the necessary coursework then applied to the Police Academy. Why she was training to be a cop. She had seen her through a pair of binoculars as she ran with the rest of the cadet corps. She seemed so determined, so passionate. Part of her wanted to tell her so she would go easier on herself, have a real life, but that would put her in even more danger.

Keeping Katie safe was why she was here, meeting a reformed dirty cop in her old law office. Bristow had done some digging before sending her to him. She had the results of that in the file she had received by messenger. He had cleaned up his act after the murder of Robert Armen, it would seem. Poured himself into the job. He had a list of commendations for valor, he had taken his mistake and turned himself into a better cop.

Though it went against all of her training, she kept her back turned from the door when he entered. She wanted him to get the full effect when he saw her face for the first time.

"Stay right where you are." She heard him say with a voice both quiet and dripping with authority. She didn't have to look to know his service weapon was trained on her.

"You came alone, right?" She asked quietly, but with some steel of her own.

"Yes, I did, now turn around...real slow." Montgomery replied.

When she complied his face visibly paled.

"But...you're dead...I saw you in the morgue...you were positively identified..." he stammered, lowering his pistol.

"Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. I go by Jessica Bennet these days." She replied, as she grabbed a hair from her head and pulled it out. "feel free to run my DNA, if you have a fingerprint kit, I'd be happy to do that too. I need you to believe me."

"But why?" Montgomery asked her.

"I wasn't given much of a choice, I only recently figured this out for myself, so I don't have all of the details." Jessica told him.

"Why come back now?" Montgomery asked again, holstering his pistol.

"Johanna Beckett needs to stay dead, it is too dangerous for the people I hold dear for me to come back, but my daughter, Katie is in the police academy, and I will need somebody to look out for her."

"What do you need me to do?" Montgomery asked, unsure what she was expecting.

"I know what you were involved in all those years ago, and I know that you removed yourself from the records. What I want you to do is take her under your wing and keep her from digging into my case, I'm sure you're aware of how dangerous the people involved are. Make sure anything she finds leads her nowhere. Other than that, just try to keep her safe."

"But why me?" Montgomery asked.

"I know why you turned yourself around, went back on the straight and narrow. You tried to help me once and failed to get me to stop and I paid a terrible price for not heeding your warning." Jessica stated quietly, "Now is your chance to help me make it right. Just protect her, like you tried to protect me, that's all I ask. Keep her out of this, keep her safe for me."

Montgomery now knew without a doubt that this was indeed Johanna Beckett. Her only thought was for her daughter. He had heard about her entering the academy, as this case haunted him like no other, and he had checked up on the family from time to time. He had resolved to smooth the way for Kate Beckett long before this meeting, now he just had an added incentive.

"You have my word." He stated, he was a man on a mission now. He had been given a gift from God to absolve him of his greatest sin. That he had simply stood by and done nothing while Johanna Beckett was murdered.

He knew what he had to do, knew how far he would be willing to go.

This time he was going to get it right.


	8. Digging Two Graves

**Chapter Seven  
****Digging Two Graves**

"_He who seeks vengeance must first dig two graves, one for his enemy and one for himself."_

Chinese proverb

Jessica waited nervously on her couch with her burner phone on the coffee table in front of her. Only a single dim reading lamp on the end table lit the room as she sat with her legs curled under her and a copy of In A Hail of Bulletsin her hands. She dimly recalled liking the book, but she couldn't concentrate on the words on the page. She was both waiting for the phone to ring and at the same time dreading it.

Roy Montgomery had given her number to a man he knew could put her in touch with someone who could help her remain hidden from the forces arrayed against her. The haunted look in his eyes told her that he knew more than he was telling, but she also knew he had a family of his own to protect. She understood how that felt and was careful not to press him too hard on the topic.

When the phone finally rang, she nearly jumped out of her skin. When she picked it up and opened the line the gruff voice of an aging man spoke on the other end of the line.

"Roy Montgomery asked me to call you, he said that you needed me to make an introduction." said the voice on the other end of the line.

"Yes," Jessica replied, "I need to arrange a safe meet with a mutual acquaintance of ours."

"And who might that be?" the man's voice replied.

A name swam up from the depths of her memory, a man she once trusted, one who had saved her life decades ago. She remembered a kind face with gentle hands, the first man who had ever treated her care and respect since her father died. Even though she could not yet even picture what he looked like.

"Richard Webb, " she replied, "Tell him that Jessica Bennet would like to come in from the cold, and that she will be bringing an old friend of his along for the ride."

"Where would you like to arrange to meet?" Smith replied without any trace of emotion. He hung up after she gave him the address of a vacant office space in Washington Heights and he told her that he would get back to her.

He may have retired from active service a year ago, but he had handled these sorts of things many times over the years. In the old days, sometimes all it took to bring a rogue agent to heel, bring down a spy ring or turn them into double agents was for them to learn that _Mr. Smith_ was sniffing around. Though he was a fearsome operator in his own right, it was widely known that _"where Smith went, Nemesis was not far behind."_ As intimidating as he had been in his prime, and even in his later years, his old friend Richard Webb could be downright scary. He could carry on a casual conversation with his target, and just bolt out of the blue put two in their head without even skipping a beat.

The man had ice water in his veins.

Anything that involved his family was a sensitive subject. The last man who made even an idle threat in that particular direction had died before he could finish spitting the words out. Webb had killed him with a single two-knuckle jab in the throat, crushing his windpipe. Word got around. Bating Nemesis about his family was a very bad idea.

He certainly hoped this Jessica Bennet had gotten that particular memo.

* * *

Two days later  
7:30 PM

Jessica Bennet was once again waiting in the vacant office space for the Justice Initiative. Though the place had seemed vaguely familiar when she had met Roy Montgomery here, she could now almost vividly remember working on cases here. Joseph Pulgotti's case in particular.

She remembered exactly where the whiteboard had been with the time line for the death of Robert Armen. Where Jennifer Stewart's desk was in the office, one of three people she killed with her own hands. She remembered decrypting the files that Jake Newstead had sent her in that odd code he insisted all of their correspondence be written in.

She remembered decrypting the message in which he told her she had been made, to take her family and flee. She remembered shredding and burning all of the unencrypted files and encrypting the letter she was going to place in the dead drop to the man she was about to meet in the next few minutes, just before she got the call from Sophia Turner, setting the trap that had sent her on this horrific journey.

She even remembered duct taping a manila envelope with copies of everything to the bottom of a drawer in her filing cabinet, in case he was mistaken and she could come back to the office the next day after dinner with Jim and Katie.

She errantly wondered what became of the furnishings for her office. She imagined that Jim and Katie probably cleaned them all out before the lease expired. Thankfully neither of them would be able to make heads or tails of the encrypted files even if they found them. Where she was going, they could not be allowed to follow.

The consequences if that happened were more than she could bear.

"Were you involved in the attempt on my son?"

A voice she found startlingly, achingly familiar rang in her ears, though much colder and angrier than she recalled. She hadn't even heard him come in. Forty three years had obviously not dulled any of his skills. She hadn't heard him coming when he unlocked the door of her basement prison to set her free all those many years ago, either.

"The...the what?" Jessica replied, "no, I wasn't aware of any plot against your son."

_Only your granddaughter,_ the thought came to her unbidden, the guilt for her part in her murder, and her failure to prevent it still fresh in her mind.

Webb held out a photo to her. She still had still been standing mostly in shadow up until this moment. When she stepped closer and into the waning daylight to take the photo from his hand he finally got a good look at her face.

"Johanna?" he asked, just as shocked and disbelieving that she was standing there alive as Roy Montgomery had been.

His face softened for a moment, before the hard shell slammed back down.

"What the hell happened to you, Johanna?"

As crazy as her story sounded, as she explained what little of it she had been able to piece together over the last few weeks, he seemed to believe her.

"A former KGB agent with the skill-set to do precisely that was believed to have gained entry into the United States at just about that time, Irina Derevko, alias Laura Bristow. She was picked up in Los Angeles about two weeks ago, her ex-husband Jack Bristow took her into custody." Webb told her.

"That must be her, she went by the name Dr. Irene Bristow. She posed as my therapist." Jessica replied.

"She and whomever hired her to do this to you must have had a falling out, because by all reports she made it far to easy to track her movements, and she simply walked right into our hands like she had been waiting to be apprehended." Webb added.

Anger began to seep into her heart. Again she was being used as a pawn in someone else's power game. She didn't like it one bit.

"If we have any hope of finding this mystery man, I need to disappear." she finally stated after schooling her features.

"I agree, Jo, whomever set me that photo, obviously wanted me to clean up his mess for him and eliminate you. I think I can arrange a suitable erasure for you." Webb stated.

"I have some unfinished business with my husband first, Richard, once that's done I am all yours." Jessica replied.

"That's fine." Webb told her, "It will take some time to put together what I have in mind. Will two weeks be enough time?"

"That will be more than enough," Jessica replied, "if you could find him for me, that would save me some recon, allow me to keep out of sight."

"Done," Rick said, "Take this, I'll arrange that surveillance for you, let me know when you're ready to disappear."

He handed her a card with his number on it.

"And Johanna," he said, as he was on his way out, "It's good to see you again."

"The same to you Richard," she replied, for the first time finding comfort in being addressed by her real name "I just wish it was under better circumstances."

* * *

Five days later

Jessica Bennet's heart seemed to clench in her chest as she watched her husband slowly drink himself into a stupor. The man who had loved her, married her, and she had made a baby with, slowly losing himself into as he drank each successive glass of scotch. Watching him call for another round with slurred speech, knowing he likely had several bottles at home too.

A single tear rolled down her cheek at what her "death" had done to him and what the washed up drunk he was becoming was doing to their daughter. Slowly anger was rising in her heart at him. He was leaving their daughter to wallow in her grief alone as she drifted into a dangerous obsession while he crawled into a bottle of scotch, looking for his answers at the bottom.

"Okay, this has gone on just about long enough!" she whispered angrily to no one in particular, as she rose from her seat at the secluded table she had been sitting at, finishing the glass of wine she had been nursing most of the night. It was time to put her plan into action. A plan she had been working out in her head for days since Webb's people had found Jim's preferred watering hole, having colored her hair from blonde to her original shade, and bought clothes to suit a style that was no longer her own.

"James Beckett, what the hell has gotten into you!" she bellowed.

"Who're you..." Jim slurred, the scotch having long since dulled his once sharp mind.

When the bartender gave her a funny look and cleared his throat she silenced him with a glare that practically screamed "back off" as she paid his tab, and levered Jim to his feet.

"Wait-a-minnut!" Jim slurred, his voice almost a petulant whine as he was dragged unceremoniously to his feet, reaching for his unfinished glass of scotch, "nod-done-yet"

"Oh you are well past done, sweetheart." Jessica stated flatly.

It wasn't until she had manhandled him into the back seat of the taxi that a look of recognition suddenly crossed his features.

"Johanna?" he breathed in a voice though slurred with alcohol carried love and pain and heartbreak with it as the grown man promptly burst into tears. His uncontrolled sobbing broke her heart as she pulled his head to her chest and simply held him there, feeling his choking sobs through her jacket as tears of her own ran down her cheeks.

The following morning

Jessica pulled on her jacket as she prepared to leave the house she once had called her own. She had read Jim the riot act for the way he was treating himself and Katie. He needed to straighten up and fly right, start thinking about Katie now. She had made arrangements with a rehab center through Richard Webb, he would come out clean and sober in 90 days. Had him make the phone call for them to pick him up himself, and write a note on a post it on the bathroom mirror to call Katie and tell her where he was going.

Everything in the house was left almost exactly where if had been, so she had taken the opportunity to rummage through a few family albums for some mementos of a life she was not yet ready to rejoin. Copies of Katie's baby pictures, and school photos from kindergarten though her senior picture. Mostly little things that she herself had put away years ago and no one would miss. She would cherish them as only a mother could.

She had gone through the boxes from her home office and found the court file she had requested back then and removed that too. Judging by the level of dust on everything nobody had been in there in years. She knew eventually Kate would go in there looking for answers, answers she was better off not having.

What was behind this was bigger than she realized. It was better to have her running in circles chasing a case she couldn't solve than to have her find those answers and wind up dead. Or worse, as she knew now with absolute clarity.

She was out the door before Jim woke, leaving no trace she had been there since her death.

* * *

Two weeks later

The New York City Fire Marshal was investigating a fire at a brownstone in Manhattan of suspicious origin in which the body of a woman in her early fifties was found with two bullet holes in her head. From documents and identification found at the scene and from dental records the woman was tentatively identified as Captain Jessica Bennet, US Army (retired)

A careful examination of her credit history showed she had not existed before 1999. There were few, if any other leads and the case slowly went cold.

When the case file reached Senator Bracken's desk, he was quite pleased with his handiwork. "Uncle Rick" was predictable, and nothing if not thorough. Problem solved.

The same day Bracken was getting confirmation of her death from his man in the Fire Marshall's office, Jessica Bennet, her hair once again platinum blonde, was watching her husband and daughter get out of their rental car at the rehab facility she had selected through a pair of high powered binoculars.

She saw Jim take off his watch, and then remove a silver chain from around his neck with what looked like her wedding band hanging on a silver chain for her to to hold onto for "safekeeping" he said as she read his lips as he pressed them into her hands. He hugged her for what seemed like forever then kissed the top of her head and entered the facility under his own power.

Jessica Bennet didn't know it when she put the binoculars away, but it would be the last time she would see either one of them in the flesh for a decade.

With a sad, wistful expression on her face, she got in her car and headed back to her new safe house, and her new job with the CIA.

She had dug her two graves, now it was time to hunt for the man responsible so she could fill the other one.


	9. Epilogue: Part One

_First and foremost I would like to thank all of my loyal readers who stuck around for both "Agent Rodgers FBI" and this story, in spite of the fact that I killed off Alexis Castle. (who is, believe it or not, one of my favorite characters on the show) Not to mention those who came in after hearing about the "great new Alias crossover" even after you found out I was merely borrowing the main character because I couldn't come up with a better one on my own and had to steal one from JJ Abrams. _

_It has been a long, strange trip since last August when I first foisted the prologue of Agent Rodgers upon Nerwen Aldarion in an e-mail and made her cry, then want to kill me, then made her cry some more. I am almost sad that she now has an immunity to my sad stories. (I guess I'm gonna have to work a little harder next time) I thank you all including Phnxgrl for pestering me for updates, even you Dinormus for pissing me off and making me defend my plot choices. I still can't believe how long this story really is. I honestly thought it would bottom out at 30 chapters._

_To those people who have been asking (and in some cases begging) me for a sequel to Agent Rodgers, I wish I could promise that, but my track record with sequels is not very good up to this point. I think I make a habit of tying up my loose ends far too neatly that I can't find a hook to wrap the new story around._

_I hope this really long, two part epilogue helps make up for this deficiency in my writing style._

_**Part One** will focus primarily on events and circumstances that take place in the seven years in between "The Bennet Identity" and "Agent Rodgers FBI"_

_**Part Two** will take place after the events of "Agent Rodgers, FBI" and act as an epilogue for this story as a whole._

_Again I thank you all for your support, your reviews,and your indulgence as I dragged you all through the worst tragedy Richard Castle could ever experience. I sincerely hope that Andrew Marlowe does not put Rick through it on the show._

_Shutterbug5269_

_And now, I give you Part One._

* * *

**Epilogue: ****Part One**

February 14th 2004

Jim Beckett went off the wagon only once after he came back from his ninety day stay at the rehab center. He had made it through Christmas, New Years, and even the fifth anniversary of Johanna's death well enough. It had been her birthday with Valentine's Day so quickly on it's heels that got to him. The last five years he had spent this time of the year in a drunken haze, so he hadn't had to look at all of the couples in love strolling in Central Park when he was taking his morning walk. He hadn't had to see the decorations up in every store since Christmas as he waited in line to pay for his groceries.

Today it was all simply too much.

He knew buying that bottle of scotch was a mistake. Knew that dropping the ice cubes into the glass and following them with the amber liquid that had dominated his life for the last five years was another. It wasn't until the third refill that he realized just how huge a mistake it had been, but he couldn't seem to stop himself.

The last time he had indulged (or more accurately overindulged) in alcohol he'd had that glorious hallucination that Johanna had come back from the dead to save him from himself. Now he knew what he had subconsciously been trying to do. He had been trying to bring that hallucination back...a desperate attempt to make it happen again. It had felt so real, like she had actually come back to him. When he had awakened to his hangover the next morning he could have sworn he could smell her perfume. God he missed her.

A loud insistent knock on the door jolted him back to the reality of what he was doing. He was supposed to have met Katie at the restaurant an hour ago. The parallels to the day Johanna died were not lost on him. When he heard Katie's scared, worried voice calling out to him from the other side of his front door, his heart burned with shame.

Shame for having chosen a drunken stupor over his daughter once again. He suddenly felt sick to his stomach, powerfully angry and disgusted with himself. He picked up the half full bottle of expensive single malt scotch and heaved it with all of the strength he could muster, shattering the bottle against the wall of the living room, before he collapsed in a heap on the couch with his head in his hands.

The next sound he heard was the resounding crack of shattering wood as she kicked the door in, entering with her pistol drawn, a look of near panic on her face, followed swiftly by soul crushing disappointment. He was drinking...again. It was all in her eyes, as he looked up at her, the desolation he found there at having been abandoned by her father...again.

"I'm sorry, Katie..." he sobbed quietly, "I'm so, so sorry! I tried so hard this time, I really did."

Kate put away her gun and closed her eyes for a moment, not sure if she was prepared to believe him, or to trust him. He had let her down so many times over the years that she had built a wall around her heart to keep herself safe from feeling the pain of the losses she had endured.

After making arrangements to have the doorjamb repaired, she left without speaking a word.

As he dialed the number for his sponsor, he vowed to himself, that from this day forward, he would never again give Katie a reason to be disappointed in him. Never again put that look of utter desolation on her face. He resolved, once and for all, to be the father she deserved, the father he should have been five years ago when she had truly needed him and he abandoned her to her own crushing loss to drown his sorrows in a bottle. He just needed a little help.

Three days later, he found himself standing up in a church recreation room. Surrounded by encouraging faces, knowing he was not alone in this sickness.

"My name is Jim Beckett, and I am an alcoholic..."

* * *

February 20th 2004

Officer Kate Beckett stepped out of her squad car on her first official non-training day on the job. She had spent the past year in on the job training and evaluations. Her crisp blue uniform was immaculate and the badge was shiny on the left panel of her heavy coat as she walked up to the car she had pulled over. Her first traffic citation.

She was eager to please, she knew she had a long way to go before she made detective, before she could get herself transferred to homicide and the real work of finding her mother's killer and bringing him to justice would begin. She owed this all to Richard Castle's books. They had filled her with renewed purpose, and maybe just a little bit of hope.

When she reached the driver's side door of the rented Mercedes, the window rolled down to reveal a man in his mid thirties, a scruffy five o'clock shadow on his face.

"License and registration please." she stated with crisp, but polite, authority.

When the requested documents were passed out the window to her, she looked them over and asked,

"Where were you going in such a hurry, Mr. Rodgers?"

Several minutes went by before Richard Alexander Rodgers pulled back into traffic. The eager young police officer had long since turned off the flashing lights of her cruiser and pulled back into traffic. He had phoned his lawyer to see to the traffic ticket, with instructions to simply pay the fine and have done with it. He didn't need it hanging over his head when the FBI ran his background check.

He had a plane to Virginia to catch, a new life to begin. The rigorous training at Quantico would purge him forever of the shell that was once Richard Castle, as that name no longer held any meaning for him. Without his daughter, there was simply no point to that existence. He would build a new life from the ashes, far from the devastating memories of New York City.

He would begin again.

He had seen a similar expression in the eyes of the young officer who had pulled him over. Something buried in the back of his psyche told him that she too had suffered. There was no trace of bridge and tunnel in her voice, which meant Manhattan and money.

Beautiful women like her simply didn't become cops, they became lawyers or models or something else, so something must have happened to make her choose this instead. Something terrible and tragic, from the haunted look in her eyes. The part of him that used to be a writer wondered what it was.

He wished her well. Whatever she was looking for, he truly hoped she would find it.

"_Go placidly amidst the noise and haste__, Officer Beckett." _he thought to himself as he once again steered toward JFK and put the chance meeting with a kindred spirit out of his mind. He no longer believed in fate or a just universe. He wasn't sure what he believed in anymore, hopefully in the FBI he would find something to at least give his remaining years without Alexis a sense of purpose.

* * *

August 31st 2004

"What are you doing down here, officer?"

Kate had been caught _red handed_ and she knew it. She wasn't authorized to be in the Homicide Division's records vault. She had no official reason to be down here, no standing or official case to explain her presence. She had managed to resist the temptation to sneak a peek at her mother's official case file for nearly six months since being transferred to the 12th Precinct as a patrol officer. After her parent's anniversary she could finally resist no longer. Only to be caught by her new captain, no less.

"It's uhmm...it's not...it's not...what it looks like, sir... please...I can explain..." Kate stammered, her eyes filling with sudden panic.

"Finish what you're doing and put that file back where you found it, _Officer_ Beckett." Captain Montgomery replied with an angry scowl on his face, "I expect to see you _in my office_ in fifteen minutes!"

Kate swallowed hard after Montgomery left, trying hard not to cry. She knew he would be within his rights to have her suspended without pay for as long as thirty days for this infraction...if she was lucky. He could also have her charged with tampering with evidence in an open case. She may have just cost herself her shield.

She carefully slid the file back into the box after taking a long sorrowful look at her mother's picture on the front, her bright beaming smile in what had been one of her favorite photos of herself. She dabbed a tissue to her eyes as she carefully cradled the bankers box in her other hand like she was carrying a child, thankful she had forgone eyeliner and mascara when in uniform.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid" she muttered to herself, as she carefully replaced the box on the shelf where it came from, lightly brushing her slender fingers along its surface, barely touching the black ink of her mother's name. **Beckett, Johanna, Jan. 1999**. Knowing she might very well have cost herself any chance of solving her mother's case with this impulsive act.

After carefully composing herself, she made her way up to the homicide floor to bite the bullet. She had known of Roy Montgomery only by reputation. He was an honest to goodness super-cop, with the highest closure rate of any detective in the department, a record that still stood even since he had moved to an administrative role.

_"Too bad Raglan caught mom's case instead of him," s_he thought mournfully to herself,_ "had Montgomery gotten it, I might not have to be here, mom's killer would be in prison and this bitter cup might have been passed from me."_

There was nothing to be done about it now, it was time to face the music and hope that she could talk her way out of the hole she had dug herself into. Try to make him understand.

Later as she walked out of the Captain's office she felt an odd sense of relief. Instead of suspending her, or writing her up for a formal review, he simply chastised her like a recalcitrant schoolgirl caught out after curfew and informed her that she was being transferred out of patrol, and into Vice.

Though she didn't relish the idea of getting dressed up as a hooker and walking the streets looking for johns, it certainly beat the alternative. Besides, working Vice was the quickest way up the promotion track for a female officer, especially one with her ambitions.

She could live with the idea of wearing skimpy, skintight tops, micro-mini skirts and stripper heels if it meant getting her gold shield and transferring to homicide where that small gray dust covered banker's box beckoned to her like a siren's song in the mist. She would simply have to take the long view.

A few days later, she was sitting on the couch in her new apartment, her aching feet soaking in a tub of water on the floor. Her feet were killing her when she got in from her first day walking a corner for the vice squad. But the aching in her joints was worth it. She enjoyed the extra four inches in height that the stripper shoes had given her. It made her feel powerful to tower over the other cops in the squad, or to be at eye level with the taller ones. She found that she liked that feeling of power. Though the style of shoe really didn't do anything for her.

Maybe a pair of boots with a durable heel would be more to her liking. She had a sizable inheritance from her grandfather that she rarely touched, not Richard Castle money maybe, but enough to get her an apartment she could not have afforded on a cop's salary. She had tomorrow off, so she resolved to go shoe shopping, maybe make a stop at Burberry for a trench coat and maybe a jacket or two?

Captain Crockett had told her that with her work ethic she would make detective in no time, and she wanted to look the part when she did. She saw her goal was in reach, more so than it had been when she was sneaking into the homicide records room. She would make it to homicide soon enough.

When that happened she would be ready. Look out murderous scum, Kate Beckett is coming.

Enter the Huntress.

* * *

September 21st 2007

**FBI Agent found dead in Washington Heights **

FBI Agent Jacob Newstead was found dead last night  
in an alley in Washington Heights of an apparent self  
inflicted gunshot wound to the head.  
According to sources within the FBI, the twice decorated  
agent had been greatly troubled by the death of his partner,  
Robert Armen who had been murdered in the line of duty by  
Mob enforcer Vincent Pulgotti in 1987.  
He left no known next of kin

Notably he was found in the same alley where the body  
of slain civil rights attorney Johanna Beckett was discovered  
in 1999. Her murder is still unsolved

Jessica Bennet cried uncontrollably at breakfast when she read the New York Times that morning. Jake had been searching for answers for the death of his partner and friend when he had approached her for help all those years ago. His unflinching, unwavering, desire for answers had touched her heart and set her on this path. He was so forthright and noble in his dogged pursuit of justice, willing to take the fight right down the throat of the man responsible. She couldn't even bring herself to hate him. He had had no idea what he was up against, neither of them did.

He had kept looking, driven obsessively for answers, only her "death" had so infused him with guilt and remorse over getting her killed that he had tried to take the dragon on alone and the noble fallen knight had gotten eaten. When the time came, she would find this man and end him.

This guy had a lot to answer for, and she intended to see he paid in full for his crimes.

* * *

May 18th 2011

Jessica Bennet had driven like a mad woman straight from Syracuse to New York City, stopping only once for gas when she had heard about the death of Roy Montgomery, the man she had entrusted her daughter's safety. He had done an admirable job of keeping her off the case for most of her career as a cop. Only lately, when she had gotten involved with Webb's estranged son, had she begun to step into dangerous territory.

Though she wasn't wild about the idea of all of the danger that her job put her in, she was proud of everything Kate had accomplished with her life, even though it had been done in her name under false pretenses. She had longed to real herself to her family for years, but she knew that coming in out of the cold while the man who used her to tie up the loose ends she'd created, tried to kill her when she learned the truth was still out there.

She could bring only more danger to her family. Or so she thought.

She had become concerned when Cole Maddox had gone active after being off the grid for over a year after tangling with the LAPD detective with the unfortunate last name that Webb had enlisted to help his son with his investigation. Help she had insisted he send, given what his son and her daughter were looking into.

He had just received a rather large sum of money from an account with which Bennet was very familiar. She had received money for expenses from that same account when she thought she was serving her country. When she found out he had surfaced in New York City, she armed herself, packed an overnight bag and in the middle of the night set off on the NYS Thruway.

When she arrived that morning, the funeral was already underway, Kate was one of the pallbearers, so was Webb's son. She had heard they had become an item over the years. The looks they gave each other spoke volumes. It was all very poetic, two people who's lives were changed by tragedy brought together. It was like something out of a soap opera.

Her thoughts on her daughter's budding romance were interrupted when movement to her left caught her eye. About two hundred yards out she saw a man crouching behind a stone lining up a rifle. He was well out of the effective range of her silenced pistol, she knew if it was who she thought it was she didn't have a chance in hell of taking him on directly, he would simply kill her then finish the job on Kate. She wasn't trained for this, wasn't trained to take on special forces operatives, but she had to do...something.

She would slip in as close as she could, time her shot just as he was pulling the trigger. If she screwed this up her daughter would die. She would truly know Richard Rodgers' pain, because she would share it.

At one hundred yards out, she flicked her eyes to the podium and saw Kate stepping up to it. It was now or never. She took cover behind a Civil War monument and lined up her shot. She would have to time this just right and pray that everything worked out. She knew Maddox would go for a killing shot, straight to the heart, she only had to throw him off by a millimeter or more to save her life.

"Forgive me..." she whispered as she pulled the trigger over and over again, until she heard the loud boom of the rifle and the screams as Kate went down.

She thought she was going to be sick.

**Several hours later**

Kate was out of surgery, but was not yet allowed to have visitors as Jessica, dressed in nurse's scrubs entered her room. Her mind went back to the last time she had stood in a hospital room this way. When a little girl's life had hung in the balance, and she had failed to save her.

This is the closest she had been to her daughter since the morning before she had been taken. She was unprepared for how she would feel, seeing her with a tube down her throat and IV's in her arm. Shot because of her. She touched Katie's hand, and ran her fingers though her hair, smoothing it back behind her ear. She was expected to recover and would be moved to a room soon.

She had seen Richard Rodgers in the waiting room with Jim. Saw the dead, hopeless, heartbroken expression on his face, the same one she had seen the day he put his daughter in the ground. He loved Katie, he really loved her and was devastated by the thought of losing her.

She had done the best she could, she only hoped it would be enough.

The rest would be up to Katie.

* * *

_Part two will be coming soon. Stay tuned._


	10. Epilogue: Part Two

**Epilogue: Part Two  
**

May 21st 2011

Jessica had seen the reports on the news about the arrest of Senator William Bracken.

Considering what he did to both his daughter and her own, she thought it was poetic justice that Special Agent Richard Rodgers had slapped the cuffs on him, personally. She knew in her heart, however, that either through his connections, or his rich father, he might somehow find a way to get himself out of this...unless she beat him to the punch. At one time she had been a tireless advocate for justice, but what that man had done to her, her family and the countless other lives he had ruined in his bid for power had opened her eyes.

She had made a few friends since she had begun working for Webb. Some of whom had also been wronged by Senator Bracken or one of his underlings in one way or another since he had shut down Project Archangel all those years ago, some just hated what he had gotten away with over the years, a few others had worked closely with Mike Smith and wanted payback.

She now had access to a small, motivated pool of very highly trained and disciplined men and women who were both loyal to Richard Webb, yet all too painfully aware of the fact that he was allowing his personal feelings about William Bracken and his father to get in the way of his better judgment. Men and women who were more than willing to do what they knew must be done, now that they had completed their assigned tasks under Operation Instant Karma.

For highly trained and experienced operators like these, planning a jailbreak from the New York City Federal Building's holding cells with zero collateral damage would be child's play.

She would let Bracken think that his father had broken him out, at least for a short time anyway. Let him have that illusion to cling to, that his money and connections had once again gotten him out from under the the scales of Blind Justice. She would dish out some karma of her own when she shattered that illusion, crushed those hopes and then sanctioned him. With extreme prejudice.

They would break out Lockwood's remaining henchman, Tom Jackson, as well (he had been transferred to federal custody a week ago to face charges of treason) then make it look like they had a falling out and Richards killed him before going off the grid. Jackson's body would never be found. The "Dragon" would be slain, and the last of his henchmen who could positively identify her would be dead. Operation Dragonslayer (as the group called it informally) would kick of in twenty minutes.

As Richard Webb was fond of saying, she thought to herself, "Ain't karma a bitch."

* * *

**May 2nd, 2013**

Kate Beckett had been signing so many copies of her first book, Heat Wave that she thought her arm was going to go numb. She had been propositioned by at least a half dozen men and more than a few women who had obviously not seen either the engagement announcement that her publicist, Paula Haas had gotten into just about every newspaper on the planet, nor the incredibly expensive and tasteful engagement ring she sported on her finger.

She would have liked nothing better than to have her soon to be husband with her at her first book signing, she really needed her partner, but he had opted to stay at the hotel. He sent her frequent, loving text messages of encouragement as well as to remind her that they had dinner plans later that evening.

His help had been invaluable when she was researching the book and setting up the various plot devices and complex relationships in the plot. Not to mention his near encyclopedic knowledge of FBI procedures. She knew the real reason he had elected to bow out, however. He didn't want to take the chance of being recognized as Richard Castle, didn't want his celebrity past to steal her thunder or overshadow her achievement. She knew how proud he was of her. The forward he had written as his former alter ego was proof of that.

He had written it in secret when she was away at her therapy sessions, both PT and with Dr. Burke. All she had known at the time was that he had been withdrawn and depressed for nearly a week, she would come home at night to find him staring at the photo of himself and Alexis walking to the playground with tears in his eyes. It broke her heart to see him like this. To see what the loss of his daughter still did to him, even now.

It wasn't until she had received the final pre-press treatment for the novel that she realized the enormity what he had done. It was a beautifully written three paragraph forward from Richard Castle himself to all of his fans. He sang her praises as a new author, and asked them to support her as she took up the mantle that he had set aside so many years ago and dubbed her the new "_Mistress of the Macabre_." He had obviously slipped it into the shipping box containing her manuscript without her knowledge. The press had picked it up (with a little _help_ from Paula) and ran with it, driving initial sales through the roof.

He had, on his own initiative, _willingly_ brought upon himself a _week_ of near crippling emotional agony as he tore open the scars of his deepest emotional wound to be her favorite writer one final time. If she had had any doubts about how much he loved her, or how far he would go to support her, they were erased forever.

She requested only one change to her manuscript...the dedication.

_For Special Agent Richard Rodgers, FBI  
my true love & partner in all things.  
In memory of his beloved daughter.  
May she continue to watch over both of us..._

_Always_.

The book signing was coming to an end, when a woman in her late fifties in a gray blazer and matching pencil skirt with strawberry blonde hair carefully drawn up in a tight bun, stepped up to the table.

"Who can I make it out to?" Kate asked with a kind smile for what had to be the thousandth time that day.

"Jessica. You can make it out to Jessica Bennet, thank you." the woman replied quietly. She seemed hesitant and skittish, like she would flee at the slightest provocation.

Kate looked up at the older woman before her and took in her sad, haunted eyes, and was reminded of Richard when she had first met him, once upon a time and wrote the following in her book.

_To Jessica Bennet,  
Don't let what you have lost keep you from reaching out for what you still have.  
Strive to be happy and free._

_Katherine Beckett _

She thought for the briefest moment that the older woman would burst into tears when she read it. But it had felt right. The woman seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place her. The next person in line ended her introspective moment though as the mystery woman melted into the crowd and disappeared.

She had a lot of books left to sign in a very short period of time if she wanted to meet Rick in time to change for dinner. They had reservations at Le Cirque at seven thirty. The mystery of Jessica Bennet, or "the Gray Lady" as Paula and Gina had taken to calling her when they thought she wasn't listening, (they knew she didn't take kindly to such things, she was protective of her new-found fans, even the weird ones) would have to wait.

* * *

September 28th, 2015  
Presbyterian Hospital  
11:25 PM

Kate Beckett Rodgers woke in a hospital bed for the first time since her shooting to find her husband seated next to her in the bed clutching her hand in a near catatonic state. Anguish and grief were written all over his face. The last thing she remembered before she lost consciousness was the squeal of brakes and the shrieking of rending metal as the other car had run the red light and t-boned her sedan on the passenger side. Though there was relief in his eyes that she had survived, his grief had not subsided. In that instant, as her eyes locked on his, she knew something was wrong. Something was terribly, horribly wrong.

"The baby?' she choked out, "Rick...please...no."

He hook his head, because he couldn't get the words past his throat, and as if they were one being they both burst into tears. Their shared grief over the loss of a child who had not yet even had a chance to draw breath echoed in the room. She had only been pregnant for ten weeks, but they had been excited beyond measure, only to have their hopes dashed in an instant.

They clung to each other as if for dear life. It was the one secret pain that Rick had never wanted to share with his beloved Kate, the crushing grief of losing a child, even a fetus. He would not let her face it alone like he had. They would get through this like they had gotten through everything else that life had cruelly thrown at them...together.

Little did they know that another person had been present to observe their grief. Jessica Bennet had been shadowing her daughter. She had been as soon as she had found out she was pregnant. It had been she who had wrenched open the driver's side door of Kate's shattered car, assessed her injuries, most notably the one to her abdomen and called the ambulance.

This wasn't something she could fix with a knife or a silenced pistol in a dark alley. There was no one to blame, the other driver had not intentionally run the red light, it had been determined that a ruptured brake line had been the primary cause of the accident that had cost Kate what should have been her first born.

Katie didn't need an avenger or a guardian angel this time, she needed her mother. She couldn't in good conscience stand in the shadows any longer. It was time for Johanna Beckett to come in out of the cold.

The initial revelation two weeks later when she had finally screwed on her courage had not gone well. Katie's initial anger had been anticipated. Webb had prepared her for that, based on his own experience with Martha. Katie had simply refused to believe her. After a DNA test had proven she was who she said she was, and Kate had raged, thrown things and cried herself to sleep in Ricks arms she allowed her to explain what had become of her.

The story of Bracken's treachery and her own transformation from legal crusader for the downtrodden to dangerous assassin. Her fight to get her identity back, her finally melted her heart toward her. When her father found out, he too needed some convincing, but after hearing her out, he was only too happy to have her back.

Several weeks later, the tabloids noted that the father of best selling author Katherine Beckett was seen in the company of a woman identified only as Jessica. It had been a matter of public record that he was a widower and the writer of the piece went on to wish him well.

* * *

July 21st 2016  
Rodgers Loft

Kate and Rick stood in the middle of the nursery arm in arm looking at their newborn twins, marveling at how perfect they were. They hadn't been actively looking to try again so soon after she lost the last one, but shortly after her recovery they had gotten into a stupid shouting match over what to do with the crib and baby clothes they had bought. It had gotten truly ugly very quickly and neither of them backed down, or pulled any punches. It had been one of the worst fights they had had since the Raglan case.

One thing had led to another and they ended up having angry sex on the breakfast bar in the kitchen...on the desk in their shared study...pressed up against the door to their bedroom...and again in their bed. Somewhere in the middle of all that the twins now curled up together in the crib had been conceived, one girl named Johanna Alexis Rodgers, and a boy named David Christopher Rodgers.

Kate had taken to calling the two redheads her "wonder twins" as they had pulled her back from the depression that had threatened to cripple her following the car accident that had taken their first from them. She had studiously refused to drive a car during her pregnancy, and rarely ventured out other than to her prenatal doctor visits, and then only because Rick insisted she get some air. She was positively paranoid about letting nothing go wrong this time.

The day she and the twins came home from the hospital, he had led her up the stairs with a surprise for her. When he opened the door to what had been Alexis' room and flicked on the light, his daughter's possessions were gone, replaced by a fully appointed nursery. A framed photo of Alexis hung on the wall over the crib, and the stuffed animals that had once stood silent guard over her bed were arranged in various surfaces of the room. When she looked at him with misty eyes he merely shrugged his shoulders and said, "She would want them to have it."

Her mother had been an invaluable asset during the new pregnancy. If had taken time to get used to to the idea that her name was now Jessica Bennet, but she had insisted that Johanna had died that day back in 1999, She was a different person now and this was the name the world knew her by now and the name suited her. Jim had the hardest time acclimating to this change as Kate simply called her mom. She studiously avoided the topic of what she did for a living now. Merely a vague reference to working for the State Department.

As an active FBI agent, Rick knew that this doublespeak was common for agents of the CIA and NSA, but his security clearance required him to keep this information to himself. He didn't want to rock the boat, because he knew that this is what Kate needed. For the first time since he had known her, Kate felt whole and happy. It was enough for him.

As she turned out the light on her way out of the nursery, out of the corner of her eye, Kate could have swore she saw Alexis standing beside the crib where her brother and sister slept, silently keeping watch. A small smile on her face.

All was now right with their universe.

The End.


End file.
