Beckett's Sister: A Castle AU Fanfiction

Chapter 21

Kate was well into her fourth glass of wine as she eyed Castle over the rim of her glass. The writer had barely touched his food as he was too busy watching Kris and Russo like a hawk. Kate polished off the remainder of her food and sat back in her chair.

"Rick, are you going to eat or sit there and look like a creepy stalker all night?" Kate asked as she took another sip of wine.

Castle quickly piled a large bite of pasta onto his fork and shoved it into his mouth without taking his eyes away from the back of the restaurant. Kate just sighed and pulled her phone out.

"Aren't you the least bit concerned here Kate?" Castle said as he finally looked at her for the first time in almost an hour.

"Concerned about what, Rick? She's a grown woman. He's a good guy, you said that yourself. Just because you used to run around with a different bimbo every night doesn't mean every other man does." Kate snapped.

Seeing the hurt look on Castle's face, Kate sighed and finished her wine. "Look Castle, all I'm saying is that she's a big girl. We can't protect her from everything, I know that better than anyone. She's spent all of her adult life terrified to get close to anyone because she's afraid they'll leave. Russo seems like a good guy for her, he makes her smile. I've not even seen her drink in weeks so that alone is a big improvement in my book."

"I just want to see her find the kind of happiness that you have, Kate. The two of you deserve it more than anyone after everything you've been through." Castle replied, giving Kate's hand a kiss.

"She will but she needs to do it on her own. Trust me, trying to force that girl to do something is like reading a Game of Thrones book and expecting no deaths. It's not gonna happen." Kate said with a smirk.

"I guess you're right. Now I can finish my dinner then we'll head home. Sound good?" Castle said as he speared a meatball onto his fork.

"Yep. Besides, this wine is starting to get to me. I think we're gonna need a whole bowl of ice cubes tonight." Kate grinned at the answering sound of Castle choking on his meatball then calling for the check.

"So, how did you end up working for the NYPD anyway? I mean, surely doing computer work for a police station wasn't your dream job growing up." Russo said as he took a sip of water.

"Ha, well that's a funny story actually." Kris said with a laugh. "When Kate started out as a uniform in the precinct, I was still in high school and I started hacking into the police database to see if I could find anything on our mom's case, ya know something somebody may have missed or whatever. I never got caught once. I mean their security could have been designed by a three year old as easy as it was to hack. Of course, I never found anything." Kris replied before taking a sip of her own water. "After I started college, I really had no clue at the time what I wanted to do with my life. I mean, Kate was out saving the world as a cop and all I knew how to do was work computers. I worked part-time at an electronics store off campus my freshman year and one of the guys there was in a few of my classes. He eventually talked me into running a side business with him selling test answers. I hacked the campus system, printed the tests and he sold them. I got half of whatever he made. That was the only time I almost got caught."

Russo just laughed. "What happened?"

"I was home one weekend and I was in my room printing off tests for the next week and Kate caught me. She figured it out and made me tell her what I was caught up in. She threatened to turn me into the Dean if I didn't stop. You think she's scary when she's interrogating someone? Well she's about ten times worse when it comes to me." Kris replied with a smirk.

"So, how did that set you on the path to become a badass tech manager for the NYPD?" Russo said as the waiter finally appeared with the check.

"It didn't, not at first anyway. After the semester ended I still had no clue what I wanted to major in. I spent my freshman year just taking general courses. I knew there was only one thing I was really good at so I figured I'd come up with a way to apply that to a career that wasn't illegal. I spent some time with Kate that summer when she didn't have cases going on and that's pretty much how I figured my life out. She had a massive virus on her desktop one day and when I went in to fix it, I found that the virus not only affected her computer but the whole precinct system. It took me all day but I finally managed to debug the system and update the firewalls." Kris replied.