Finding home

Chapter 17 - Case number 9926384-364

"Kate, will you draw with us?" Alexis asked and I looked up from my laptop.

"Sure, doesn't look like Espo nor Ryan will let me in on the investigation anyway" I said, putting away my laptop to accept the paper Alexis held out for me.

We sat there for a while, drawing, chatting. I had put on some music to have in the background before I had really started on my drawing. Before I even knew how long it had gone someone knocked on the door and I immediately saw Alexis' head pop up with a shocked but happy expression.

"Is that dad?" she asked excitedly and I chuckled.

"Well, I'm not expecting someone else so, maybe" I teased as I got up on my feet and walked towards the door.

I heard Alexis and Molly stand on their feet to follow me. I unlocked the door and opened it before the person behind it managed to knock again.

"Hey!" Castle exclaimed the second he saw Alexis run up to him.

"Shhh, get in here" I remembered all my neighbors who definitely would report me if they knew who was here.

Castle got inside and picked up Alexis in his arms at the same time. I peeked out in the corridor to see if anyone had heard and come out to see what was going on. To my relief there was none to be seen so I closed my door and locked it.

"How are you girls?" Castle asked as he sat down where Alexis had dragged him after him putting her down.

They sat by the drawings and Castle looked at both his daughter and at Molly.

"Good! Drawing!" Molly said with a big proud grin as she held up her drawing.

"I'm good too, especially now when you're here" Alexis said and I bit my lip.

She needed her father, no matter how safe she felt she would always need her father. Why had they taken her away from him? I needed to know, and I needed to make this right. It didn't feel like he had been judged right, not from the way I saw he was with Alexis.

"Is this yours Kate?" Castle asked and when I looked at him I saw him eyeing the drawing I had worked on.

I quickly walked towards him and took the paper to hide it.

"No" was the only clever I could come up with.

He smiled and shook his head, not believing my obvious lie.

"Dad, you wanna draw with us?" Alexis asked and he looked at her.

"Of course I do!" he exclaimed and I chuckled at the energy in him.

I went to take my laptop and sat down in the couch, watching the girls and the man in front of me as I went to the site for the social workers. I knew this site were only for those working on it, it contained all their database and it had a secret password to access it. I had found out the password one time when I had visited their centre for a meeting about getting to be a foster mom. I hacked into a random account to get access to all the files they had, stupidly actually, uploaded all the files on all their cases so that their employees could access them everywhere. I went to the file centre and clicked on the search square, wrote 'Alexis Castle' and her case number, which I had also seen on one of the papers the social worker who had Alexis' case. I was so glad of my detective skills, if it weren't for them this would've probably been impossible. I clicked into her file and stared at the picture they had taken on her. She looked so scared, did they really had to take pictures of the kids like they took them on criminals? It looked like they had placed her against a wall and told her to look into the camera. Wouldn't surprise me if it was the first day as well, when she was the most scared because she had no clue on what was going on.