Chapter 7
Chapter 7 – Day Two, 6:20 A.M.
Casey had been at Castle for hours. Ever since before sunrise, he'd been trying to solve one problem. Mariana. He already knew Walker wasn't going to tell him everything. Not because she was being difficult. Because whatever history she had with Mariana… …it was personal. That meant Casey had to find the answers himself. Rows of monitors flickered across the dark operations center. Personnel files. Mission reports. Facial recognition results. Archived intelligence. None of it was enough. None of it fit. "Mariana…" he muttered to himself.
Casey hated blind spots. And this one was enormous. Walker wasn't talking. That alone told him something. Not that she didn't want to help. That she couldn't. Or at least… not the way Casey wanted. Personal history got people killed. Personal history made good agents hesitate. Casey leaned back, closed his eyes for a brief moment, then returned to the keyboard. His fingers moved quickly. Old operations. Classified missions. A database of deceased operatives appeared on the screen. "No one just dies," Casey muttered. "They're either buried… …or buried in paperwork."
Alias after alias scrolled past. Different countries. Different agencies. Different operations. Too many threads. Yet Casey had the growing feeling they all led back to the same operative. His eyes narrowed. "This wasn't an ordinary field agent."
He opened another file. Highly encrypted. Buried deep enough that someone had clearly intended it to stay forgotten. Casey stared at it for a moment. Then began breaking through the security. A partially redacted mission report appeared. Whole sections had been removed. Deliberately. Casey nodded to himself. "Of course. Someone buried this."
One codename caught his attention. Open Invitation. Casey's jaw tightened. "I knew it."
He kept reading. The report said one thing. The missing pages said something else. There were holes everywhere. Places where entire pieces of the story had been cut away. Whatever remained… didn't make sense by itself. "Betrayal…" Casey muttered. "But whose?"
He pulled up another collection of intelligence. Satellite imagery. Financial transfers. Communication networks. And then… he saw it. A pattern. "Someone's pulling the strings."
He stopped. Looked at the screen again. "And you're not working alone."
Casey stood and slowly paced across Castle's operations floor. The picture was beginning to come together. Mariana hadn't simply resurfaced. She'd come back for a reason. And if she knew about the Intersect… Then this wasn't a coincidence. It was a plan. "Bartowski…" Casey said quietly. "You're showing up on the wrong people's radar."
He looked back toward the monitor. The classified file was still open. One name remained on the screen. Rebecca Franco. Casey's expression hardened. "Whether Walker likes it or not… I'm going to find out what really happened."
The silence inside Castle seemed heavier than before. Above ground, the sun had already risen over Burbank. Down here… something far darker was beginning to take shape.