Beckett saw the contract killer woman running away through the fog. She dissapeared just in a few seconds. The detective wondered why she had left her alive. She tought about her last words for a moment, but now she had no time to think about their meaning. She was just a woman with her hands tied behind her back, in an unknown place and the body of one of the bad guys bleeding to death in front of her.

Kate tried quickly to get up. She felt her painful legs muscles trying to kept her up. The detective gasped and struggled with her wrists tied. The guy had drive a car though a path, she would retrace their steps and use the vehicle to escape, but it was a dark night in a unknown forest and she could easily be lost.

So Beckett walked downhill, avoiding steep slopes. It was difficult to maintain balance with her hands in her back. She had fallen once before and her ankles an knees were aching now. The trought than wherever she was, she could not be far from any civilized place. Althought detective Beckett dindn't trust in hospitality of average New Yorker, she did it in her hability to survive.

Beckett approached to the automatic glass door but it didn't open. She was exhausted. She had walked across the woods towards the highway lights for an hour, and she had finally arrived to a small gas station.

Beckett could see a clerk who was sleeping leaning his head on the counter. The detective kick the glass door and he woke up, then she shouted 'Police!'. The man raised his head and looked stunned towards door, and immediately hid behind the counter.

"Police!" Beckett insisted with authority "Call 911!"

Nothing moved inside the store. Beckett noticed a fish eye convex mirror which the clerk surely used to monitoring the clients. She saw a very thin and bent black figure, with wet and muddy clothes, disheveled, with bruised and dirty face ... she took a few seconds to recognize that it was her own reflection. No surprise the man had scared.

"Call the police, please!" She said with a more friendly tone, tried to connect with his human side.

Then the clerk showed from behind the counter with a shotgun pointing at her. Beckett kept frozen. The man walked towards her, keeping his gaze into her eyes. She called to her inner actress and changed her face to showing up a helpless scared woman, then Kate bent her legs and knelt down in front of the door.

After a few seconds the man stepped back, hid the shotgun in the counter and took a cellphone. Beckett glanced at him and felt relieved. The clerk was talking and looking at her, probably because he was training to describe her. Well done average New Yorker!.

At last she felt she could relax. She stayed kneeling on the floor, sitting on her ankles and hunched. She closed her eyes and tried to calm her breathing, still panting from the effort and adrenaline.

The few minutes she wainted until red-blue lights come to the gas station passed like a kind of dream to her. She was no longer aware of the cramps along her legs, the stiffness of her arms, the ardor of her injuries or the chill contact of wet clothes on her skin.

Kate heard footsteps of two or three people runing towards her. She turned her head to try to see something, but she lost her balance. She was about to fall and hit her head, but someone took her shoulders. Kate felt the firm but gentle grip and felt safe.

"I'm ... Detective Beckett ... Homicides ... NYPD ..." she mumbled.

"Kate!" she heard in response.

It was the voice that had accompanied her throughout the nightmare that had lived, but she was so tired that she thought it had been her imagination.

"Beckett.. 12th Precinct..." she said.

She felt her interlocutor set aside a lock of hair and then the clouds of her mind cleared and a bright sun raised.

"C... Castle!" She pronouncied surprised.

"Yes, Kate." He said calmly.

Beckett saw his eyes shining with excitement while a smile appeared on his lips.

"Castle!" she repeated, but now relieved, watching him kneeling beside her.

One of the officers accompanying the writer cut the flange tying Beckett's wrists. As Kate felt liberated, moved her aching arms around his neck. He bowed to her so she could rest her head on his shoulder.

"... Babe ... " She said with broken voice and sheding tears of joy.

The writer said nothing, only held her tightly in his arms wanting to stay that way forever.

Kate was washing her face in the toilet at the gas station after convincing Castle that she could do it alone.

Feeling the water in her face again bring the torture sesion to her mind. She had swallowed so icy water than she thought she would only drink hot coffee for a whole week.

When she get out the toilet, Rick was waiting with a police jacket for her. He helped her to wear it like a gentleman.

The heat Kate felt with warmer clothes didn't have comparison with the heat she felt when looked into Rick's deep blue eyes. She remembered the letter she had written and wanted to repeat the same words in person, but seeing the clutter of agents and medical staff, she decided to wait for a better time.

"Do you feel better now?" - he asked with deep voice.

"Yeahhh" - she answered ending the word with a sigh, then she rubbed her arms to get warm.

"I would have brought you a hot coffee, but the doctor want to examinate you first of all."

Kate nodded. The writer took her by the shoulders, left the store and helped her into the ambulance cabin. One doctor began with some tests under the watchful eyes of Castle, leaning against the door of the cabin.

"How did you come so soon?" Kate asked in a whisper to him while the doctor was checking the flexibility of her knees.

Rick stood up and smiled slightly before answering.

"We traced your text, the one with incomplete address. We found that it came from somewhere in Scardale. Ryan and Esposito were looking for matching addresses but it was slow and hopeless. So I begged Gates a police car for shearching some missed clues in the house of that guy, the one you seasoned with ketchup, tricky girl. We were in the way when I heard a warning on the police radio 'tall thin handcuffed caucasian woman in Scardale gas station' so we changed our tour."

"Wow" was the only word Beckett could say, such a big coincidence could only be due to the fate.

"Driving crazy fast... I think I'm going to give them all my season tickets." He said taking a look over his shoulder toward the uniforms and gesturing with his thumb up.

The detective smiled for the first time in hours, exhaled air with her ailing lungs and coughed. The doctor auscultated her torax, made her lie down on the stretcher and put the oxygen mask.

Castle was not going to leave her alone never again, so he went up in the cabin, then the writer held her hand and closed the cabin door for touring back with her.

"In the belly of the beast" has been a great episode, but I missed too much a scene like this I have written.

I hope you enjoyed it.

If you liked it I'll write more.

Sorry for my bad English, feel free to correct me.