Finding home

Chapter 23 - The girls

We quickly hid the papers with the list of the suspects and I closed the top of my laptop. The second we had put it away the girls was done taking off their shoes and came running into us. Molly through her arms around me while Alexis through hers around Castle.

"Heey sweeties!" me and Castle said at the same time, earning a surprised look from Lanie, me and Castle.

After a few looks and seconds of silence I finally asked them what they had been doing, which quickly led to the two girls telling a long detailed story about everything they had done from playing with other kids at the park to Lanie dropping some of her ice cream on the ground which the girls couldn't stop laughing about.

"So, what did you do?" Alexis asked us after their story about the day.

"Well, not much" I said looking at Castle to see if he had a good explanation of what we had done today.

"We, uhm, mostly chilled, watched some movie and talked" he lied up, only hesitating in the beginning.

His hesitation could be the death for me though since I knew it wouldn't slip through Lanie's radar. When I looked at her I could confirm my thoughts since she had that special smirk she always had when she knew something that wouldn't do me any good, at all.

"I should probably go home to change" Castle tried to whisper to me but by the gasp Alexis let go of she had definitely heard.

"No! Dad, please don't go, please stay" she begged with tears in her eyes while she threw her arms around his neck to hold him tight.

"Don't worry Alexis, he'll be back" I promised and when I met his eyes I couldn't help but bite my lip to stop a smirk appearing.

"Please make him stay Kate" Alexis said looking at me.

"He needs a shower, don't you think he stinks?" I asked in a teasing tone and she wrinkled her nose.

"Maybe" she agreed.

"Hey!" Castle exclaimed and I chuckled.

"But he can shower here, you have a shower" Alexis suggested and I had to mentally give her applauses for her intelligence.

"How about this, he will go home, grab the stuff he needs such as clothes, a towel, etcetera and then he will come back here and shower here, does that sound good?" I asked and I saw Castle's eyes shine up.

Alexis looked at me before she turned to her father.

"You promise to come back tonight?" she questioned.

"Of course! I promise I will come back tonight" he said crossing his heart.

I looked over at Lanie who met my gaze. She made a nod upwards to show she wanted to talk with me. I raised and walked over to her. We went to stand against the wall to be able to talk low without Castle or the girls hearing. Castle started tickling his daughter and not soon after he added Molly in the equation, tickling both of them while they laughed.

"Okay, I see what you mean, there's no way in hell that man would do anything to take his girl away from him" Lanie admitted and I smiled.

"Yeah, we're trying to figure out who sent in the complaint, and if we got it right it's all linked to my mother's murder" I said, my smile slowly fading away.

"What?!" Lanie exclaimed in a whisper, shocked.

I nodded to let her know she had heard right.

"Have you found anything yet?" she asked and I shook my head.

"Not really, we have a list of people but we're not close at all" I didn't want to tell her more than that, didn't need her to be in danger in case it would come out to whoever was behind all of this.