Page 95 of Until the End

She looked back at Alistair in the back seat.

The drugs would keep him sedated another hour at least.

Kit put her hand to Castle’s cheek, bringing his mouth to hers in a quick kiss. The crush of her lips and the sweetness of her tongue eased the anxiety roiling inside him.

There was such an intoxicating brightness and warmth in her.

Need buzzed beneath his skin. He was grateful for the ache, but she was making him more and more vulnerable.

“Two minutes.” She threw him a hopeful smile, but her eyes were haunted.

Castle grabbed the two hard drives. Just as quickly, her smile disappeared like the sun behind a cloud. Kit had managed to copy the relevant data from the third drive to the other two and doctored the time stamps in between them fooling around. She wasn’t giving her talents enough credit, and he didn’t mean in the sexual department. Although she was stellar there too.

Adopting his usual icy reserve, he got out of the Hummer with the drives and hustled to greet Reaper.

But the passenger-side chopper door opened, and Bruce Sanborn got out first.

The sight of his boss pierced Castle’s stoic determination. Dread licked through his veins. He kept moving, not slowing, organizing his thoughts rapid-fire.

To have the director of the Gray Box hitch a ride on this bird to collect Allie and the data was no small matter. Pretending otherwise was career suicide.

The rotor blades slowed, and the turbine engine was cut.

Reaper got out next, followed by Daniel fucking Cutter.

“Hello, Castle,” Sanborn said as Cutter and Reaper jogged over to the SUV.

“Sir.” Castle proffered the hard drives.

Sanborn took them and stared at the black rectangular boxes. “Two?”

“Ms. Westcott lied about how many she’d taken.”

With his eyes shielded behind a pair of Oakleys, Sanborn’s face was as unreadable as Castle hoped his own to be. The sunglasses were a small barrier but a substantial one, providing emotional distance he’d once never needed.

“This is everything?” Sanborn cocked his head.

A slight tremor stole through Castle’s right hand, the one he’d broken in PTSD therapy when he had punched it through a wall.

He pressed his middle finger to his thumb and the tremor went away.

“I looked at the contents of the drives,” Castle said. “The files cover the right dates. I’m sure Willow will sort through it quickly and find something we can use.”

Sanborn stared at him, his staunch countenance betraying nothing. The silence in the air between them metastasized like a cancer as Reaper and Cutter loaded Alistair into the chopper.

Castle fell back on his cultivated composure, not letting anyone see him sweat. Quite literally.

On Sanborn’s recommendation, Castle had had endoscopic thoracic surgery to stop his hands and armpits from perspiring and prevent him from giving anything away.

He was dry as tinder.

“What is Cutter doing here?” More important, why was Sanborn here?

The chief removed his shades, the action feeling like an omen. A bad one. His expectation for Castle to do the same was clear. He took his off as well. The glare of the harsh sun over Sanborn’s shoulder hit Castle’s eyes like a nuclear detonation.

He squinted, letting the black spots dissipate, and met his boss’s level gaze.

“Danny Cutter is taking over your protection detail,” Sanborn said.