He wasn't sure how long it had been since he'd gotten his first glimpse of the corpse, but he hadn't been able to drag his eyes off of it – off of her – since. He could feel Beckett watching him as he stooped, slowly, next to the body, but he couldn't look at her, couldn't look anywhere except the dead girl carefully positioned the middle of the alley.

She was young, fifteen, maybe sixteen, and her red hair was long, a mess of loose, vivid waves. She looked peaceful, the way she was placed on the ground, almost as though she was sleeping, save for the thin strangulation pattern around her neck. The vibrantly red diagonal lines were unmistakable. As was the girl's uncanny similarity to his daughter.

Beckett crouched next to him, her knee brushing against his, and he finally managed to drag his eyes off the dead girl.

"You, Martha, and Gina are all going to have people on you around the clock."

"And," he prompted, voice clipped.

"And we need to make a decision about Alexis. Obviously, we have uniforms watching her. She's your daughter, and it's your call, but I'd keep her home for a couple days, at least until we have a better handle on what's going on here."

"What's there to have a handle on?" He didn't bother to control the sharp edge of his tone. "We know who did this."

"We still need to get our vic to the –"

"You really think this isn't Jerry Tyson?"

"No, Castle, I'm almost sure it is. That's why I'm putting out more uniforms than I ever have to protect you and your family. But careless police work isn't going to help us, and jumping to conclusions is careless and you know that." Her voice was steady, resolved, and it helped ground him.

He rapidly flipped through scenarios and possibilities, trying to calculate how he could keep his daughter as safe as possible. "Should I send Alexis to California? She can stay out there with Meredith."

Beckett raised her hand and slowly pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and index finger. "I don't know, Castle. Unfortunately, we still don't have a clear picture of the extent of the resources available to Tyson or the scope of his connections, so we have no idea how far his reach could extend."

Castle stood abruptly and walked away from the corpse, stopping to face an alley wall. Seconds later, he heard Beckett's heels clicking closer, and, for the first time ever, he wished she wouldn't walk up to him.

Her footfalls stopped several paces from him. "Angela Branson," he heard Ryan say, and before he could stop himself he was turning to face Beckett, Ryan, and Esposito.

"Sixteen years old. Junior over at York Prep," Esposito added, holding up a student ID in his gloved hand.

Beckett glanced at her watch. "Alright, it's a little early, but let's see if we can get someone from there on the phone and get a number for her parents."

Castle had drifted over to their conversation until he was standing shoulder to shoulder with Ryan, staring at the girl's – at Angela's – ID.

"Will do," Ryan said, reaching over and giving Castle's shoulder a sharp, reassuring pat. He and Esposito both yanked out their phones and walked to the opposite side of the alley.

Beckett looked at him, eyes dark. "Maybe it's not a bad idea for Alexis to go to California. You and Martha and Gina can head there with her. I know a couple cops out there; we could get you a decent detail, and there's always private security."

"Seriously?" he asked, staring at her.

"Look, Castle, I know it's not ideal –"

"You think I'd just walk away from this? From her?" He gestured to the prone body, sprawled peacefully in the alley.

"It's not that –"

"You think I wouldn't be useful in solving this case?"

"Castle, will you please let me get a sentence out?" she snapped. He sucked in a breath, nodded. "It's not that I don't think you would be useful, but until we have a clearer idea of why this –" she motioned sharply at Angela – " happened, I want to keep you and your family as safe as possible."

"How much clearer an idea do you need?" Castle huffed.

"Why Angela Branson? Why not actually attack Alexis? He had to know we would drastically increase security on her, on all of you, the instant we saw this. Is he just playing mind games? Does he actually intend to escalate to a personal attack on your family? Why is this so important to him that he would switch his entire M.O. from strangling twenty-something blondes to strangling teenage redheads?"

Castle leaned back against the gritty cement wall as she spoke, took one deep breath, then another. The scene had disturbed and upset him, but he hadn't quite conceived that it really could have been Alexis lying there, that they had come close, far too close, to looking at his daughter's strangled body. Suddenly, he couldn't pull enough oxygen from the dark morning air.

Beckett's hand suddenly squeezed his forearm, once, then again, and she left it resting on his jacket as she shifted to place her body between him and the crime scene. She moved confidently into his space, stopping about six inches from him (he thought, fleetingly, that they had spent less time invading each other's personal bubbles lately). With anyone else, it would have made him claustrophobic, but instead it filled him with her presence, loosened the tightness in his chest, made it possible to breathe again.

"This case," she said in a low, measured voice, "this case is something you shouldn't have to go through."

"Maybe not," he said. "But I'm not running away, not to California, not when he's still out there."

She nodded and parted her lips, maybe to reassure him, maybe to try and convince him to go, but Ryan and Esposito were swiftly approaching. Beckett pulled back into her own space abruptly. "Parents only live ten blocks from here," Ryan said, tapping his notepad against his hand.

Beckett nodded. "Ryan, Esposito, finish up here. I'll go talk to them." She blinked, held her eyes closed for a millisecond too long, and when she opened them there was the same deep, exhausted look she had each time she was about to inform someone of a loved one's death. Despite the situation, he felt the same impulse he always did, the need to reach out a finger and rest it against her arm, her wrist, her waist, but just like he always did, he suppressed it, offering up the only thing she would let him in the form of a small, comforting nod of his head.

She turned back to him, whispered, "I'm not going to tell you that you can't come with me. But I think you should go back upstairs and see your family. You can meet me at the precinct later."

He suddenly realized the extent of how shaken he was, how, since he'd been leaning against the wall, his legs had been trembling slightly, how his chest still felt too tight.

"You'll call me if you find anything," he said, not sure why he felt the need to confirm.

"Of course. Stay safe," she murmured, and he suddenly had to fight the urge to drag her with him back to his apartment, because he couldn't get back to his daughter fast enough but it was almost impossible to break away from Beckett's pull.

He finally managed, walking briskly with only a quick bob of his head as a goodbye, and soon he was rushing across the street, then tapping his feet impatiently in the elevator.

"Mr. Castle." One of the cops nodded at him and moved aside from the front of his door, and it was unbalancing and comforting, all at once, to know how closely they were being guarded. Lifting his chin in a silent greeting, he walked into the loft. He trotted over to his bedroom; he even got as far as placing his hand on his doorknob, but he wasn't sure why he bothered. Instead of stepping into the room and pulling off his jeans and crawling back into bed with Gina, he turned and trotted purposefully toward his daughter's room.

He was only going to crack the door, just to peer in and check on her. She was sleeping soundly, sprawled in her bed, but that wasn't the comfort it should have been, not with the image of Angela Branson's lifeless body looking so peaceful still blazoned in his mind.

He walked over to the bed and curled up next to her, facing her back, ignoring her indignant woof of air.

"Aren't you a little old for snuggling after nightmares?" she mumbled.

"You are absolutely never too old for snuggle time, especially when it's with your incredibly cool dad," he whispered.

"Was that an axe-murderer ringing our doorbell earlier?" she asked, still not wholly awake.

"Just Beckett," he replied, and then wished he hadn't as she flipped over and stared at him with suddenly-awake, worried eyes.

"Is everything okay? Is she here?" she asked.

"Everything's going to be fine. I'll tell you about it in the morning, pumpkin," Castle said unconvincingly, patting her arm.

She wrinkled her nose at him, calling him out on his obfuscating, but she didn't speak and, slowly, her eyes drifted shut. He had thought he'd be up for the rest of the night, but as he watched his daughter's rhythmic, steady breathing, he drifted toward sleep.

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So, I can safely say (with absolutely no bias at all) that you guys are the best reviewers in the entire world. Thank you all for making me feel oh-so-very loved, even though I was all spastic and mean with how I ended that first chapter (I will not tell you that it will never happen again, because I love you too much to lie to you, oh wonderful reviewers).