The metal cylinder in Detective Ryan's hand still carried an acrid smell, its pale green color obscured under a white residue. He turned it slightly as he raised it towards the Captain for inspection, revealing the label 'AN-HC SMOKE' stamped near a stainless steel lever laying against its side.

"Army issue, sir. We found three of them in the vents," he said in explanation, dreading the implications.

Gates stared emotionlessly at the smoke grenade a moment before replying. "I assume you've already searched for prints?"

Ryan shook his head. "Everything is clean. Nothing in the vents or surrounding areas. We found three sets on the doorknob but forensics won't have results for another several hours. I'm assuming they belong to Castle and family."

"And the security feeds?"

"The super is pulling the tapes now - I requested it myself."

Turning slowly, Gates assessed the firemen jockeying for position amongst the team of police in Castle's loft, searching for information they weren't likely to find.

Ryan watched her a moment, noting the way her eyes tightened at the two additional smoke grenades laying in evidence bags on the counter. An egg casserole sat beside them, a cold and eerie testament to the suddenness of Castle's disappearance. He realized these last days had been the Captain's first brush with the shadow that haunted Beckett and lurked in her Precinct; her first scalding from the dragon slaying the citizens she swore to protect.

And it shook her.

Over Gates' shoulder, Ryan caught a tousle of red near the couch. Martha and Alexis, huddled against each other amongst the cushions. In all the activity, he had failed to sit with them - to comfort them with promises he wasn't sure he could keep. For the hundredth time that morning he wished Beckett was here, restraining his fingers from reaching towards his phone. If her phone was off for his last five calls, she probably hadn't turned it on in the last twenty minutes. Damn Beckett and her stubborn independence - for breaking the rules and leaving them in this situation in the first place. And damn Gates for pushing her to quit her job. This whole nightmare was one hell of a drama he couldn't bear to watch, let alone live out.

"Martha? Alexis?" Ryan squatted near the coffee table, unsure of what to say.

Alexis brought her face up from her arms, cheeks dry but streaked with tell-tale tracks from an earlier outburst. Martha sat strangely quiet for all her dramatic flair; clear-eyed with an arm wrapped tight around Alexis.

"Can you find him, Detective?" Martha asked, raw hope shot through with despair.

Ryan caught the fumbling hand that touched his knee; he held it awkwardly and patted it once as he fought the lump in his throat. "He's family, Martha. There's nothing in our power we won't do to get him back."

"Dead or alive," added Alexis flatly, her eyes listless, faded jewels.

Ryan took a breath, scrambling for words that refused to come. Why hadn't Esposito shown yet? Because their family had been ripped apart, one terrible day at a time. "Alexis," Ryan finally managed, waiting for her tired eyes to find his. "I know this is hard and terrible and awful. But don't give up hope. If it were you, would he ever stop believing he'd find you alive?"

"No..." Alexis moaned, suddenly burying her face again with a ragged breath.

Wincing, Ryan glanced back at Martha, who smiled weakly and drew the girl closer.

"If he was obstinate enough to get himself into this, he is obstinate enough stay alive until he gets out of it," she stated, eyes shining brighter. The strength of a single mother braced her words, and the resolve of a woman accustomed to difficulty blinked the moisture away.

Ryan smiled gently back, strangely encouraged. "I guess they already questioned you?"

"Yes - not much to tell, really. Yesterday we all went to graduation. Afterwards, I went out, Alexis went to a sleepover, and Richard went home. Then around twelve today, Alexis found the smoke and an empty apartment and called 911." She cleared her throat and pushed at the hair curling over her temple. "His phone's off - and his phone is never off. I called you when they found the smoke bombs...I thought you may know something."

"I'm sorry. I wish I did. But we will." Ryan knees cracked as he stood, suddenly catching Esposito out of the corner of his eye. "Excuse me a moment," he murmured, moving away.

The suspended detective disappeared into the study, and Ryan hustled in behind him. "Do you want Gates to have your head as well as your badge?" he strained, voice low. "I said meet me in the lobby."

"She has everything she can take from me right now," grunted Esposito, continuing towards the bedroom. "And you didn't meet me in the lobby."

"I got hung up - hey, ho, where are you going, dude?" Ryan said, glancing behind his shoulder to reassure himself that Gates wasn't in pursuit.

Esposito was walking past Castle's dresser, eyes darting across the room to the bed. "Sly bastard slept with her," he mumbled. "After everything - and the idiot slept with her. Probably didn't even ask what happened - dammit Beckett! What were you thinking? Both of you!"

Glowering, Ryan grabbed Esposito's shoulder and yanked him around. "Esposito! What are you talking about?"

"I checked the security feeds in the lobby while I was waiting for you. Castle and Beckett left the loft with three firemen - but the time stamp shows it was before the fire department had been notified." His face darkened. "Beckett knew they were after Smith, and from Smith they would be led here...just because she quit her job doesn't mean she can turn off her brain-"

"Beckett was here?" Ryan interjected. "But I thought they broke up - I mean, broke up their not-dating dating thing - and how does Smith connect to Castle?"

"Castle was working on Johanna's murder behind Beckett's back. Smith contacted Castle and told him to keep Beckett off the case. Some kind of deal he'd worked out." Esposito pushed by Ryan to step back into Castle's study. "Yeah, they fought about it - but when Beckett quit her job she must have come back here to make up with Castle, forgetting that Cole Maddox was after Smith, and Smith would lead Maddox right back here." He was opening and closing the desk drawers now, rifling through papers and pens. The last drawer contained several dozen files; he grabbed them in one heap and dropped them across the desk.

Ryan blinked at his partner's back for a moment, watching him briefly flip open each folder. And suddenly, he understood. "You're looking for Castle's murder files," he stated, stepping forward to join the search. "We find these guys and we find Castle and Beckett."

"I only hope we find them before it's too late," Esposito replied grimly, flipping through the last of the folders. Shutting the last one, he sank into Castle's chair. "Nothin'."

Darting his eyes around the shelves, Ryan saw only bindings and bookends. "He loves gadgets. Probably doesn't even have any hard copies - I'd bet it's all electronic."

"Then we're screwed. He took his laptop."

The corner drawer was still half-open; Ryan reached in and retrieved a small remote. Pointing it at the large monitor hanging from the ceiling, he held his breath as it powered on. "Hey - it's not a TV."

Esposito squinted at the few icons dotting the screen, taking the remote from Ryan's hand. But the buttons weren't opening anything; he mashed them, moved the remote through the air, and finally smacked it several times against his palm. "Stupid batteries," he grumbled.

Ryan glanced once at the minimalistic remote and walked forward to touch a 'Nikki Heat' icon. A web of pictures exploded over the screen - but it was pure fiction, with nothing pertaining to Johanna Beckett's murder. He tried another, and another, all with same result. "Looks like it's on his laptop," he sighed, shoulders slumping as he moved away. "Dead end."

Setting his jaw, Esposito turned his face towards the ceiling. "No," he murmured, leaning back in the chair and popping his knuckles, one by one. A moment later, he suddenly stood, punching the trash-can icon hovering in the corner of the screen. Kate Beckett's face filled the screen; another touch brought the entire murder board surfacing from the blackness.

"The trash?" Ryan asked, incredulous. "How'd you know to look there?"

"Too many ex-girlfriends," Esposito snorted. "Go find Gates."

. . . . .

Several blocks away, outside a moderate downtown apartment complex surrounded by street vendors and a few small boutiques, a blue-and-white United States Postal Service truck pulled away from the curb and puttered into traffic. Inside the old complex, an overweight woman with layers of makeup painted around her small eyes sorted the day's mail into small stacks, heaving herself upwards every so often to stuff the envelopes and small packages unceremoniously into their designated postal boxes lining one side of the room.

The woman finished her task and pushed the empty mail carton under the table with one sandaled foot, grunting at the single white envelope she found lying beneath it. Reaching laboriously to the floor, she gathered the envelope and flipped it over, noting it had been forwarded from a previous address. She recognized the recipient's name: Detective Katherine Beckett, the building's only resident employed by the NYPD. Shuffling back to the wall, she slipped the envelope into the Detective's otherwise empty box, where it waited in solitary confinement for the discovery of its contents.


As soon as she jumped towards the open van, Beckett felt the wrongness of the situation. The firemen had told her there was a bomb threat and the police were securing a perimeter; that they had suspected an attack and had a van waiting to shuttle her to safety. She had been too worried about the threat of a sniper to process any details during the seconds she spent weaving across the sidewalk towards the safety of the enclosed vehicle, but now that she was nearly inside, her brain was filtering the scene from the muck of fear. No sirens, lights, or uniforms had been present; the flow of people had been uninterrupted in the shadow of Castle's building.

She landed on her stomach on the metal floor, noting the stripped walls and caged front with a heightening sense of alarm. Castle's weight immediately followed, pressing her into the grimy metal as she struggled to breathe beneath him. It was too dirty, too bare: this wasn't a secure vehicle under the command of the NYPD.

This was a prison.

The panic overwhelmed her, adrenaline moving her body before she even knew what she was doing. Her palms pressed against the floor as she lifted both their bodies upwards in a mighty heave; the tendons in her shoulders standing out under the sudden tension and her abdominals a solid wall as her knees shot forward into a crouch. Castle yelped in surprise as he rose and tumbled sideways into the van wall, the force of her toss leaving him upright on one knee. Beckett launched herself backwards, turning in her vector to face the door, seeing there was still a sliver of light; still hope-

She slammed into the closing door a moment too late, her body crushing into itself against the unyielding wall. She heard shouting and realized she was screaming at Castle to move, her fists still pounding uselessly against the door. An instinct sparked; she whirled but they were already on her, hands clawing at her shoulders and yanking at her wrists. Beckett writhed, loosing one elbow to fly into the nose of an assailant, bringing a spatter of blood across her cheek and a stream of foreign words in her ear. The floor of the van impacted her spine - she felt the jarring through her teeth - and then they had one arm pinned, one wrist encircled in steel cuffs. Bucking upwards, she refused to be turned over, needing stay on her back where she had her knees and elbows to protect her...but her foot slipped in the loose grime, and the weight of her opponents flattened her, sinews of a thick arm crushing her neck until her hearing roared and her vision spotted away into blackness.

When air could flow around her coughing, she found her hands secured behind her back, her feet shackled in a second pair of cuffs, and a boot planted between her shoulder blades to hold her against the floor. Opening her lids, she met Castle's blue stare, the whites of his eyes betraying his own panic. Beckett snapped her head up, and the barrel of a weapon jabbed deeply into her skull.

"Kate - stop - Kate-" Castle pleaded, his head lying obediently against the floor.

She heard him, but was already twisting her hips to flip over and rise up. The boot burrowed into her back, and the barrel whipped across her temple with enough force to stun her back into stillness. Blinking furiously, the haze in her vision finally dissipated, leaving her with a pulsing headache and a heavy pain over her left eye.

"Kate, they're threatening to kill you. Stop moving, please…" Castle was almost whimpering now.

The combination of a gun barrel to his head, the desperation in his tone, and the force of the boot compressing her ribs sapped the last of the fight from her spirit. Sagging her head onto the floor, she gasped helplessly, unable to expand her chest more than a few inches. She felt like a dying fish, caught in the net of her darkest fears.

"Let her breath, dammit! Can't you see she's done? Give her some room!"

Beckett blinked at him, holding his stare with a resigned finality. She would watch him until they killed her; watch the way his brow sloped across those crystal eyes, the way his lips moved over a flash of teeth. She would watch, and remember the one night they had together before her past severed their future.

. . . . . . .

Their handcuffs were secured into the empty seat-bolts set in the floor, allowing their captors to move away and shrug off the heavy fire gear before settling against the front cage, rifles across their knees. Castle wasn't sure how long he and Beckett lay in silence, the vibrations of the road numbing their bodies, heat seeping through the floor from the exhaust passing beneath the chassis. He knew it was hours. First through the stop-and-go of New York's streets, then through the varying speed of the city highway; finally smoothing into a constant hum as the van carried them over the miles. It was hours of watching Beckett stare at him, quiet death in her eyes.

"Castle." Her voice was quiet, rasping.

Shifting his head, he focused his attention on her.

"You have to do everything they say," she whispered. "Don't make eye contact. Don't argue. Don't antagonize them. Whatever they do to me, you cannot intervene. It will only get you killed."

"Kate-" he started, but she hardened her face and he dropped his voice. "I'm not very good at that."

"I know," Beckett replied, a disjointed smile floating across her features.

"I'm not going to let them kill you," he insisted.

Another strange smile lifted the corners of her mouth. "That's not your choice to make, Rick. Don't make them kill you, too."

He pulled himself towards his handcuffs, briefly attracting the attention of the guards as he rolled onto his back. But there wasn't anywhere to go, and they quickly lost interest. He was closer to Beckett now - he could see the play of her eyelashes beneath her brow as she looked up at him. "You can't just give up," he murmured. "We've got the entire NYPD behind us, just waiting to bring these people to justice."

A dangerous glimmer sparked in the darkness of her eyes. "Justice?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. "Justice?"

Her tone caused him to do a double-take at her expression, trying to catch the implication.

"This isn't about justice," she husked above a whisper. "This is about survival. And vengeance."


A/N: I've got this whole thing all planned out, so hang on for the ride. I've never been more excited to write a story!