Chapter One

It was a suspiciously cold November day. Richard Castle spent another restless night on the leather couch that rested in his den. The light of morning flashed in his fluttering eyelids until he escaped from his nightmare and thrust himself awake. His blue eyes scanned around him, as if he was looking for something out of place. The red walls stood silent, and the shelves that held various beloved knickknacks mimicked the slow rising sun itself.

He ran his hands through his scraggly brown hair and sighed. Ever since his daughter, Alexis, left for Stanford, he had never been able to fall asleep. It was like he was waiting for someone to burst through his front door and tell him in a gasping voice that Alexis had been in some sort of accident.

Richard Castle reached for his laptop, and he was brought to full consciousness when it almost slipped from his hand. He shook his head. When his finger lightly brushed over the touch pad, his laptop came awake and lit up his last window he left open. He sighed again. Google. He smoothed his finger over to the red 'x' box and exited out of the results page of car accident statistics. No need to start a morning of torturing himself when he just awoke from a night of his masochism.

How long had it been since he looked into the clear-blue eyes of his daughter? Sure, he knew it had only been a few months since she came down for summer vacation, but as he closed his laptop, it felt like years. The loft was silent. A different silence than when his daughter was here. Memories flashed in his eyes in the moment sunlight flashed through the windows. Yet he shook them away before he could remember them completely. If he took a step back and thought of last year, it wouldn't have been so bad. But what Rick was avoiding was the bolting down to the days of Alexis when she was eight. He didn't like to play favorites with his memories of her, but the writer in him always thought that if a battalion of rogue androids broke loose and allowed him to keep one human memory before they assimilated him, he decided on year eight with her. It was the year Alexis was most like a kid and it was the year he felt that they were the most aligned. But no. He shook his head again. He already tortured himself with what could happen to her, if he began to look back on his years with her, the father in him would possess him to re-watch all of her childhood tapes, while the writer in him would convince him to think of writing a eulogy. That's what he liked best about year eight. He was so far to being her dad, and so far to being a writer, but the thing he would trade them both for was to be her absolute best friend again. To race shopping carts down the aisles of various toy stores. To build forts out of sofa cushions while watching Saturday morning cartoons. Water balloon fights. Flashlight light saber duels in the dark. Popsicle stick towers. Damn, he thought. He went down that memory by not even meaning to. An earthworm mind was good when you're writing, but when you're trying to forget it's been five days since you last talk to your precious baby girl, its tunneling and erratic pattern is horribly painful.

Normally, Rick wasn't alone in his loft. His mother, Martha, always lurked in one way or another, and at this time, he wished she wasn't off overseeing her acting school. Martha would've made him get up from the couch and eat something. He could almost hear her voice, "Richard! Just because Alexis is gone doesn't mean you should sink to an all-new low." He leaned his head back in thought, trying to imagine Alexis' voice and what she might tell him. Yet it was like a bad dream. Her voice was blurred to his ears. White noise.

When he finally shook the grey blanket from being wrapped around his legs, he pulled himself up from the couch and glanced back at where he had been sleeping. A large crater of his shape was slowly trying to refigure itself and he spent a few minutes just watching it.

He walked over to the kitchen counter where his phone lay. Its black, vacant screen reminded him that he had switched it off. Rick scratched his face, and let out a surprised "Oh" when he saw that his jawline and cheeks were covered in growing scruff. Had it really been that long since he last shaved? He picked up his phone and pressed it back on. It revealed the new artwork for his fourth Nikki Heat book, and forty-eight missed calls.

A light smile spread across his face as he listened to the last message left by his muse. As usual, she tried to remain aloof and hide the obvious sound of concern and worry in her voice. Even though she left him thirty-six messages all averaging around the subject of "Castle, where the hell are you?" and ending with, "Y'know it's too bad you're not here, the vic was decapitated and when we finally found his head, it was already cooking in a microwave at the girlfriend's house." Anything to lure him back. And God, he loved that about her.

It was around noon when he finally showered and got dressed. When he paused in front of the mirror by his door, he rubbed his quarter-inch scruff proudly and tried to keep his smile from sinking.

He rode the elevator down to the lobby and the doorman held a surprised expression as Rick slipped him a hundred.

"Thank you for holding my visits, Pelosi." He said pleasantly, and he hailed a cab, realizing the first sentence he chose in five days was to thank a man whose hearing aid wasn't even turned on to hear it.

As he slid inside the taxi, the cabbie turned back, with a toothpick skillfully pointing at Rick, "Hey, boss, where you wanna go?"

He took a quick glance at the white glove the cabbie was wearing on his right hand and then stared out the window and smiled. "The Twelfth Precinct."