Disclaimer: I do not own Castle or the characters. I simply borrow them for my own enjoyment.

Notes: Thank you so much for reading and letting me know what you think so far. Stick around. Sorry for any mistakes.


A couple of days later…

Castle draped his arm around Beckett's body as they lay in bed, tangled with the heavy duvet that shielded them from the crisp midnight air.

"Why are you still awake?" The question was muffled by his pillow.

Beckett shifted slightly to turn to her side. "How did you know I was awake? You were just snoring." She smiled in the dark.

Castle exhaled deeply into the pillow. "I always know when you're awake. I can almost hear your thoughts." He pulled her closer with his arm.

She couldn't fight the smile of pride that appeared on her face. He knew her so well. "Sorry." She snuggled closer and rubbed his back. An act that had become almost second nature to them both. She loved the warmth he radiated, and the way his muscles relaxed under her touch as his breathing changed. He enjoyed the way her fingers could almost hypnotize him before he gave in to sleep. It happened almost every night. It was their thing.

"Are you ok?" Castle questioned sleepily.

He felt her nod against his pillow. "Yeah. Just thinking about the case." She sighed.

Castle grunted as he moved away from her hand so he could lay flat on his back. "Come here." He pulled her into his side so she could lay her head on his chest. She positioned her hand over his heart. "Go to sleep, Kate. We can think about the case in the morning."

"There's just something about this that has me running circles in my mind." She spoke low. Her words warm against his flesh.

Castle hugged her before he covered her hand with his own. "Take a break." He joked with a small smile to take her away from what troubled her. "I can run for you while you rest."

Kate smiled against his chest and shook her head with a soft chuckle. "I love you." She exhaled softly before she relaxed into him, grateful that he was always there to ease her mind.

"I love you, too." He whispered before he drifted off with her.

The loud ringing coming from her nightstand jerked them both out of their haze.

"Wow." Castle ran a hand over his face, forcing the sleep off of it as Beckett reached back for the phone. "Crime never sleeps, I guess." He joked.

"Bec-." She cleared the sleep out of her throat. "Beckett."

He could not make out what the person on the other end said, but he had a pretty good idea when he heard the exasperated sigh that escaped Kate's lips when she disconnected the call. "Body drop?" He sat up against the headboard.

Kate switched the small table light on before she looked to him with a nod. "Gun shot and stabbing." She shook her head.

Castle's eyes widened. "Coincidence?"

"Could be." She replied before she stood to make her way to the bathroom. "Are you coming?" She called back to him already grabbing for her essentials to ready herself for the scene.

"Always." He threw the covers off and also hurried to get dressed.


The team stood quietly around the white board.

Another set of pictures inhabited the white canvas. The similarities between the two were undeniable. Two homicides, two men from out of town, multiple gunshot and stab wounds, and no leads.

"What are the chances that the two murders are not related?" Esposito asked the group as he rubbed a hand over his face.

Ryan tapped the marker on his leg. "There's a chance." He answered optimistically.

"But it's not likely." Beckett grounded everyone back to reality when she stood from the edge of her desk to make her way closer to the board. "These two men are connected somehow. It is not an accident that two bodies turn up a mile from each other, days apart, with similar style wounds and zero suspects."

They each studied the photos from their seats and struggled to come up with any possible leads to get them rolling.

"Alright, so we know that the two men have clean records. They each had money in their wallets and photos of family, but no family ties exist in their financial records." Castle started to build theory as he sat in Beckett's chair. Everyone looked quietly at him as he continued. "What if these two men weren't really who the I.D.s say they were?" Castle asked as he looked over at Beckett.

Her brows knitted together as she thought over what her partner had questioned.

"But why would two random men be carrying fake I.D.s, and why is it that both of them happened to get killed days apart?" Ryan asked.

Esposito sighed as he too tried to think it over.

Castle stood up and walked over to the photos. He tapped his finger under each photo in thought. "They're working together. That's why the cases are so similar. What if they are spies, Beckett?"

Beckett wanted to roll her eyes at him, but in light of the situation she accepted his far-fetched ideas. "Spies?" She asked as she tried to envision a scenario where spies prowled the streets of New York City.

A phone ringing brought them all out of their session. "Beckett." She listened for a few seconds before she nodded. "I'll be right down." She hung up the phone and smiled. "They're not spies." She walked away leaving the men in suspense.

"Kate?" Castle gawked at her as she made her way to the elevator.

Her footsteps echoed in the hallway of Lanie's lab.

"Drugs? Really?" Beckett asked incredulously as she pushed the doors to Lanie's exam room open.

Lanie looked up from her file and nodded. "Our second victim, Rob Flores, had small traces of cocaine in his blood. It was not enough to kill him, but it was detectable by the toxicology reports." She dropped her folder on the desktop and moved over to where the body lay on the table. "I wanted to see if he had any track marks, and when I found none I ran a few tests on his nasal passages."

"He was using." Beckett concluded, but frowned when Lanie shook her head.

"Not exactly." She continued. "The tissue is not degraded, and there were no traces of the drugs from the swabs. I thought about Castle's crazy mob theories, why would there be drugs but no drugs?" She waited for Beckett to guess, but pressed on as she got nothing. "I took a swab from his gums and mouth. He tasted the product. He's probably a dealer. I ran the same tests on Parrilla just to make sure, and I got cocaine in the gums. His toxicology reports did not pick it up, possibly because he was killed right as he tasted the batch."

Beckett was surprised by Lanie's theory, but it all made sense to her. Finally, they would have a lead to go on. "Thanks, Lanie." She smiled at her friend before she turned to leave. "Oh, any luck on the second weapon?"

Lanie nodded. "The wound width and depth is consistent with a pocket knife. I'm trying to see if I can find a specific type of pocket knife. No luck, yet."

Beckett grinned. "Thanks, Lanie. See ya." She rushed out and back up to the rest of her team.