The apartment is nothing like she expects. It's ostentatious, vases and figurines cluttering the tables with a collection of framed photos that generally feature Martha with a co-star or famous friend. Kate catches a few family photos, including a black and white one that looks to have been taken when Castle was somewhere in his twenties, but those are the only mark on the place that would really give a hint that the writer lives there at all.

She wonders where he goes to work, if his bedroom is the one place that hasn't been overrun by his mother and her need for dramatic flair.

And Kate promptly puts a halt on that line of thinking, wrinkling her nose in distaste at herself. Imagining what his bedroom looks like is a little much, and that's certainly not why she's perched on a barstool watching him expertly operate what she knows to be a top of the line espresso machine.

There's something oddly seductive about it. The way the muscles in his arms flex as the milk froths up or the intense concentration she can see on his face as Castle carefully combines the white liquid with the espresso and then begins drawing what proves to be an intricate leaf pattern when he presents the extra large mug to her with a flourish and beaming smile.

She doesn't miss that he forgoes the smooth motions and over the top presentation for his own cup, but Kate doesn't comment. It's interesting, sure, but she hardly knows this man. Or, well, this version of him. It's a bit like staring at a fun house mirror that distorts your features, gives you some reflection of yourself that's just not quite what you have known.

It's wholly unsettling, only making the anxiety and agitation about the entire situation churn in her stomach as she takes a tentative sip of the drink and promptly tries not to moan at the bitter-sweet explosion against her taste-buds.

By far, it's the best coffee she's had in years.

On some level, he seems to sense it, blue eyes twinkling at her from over the rim of his own cup. He's amused by her, that much is clear, but Kate can't help the clench of muscles at the absence of familiarity. Less than a day ago he'd looked at her like he'd known all of her secrets and had treasured every one of them.

She's not sure what it says that some part of her yearned for it to be true, that someone existed in the world who had gotten under her armor and made themselves at home, turned her lonely world into something extraordinary.

"So, you ready to tell me why my mother thinks I've been shadowing you for a book?" Castle asks after another lingering sip of coffee, the tip of his tongue darting out to lick at his upper lip for any stray drops.

That move makes her shift in her seat for a different reason, one that Kate steadfastly ignores. It's already weird enough without adding her obvious attraction to the writer into the fray.

"….because you were," Kate offers it in its simplest form, no subtext or word manipulation to allow the truth of the thing to arrive in an easier fashion. Her hyper rational mind and devotion to logic have no hope of making sense of this, not unless he's sustained some bump on the head or a psychotic break that has forged him to forget the past 48 hours.

But even if that were possible, it doesn't explain how he's sitting healthy and whole in his kitchen, he should be in a hospital recovering from surgery or at least nursing some stitches or a nasty bruise. There's no answer for why he seemed to know every inch of her and now glances at her with the general interest that she so often sees in men.

Warmth, intrigue, appreciation - those are all things she can decipher in that swirling vortex of blue. There's no intimacy, no affection. Those emotions evaporated with a gunshot that Kate can still feel rattling through her body and will surely haunt her mind for weeks to come.

"I wasn't," Castle replies, slowly placing his mug onto the counter. His eyes are still curious, still sparkling with an infinite measure of possibilities, but they are also guarded, cautious in the face of the evidence she's about to present him with, "For the past two days, I've been in the Hamptons attempting to write about the police force there and the small town crimes. It…." the words trail off for a moment, broad shoulders slumping inward with his frustrated exhale of air, "It didn't go well."

Kate's nose wrinkles up at the idea by reflex. Small town capers? It sounds rather dull, nothing like the globe-trotting adventures of Derrick Storm or the high drama of his earlier works. She doesn't really even get time to school her features, to offer some half-hearted encouragement that he keep plugging at the idea before he has read her reaction and jumped in with more explanations, hands gesturing at her in some form of appeasement.

"I know, it's a little Murder, She Wrote or even Veronica Mars," he says, eyes rolling in some mix of exasperation and embarrassment, "But it was a concept, and that's more than I've had in a while, so I retreated up there to research the resources and procedures of the Southampton Police Department. I can't have been here and yet you and my mother both claim that I have been."

That excitement flows back into him as if someone has flipped a switch and left him buzzing with electricity. The flare in his eyes and that lopsided grin make her heart kick just a little harder against her ribs, and she can feel her lips twitch in a smile when the writer leans across the counter, one hand planted under his chin when he whispers with glee, "I either have a twin - which I'm sure my mother would remember - or there's something fantastically weird happening. So which is it, Captain Beckett? How can I be in two places at once?"

He's so smug with the question, and combined with the unrepressed giddiness that radiates off of him, Kate can't help but roll her eyes. She can see how he's bursting to say something about alternate universes and parallel worlds, which is exactly the sort of conversation she'd had with his counterpart not so long ago, but instead of diving into it himself, this version is toying with her.

He wants her to say it, almost like some sort of test that will determine how the rest of their conversation proceeds.

She has to grit her teeth against it for a moment, gathering up the courage to ignore her need for logic. This is one situation where logic certainly doesn't apply, but the evidence adds up.

Kate trusts evidence, and part of her trusts Richard Castle because some version of him took a bullet for her when she'd done nothing more than make his life difficult and berate him for getting in the way.

"The other version of you mentioned a parallel universe, that he'd touched an ancient artifact that had taken him from his world to ours. He thought if he touched it again that it would take him back to his world," she replies, pressing her lips together in amusement when Castle punches his fist in the air.

"I knew it! Parallel universes are real," he yells, bouncing on his toes a couple of times, "this is so cool."

A reprimand forms on her tongue instantly, some harsh and mean spirited thing that is meant to inform him that taking a bullet, sacrificing himself for her isn't cool but she holds it in, completely unwilling to both ruin his joy at the implausible becoming possible and to see his reaction to the knowledge that somewhere there's another version of his family that will spend the rest of their lives wondering what happened to him.

The proverbial train of her thoughts grinds to a screeching halt with that idea, Kate's eyebrows shooting towards her hairline.

What happened to the body.

She's up on her feet in an instant, struggling with her blazer pocket to retrieve her phone. Castle's barrage of questions are mere background noise, like static on a radio station when she dials up the contact number for Lanie and tries to fight the tingling shocks that lick at her skin while the medical examiner's phone rings in her ear.

"Parish," gets huffed out just after the sixth ring, proof that even something as simple as walking can do things to your energy level at eight months pregnant.

"Lanie, hey," Kate tries to keep the excitement out of her tone, to appear disinterested and casual, "Did you do the autopsy on the body that came from our crime scene yesterday? The shooting victims….."

"Girl, you think I can do three dead bodies in less than a day?" Lanie snaps, the words followed by a sharp grunt and a lot of muttering that she can't make out over the creaking of the phone and what sounds to be piles of folders being shuffled around. Kate can picture her friend in her office, crowded by the paperwork that towers on her desk and to the floor beyond, slumping down into the extra large chair that will give her exhausted body some relief from it's added weight.

"I just need to know one thing," she replies, sympathizing with Lanie as much as she can in her non-pregnant life experience, "The third body, the one I didn't shoot…." Kate chokes on attempting to say the name, feeling the goosebumps rise across her arms and neck at the memory of those blue eyes reflecting so much pain and how he'd gone so still while she'd tried to fight the inevitable.

She doesn't even reprimand herself for staring when she turns to glance at that body and its current frantic state. Castle's hunched over the countertop, notepad in front of him and pen scribbling away.

"What about it?" Lanie asks, her voice followed by the faint creak of chair springs.

"Is it still in the morgue?" she closes her eyes, picturing him laid out on an impersonal stainless steel drawer, awaiting the useless process of being cut open to determine his death. It'd been a gunshot wound, taken in defense of her own life. Kate wants to ask Lanie not to cut him open, to let whatever version of Richard Castle that lies there to rest in peace, no more scars to mark his skin.

"Probably not," her friend drawls, the speaker crackling with the sound of a sigh when Lanie hauls herself out of the chair, grunting with the effort of lifting her baby boy, "We know what killed him, so procedure is to let the family tell us which funeral service will be picking him up and when. I'm sure they were informed last night, so if he's still here then I don't think its for long. Why?"

"I…." Kate sinks her teeth into her lower lip, worrying at the skin while she thinks. She's so far out of her element, so completely beyond anything rational that she's nearly frozen with indecision. It'd be easier to hang up, give some excuse to Lanie and just not worry about it but she knows that she can't. "….I just need to know what happened to the body. Please don't ask why."

Lanie is one of the few people in her life that can make silence speak, but the lack of noise stretches between them, growing and pressing at Kate's ears until she thinks they might burst with it. The silence means disapproval in keeping Lanie out of her affairs, but also enough respect of Kate's boundaries to not push - not yet at least.

She's never been more grateful.

"Your vic's paperwork has been processed in full and he is now on his way to —-" this silence is different, tense with surprise that keeps both women in a moment of suspension until the doctor breaks it.

"Kate, uh, there's no record of a third victim."